Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  Lockwood didn’t seem overly perturbed by the jibe. ‘Well, you know,’ he said, ‘these things happen. So . . . what are you researching?’

  ‘Cluster of ghosts in a road tunnel near Moorgate. Trying to figure out what they are.’ He eyed our open files. ‘I see you’re looking into something too.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Richmond Examiner . . . Oh, I see. The notorious Sheen Road case. Of course, here at Fittes, we tend to do our research before we take on a Visitor. We’re not completely stupid, you know.’

  The boy at his side, a tall and gangling youth with a large, big-boned head and a thatch of mousy hair, laughed dutifully. The girl didn’t respond. Humour – even the snide and easy sort that she was meant to side with – didn’t seem her thing. Her chin was small and slightly pointy. Her blonde hair had been cut short at the back, but she had a sharp flick angled across her forehead; its tip almost reached her eye. I thought her striking, in a hard and plastic sort of way.

  She gazed at me. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘New assistant,’ Lockwood said. ‘Well, newish.’

  I held out a hand to the girl. ‘Lucy Carlyle. And you are . . .?’

  The girl gave a little laugh and looked away up the aisle as if there were a crisp packet or something lying there that she found more interesting than me.

  ‘You ought to watch out being with Tony, sweetheart,’ Quill Kipps said. ‘His last assistant came to a nasty end.’

  I smiled blandly. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.’

  ‘Yeah, but bad things happen to people he’s close to. It’s always been that way. Since he was ever so young.’

  He tried to make it sound casual, but his tone betrayed him. There was a catch in his voice that I didn’t understand. I glanced across at Lockwood. The way he stood was different. His studious unconcern had stiffened, become something harder and less pliable. I knew he was about to say something, but before he could speak, George stirred.

  ‘I’ve been hearing things about you too, Quill,’ he said. ‘That young lad you sent into the Southwark catacombs alone, while you “waited for reinforcements” at the door. What became of that kid, Quill? Or haven’t they found him yet?’

  Kipps frowned. ‘Who told you that? That wasn’t the way it happened—’

  ‘And that client who got ghost-touched because your agents left an arm-bone in his bin.’

  The man flushed. ‘That was a mistake! They threw away the wrong bag—’

  ‘Plus you have the highest mortality rate of any Fittes team leader, so I’m told.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘It’s not a great record, is it?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Oh, and your fly’s undone,’ George said.

  Kipps looked down and discovered the unhappy truth of the statement. His face went bright red. His fingers strayed to his sword hilt; he took a half-step forward. George didn’t move, but unblinkingly pointed to a QUIET sign hanging on the wall.

  Quill Kipps took a deep breath. He smoothed his hair back, smiled. ‘Pity I can’t close that fat mouth of yours here, Cubbins,’ he said. ‘But there’ll come a time when I will.’

  ‘OK,’ George said. ‘Meanwhile, why not pick a fight with someone your own size? I suggest a gerbil or a mole.’

  Kipps made a small sound with his lips. He moved; the blade was in his hand—

  A blur of movement at my side; a tang of steel on steel. Lockwood scarcely seemed to have changed position, but the line of his rapier now stretched out diagonally across the table, intersecting Kipps’s blade, pressing it firmly down.

  ‘If you’re going to mess about with swords, Quill,’ Lockwood said, ‘you’d better be able to use them.’

  Kipps said nothing. A vein pulsed halfway up his neck; under the smart material of his soft grey sleeve, his arm exerted pressure. I could see that he was trying to shift his rapier, first one way, then the other, but Lockwood, without appearing to expend any effort whatsoever, forestalled him. The blades remained still, their owners almost motionless; George and I, and the two Fittes agents, were likewise frozen, as if by some magical extension. All around us, the library’s quiet hum went on.

  ‘You can’t keep this up for ever,’ Kipps said.

  ‘True.’ Lockwood’s arm twisted; he flicked his wrist. Quill Kipps’s rapier was snatched from his hand. It flew straight up and embedded itself, point-first, in the ceiling.

