‘Even though they look so different?’ It was one of the things that had puzzled us about the skull’s claims. Penelope Fittes was glossy and glamorous, a raven-haired woman in her thirties; Marissa, in later years at least, had been a gaunt and shrivelled creature, prey to the frailties of age.
‘Looks?’ the skull said. ‘Who cares about that? It’s superficial. Outward appearance doesn’t interest me at all. Why do you think I hang around with you?’ It chuckled. ‘Insults aside, that’s just one way in which I’m superior to every one of you, except for Cubbins.’
I blinked. ‘What? Why? What’s George got to do with anything?’
‘What a person looks like doesn’t bother him much, or hadn’t you noticed?’
There was a scrabbling at the door. I turned in my chair – to find George himself tottering into the kitchen in the first throes of wakefulness. He switched on the light, scratching industriously at a crevice in his pyjamas. ‘What’s that skull saying? Something about me?’
‘Never mind. It’s not important.’ I turned the lever on the jar. ‘You want tea? How did you get on yesterday?’
‘At the Archives? Oh, I found plenty. I’ll tell you more presently. Can’t think straight before I’ve had my breakfast.’
‘Nor me.’ Especially not today. My head was spinning from the ghost’s conversation, and it wasn’t yet seven in the morning.
Lockwood was down later than usual, long after Holly had arrived and the day’s work had begun. He seemed in good spirits; we smiled at each other, but didn’t refer to our expedition to the cemetery. We turned our attention to the business of the day.
We had agreed to arrive at Mr Tufnell’s establishment at five o’clock that evening, when there was still an hour or two of daylight left, and we could properly look over the Palace Theatre and the surrounding fair. Before that happened, Lockwood had a new rapier and other supplies to pick up from Mullet’s on Bond Street. A delivery of fresh iron was expected too; and Holly and I had a batch of DEPRAC paperwork to get through. We were also keen to try out some new techniques in the rapier practice room. In short, there was plenty to be done, but – as always before a major new case – George’s briefing came first. We gathered in the basement office to hear him.
‘Just a quick one first about the whole Marissa thing,’ George said. He had a pile of notebooks that he’d taken from his battered leather case. ‘As you know, I’ve been looking into the beginnings of the Problem, and the way in which Fittes and Rotwell started out. Yesterday I had to nip off to the Hardimann Library to follow up a lead, and it might be something tasty. I’ll fill you in when I learn more.’
‘Isn’t the Hardimann out of bounds?’ Holly asked. As part of DEPRAC’s new edicts, certain occult libraries had restrictions on them. Officially this was to prevent the spread of dangerous ghost-cults among the public; we guessed it was also to discourage curious researchers like George.
‘Strictly speaking,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t go there without a permit, but the curator’s a friend of mine. It’s not a big deal. Anyway, more on that later. I was mostly in the Archives, looking into the history of the Palace Theatre. And I had some success there too, as you’ll see …’
George sat back in his chair; he spread his notebooks out in front of him and unfolded a yellowed theatrical handbill, similar to the one Tufnell had given us. It showed the same blonde woman in another chilly-looking pose, this time with the words The Hangman’s Daughter written alongside. The D was formed of an ominous-looking noose.
Lockwood tilted the flyer round approvingly. ‘Aha, so you found out something more about our glamorous ghost, La Belle Dame?’
‘Her real name would be a good start,’ I said.
‘We’ve got it here.’ Lockwood pointed to a corner of the handbill. ‘See? Featuring our sinister star, Marianne de Sèvres. Classy. She must’ve come straight from Paris.’
‘Or possibly Luton.’ George scratched his ear. ‘Turns out Marianne de Sèvres was only her stage name. Her real name was Doris Blower. She was first heard of at an end-of-the-pier show in Eastbourne a hundred years ago. Within five years she’s packing out audiences at the Palace Theatre in Stratford. Tufnell was right: she was a big star of her day, and it was all based on a certain kind of act – one that combined glamour, sensation and the threat of violent death.’ He looked at us meaningfully. ‘That pretty much summed up her offstage life too.’
‘Mr Tufnell said she was a cruel and wicked woman,’ Holly said, ‘who wrapped men round her little finger. Or that was the implication.’
