Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (28 page)

Our bags were stuffed into the back, and with some difficulty George and I squeezed in alongside. Lockwood bounded round to the front beside the driver. The taxi veered out into the road, sending ducks squalling across the village pond and me sprawling headlong onto George’s lap. Grimly, I levered myself upright. The lad whistled through his teeth as we drove between stark grey elms.

‘No extra ironwork on the car, I see,’ Lockwood said, by way of conversation.

‘No need, round here,’ the boy replied.

‘Safe district, is it? No Visitors around?’

‘Nope. They’re all up at the house.’ The boy turned sharply to avoid a pothole, so that I was flung bodily across George’s lap again.

George looked down at me. ‘Want a hand? You can stay there if it’s easier.’

‘No. No, thank you. I can manage.’

‘You mean Combe Carey Hall?’ Lockwood was saying. ‘Good. That’s where we’ll be staying tonight.’

‘In the new wing? Or with old Bert Starkins the caretaker?’

‘In the main house.’

There was a pause, during which the youth took his hands off the wheel to cross himself, touch a small religious icon on the dashboard and spit ritually out of the window. He looked in the rear-view mirror in a ruminative manner. ‘I like that red duffel bag,’ he said. ‘I could do with one for my football gear. Mind if I nip up to the Hall tomorrow and ask for it? Mr Fairfax wouldn’t be wanting it, would he? Nor old Starkins.’

‘Sorry,’ Lockwood said. ‘
We’ll
still have need of it tomorrow.’

The youth nodded. ‘I’ll drop by anyhow,’ he said. ‘No harm in seeing.’

We drove uphill, through straggling woods, amid a tangled grid of cold, dark fields lined with winter greens. ‘You ever been inside the Hall?’ Lockwood said.

‘What? You think I’m mad?’

‘You must know something about it, though. About its haunting.’

The youth turned abruptly up a narrow side-lane, a miracle of last-minute steering, so that everything in the back of the car shifted violently to the left, and my head was brutally sandwiched between the window-glass and some soft portion of George’s face. For a few seconds I heard nothing except him breathing in my ear; by the time he prised himself loose, with much gratuitous fumbling, we had passed through a tumbledown gateway and were racing up a long straight drive.

‘. . . murdered, hidden, and never found,’ the boy was saying. ‘
That’s
how it all began, I reckon. Everyone round here knows it. One death leads to another, and so becomes a chain of deaths that’ll keep on growing as long as the house shall last. Whole place should be burned down and salt sown on the ashes – that’s what my mum says. Not that we can get the owner to see that kind of sense. He’s so set on his little experiments. So: here we are. That’ll be ten pounds fifty, plus two for the extra bags.’

‘Interesting,’ Lockwood said. ‘Particularly the first bit. Thanks.’

We had come to a halt at the terminus of the gravel drive. Through my window I saw rolling parkland, spotted with oaks and beeches, and part of the lake I’d noticed in Fairfax’s photograph. It all had a wild, unkempt look. The grass was high, and the lakeshore overgrown with matted sedge. On the other side, past George, I could just make out the pale trunk of a tree, two vast urns on plinths and, behind it all, the blank grey stone of a house.

Lockwood was busy talking with the driver. I got out and helped George with the bags. Combe Carey Hall rose vast and tall above me. The air was dank and chill.

Far above, long brick chimneys sprouted like horns against the clouds. This left-hand portion of the house, which I assumed to be the older, western, wing, was mostly of ancient stone, switching to brickwork near the roof and on the margins. It had a great number of windows, of many sizes and at a variety of levels, each one blankly reflecting the grey November sky. Cracked columns supported an ugly concrete portico above the double entrance doors, which were reached by a splaying flight of stairs. A monumental ash tree, of considerable age and size, stood by the far end of the wing. Its bone-white branches pressed against the bricks like the legs of giant spiders.

To the right of the entrance stairs, the smaller, eastern, wing was also brickwork, but of clearly modern construction. By a curious accident of architecture, the wings were set at a
slight angle to each other, so the effect was of the entire house subtly reaching out to encircle me. It was an ugly, oppressive mongrel of a building and I’d have disliked it intensely, even if I hadn’t known its reputation.

‘Lovely!’ Lockwood said cheerily. ‘Here’s our hotel for the night.’ He had been talking animatedly with the driver for a surprisingly long time. As I watched, he handed over a wad of notes – considerably more than £12.50 – and a sealed brown envelope.

