‘Got the boot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Chuck it at George’s door.’
With as much strength as I could muster I hurled it across the landing. It struck the door opposite with a dramatic thump. We waited, watching darkness.
‘It followed me down the stairs,’ I said.
‘I know. You said. Hurry it up, George . . .’
‘You’d have thought he’d be awake already, the noise I made.’
‘Well, he’s a heavy sleeper. In more ways than one. Ah, here he is.’
At last George had stumbled from his room, blinking and peering like a myopic vole. He wore an enormous pair of saggy blue pyjamas that were at least three sizes too big for him, and decorated with garish and ill-conceived spaceships and planes.
‘George,’ Lockwood called, ‘Lucy says she’s seen a Visitor, here in the house.’
‘I have seen it,’ I said tersely.
‘Got any iron to hand?’ Lockwood said. ‘We need to check this out.’
George rubbed his eyes; he fumbled at his belt-cord in a vain effort to keep his trousers from sagging dangerously low. ‘Not sure. Maybe. Hold on.’
He turned and trudged inside. There was a pause, followed by various rummaging sounds. A few moments later George returned, wearing a gaucho-style shoulder-belt bristling with magnesium flares, salt bombs and canisters of iron. An empty silver-glass box hung beneath it on a string. He carried a coil of chain, a long, ornate-handled rapier, and had a torch poking nonchalantly from the waist-band of his pyjamas. His feet were encased in enormous boots. Lockwood and I gazed at him.
‘What?’ George said. ‘Few little bits and pieces I keep by my bedside. Always good to be prepared. You can borrow a salt bomb if you want to, Lockwood.’
Lockwood hefted his tinkling mobile resignedly. ‘No, no, I’ll be all right with this.’
‘If you’re sure. So where’s this apparition, then?’
With a few terse words I filled them in. Lockwood gave the order. We began to climb the stairs.
To my surprise, the way was clear. Every few steps we stopped to look and listen, but with no result. The sense of fearsome cold had gone; the ghost-fog too had faded, and I heard nothing with my inner ear. Lockwood and George drew a blank as well. The only obvious peril was provided by George’s pyjama bottoms, which with the weight of his equipment were in perpetual danger of falling down.
We rounded the corner at last. George plucked the torch from his pyjamas and flashed it around my room. Everything was dark and quiet. My rumpled duvet lay where I’d cast it, beside my disarranged bed. The clothes from my chair, which I must have knocked over in my flight, lay scattered on the floor.
‘Nothing here,’ George said. ‘Are you sure about this, Lucy?’
‘Of course I am,’ I snapped. I crossed swiftly to the window, looked down onto the distant street. ‘Though I admit I can’t feel it now.’
Lockwood was kneeling, squinting under the bed. ‘From what you say, it must’ve been a weak one – slow-moving, only faintly aware of its surroundings, otherwise it would have caught you, surely. Maybe it’s used up its energy, gone back into its Source.’
‘Which would be what, precisely?’ George said. ‘Where’s this new Source that’s just mysteriously sprung from nowhere in Lucy’s room? The house is well-defended. Nothing can get in.’ He peered into my wardrobe, rapier at the ready. ‘Well, there’s nothing in here but some charming tops and skirts and . . . Ooh, Lucy – I’ve never seen you wearing that.’
I slammed the door closed, narrowly missing his podgy hand. ‘I tell you, I saw a ghost, George. You think I’m going blind?’
‘No, I just think you’re deluded.’
‘Now look—’
‘This makes no sense at all,’ Lockwood interrupted, ‘unless Lucy’s brought one of our psychic artefacts up here. You haven’t, have you, Luce? You haven’t brought that pirate’s hand up for a closer inspection, for instance, and forgotten to put it back in its case?’
I gave a little cry of anger. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course I haven’t. I wouldn’t dream of taking anything that wasn’t properly . . . that wasn’t properly secured . . . Oh.’
‘Well, George is always moving that jar of his about . . .’ Lockwood noticed my expression. ‘Lucy?’
‘Oh. Oh no.’
‘What is it? Have you taken something?’
I gazed at him. ‘Yes,’ I said in a very small voice. ‘Yes, I think I have.’
