Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

held up a hand. ‘Wait! You knew this? How?’
    ‘Thanks to a psychic insight by Lucy here,’ Lockwood said. ‘In touching it, she detected strong emotional traces that linked Annie Ward’s unknown admirer with the moment of her death.’
    The great head turned; the black eyes considered me for some seconds. ‘Ah yes, the sensitive Miss Carlyle . . .’ Something in the way he said it made my skin recoil. ‘But, legally speaking,’ Fairfax said, ‘that’s hogwash. There’s no proof in it at all.’
    ‘Quite so,’ Lockwood said. ‘Which was why I wanted to understand the inscription we found on the locket. On the outside, this was Tormentum meum, laetitia mea : “My torment, my bliss”, or similar gibberish. This told us little, other than that the guy who’d had the necklace made was a pretentious, self-regarding sort of fellow. But then, so many murderers are, aren’t they, Fairfax? We needed something more.’
    Silence in the library. The old man sat motionless, gnarled hands resting on the studded arms of his leather chair. His head jutted forward in an attitude of strict attention.
    ‘Next,’ Lockwood said, ‘we came to what we found inside. This, if I recall correctly, was: A ‡ W; H.II.2.115 . Threeletters, A, W and H, plus the mysterious set of numerals. To begin with, the letters foxed us; in fact, they led us into a serious error. Our instant assumption was that AW stood for Annabel Ward, and that the H might therefore stand for her admirer’s name. The newspapers of the time had highlighted her relationship with Hugo Blake, so this seemed a strong possibility. He’d been the last to see her alive, and had been the only original suspect in the case. The police today also remembered Blake and soon arrested him.
    ‘In fact,’ Lockwood continued, ‘Blake was a complete red herring, which I might have realized after a careful study of the inscription. Wasn’t it a bit odd that Annie Ward’s initials were spelled out in full, while her admirer’s were confined to a single letter? And what about the numbers: II.2.115? Was it some kind of code? A date? I’m sorry to say that I was stumped.’
    He glanced at his watch for a moment, then grinned across at me. ‘Lucy made all the difference, Fairfax. She found a photo showing you in the same group as Annie Ward. At once I knew you’d lied about your purpose in bringing us here. On the train down I read about your early years in the theatre and remembered that Annie Ward had acted too. I guessed that might have been your connection. I also noticed that you acted under your middle name: Will Fairfax. At once that gave a new solution to A ‡ W. Not Annie Ward, but Annie and Will .’
    Still the old man hadn’t moved. Or perhaps his head had dropped a little. His eyes were in deep shadow now and could not be seen.
    ‘I didn’t figure out the meaning of the final bit until this evening,’ Lockwood said. ‘We were on the Screaming Staircase at the time, and have been a little busy ever since, so I haven’t had a chance to check yet. But I think we’ll find that “H.II.2.115” is a reference to one of the plays you acted in with Annie Ward. I bet it’s some soppy quote that somehow binds the two of you together and which, if we investigated, would prove you knew each other very well indeed.’ He glanced up at the painting on the wall. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say Hamlet , since that seems to be your personal favourite, but who can say except you?’ He smiled and folded his hands across his knee. ‘So, Fairfax – how about it? Perhaps now’s the moment to fill us in.’
    Fairfax didn’t stir. Had he actually fallen asleep? It was almost possible, given how long Lockwood had been talking. Up by the bookcase, the man with the gun shifted; clearly he at least had grown impatient. ‘Almost four-thirty, sir,’ he said.
    A cracked voice from the chair, from the shaded face. ‘Yes, yes. Just one question, Mr Lockwood. You had the inscription. Why didn’t you instantly show it to the police?’
    For a few seconds Lockwood didn’t answer. ‘Pride, I suppose. I wanted to decode it myself. I wanted Lockwood and Co. to have the glory. It was a mistake.’
    ‘I understand.’ Fairfax lifted his head, and if he had looked old before, now he looked positively deathlike, his eyes bright and ghastly, his grey skin clinging to the bones. ‘Pride does terrible things to a man. In your case, it will be the death of you and your