‘It’s pretty much accurate,’ George said. ‘The popular papers of the day were full of stories about the rich married men who’d fallen for her, and all the wives she’d wronged – they even attacked her in the street. She never stayed with her lovers for long, but discarded them like sweet wrappers. It’s rumoured that more than one man killed himself for love of her. When she heard about it, La Belle Dame laughed and said it was life imitating art. All her shows involved that kind of story too.’
‘Charming woman,’ I said.
‘And now a charming ghost.’ George consulted his notes. ‘Well, it’s not surprising she’s shown up at the Palace Theatre, because that was her base for years. She performed many illusions there, all of which were set up as little dramas or playlets. Each one ended with a staged death that was acted out with the utmost precision. The one she actually died in, The Sultan’s Revenge, was a story about a faithless queen who did all sorts of naughty things behind her husband’s back. When the king found out, he had her sealed in a massive coffin and run through with fifty swords.’ George pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Guess that’s entertainment for you.’
Holly gave a snort of disgust. ‘What a foul story. Who’d want to see that?’
‘Lots of people. It was the sensation of the age. Another of her hits was The Captive Mermaid. They built a great glass tank on stage and filled it with water. La Belle Dame went splashing about with a fish tail; she played an innocent mermaid who was caught by a jealous rival and horribly mistreated. At the end she was tied to lots of weights and—’
‘Pardoned, I hope,’ Holly said tartly.
‘I’m going to guess “thrown back into the tank to drown”,’ I said.
‘Points go to Lucy there,’ George said. ‘Yes, it was a famous illusion. She thrashes around at the bottom of the vat for ages, goes limp, and finally a black curtain is drawn round, concealing her from view. Then – presto! – the mermaid reappears from offstage, alive and kicking. Well, not exactly kicking. She’s got a tail.’
‘And people came to see this?’ Holly folded her arms. ‘It doesn’t even make sense. A mermaid can’t drown.’
‘It was very good show business. It’s said that everyone came – the men to adore her, the women to cheer on the hangman, the drowning pool, the executioner’s knife.’ George sat back with an air of finality. ‘How much more do you want? There was the celebrated routine called The Hangman’s Daughter about—’
I held up a hand. ‘Don’t tell me. About a beautiful girl who hanged herself for love?’
‘Hey,’ George said. ‘Got it in one. You are good.’
Holly scowled. ‘Did any of these women in her shows get to live at all?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. They were mostly drowned, stabbed, poisoned or thrown from a height. The point is, they all seemed to die – then La Belle Dame would spring back onstage, alive and well and taking the wild applause of the crowd.’ George blinked at us doubtfully. ‘So I suppose in a sense they all lived in the end.’
Holly snorted. ‘Not in my book, they didn’t. What an appalling creature.’
‘And now,’ Lockwood said, ‘she’s come back as a malignant ghost with vampiric tendencies. We’ll have to tread carefully tonight.’
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about that,’ I said. ‘I reckon you should let Holly and me tackle this one.’
Lockwood gazed at us. ‘Alone? While George and I tw
iddle our thumbs at home?’
‘Why not?’
‘Not a chance. It’s far too dangerous.’
‘I agree with Lucy here,’ Holly said. ‘Clearly La Belle Dame has particular power over addled young men. Lucy and I would be far less vulnerable than you.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s true. George and I have dealt with attractive female ghosts before …’ Lockwood chuckled fondly. ‘Remember the Hoxton Bathhouse, George?’
George took off his glasses and inspected them. ‘Do I? Not half.’
‘Besides, there’s no mystery about the two victims so far,’ Lockwood went on. ‘Both Charley Budd and Sid Morrison displayed classic patterns of psychic vulnerability.’
‘That’s right,’ George said. ‘Didn’t you notice? According to Tufnell, the kid who died was totally lovelorn, practically starving himself through romantic misery. If a barrel in a dress had rolled past him, he’d have gone scampering after it. As for Charley Budd, he was sickly. It may be that he subconsciously wanted release: that’s why he followed the ghost. In other words, neither of the victims was physically or mentally strong.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Holly said. ‘You mean the ghost could sense their weaknesses?’