George and Lockwood both turned towards me, their backs to the wardrobe and the mess of scattered clothes. As they began to speak, pale radiance flared across the wall. A figure rose from the floor behind them. I saw thin, thin arms and legs, a dress with orange sunflowers, long blonde tresses dissolving into whirling snakes of mist, a contorted face of cold, hard rage . . . I gave a cry. Both boys wheeled round, just as sharp-nailed fingers reached out for their necks. George swung his sword, embedded it in the corner of my wardrobe. Lockwood thrust frantically with the mobile. There was an impact pulse as the iron struck; the ghost-girl vanished. A wave of cold air blasted across the room, pressing my nightie tight against my legs.
The attic room was dark once more.
Somebody coughed. George tugged at the rapier hilt, trying to get it free.
‘Lucy . . .’ Lockwood’s voice was dangerously quiet. ‘Didn’t that look like—’
‘Yes. It was. I’m so, so sorry.’
George gave a heave; the blade came free. He stepped awkwardly to the side and, as he did so, there was a sharp crack beneath his boot. He frowned, bent down, picked up something from amongst the scattered clothes beside the chair. ‘Ow!’ he said. ‘It’s freezing!’
Lockwood took the torch and trained the light upon the object dangling from George’s fingers. A pendant, slightly squashed, glinting as it spun on a delicate golden chain.
Lockwood and George stared at it. They stared at me. George unhooked the silver-glass box from his belt and stowed the necklace inside. He shut it with a crisp and final click.
Slowly Lockwood raised the torch until I was transfixed by a silent, accusatory beam of light.
‘Er, yes,’ I said. ‘The girl’s necklace . . . Um, you know, I was going to mention that to you.’ Standing there in my rumpled nightie, in my bandaged, dishevelled state, I did my best to smile at them as prettily as I could.
12
The following day dawned bright and clear. Pale November sunshine flowed through the kitchen window and extended cheerily over the usual breakfast clutter. Cornflake packets glowed, bowls and glasses sparkled; every scattered crumb and blob of jam was picked out perfectly in the morning light. The air was warm, and heavy with the scent of good strong tea, of toast, fried eggs and bacon.
I wasn’t enjoying myself at all.
‘Why, Lucy?’ Lockwood demanded. ‘I just don’t understand! You know an agent has to report any artefact she finds. Particularly one so intimately connected with a Visitor. They must be properly contained.’
‘I know that.’
‘They’ve got to be put in iron or silver-glass until they can be studied or destroyed.’
‘I know.’
‘But you just shoved it in your pocket, and didn’t tell me or George!’
‘Yes. I said I’m sorry! I’ve never done that sort of thing before.’
‘So why did you do it now?’
I took a deep breath. My head was lowered; for some minutes, while my reprimand proceeded, I’d been grimly doodling on the thinking cloth. It was a picture of a girl; a thin girl wearing an old-style summer dress. Her hair whipped around her head, and her eyes were vast and blank. I pressed the pen down hard, probably scoring the table below.
‘I don’t know,’ I muttered. ‘It all happened so fast. Maybe it was because of the fire – maybe I just wanted to save something of her, so she wouldn’t be completely lost . . .’ I sketched a big black sunflower in the middle of the dress. ‘In all honesty I hardly remember t
aking it at all. And afterwards . . . I just forgot.’
‘Better not mention this to Barnes,’ George remarked. ‘He’d be livid if he knew you’d absent-mindedly carried a dangerous Visitor around London without precautions. It’d give him yet another reason to close this agency down.’
Out of the corner of my eye I watched him complacently spread another dollop of lemon curd on his toasted bun. Oh, he was in fine fettle that morning, George, chipper as a ferret. I reckoned he was enjoying my discomfort big time.
‘You forgot?’ Lockwood said. ‘That’s it? That’s your excuse?’
Defiance flared; I raised my head, brushed my hair back. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and if you want to know why, for starters I was probably too preoccupied with being in hospital, and after that too busy worrying about you. But actually, if you think about it, I didn’t have any reason to believe it was dangerous. Did I? Because we’d just sealed the Source.’
‘No!’ Lockwood jabbed a finger of his good hand on the tablecloth. ‘That’s just it! We thought we had, but we hadn’t! We hadn’t sealed the Source, Lucy, because obviously the Source is there.’