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  Smiling, Lockwood returned his sword to his belt and sat back down, leaving Kipps breathing loudly through his nose. After a moment he gave a little jump, hoping to reach the hilt of his hanging sword, but missed by several inches. He jumped again.

  ‘Little bit higher, Quill,’ George said encouragingly. ‘You almost got it then.’

  At length Kipps had to scramble onto the table in order to wrestle his rapier free. His agents watched in silence, the boy smirking, the blonde girl as stony-faced as ever.

  ‘I’ll pay you out for that, Lockwood,’ Kipps said, when he’d returned to the ground. ‘I swear I’ll make you pay. Everyone knows DEPRAC’s going to close you down, but that won’t be enough for me. I’ll find a way of making you really suffer, you and these idiot friends of yours. Bill, Kate, come on.’

  He spun round. His lackeys did so too. Like a small, poorly trained dance ensemble, they flounced away in unison towards the lift.

  ‘Even when I worked with him, Kipps had a terribly short fuse,’ George observed. ‘He’s got to learn to lighten up a bit. Wouldn’t you say so, Lockwood?’

  But Lockwood was already buried in the files again, his lips a thin hard line. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a job to do here. We mustn’t waste any more time.’

  In the event it was only another minute or so before the breakthrough came, and it was Lockwood himself who made it. With a low, long whistle of triumph he pointed to the newspaper before him. There she was. Annabel Ward. A different photograph, same familiar splash of blonde hair, curves and gleaming teeth. This time she was wearing some kind of ball gown; this time she’d made the front cover of the Richmond Examiner, forty-nine years ago.

  * * *

  ANNIE WARD:

  EX-BOYFRIEND QUESTIONED

  The case of Miss Annabel ‘Annie’ Ward, the local woman missing for almost two weeks, took a new turn last night when police arrested one of her former boyfriends. Mr Hugo Blake, 22, a well-known gambler and society figure, is currently being held at Bow Street Police Station. He has not yet been formally charged.

  According to police sources, Mr Blake was one of Miss Ward’s dining companions at the Gallops nightclub on Saturday 21st June, the night she disappeared. He is said to have left the club soon after Miss Ward and, under repeated questioning, has admitted driving her home. Sources say that the pair had been close some months previously, but that their relationship had cooled. Blake’s association with Miss Ward caused much comment in fashionable circles. Under his influence, she had largely abandoned a promising acting career, though she had recently made attempts to find new roles in

  * * *

  ‘Hugo Blake,’ I said softly. ‘Her former boyfriend. I bet he gave her the necklace.’

  George nodded. ‘And he took her home that night . . . Well, I think we know what he did there.’

  ‘Keep looking,’ Lockwood said. ‘They arrested him, but was he charged? For all we know he may have gone to prison, even though they didn’t locate the body.’

  It didn’t take long to find the answer. A small piece dated a few days later tersely recorded that Hugo Blake had been released without charge. Scotland Yard sources were quoted saying the Annabel Ward enquiry had ‘run up against a brick wall’.

  ‘A brick wall is right!’ I gasped. ‘Those idiots! She was right there, all along!’

  ‘They didn’t have enough evidence to nail Blake at the time,’ Lockwood said, scanning the page. ‘He was the only real suspect in the case, but they couldn’t back it up. He claimed
he’d escorted her home and left her there, but hadn’t gone inside. No one could prove otherwise, and since they didn’t have the body, or anything else to go on, they couldn’t press charges . . . So they let him walk. This is perfect. Looks like Blake’s our man.’

  George sat back in his chair. ‘How old was Blake then?’

  ‘Twenty-two,’ I said. ‘Poor Annie Ward was only twenty.’

  ‘Well, that was forty-nine years ago. Long time, but he’d only be seventy-one now. He’s probably still alive.’

  ‘I bet he is,’ I said savagely. ‘I bet he’s been living it up ever since. He got away with murder.’

