Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (40 page)

‘By rights I should charge you for withholding information,’ he growled. ‘Or stealing evidence from a crime scene. Or recklessly endangering yourself and these two idiots who follow you around. By coming here alone you knowingly put yourselves at the mercy of a murderer!’

‘A suspected murderer,’ Lockwood said. ‘I didn’t fully understand the locket inscription at the time.’

Barnes rolled his eyes. The fringes of his moustache shot out horizontally with the power of his snort. ‘A
suspected
murderer, then! That’s hardly any more sensible! And I notice you didn’t see fit to include Cubbins or Miss Carlyle in making that decision!’

This, it had to be said, was a decent point, which was also on my mind.

Lockwood took a deep breath; perhaps he realized he had to explain himself to George and me, as well as to Barnes. ‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘I
had
to accept Fairfax’s invitation. That was the only way I could get the money to pay my debts. And as to the danger we were in, I had full confidence in the ability of my team. Lucy and George are the best operatives in London, as you can see from our results. We’ve neutralized a major cluster of Visitors
and
overcome a determined and ruthless foe. And all without a single adult supervisor in sight, Mr Barnes.’ He switched on his fullest, most radiant smile.

Barnes winced. ‘Put those teeth away. It’s too early in the
morning and I haven’t had my breakfast . . . Oi, Kipps!’ Quill Kipps was struggling by, labouring under the weight of three giant see-through plastic crates. Two were filled with Fairfax’s theatrical scrapbooks, being removed as evidence; the third contained a chain-mail tunic, neatly folded, and the two strange iron helmets. ‘Where’s the second tunic?’ Barnes asked.

‘Still on the corpse,’ Kipps said.

‘Well, we need to prise it off him, before he gets too swollen. See to it now, will you?’

‘No dawdling,’ George called. ‘Chop-chop!’

‘That reminds me,’ Barnes went on, as Kipps departed, scowling. ‘Those helmets. They were Fairfax’s, I assume?’

‘Yes, Mr Barnes,’ Lockwood said innocently. ‘We wondered what they were.’

‘Well, you can go on wondering, because I’m impounding them. They’re DEPRAC business now.’ The inspector hesitated, twisting a corner of his moustache. ‘Fairfax didn’t . . . talk to you about any of this weird get-up, did he?’ he said suddenly. ‘About what he liked
doing
in this place?’

Lockwood shook his head. ‘I think he was too busy trying to kill us, Mr Barnes.’

‘And who can blame him.’ Barnes appraised us sourly. ‘By the way, one of the helmets seems to lack its eye-piece. Any idea where it might be?’

‘No, sir. Perhaps it didn’t have one.’

‘Perhaps not . . .’ Rewarding us with a final searching glare, Barnes went to organize our departure from the Hall. We stayed where we were, slumped together on the library chairs. We didn’t talk. Someone brought us another cup of tea. We watched the daylight spread across the fields.

When clear-up specialists re-entered Combe Carey some weeks later, they found its supernatural activity much diminished in strength. Their first job, acting on our report, was to dredge the well. There, at a considerable depth, they found the ancient bones of seven adult males, previously bound together, but now much mangled and mixed with fragments of silver and iron. The remains were retrieved and destroyed, and after that, as Lockwood had predicted, the rest of the house soon fell in line. A number of secondary Sources were discovered beneath the flagstones of the lobby and in old chests in one of the bedrooms, but with the monks’ bones gone, most of the peripheral Type Ones also faded clean away.

Lockwood had lobbied hard for us to be involved in the final cleansing of the Hall, but our bid was turned down flat by the estate’s new owners – a nephew and a niece of Fairfax, who had taken control of his company. They disliked the house, and sold it soon after it had been made safe. The following year it became a prep school.

Fairfax himself had no direct heirs. It turned out that he
had never married, and had no children of his own. So perhaps Annabel Ward
had
been the love of his life, after all.

The remains of the locket were swept up and removed by Barnes’s men in a special silver-glass canister. Whether the ghost-girl’s spirit remained tied to it, or whether (as I myself believe) she had permanently departed, I don’t know, because I never saw it again.

The body of the missing Fittes agent was recovered from the well room that same night and taken away by his modern equivalents. Some time later, Lockwood received a letter from Penelope Fittes herself, head of the agency and a direct descendant of its founder, the legendary Marissa Fittes. She congratulated us on our success, and thanked us for locating the body of her childhood friend and colleague. His name was Sam McCarthy. For the record, he’d been twelve years old.

For some days, rumours have been circulating about recent events at Combe Carey Hall and the sudden death of its owner, the noted industrialist Mr John William Fairfax. Inside today’s
Times
of London we are proud to reveal the true extraordinary story of that night, as told by one of its main protagonists, Anthony Lockwood Esq. of Lockwood & Co.

In an exclusive conversation with our reporter, Mr Lockwood describes the horrific cluster of Type Two Visitors his team uncovered
at the Hall, the secret passages they explored, and the terrors of the notorious ‘death well’ hidden at the heart of the house.

He also explains the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Mr Fairfax, who suffered a heart attack after being ghost-touched during the final confrontation. ‘He entered the wing against our advice,’ Mr Lockwood says. ‘He was a brave man, and I believe he wanted to witness the Visitors for himself, but it’s always perilous for a non-operative to enter an affected zone.’