He indicated the small silver-glass box, which sat quietly between the butter and the teapot. It glittered in the sunshine; inside, the golden necklace could just be seen.
‘But how can it be the Source?’ I cried. ‘It should’ve been her bones.’
He shook his head pityingly. ‘It only seemed that way because her ghost vanished the moment you covered her body with the silver net. But obviously you’d covered the necklace too, in the self-same action, which was more than enough to seal it up. Then, when you pinched the necklace—’
I glared at him. ‘I didn’t pinch it.’
‘– you put it straight into your coat pocket, which was stuffed full of iron filings and packets of salt, and other agency bits and pieces that were more than enough to keep the Visitor constrained for the remainder of the night. The following day, though, you slung your coat down on your chair and the necklace fell out. Then it lay hidden in the pile of clothes until darkness, when the ghost was able to return.’
‘The only puzzler is why it wasn’t as fast or powerful as the previous night,’ George said. ‘From what you say it was almost sluggish when you first escaped from the room.’
‘Most likely some of the iron and salt fell out of your coat with the necklace,’ Lockwood said. ‘They’d have been enough to keep the ghost weak, and stop it sustaining its presence very long. That’s probably why it couldn’t follow you downstairs, and wasn’t able to re-materialize swiftly when we came back up.’
‘Luckily for us,’ George said. He shivered, took a consoling bite of toasted bun.
I held up my hands to silence them. ‘Yes, yes. I understand all that. But that’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is, the Source is whatever the Visitor is most attached to, isn’t it? It’s what it holds most dear. So surely it really ought to have been her bones.’ I reached out, picked up the glass case by its cord and turned it in my fingers, so that the pendant and spool of chain inside slid softly to and fro. ‘But instead it turns out to be this. This necklace is more significant to the spirit of Annabel Ward than her own bodily remains . . . Isn’t that a little odd?’
‘No different from that motorbike rider we had one time,’ George pointed out.
‘True, but—’
‘I hope you’re not trying to change the subject, Lucy,’ Lockwood said in a cold voice. ‘I’m in the middle of ticking you off here.’
I set the case down. ‘I know.’
‘I’m not finished, either. Not by a long chalk. I’ve a whole heap more to say.’ There was a protracted pause. Lockwood gazed sternly at me, then out of the window. Finally he gave an exasperated cry. ‘Unfortunately I’ve lost my train of thought. The point is: don’t do it again. I’m disappointed in you. When you joined the company I told you I wasn’t fussed if you kept stuff hidden about your past. That’s still true. But keeping secrets about things that happen now is different. We’re a team and we’ve got to work that way.’
I nodded. I stared at the tablecloth. My face felt cold and hot at the same time.
‘You can forget wondering about this necklace too,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’m taking it to the Fittes furnaces in Clerkenwell today to get it incinerated. Goodbye Source. Goodbye Annabel Ward. Good riddance to the whole affair.’ He scowled petulantly into his mug. ‘And now my tea’s gone cold.’
The events of the night certainly hadn’t helped matters, but Lockwood’s mood was poor for other reasons too. His ghost-touched hand was troubling him. Barnes’s bad tidings weighed heavily on his mind. Worst of all, the public fallout from our Sheen Road disaster had begun. To his horror, the fire had made The Times that morning. In the Problem Pages, where prominent hauntings were covered daily, an article entitled INDEPENDENT AGENCIES: MORE CONTROL NEEDED? described how an investigation carried out by Lockwood & Co. (‘an independent outfit run by juveniles’) had resulted in a dangerous, destructive blaze. It was clearly implied that Lockwood had lost control. At the end of the piece a spokeswoman for the giant Fittes Agency was quoted. She recommended ‘adult supervision’ for nearly all psychical investigations.
The repercussions of this article had been quick and definite. At 8.05 a.m. there’d been a phone call to the office, cancelling one of our ongoing cases. A second call followed at nine. We fully expected several more.
The chances of raising £60,000 within a month seemed remote, to say the least.
