Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (27 page)

‘Look,’ I said, picking up the paper from the floor. ‘I did what we should have done originally. I showed Annie Ward these pictures. What are they of? Hugo Blake. What did she do? She went ballistic. I’ve never heard such a scream.’

‘You deliberately let her free?’ Lockwood said. ‘That was a stupid thing to do.’

When I looked at his face, my heart quailed. ‘Not free,’ I said desperately. ‘Just . . . freer. And it got results, which nothing else has done so far.’

George snorted. ‘What results? Did she actually speak with you? No. Did she sign a legal document that would stand up in court? No.’

‘The reaction was clear, George. Cause and effect. You can’t deny the connection.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Even so, you shouldn’t have done it. Give me the paper.’

I handed it over wordlessly, my eyes pricking. I was for it now. I’d made the wrong decision yet again, and this time I knew Lockwood would not forgive me. I could see it in his face. This was the end of my emploment at the company. All at once I understood the preciousness of what I’d thrown away.

Lockwood stepped aside, his boots crunching across the salt, to stand and study the paper beneath the light. No such luck with George; he came in close, eyes behind his spectacles bulging so much they almost pressed against the glass.

‘I can’t
believe
you did that, Lucy. You’re crazy!
Purposefully
freeing a ghost!’

‘It was an experiment,’ I said. ‘Why are you complaining? You’re always messing about with that stupid jar of yours.’

‘There’s no comparison. I keep that ghost in the jar. Anyway, it’s scientific research. I do it under carefully controlled conditions.’

‘Carefully controlled? I found it in the bath the other day!’

‘That’s right. I was testing the ghost’s reaction to heat.’

‘And to bubble bath? There were bubbles all over the jar. You put some nice soapy fragrance in that water, and . . .’ I stared at him. ‘Do you get in the tub with it, George?’

His face flushed. ‘No, I do not. Not as a rule. I – I was saving time. I was just getting in myself when it occurred to me I could do a useful experiment about the resistance of ectoplasm to warmth. I wanted to see if it would contract—’ He waved his hands wildly in the air. ‘Wait! Why am I explaining myself to
you
? You just unleashed a ghost in our house!’

‘Lucy . . .’ Lockwood said.

‘I didn’t unleash it!’ I cried. ‘Take a look at all the salt. I was in total control.’

‘Yeah,’ George said, ‘which is why we found you spread-eagled on the floor. If you kept the ghost constrained, it was more by dumb luck than skill. That bloody thing nearly had our heads off the other night, and now—’

‘Oh, quit complaining.
You
got naked with a ghost—’

‘
Lucy!
’ We broke off. Lockwood was still in exactly the same pose as when we started bickering, under the ceiling light, holding the paper before him. His face was pale and his voice was strange. ‘You showed the Visitor this paper?’

‘Well, yes. I—’

‘How did you hold it? Like that? Or like that?’ He adjusted his hand grip rapidly.

‘Er, the last one, I suppose.’

‘It definitely saw the whole paper?’

‘Well, yes, but only for a second. Then it went crazy, as you saw.’

‘Yeah,’ George said grimly. ‘We saw. Lockwood, you’ve been pretty quiet so far. Can you tell Lucy that she is never to do anything like this again? This is twice now we’ve been put at risk. We need to say—’

‘We need to say
well done
,’ Lockwood interrupted. ‘Lucy, you’re a genius. I think you’ve made a key connection. This is a crucial clue.’

I was almost as surprised as George, whose lower jaw now resembled a gently moving swing. ‘Oh. Thanks . . .’ I said. ‘You think . . . you think this will help the case?’

‘Very much so.’

‘So shall we take it to the police? Shall we show the locket to Barnes?’

‘Not yet. George is right: the ghost’s reaction can’t strictly count as evidence. But don’t worry – thanks to you, I’m confident we can bring the Annie Ward story to a satisfactory conclusion very soon.’

‘I hope so . . .’ Baffled as I was, I was also mightily relieved. ‘But there’s something you should know. Hugo Blake’s going to be released.’ I told them about the call.

Lockwood smiled; he seemed suddenly relaxed, cheerful even. ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ve made the house
secure. They won’t burgle us again. All the same, I don’t think we should leave the locket here when we go down to Combe Carey. Bring it with you, Lucy – keep it around your neck. I promise we’ll deal with the matter soon. But first’ – he grinned – ‘there’s the Fairfax job. George has got some news on that.’

‘Yeah,’ George said. ‘I uncovered a bit about the haunting.’

I stared at him. ‘And is it as bad as Fairfax said?’

‘Nope.’ George took off his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes. ‘From what I’ve seen, it’s almost certainly a whole lot worse.’

To get from the London offices of Lockwood & Co. to the village of Combe Carey is a fairly simple business. All it takes is a quick taxi up the road to Marylebone Station, a leisurely wait at platform six, and finally a gentle forty-minute train ride – through rolling, grey-brown suburbs, then the wintry Berkshire fields – before you arrive below the mossy flanks of St Wilfred’s Church in old Combe Carey station. An hour and a half’s journey, tops. Easy, quick, straightforward, and as pleasant as a trip can be.

Yeah, right. That’s the theory. But it isn’t so much fun when you’re helping carry six super-massive duffel bags weighed down with metal, plus a rapier bag with four old ones stuffed inside as spares,
and
you have a brand-new
rapier at your belt getting in your way. It also doesn’t help if your leader and his deputy both conveniently mislay their wallets, so it’s
you
who have to fork out for the train tickets,
and
pay supplements for the heavy luggage. Or that you spend so much time haggling you end up missing the first train. Yes, all that
really
improves your mood.

Then there’s the small matter of heading towards one of the most haunted houses in England, and hoping you aren’t going to die.