  ‘Until now,’ Lockwood said. He grinned at us. ‘This is just what we need – as long as we treat it right. So here’s the plan. We contact DEPRAC. If Blake’s still living, he’ll be arrested. Meanwhile we go to the papers, tell them the story. Killer caught after fifty years! That should make some waves.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ George said slowly, ‘but I’m not sure we should go public yet. There’s a lot more research we could do, checking into Annie Ward’s past.’ He patted the pile of London Society magazines beside him. ‘She’s bound to be here somewhere. And if we’re lucky, we can probably find juicy stuff on Blake too, which might—’

  ‘You carry on.’ Lockwood scraped his chair back, got to his feet. ‘Let me know what you find. Meantime, I’m going to talk to some people. We lost three clients this morning. For the sake of the agency, we can’t afford to hang around.’

  ‘Well . . .’ George adjusted his glasses doubtfully. ‘Don’t be too hasty, that’s all.’

  Lockwood gave us both a gleaming smile. ‘Oh, I’ll be careful. You know me.’

  14

  * * *

  DISCOVERED AFTER 50 YEARS!

  MURDER VICTIM’S BODY FOUND

  TRIUMPH OF DETECTION

  BY LOCKWOOD AGENCY

  In one of the most incredible examples of ‘cold case’ detections of recent years, the body of Annabel ‘Annie’ Ward, who vanished almost half a century ago, has been discovered in a house in south-west London. Operatives working for the Lockwood & Co. agency battled half the night with the terrifying spirit of the victim, before locating and making safe the remains.

  ‘We barely escaped with our lives,’ says young agency head, Anthony Lockwood. ‘But destroying the ghost wasn’t enough for us. We wanted justice for the unknown girl.’

  The team subsequently employed sophisticated research techniques to establish the identity of Miss Ward. DEPRAC has since agreed to open a murder investigation.

  ‘There’s no case too old or too difficult for us,’ says Mr Lockwood. ‘In fact, the tricky ones suit us best, because of our high professionalism and distinctly personal approach. We want to dispose of Visitors, of course, but we’re also interested in the human stories behind the hauntings. Poor Annie Ward died long ago, but her killer can still be brought to account. Lucy Carlisle, one of our top agents, communicated psychically with the Visitor during the operation and, despite a raging inferno started by the vengeful spirit, gained vital evidence that we think will lead us to the culprit’s door. That’s all I can say for now, but we expect to have more news soon, when we’ll reveal the full sensational truth behind this tragedy.’

  * * *

  ‘What a great article,’ Lockwood said, for the twentieth time that day. ‘Couldn’t have been better.’

  ‘They spelled my name wrong,’ I pointed out.

  ‘They didn’t mention me at all,’ George said.

  ‘Well, in all the essentials, I mean.’ Lockwood grinned round at us. ‘Page six of The Times. Best bit of publicity we’ve ever had. This is the turning point. Things are finally looking up.’ He shivered and moved his boots from one foul-smelling portion of compost to another.

  It was almost eight p.m., the day after our trip to the Archives. We were standing in a mucky gooseberry patch in a dark and chilly garden, waiting for a ghost. It wasn’t the most glamorous assignment known to man.

  ‘Temperature?’ Lockwood asked.

  ‘Still dropping.’ George was checking his thermometer. It glowed faintly amid the tangles of the gooseberries. Up in the house, the lights were masked by drab curtains. A dog barked a good way off. Twenty feet away from us, the thin black branches of a willow tree hung like frozen shafts of rain.

  ‘Miasma’s intensifying,’ I said. My limbs were heavy, my brain tugged by alien emotions of futility and despair. The taste of decay was bitter in my mouth. I took another mint to freshen things up.

  ‘Good,’ Lockwood said. ‘Shouldn’t be too long.’

  ‘Telling DEPRAC about Annie Ward,’ George said suddenly, ‘is all well and good. But I still don’t think you should have got the press involved so early. The police investigation’s hardly started, has it? We don’t know where it’s going.’

  ‘Oh yes we do. Barnes wasn’t very pleased that we’d beaten them to the girl’s identity, but he was very interested in the connection to this Hugo Blake. He looked him up in their records. Turns out he’s something of a successful businessman, but has been in prison several times for fraud, and once for serious assault. He’s a nasty piece of work. And we were right: he’s still alive and well, and living here in London.’

  ‘So they’re bringing him in?’ I said.