Our meal tailed off into frosty silence. Lockwood sat across the table from me, nursing his cold tea, flexing his injured fingers. Life was returning to them, but they still had a bluish look. George shuffled about the kitchen, gathering plates and bunging them in the sink.
I turned the glass case over and over in my hand.
Lockwood’s anger was justified, and that made me miserable. The strange thing was – though I knew I’d been in the wrong, both in taking the necklace and forgetting all about it – I couldn’t wholly regret what I’d done. That night in Sheen Road I’d heard the voice of a murdered girl. I’d seen her too – both as she’d once been, and as the wretched, shrivelled object she’d become. And despite the fear and fury of the haunting, despite the terrible malignancy of the vengeful ghost, I couldn’t quite throw those memories aside.
With the body turned to ashes, this necklace was all that remained: of Annabel Ward, of her life and death, of her whole unknown story.
And we were going to bung that in the fires too.
It didn’t seem right to me.
I lifted the case closer to my eyes, staring through the glass. ‘Lockwood,’ I said, ‘can I get the necklace out?’
He sighed. ‘I suppose. It’s daytime. It’s safe enough for now.’
It was certainly true that Annabel Ward’s ghost was not going to spring forth from the pendant during the day. But it was linked to her, whether she was somehow contained within it, or simply using it as a conduit from the other side. So I couldn’t help feeling a frisson of anxiety as I flicked aside the slender iron bolt and eased the silver-glass open.
There it was: looking scarcely more sinister than the jam spoons and butter knives that littered the sunlit table. A delicate piece of jewellery on a delicate golden chain. I took it out of the case, flinching a little at its chill touch on my skin, and studied it properly for the first time.
The chain was formed of twisted loops of gold, mostly clean and bright, except in a couple of spots where something black had clogged between the links. The pendant itself was roughly oval, about the dimensions of a walnut. Thanks to George’s galumphing boot, it had a slightly squashed look. At one time the exterior must have been lovely. It had been lined with dozens of flakes of mother-of-pearl – pinkish-white and glittering, and neatly embedded in a mesh of gold. But many of the pieces had fallen out and, as with the chain, the surface was tarnished in places with ominous black flecks. Worst of all (and again thanks probably to George), the
entire oval had been ruptured down one side. I could see a clear split along a seam.
More interesting than all that, however, was a slightly raised heart-shaped symbol halfway down the pendant at the front. Here, a faint and spidery pattern marked the gold.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘There’s an inscription on it.’
I held it up so it caught the light, and ran my finger over the letters. As I did so, I caught a sudden sound of voices – a man and woman talking, then the woman’s laughter, high and shrill.
I blinked; the sensation faded. I gazed at the object in my hand. My curiosity had infected the others. Despite himself, Lockwood had got up and moved round the table. George had left off the dishes and, flourishing a tea towel, was peering over my shoulder from the other side.
Four words. We gazed at them in silence for a time.
Tormentum meum
laetitia mea
It didn’t make much sense to me.
‘Tormentum . . .’ George said at last. ‘That sounds cheerful.’
‘Latin,’ Lockwood said. ‘Haven’t we got a Latin dictionary somewhere?’
‘It’s from the man who gave her the necklace,’ I said. ‘The one she loved . . .’ The echo of the two voices still resounded in my mind.
‘How d’you know it’s a bloke?’ George put in. ‘It could have been a female friend. Could’ve been her mum.’
‘No way,’ I said. ‘Look at the symbol. Besides, you wear these things so you can have your loved one’s message next to your heart.’
‘Like you know anything about that,’ George said.
‘Like you do either.’
‘Let’s have a look at it,’ Lockwood said. He perched on the chair next to mine and took the necklace from my hand. He held it close, brow furrowing.
‘Latin phrases, a loved one’s gift, a long-lost girl . . .’ George flipped his damp tea towel over his shoulder and headed for the sink. ‘Bit of an exotic mystery . . .’
‘Isn’t it?’ Lockwood said. ‘Isn’t it, though?’ We looked at him. His eyes were shining; he’d sat up suddenly. The gloom that had enveloped him all morning had suddenly dispersed like white clouds on the wind. ‘George,’ he went on, ‘do you remember that famous case that Tendy’s had, a year or two back? The one with the two entangled skeletons?’
Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase Page 12