George nodded. ‘Exactly. We all know Visitors sense anger and sorrow. They’re attracted to people who give off strong emotions. Perhaps they’re also drawn to weakness and despair. These two were enfeebled in different ways … They both had weak connections to life. Each was clearly vulnerable to some cut-price supernatural glamour.’
‘Which we aren’t,’ Lockwood added. ‘End of story. George and I will be fine. Won’t we, George?’
‘Yep, we’re cold-eyed professionals,’ George said. ‘Can I have that handbill back, Lucy? I want to stick it in my casebook as a fold-out spread. Thanks, that’s fine.’
With that the meeting broke up. Lockwood went off to Mullet’s; the rest of us did paperwork. Then Holly and I practised with our rapiers until we were hot and thirsty and the straw dummies hanging in the basement were full of holes. Motes of straw dust floated in the air. Outside Portland Row the afternoon drew on. Somewhere in London a chained boy impatiently awaited death. The first stars showed in the sky.
8
To get to the Palace Theatre, Stratford, in the East End of the city, we had to take the tube, which ran until almost nightfall. Shortly before four, George, Holly and I put on our work-belts and snapped our rapiers into position. We locked up Portland Row and walked to Baker Street Station, carrying our bags of iron. The ghost-jar, sealed and silent, was in my rucksack. Lockwood was still at Mullet’s, and would travel separately. We would meet him at the theatre door.
It had been a pleasant early autumn day, heavy with warmth that piggybacked on six weeks of hard, hot weather. The streets were still busy, but with that faint electric charge that always builds up as dusk approaches. The people moved ever more quickly, their faces set, intent on getting home before the hours of the dead began. The sun was low now. Slanting rays sliced the houses into triangular slabs of light and shadow.
As we neared the Marylebone Road, we passed a darkened alley. From among the bin bags piled in its mouth rose a misshapen figure. It lurched towards us, arms out, rags fluttering, carrying with it the smell of waste pipes and carrion.
Holly jumped; I reached automatically for my rapier.
‘Hullo, Flo,’ said George.
Although it wasn’t instantly apparent to the casual observer, the shape was female and possibly not much older than me. She had a roundish, mud-flecked face from which piercing blue eyes blinked shrewdly. Her hair, lank, dirty and yellow, was scarcely distinguishable from the ragged edges of her wide straw hat. She wore rubber boots and a long blue puffa jacket that never came off, whatever the weather. What might lie beneath it was the stuff of whispered legend.
This was Ms Florence Bonnard, aka the notorious relic-woman Flo Bones. Relic-men and -women were professional scavengers, many armed with decent psychic abilities, who loitered around cemeteries, refuse tips and other places on the margins of society, looking for Sources that had been overlooked by normal agents. They then sold these – to ghost-cults, to black-market collectors, even to DEPRAC itself; basically to whoever offered the best price. Flo’s patch consisted of the murky banks of the Thames, and these she roamed with a sinister hessian bag that contained God knew what damp horrors. She liked liquorice, George and Lockwood, in a somewhat unclear order, and just about tolerated me. Along with Kipps, she was an important, if unofficial, associate of Lockwood & Co.
‘All right, Cubbins,’ Flo said. She grinned at George, showing exceptionally bright white teeth, and – as a reluctant afterthought – nodded curtly at Holly and me.
‘Haven’t seen you at ours for a bit,’ George said. ‘Been busy?’
Flo’s shrug cracked the dried mud on the shoulders of her coat. ‘Nah. Not really.’
There was a moment of silence, in which it became clear that Flo was focused intently on George, and that George was watching her expectantly. Holly and I looked from one to the other and back again.
‘Well, so I got it, then,’ Flo said. She scrabbled in the shadows of her puffa jacket and brought out an oilcloth package, tied up with grubby string.
‘Brilliant. Thanks, Flo.’ George unzipped his coat and tucked the package inside.
‘’S all right.’ Flo rubbed at the side of her nose. ‘So you’re good, are you, George?’
‘Yes, fine … What about you, Flo?’
‘Fine.’
‘Great.’
‘Yeah.’