  ‘They were going to do it today. Probably arrested him already.’

  ‘Ghost-fog coming,’ George said. Faint tendrils had risen from the earth, coldly luminous, thin as spaghetti, winding between the willow and the wall.

  ‘What do you hear, Lucy?’ Lockwood asked.

  ‘Still the same. Wind in the leaves. And a rasping squeak, squeak, squeak.’

  ‘Rope, you think?’

  ‘Might be.’

  ‘George – see anything?’

  ‘Not yet. What about you? Death-glow still off-ground?’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t have moved, would it? Yeah, still up there among the branches.’

  ‘Can I have a mint, Lucy?’ George said. ‘Forgot mine.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I handed the packet round. Conversation lapsed. We watched the willow tree.

  Despite Lockwood’s high hopes for his article, we had not yet felt any benefits from its publicity, and this evening’s vigil represented the last case remaining on our books. Our clients, a young married couple, had regularly experienced feelings of unease and terror near the bottom of their urban garden. On recent nights their children (aged four and six) had reported looking from the house and seeing ‘a dark, still shadow’ standing amongst the trailing branches of the tree. The parents, who were with the children on each occasion, had seen nothing.

  Lockwood and I had carried out an initial survey of the area that morning. The willow was very old, with high, thick branches. We’d both noticed faint background phenomena in the vicinity, mainly miasma and creeping fear. Meanwhile George, who had been at the Archives all day, had investigated the history of the house. He had discovered one significant incident. In May 1926 the owner, a Mr Henry Kitchener, had hung himself somewhere on the premises. The exact location was not specified.

  We had reason to suspect the tree.

  ‘I still don’t know why you mentioned me but not the necklace,’ I said. ‘You make it sound like Annie Ward told me personally who killed her, which we all know is rubbish. Ghosts don’t communicate clearly enough. Psychic connection is a fragmentary thing.’

  Lockwood chuckled. ‘I know, but it doesn’t hurt to emphasize what a star you are. We want other clients to come running, eager for your services. And I deliberately didn’t mention the necklace, partly because I’m holding that back for future articles, and partly because I haven’t told Barnes about it either.’

  ‘You didn’t tell Barnes?’ George said incredulously. ‘Even about the inscription?’

  ‘Not yet. He’s still livid with us, and since taking dangerous artefacts as Lucy did is kind of an offence, I thought it was safer to keep quiet about it now. Besides
, why bother? The necklace doesn’t really add anything. Even without it, Blake’s clearly guilty. That reminds me – did you find anything else about the Ward case, George?’

  ‘Yeah. Some pictures. They’re interesting. I’ll show you when we get back.’

  Time passed. The chill increased. The desolate emotions of the restless suicide seeped out from the willow, spreading between the shrubs and flowerbeds, the plastic bikes and children’s toys scattered about the garden. The willow twigs began to rustle gently, though there wasn’t any wind.

  ‘Wonder why he did it,’ Lockwood murmured.

  ‘Who?’ George said. ‘Hugo Blake?’

  ‘No, I was thinking about this case. Why the man hanged himself.’

  I stirred. ‘He lost someone dear to him.’

  ‘Really? Why do you say that, Luce? Wasn’t in the report, was it, George?’

  My mind had been empty; I’d been listening to the squeaking in the tree. ‘I don’t know. I’m probably wrong.’

  ‘Hold it.’ Lockwood’s voice was sharp. ‘I’ve got a shape . . . Yes! You both see that?’

  ‘No. Where?’

  ‘He’s right there! Can’t you see him? He’s standing under the tree, looking up.’

  I’d felt the thing’s arrival – the invisible disturbance wave, rippling outwards, had made the blood pulse in my ears. But my Sight’s not as good as Lockwood’s, and the tree was still a web of shadows.

  ‘He’s got the rope in his hand,’ Lockwood muttered. ‘He must have stood there such a time, willing himself to do it . . .’

  Sometimes the trick, like with stars, is to look slightly away. When I moved my eyes towards the garden wall, shadows under the tree contracted into sudden focus: I saw a pale outline, slim and motionless, the willow branches superimposed on it like bars.