Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (39 page)

‘I’m waiting,’ Fairfax said. He was completely calm. The prospect of murdering us didn’t appear to distress him in the slightest.

Lockwood, however, seemed just as relaxed, if not more so. ‘Thanks for the story,’ he said. ‘It was most enlightening – and very useful, as it’s helped us waste a bit more time. You see, I forgot to mention earlier that we’re not going to be alone for long. Shortly before we arrived I sent word via our driver to Inspector Barnes of DEPRAC. I gave him enough information about you to excite his interest and asked him to meet us here by dawn.’

George and I stared at him. I remembered the package, the taxi driver, the money changing hands . . .

‘He should arrive quite soon,’ Lockwood went on blithely. He leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms behind his head. ‘In other words, it’s all over for you, Fairfax. So we might as well relax. Why not get Grebe to make us all a cup of tea?’

The old man’s face was ghastly to observe: hatred, fear and disbelief washed over it in waves, and for a moment he was struck dumb. Then the expression cleared. ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said. ‘And even if you’re not, who cares? By the time anyone arrives, you’ll have sadly met your end while fighting Visitors by the haunted well. One after the other, you all fell in. I’ll be terribly distraught. Barnes will be able to prove
nothing. So. One final time of asking:
Where is the locket?
’

No one said anything.

‘Percy,’ Fairfax said. ‘Shoot the girl.’

‘Wait!’ Lockwood and George leaped from their chairs.

‘OK!’ I cried. ‘OK, don’t do it! I’ll tell you.’

All eyes turned as I stood up. Fairfax leaned forward. ‘Excellent. I
thought
you’d be the one to crack. So . . . where did you hide it, girl? Which room?’

‘Lucy—’ Lockwood began.

‘Oh, it’s not at Portland Row at all,’ I said. ‘I’ve got it here.’

I was watching the old man’s face as I spoke; I saw how his eyes drew tight in pleasure, how his mouth curled sensuously into a secretive half-smile. And something about the expression, fleeting as it was, opened a cracked and dirty window for me onto his truest, deepest nature. It was something he generally kept hidden beneath the bluff, bombastic veneer of the captain of industry; it even underlay the dry regret of his long confession. I’d seen a lot that night at Combe Carey Hall, but that little gleeful smile on those old, wide lips? Yeah, it was the self-love of the murderer, and easily the most repulsive thing of all. I wondered how many others had fallen foul of him over the years, and how he had disposed of them.

‘Show me, then,’ he said.

‘Sure.’ Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lockwood
staring at me, trying desperately to catch my attention. I didn’t meet his gaze. There was no point. I’d made my choice. I knew what I was going to do.

I reached round the back of my neck and removed the loop of cord. As I pulled out the case, I thought I saw a flash of pale fire from beneath the glass, but the electric lights were bright in the library and I might have been mistaken. I held the case in one hand and shot aside the little bolt.

‘Hey, that’s silver-glass . . .’ Grebe said suddenly. ‘What’s the locket doing in there?’

I swung the lid open and tipped the necklace out into my palm. As I did so, I heard a little gasp from George. Fairfax spoke too, but I didn’t heed him. I was listening to another sound – far off, but swiftly drawing near.

The locket was blisteringly cold; so cold it burned my skin. ‘Here you are,’ I said. ‘All yours.’

With that I held my arm outstretched, and turned my head aside.

Up on the wall, the photo of young Fairfax, legs valiantly akimbo, thoughtfully considered the mouldering skull. Here in the library, the old, decrepit Fairfax stared in sudden consternation at the necklace in my hand.

Air struck the side of my face. My hair stretched out behind me; chair-legs scraped on carpets, tables shifted. I heard a great collective thump as all the books in the room slammed against the back wall of the shelves. Percy Grebe,
who had been doing something with his gun, was blown back off his feet; he hit a bookshelf hard and collapsed onto the floor. Lockwood’s chair spun into George’s. Both were pressed back in their seats by the wave of force erupting from my hand.

All the light bulbs in the library blew.

But it wasn’t dark; to me the room grew brighter, because the girl was there. She wore her pretty summer dress with orange flowers. She stood between me and Fairfax, and now the other-light radiated from her like water: it poured in torrents, gushing over chairs and rugs, and spilling around the reading desks in a bright and freezing tide.

‘
I’m cold
,’ a voice said. ‘
So very cold
.’

Into my head came the little hollow knocking sound I’d heard at Sheen Road the night it all began, like a fingernail on plaster or a nail being hammered into wood. It was rhythmic now, like the beating of a heart. Otherwise it was all dead quiet. For an instant the ghost-girl’s eyes met mine; then she turned to face the old man in the chair.

Fairfax sensed but could not see her clearly. He was looking wildly all around. Suddenly his fingers scrabbled on the table. He found the goggles, pressed them to his eyes. He looked, he frowned: at once his face went slack, his body very still.

The ghost-girl drifted towards him, light streaming from her hair.

The goggles drooped in Fairfax’s hand, hung at an acute diagonal across his nose. They fell away. His eyes were rapt with wonder and an awful fear. As a gentleman does when a lady enters the room, he got slowly, shakily to his feet. He stood there, waiting.

The girl opened her arms out wide.

Perhaps Fairfax tried to move. Perhaps he tried to defend himself. But ghost-lock had him in its grip. His sword-arm twitched slightly, his hand hung helpless above his belt.

Off to the side, Lockwood fought free of the baleful influence; he tugged at George’s arm, pulled him back behind the chairs and safely out of range.