How long this breathtaking dialogue would have continued is uncertain. At that moment there was movement on the pavement a little further on. Flo glanced behind her. ‘Oh, hell,’ she spat. ‘Not them.’ With that she ducked away, and was gone into the alley; the sound of running wellingtons faded in the gloom.
Four men had come out of a side road and were looking in our direction. At a signal from the slimmest, they sauntered over. We drew ourselves up. We knew who they were.
The leader was a young man with short fair hair and a moustache. He wore a greenish tweed suit and moved with fluid ease. Even at a distance, the eye was drawn to him; close proximity made for warier fascination, as one might regard a wolverine slinking nearer through a wood. There was an aggressive jauntiness in his manner; a certainty of violence – not now, necessarily, but soon. The mark of that hung at his belt. Swords were forbidden to anyone who was not an accredited operative. Sir Rupert Gale was officially of no agency at all, but as Penelope Fittes’ feared enforcer, he didn’t see the need for rules. He carried a rapier anyway, glinting in the sun.
The three men with him wore the dark-grey jackets of the Fittes Agency. They were big, muscled and impassive. At some point they had traded in their personalities for a simple air of threat.
As always, Sir Rupert was smiling. He had a lot of teeth. The sharp tang of his aftershave enveloped us. ‘It’s Lockwood’s charming little helpers,’ he said, ‘out on an evening job. But what was that foul creature with you?’ He glanced down the alley. ‘A beggar, I suppose. You didn’t know it, did you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘A beggar, as you say.’
‘I can still smell its stench. If it was pestering you, you should have kicked it, sent it packing. The only mercy is that it won’t survive long out on the streets, the way the Problem’s going. One of these mornings we’ll find it in the gutter, staring up at the sky.’ He was gauging our reaction, watching us closely with his poacher’s gaze. None of us said anything. ‘So where’s your precious Lockwood?’ he went on. ‘I hope he’s not dead. Don’t tell me he’s gone the way of his accident-prone family.’
All day I’d been thinking of that empty grave in the cemetery, of Lockwood’s brief stillness as he sat with me on the stone, of the grief that haunted him worse than any ghost. Rage rose up within me. My hand hovered at my sword hilt. I couldn’t trust myself to speak. George was likewise bristling; I cou
ld feel insults incubating furiously behind his glittering glasses. But Holly was good in these situations. She remained impeccably polite. Her smooth, unflustered beauty seemed to have been turned up a notch. As she gazed from under half-lowered lids, her cool demeanour subtly radiated boredom and contempt. By contrast, Sir Rupert’s expensive tweed suit suddenly appeared loud and shabby; behind his yellow moustache, his face was florid, sweaty and much too eager.
‘He’s off tackling a Spectre at a theatre in Stratford,’ Holly said. ‘We’re going to meet him now. Thank you so much for taking an interest in our work.’
‘Hmm, a Spectre? You really need four agents for that?’ Beneath his moustache, Sir Rupert sucked at his teeth. ‘Do you have the relevant papers?’
Holly nodded. ‘Yes.’ She made no move to get them out.
‘Could you show them to me?’
‘I could. It would certainly be possible.’
Sir Rupert’s lips twisted slightly. ‘Then please do so.’
‘Or you could just take our word for it, Gale,’ George said as Holly slowly opened her bag. ‘But probably that’s a concept you wouldn’t know much about.’
‘You know the new rules, Cubbins.’ Sir Rupert took the papers and turned them over in gloved hands. ‘Agents must have their client agreements when out on a job. There’ve been far too many unregulated agencies running about, endangering the decent people of London. It’s been anarchy. Not a week goes by without rapier cuts and salt burns being reported. As for the damage Greek Fire can do …’
‘Don’t look at us,’ George said. ‘We haven’t burned anyone’s house down for ages.’
‘Once a plump, bespectacled pyromaniac,’ Sir Rupert said, ‘always a plump, bespectacled pyromaniac – that’s my philosophy. Well, I suppose these seem to be in order.’ He handed the papers back to Holly. ‘Good luck with your very dangerous mission. Oh, one more thing,’ he added as we moved to go. ‘You were seen near the Hardimann Library yesterday, Cubbins. Not trying to do a spot of illicit research, were you?’
‘Me? No.’
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