This last factor wasn’t improved en route by George giving us a full briefing on the things he’d discovered over the previous two days. He had a ring-binder filled with neatly written notes and, as the train pootled cheerily past the spires and ghost-lamps of villages hidden in the wooded folds of gentle hills, he regaled us with nasty details from them.

‘Basically, it seems what Fairfax told us was right,’ he said. ‘The Hall’s had a bad rep for centuries. You remember it started off as a priory? I found a medieval document about that. It was built by an outfit known as the Heretic Monks of St John. Apparently they “turned awaye from the laweful worshippe of God to the adoration of darke things”, whatever
that
means. Before long a group of barons got wind of this and burned the place down. They took over the priory’s land and divided it amongst themselves.’

‘Possibly a set-up?’ I said. ‘They framed the monks in order to nick the land?’

George nodded. ‘Maybe. Since then it’s been owned by a succession of rich families – the Careys, the Fitz-Percys, the Throckmortons – all of whom benefited from the wealth of the estate. But the Hall itself is nothing but trouble. I couldn’t find too many details, but one owner abandoned it in the fifteenth century because of a “malign presence”. It’s almost burned down two or three times, and – get this – in 1666 an outbreak of plague killed off its inhabitants. Seems a guest turned up at the door and found everyone inside lying dead, except for one little baby, left crying in a cradle in a bedroom.’

Lockwood whistled. ‘Grisly. That could be your cluster of Visitors, right there.’

‘Did they save the baby?’ I said.

George consulted his notes. ‘Yeah. He was adopted by a cousin and became a school teacher. Which is a tough break, but he was lucky to get out. Anyway, the bad vibes in that house continue right up until this century. There’ve been a succession of accidents, and the last owner before Fairfax – a distant relative – shot himself.’

‘No shortage of potential Visitors for us, then,’ Lockwood mused. ‘Any mention of this Screaming Staircase, or the dreaded Red Room?’

‘One fragment, from Corbett’s
Berkshire Legends
.’ George turned a page. ‘It claims two children from Combe Carey were found unconscious at the bottom of the “old steps” in
the Hall. One died right away, but the other recovered sufficiently to report being beset by a “foul and devilish ululation, a cruel and unholy outcry”.’ He snapped the folder shut. ‘Then she died too.’

‘What’s a ululation?’ I said.

‘That would be the screaming.’ Lockwood stared out at the passing landscape. ‘Stories, stories . . . What we badly need is
facts
.’

George adjusted his glasses in a complacent manner. ‘Aha. Maybe I can help you there too.’ From inside the folder he brought out two pieces of paper, which he unfolded and set on the little table beneath the window of our compartment. The first was a hand-drawn floor-plan of a large building, showing two extensive levels, each with walls, windows and stairs carefully rendered in ink. Here and there were annotations, written in blue:
Main Lobby, Library, Duke’s Chamber, Long Gallery
. . . At the top, in George’s neat little handwriting, was written
West Wing: Combe Carey Hall
.

‘This is superb work, George,’ Lockwood said. ‘Where did you find it?’

George scratched his pudgy nose. ‘The Royal Architectural Society on Pall Mall. They’ve got all sorts of plans and surveys there. This one was done in the nineteenth century. Look at the great staircase: it’s an absolute monster. Must dominate the hall. The other plan’ – he swapped the papers over – ‘is much older; might even be medieval. It’s a
very rough sketch, but it shows the place when it was still basically the ruins of the priory. It’s much smaller, and there are lots of rooms that must have been knocked down when they rebuilt it as a house, because they’re not on the later map. But look, you can see that the massive staircase is already there, and also the areas that became the lobby and Long Gallery. The Long Gallery was the monks’ refectory, where they ate. Some upstairs rooms correspond to the nineteenth-century plan too. So between them,’ George said, ‘these plans tell us where the oldest regions of the West Wing are.’

‘And that,’ Lockwood said, ‘is where the ultimate Source is most likely to be. Excellent. We’ll start our searches in those areas tonight. What about the other material I asked you for, George? Can I have a look?’

George produced a slim green file. ‘There you go. Everything I could find on Mr John William Fairfax. As he said, he inherited the place six or seven years ago. Didn’t seem put off by its reputation. Anyway, you’ve lots of articles on him there – interviews, profiles, that sort of thing.’

Lockwood settled back with the file. ‘Let’s see . . . Hmm, seems that Fairfax is a firm advocate of fox hunting. Likes hunting and fishing . . . Supports a
lot
of charities. Ooh, and he was keen amateur actor in his youth . . . Look at this review: “Will Fairfax gives an intense performance as Othello . . .” The mind boggles. But it makes sense, in a way. He’s a bit theatrical even now.’

‘That’s not really relevant, is it?’ I said. I was still studying the floor-plans, tracing the curve of the staircase, pondering the location of the infamous Red Room.

‘Oh, it’s good to have the full background to a job . . .’ Lockwood became engrossed. Conversation faltered; the train rushed on. Once or twice I touched the front of my coat, feeling a small hard outline hanging beneath: the case containing the ghost-girl’s locket. I’d kept it on me, safe, just as Lockwood had instructed. I hoped he was right; that we’d soon bring that story to a conclusion. Assuming, of course, that we survived the night in Combe Carey Hall.

Outside the village station, a car was waiting for us. A tousle-haired youth lounged against the bonnet, reading an old issue of
True Hauntings
. As we staggered out under our burden, like three trainee Sherpas back from Everest, he lowered the magazine and regarded us with callous amusement mixed with pity. He touched his forelock in a slightly ironic gesture. ‘Mr Lockwood, is it? Got your message. I’ll take you to the Hall.’