Coils of other-light, like giant fingers, closed in on Fairfax from all sides. And now the girl had reached him. Plasm touched the iron armour; it hissed and bubbled. The girl’s form wavered, but held firm. She looked into the old man’s eyes. He opened his mouth; he seemed about to speak . . . She clasped him to her, drew him downwards in a cold embrace.

Fairfax gave a single hollow cry.

And the other-light went out.

The room was dark. I tilted my hand; the locket fell and broke into pieces on the floor.

‘Quickly! George – get Grebe!’ That was Lockwood shouting. The chauffeur’s form could just be seen, blundering away across the room, knocking against furniture, making for
the lobby. Lockwood grabbed a poker from the fireplace, and followed. George leaped in pursuit too, skimming a cushion past Grebe’s head. Grebe ducked; his silhouette was outlined hazily against the lobby arch. He turned: a flash, a crack, a bullet whipped between us into the dark.

Lockwood and George reached the arch, paused a moment, and passed through. Then at once there came a shouting and a crashing, and the sounds of voices raised, and despite the pain in my injured hand, I too was stumbling to the lobby – where to my astonishment I found the chauffeur sprawling on the ground with Lockwood’s poker at his throat, the main entrance doors wide open, and Inspector Barnes and a crowd of grim-faced agents clustering into the Hall.

V

And After

Whatever it was that Lockwood had scribbled in his note to Inspector Barnes, it certainly had the desired effect. The taxi driver had delivered the message to Scotland Yard late the previous evening; by midnight Barnes had gathered two van-loads of DEPRAC officers and agency personnel, and was on his way to Berkshire. They reached the village of Combe Carey shortly after three, and the estate itself by four. Only their difficulty in opening the park gates (Bert Starkins, thinking they were phantoms risen from his cabbage patch, had shot at them from his window with a blunderbuss-load of iron filings) prevented them from arriving at the hall prior to five a.m. Even so, they were two full hours earlier than Lockwood had requested, and just in time to block Percy Grebe’s escape.

They didn’t turn up a moment too soon for me.

It wasn’t ghost-touch or anything, but my close exposure to Annie Ward’s final manifestation had left me badly dazed. The chill had cut to my bones, and my right hand – where I’d held the locket – was frost-burned on the palm. Coming on top of everything else we’d experienced in the house through the long hours of the night, it was all I could do to stay upright. Those first chaotic minutes after DEPRAC’s arrival I remember only as a blur.

Things soon started getting better, though. A Fittes medic gave me an adrenalin shot to pep me up. Another bandaged my injured hand. A kindly DEPRAC officer did the best thing of all and made me a decent cup of tea. Even Barnes, passing by my sofa in the midst of barking orders all around, patted me on the shoulder and asked if I was well. I was fine, thanks for asking, but quite content to let someone else take charge.

Of course, events didn’t stop just because I was side-lined. There was still plenty going on. The first thing that happened was that the chauffeur, Percy Grebe, was taken into custody. He’d not seen the gruesome details of Fairfax’s fate, but he’d
sensed
enough to be left in a state of abject terror. That terror made him talkative. Almost before he was hustled to his feet, he’d begun to spill the beans.

The next thing was that a crowd of agents, armed to the teeth with rapiers, flares and salt bombs, and swivelling
supersized torches zealously all around, advanced slowly out across the Hall. The key word here is
slowly
. They were mostly Fittes operatives, with some from Tendy and a few from Grimble, and all went with extreme caution, taking psychic readings every step of the way. The dark reputation of Combe Carey hung heavy over them, as it did their adult supervisors dawdling at the door. Lockwood and George stood cheerily by as they began to secure the area, painstakingly passing orders back and forth, and jumping at every scrape and shadow.

Their first stop, naturally, was the library, and here, by whirling torchlight, Fairfax’s body was located. He lay face-down on the rug in the centre of the room, with his eyes wide open and his arms outstretched as if in supplication. The medics had the adrenalin needles ready, but they didn’t try to use them. It was already much too late. Fairfax had suffered first-degree ghost-touch, and it had left him swollen, blue and dead. Immediate readings were carried out in the vicinity of the locket and all around the room, but everything came up negative. The spirit of Annie Ward – having been reunited with her killer – was nowhere to be found.

After this, at Barnes’s command, the operatives spread out across the Hall, routing out Fairfax’s servants in the East Wing, and checking the substance of our story in the West. Lockwood and George oversaw their progress to the door of the Red Room, which was discovered to be locked. The key,
at Lockwood’s suggestion, was found in Fairfax’s pocket; the room itself, when a crack team tiptoed in, was empty, quiet and cold.

Much to George’s delight, among the Fittes agents commandeered by Barnes that night was none other than our old friend Quill Kipps, together with his sidekicks, the blonde-flick girl and the boy with the tousled thatch. George took great pleasure in standing close as Barnes issued them with orders, occasionally chipping in with suggestions of his own.

‘Just through that secret passage you’ll find the famous staircase,’ he said. ‘I
think
we cleared it of screaming shadows, but perhaps Kipps should go ahead and check. At the bottom is the well room where the massacre of the monks took place. Maybe his team should take a peek there too. No? They seem reluctant. Well, if that’s too scary, there’s a Grey Haze in the downstairs toilet they might be able to cope with.’

In fact, any remaining danger was soon past. The first dawn rays broke through the windows of the Long Gallery and stretched warm and golden across the floor.

In keeping with tradition, Inspector Barnes managed to remain deeply annoyed with us even while grudgingly congratulating us on a job well done. His moustache hung at an aggrieved angle as he stood in the library half-light, lambasting Lockwood for keeping the locket secret for so long.