Mr Lockwood also speaks openly about new developments in the Annabel Ward murder case. ‘Fresh evidence has emerged,’ he says, ‘which proves that the original suspect, Mr Hugo Blake, had nothing to do with the crime. Although the identity of her killer remains an unsolved mystery, we are delighted to assist in rescuing the reputation of an innocent man. It’s all part of the service we like to provide.’

Full Lockwood interview: see
here
.

John Fairfax obituary and appreciation: see
here
.

Today’s most up-and-coming psychical detection agencies: see
here
.

A week after our return to London, when we’d slept long and fully recovered from our ordeal, a party was held at 35 Portland Row. It wasn’t a very big party – just the three of us, in fact – but that didn’t stop Lockwood & Co. from properly going to town. George ordered in a vast variety of doughnuts from the corner store. I bought some paper streamers, and hung them up around the kitchen. Lockwood returned from a trip to Knightsbridge with two giant wicker hampers, filled with sausage rolls and jellies, pies and cakes, bottles of Coke and ginger ale, and luxuries of all kinds. Once this lot was
unloaded, our kitchen virtually disappeared. We sat amid a wonderland of edible delights.

‘Here’s to Combe Carey Hall,’ Lockwood said, raising his glass, ‘and to the success it’s brought us. We got another new client today.’

‘That’s good,’ George said. ‘Unless it’s the cat lady again.’

‘It’s not. It’s Chelsea Ladies’ College. They report an apparition in the dormitories, a limbless man seen shuffling across the bathroom floor on his bloody stumps.’

I took a sausage roll. ‘Sounds promising.’

‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it too.’ Lockwood helped himself to an enormous slice of game pie. ‘That latest
Times
interview certainly did the job. We’ve got the right kind of publicity at last.’

George nodded. ‘That’s because we didn’t burn Combe Carey down. Though, having said that, we
did
kill our client. I suppose there’s always room for improvement.’

Lockwood refilled our glasses. We ate in companionable silence.

‘I’m just sorry,’ I said after a while, ‘that Barnes made you lie about Fairfax. He should have been publicly revealed for what he was.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Lockwood said, ‘but we’re talking about a very powerful family here, and one of the most important companies in England. If their top man were exposed as a murderer and scoundrel, there’d have been
terrible repercussions. And with the Problem worsening daily, that’s not something DEPRAC was prepared to consider.’

I put down my fork. ‘Well,
so what
if there were repercussions? This fudge isn’t really
justice
, is it? No one’s ever going to know the truth now about Fairfax, or about Annie Ward, or how—’

‘Thanks to you, Lucy,’ Lockwood interrupted, ‘the ghost of Annie Ward got exactly what she wanted. Justice has most definitely been done. In fact it’s a great result, whichever way you look at it. Annie Ward gets her murderer, Fairfax is punished, Barnes gets his cover-up . . . And since Barnes needs us to keep quiet about the true nature of the case, he’s had to let me go to
The Times
with all the other juicy details. So that means we’ve got our free publicity too. Bingo. Everybody’s happy.’

‘Except Fairfax,’ George said.

‘Oh yes. Except him.’

‘I wonder what
else
DEPRAC’s concealing?’ I said. ‘Did you see how quickly they moved into that place, and started taking away material? It’s almost as if they were more interested in Fairfax’s suit and helmet than in his crimes. That helmet
was
so bizarre . . . I would have loved to take a closer look at it.’

Lockwood gave a rueful smile. ‘Tough luck. It’ll be in the vaults at Scotland Yard now, deep underground. You
won’t see any of
that
stuff again.’

‘Good thing I nicked these goggles, then,’ George said. He pulled down the thick glass eye-pieces, which had been hanging on the back of his chair. ‘They’re very odd,’ he said. ‘They don’t
do
anything, as far as I can see. They’re just a bit blurry; make your eyes feel weird . . . There’s a strange little mark on them too – just here. What do you think
that
is, Lucy?’

He passed them over. The goggles were heavier than I’d expected, and very cold. When I squinted close, I could just make out a tiny image stamped on the inner edge of the left-hand lens . . . ‘Looks a bit like a funny-looking harp,’ I said. ‘One of those little Greek ones with the bendy sides. You can see the strings, look. Three of them . . .’

‘Yeah. Well, it’s not the Fairfax logo, that’s for sure.’ George tossed the goggles on the table between the jellies. ‘I suppose all I can do is keep experimenting.’

‘You do that, George,’ Lockwood said. We raised our glasses again.

‘We’re almost out of ginger beer,’ George said suddenly. ‘And we need to top up the doughnuts. This is another serious mission, which you can leave to me.’ He hopped to his feet, opened the basement door, and disappeared below.

Lockwood and I sat facing each other. We met each other’s eyes, smiled, and looked away. It was suddenly just a little bit awkward, like the old days back again.

‘Listen, Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’

‘Sure. Fire away.’

‘When we were back there in the library, and Grebe was going to shoot you . . . You got the necklace out and purposefully freed the ghost, right?’

‘Of course.’

‘Which saved our lives, so obviously it was a great decision. Well done again. But I was just wondering . . .’ He studied the sandwiches for a moment. ‘How did you know it wouldn’t attack us too?’

‘I didn’t. But since Fairfax was definitely going to kill us, it seemed a risk worth taking.’

‘OK . . . So it was a gamble.’ He hesitated. ‘So the ghost-girl didn’t talk to you?’

‘No.’

‘She didn’t
tell
you to get the locket out of its case?’

‘No.’

‘She hadn’t, in fact, told you to take the locket from her body in the first place, back on the night of the fire?’