‘You’ll deliver it, won’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s important.’

The youth nodded. In a shower of gravel, his taxi roared away, leaving behind a smell of fear and petrol, and the sight of an elderly man descending the steps of the house.

‘What was all
that
about?’ I demanded.

‘Little package I needed posting,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘Hush,’ George whispered. ‘This must be “old Bert Starkins”. He
is
old, isn’t he?’

The caretaker was certainly very ancient, a tight and desiccated thing from which all softness and moisture had long since been extracted. Where Mr Fairfax had been bullishly vigorous despite his age and infirmity, this man was more like the ash tree by the house: gnarled and twisted, but holding tenaciously to life. He had a shock of grey-white hair, and a narrow face that disintegrated, as he drew near, into a web of lines, a limestone pavement of incised clints and
grykes. His clothes carried an air of sombre correctness: he was dressed in an old-fashioned tail coat of dark black velvet, from the sleeves of which grey, liver-spotted fingers protruded. His striped trousers were incredibly thin, his shoes as long and pointed as his nose.

He came to a halt and surveyed us dismally. ‘Welcome to Combe Carey. Mr Fairfax is expecting you, but is presently indisposed. He will be ready to receive you shortly. In the meantime, he’s asked that I show you round the grounds and introduce you to the Hall.’ His voice was broken, querulous, like the rustling of willow fronds.

‘Thank you,’ Lockwood said. ‘Are you Mr Starkins?’

‘I am, and I’ve been caretaker here for fifty-three years, man and boy, so I know a thing or two about the place and I don’t care who knows it.’

‘I – I’m sure you do. That’s excellent. Where shall we put our bags?’

‘Leave them here. Who’s going to take them? Not the Inhabitants of the Hall, I’m sure;
they
don’t stir before sundown. Come then, I’ll show you the gardens.’

Lockwood held up a hand. ‘Excuse me, but it’s been a long journey. Do you have . . . any
facilities
nearby?’

The net of wrinkles grew deeper; shadows enveloped the old man’s eyes. ‘When we get to the house, boy. I can’t escort you now. Mr Fairfax wants to show you the interior himself.’

‘It’s a bit urgent.’

‘Cross your legs and wait.’

‘Well, you could give me directions.’

‘No! Impossible.’

‘I’ll just nip behind one of those urns, then. No one will know.’

Starkins scowled. ‘Up the steps, across the lobby, little room to the left of the stairs.’

‘Thanks so much. Won’t be a moment.’ Lockwood hurried away.

‘If he can’t hold it in now,’ the old man said, ‘how will he cope tonight, when the light begins to drain away from the Long Gallery?’

‘Er, I don’t know,’ I said. Lockwood’s behaviour had slightly perplexed me too.

‘Well, we don’t have to wait for him,’ Starkins went on. He pointed up at the western wing. ‘This stonework marks the oldest portion of Combe Carey. It’s the shell of the original priory – you can see one of the chapel windows there – built by the notorious Monks of St John. Ah, they were a wicked order! It’s said they turned away from God to the worship of—’

‘– darke things,’ I murmured.

Starkins looked at me askance. ‘Who’s doing this tour, me or you? But you’re right. Such depraved sacrifices and rituals . . . Ooh, it’s terrible to think of it. Well, the rumours spread, and finally the priory was sacked by the barons.
Seven of the wickedest monks were thrown down a well. The rest were burned inside the building. Yes, they all died screaming inside those walls! By the way, I’ve prepared your beds in the guest rooms on the first floor. There’re ensuite bathrooms too. You’ve all the mod cons.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Is the well still open?’ George asked.

‘No. You could still see a disused well out here in the courtyard when I was a lad, but they sealed it up with an iron plug, years ago, and buried it in sand.’

George and I scanned the silent building for a time. I was trying to work out which, in Mr Fairfax’s photograph, had been the window with the apparent spectral figure standing at it. It was very hard to tell. There were several potential candidates, seemingly up on the first or second floor.

‘Are the monks the ultimate Source of the haunting, do you think?’ I asked. ‘Sounds like they must be.’

‘It’s not my place to speculate,’ Bert Starkins said. ‘Might be the monks; then again, it might be mad Sir Rufus Carey, who built the first Hall from the ruins of the priory in 1328 . . . Ah, here’s your weak-bladdered friend back. About time too.’

Lockwood was pattering towards us, a spring in his step. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Have I missed anything?’

‘We were just hearing about mad Sir Rufus,’ I said.

Starkins nodded. ‘Yes. He was known hereabouts as the
Red Duke, on account of his flaming hair and addiction to spilled blood. It’s said he brought his enemies to a torture chamber deep inside the house, where . . .’ He hesitated. ‘No, I can’t say more, not with a young girl present.’

‘Oh, go on,’ George said. ‘Lucy’s terribly jaded. Look at her. She’s seen it all.’

‘I
have
seen a lot,’ I said sweetly.

The old man grunted. ‘Let’s just say they provided his nightly . . . entertainments. When he’d finished off each one, he set their skulls on the steps of the central staircase with candles burning behind the eye-sockets.’ Starkins’s aged, rheumy eyes rolled in horror at the thought. ‘So it went for years, until the stormy night one of the victims broke free and cut Sir Rufus’s throat with a rusted manacle. From that day to this, whenever the Red Duke’s ghost stalks the corridors, you can hear the souls of his victims howling. They say it’s like the very staircase screams.’

Lockwood, George and I glanced at each other. ‘So that’s the origin of the Screaming Staircase?’ Lockwood asked.

Starkins shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Have
you
ever heard it?’ I said.

‘Not a chance! Wouldn’t catch
me
going into the Hall by night.’

‘Well, what about anyone you know? Have they heard it? Any of your friends?’

‘Friends?’ The caretaker’s forehead creased in puzzlement at the concept. ‘It’s not my place to have
friends
. I’m a servant of the Hall. Well, let’s continue the tour.’

Old Mr Starkins took us on a rambling circuit of the house, pointing out external features, and giving us a potted guide. It soon became apparent that, in his opinion at least, every stone and tree had some horrid association. Sir Rufus and the monks had set the tone. Almost all the subsequent owners of the Hall had been mad, or bad, or a messy combination of both. As they hacked and strangled their way down the years, countless killings had taken place. Theoretically, any one of them might have contributed to the terrible atmosphere of the Hall, but the sheer volume of anecdotes was both numbing and hard to believe. I could see Lockwood struggling to keep an incredulous smile off his face, while George dawdled behind, yawning and rolling his eyes. For my part I soon gave up trying to remember all the stories, and spent my time studying the house. I noticed that, the main entrance aside, there were no obvious exits from the ground floor, except in the modern East Wing, which Mr Fairfax used. His Rolls was parked outside this side-door; the chauffeur, stripped to his shirt-sleeves despite the bitter air, stood polishing the bonnet.

In the grounds beyond the East Wing stretched the boating lake, drab and kidney-shaped. Close by were rose gardens, and a tall round tower with ruined battlements.

Bert Starkins pointed. ‘I draw your attention to Sir Lionel’s Folly.’

‘An unusual tower,’ Lockwood ventured.

‘Wait for it,’ George whispered.

The old man nodded. ‘Yes, it was from the top of that tower that Lady Caroline Throckmorton threw herself in 1863. Lovely summer evening, it was. She stood astride the crenulations, skirts flapping, silhouetted against a blood-red sky, while the servants tried to coax her back in with tea and seed cake. No good, of course. They said she stepped off as casually as if she were alighting from an omnibus.’

‘At least it was a serene end,’ I said.

‘You think so? She screamed and flapped her arms all the way down.’

There was a short silence. Wind ruffled the cold waters of the lake. George cleared his throat. ‘Well . . . it’s a nice rose garden.’

‘Yes . . . Built where she landed.’

‘A pleasant lake—’

‘Where old Sir John Carey perished. Took off for a swim one night. They say he swam to the middle, then dropped like a stone, weighed down by guilty memories.’

Lockwood pointed hastily to a little cottage surrounded by shrubs and hedges. ‘What about that house—’

‘Never found his corpse, they didn’t.’

‘Really? Shame. Now, that cottage—’

‘It’s down there still, cradled amongst the mud and stones and old drowned leaves . . . I’m sorry, what did you say?’

‘That little house. What’s the appalling story about that?’

The ancient man sucked his gums meditatively. ‘Ain’t none.’

‘There’s nothing?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure? No suicide pacts or crimes of passion? Must at least be a quick stabbing or something, surely.’

The caretaker appraised Lockwood in a thoughtful manner. ‘Perhaps, sir, you’d be making one of your clever college jokes about me?’