Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

work?’
    ‘No idea. I’ve not tried it yet. Might be worth a go.’ He pointed to a door alongside. ‘That’s the bathroom, if you need it. This one’s my room, and that’s George’s. I’d tread with caution there. I once walked in on him doing yoga in the nude.’
    With difficulty, I drove the image from my mind. ‘So this was your house, as a kid?’
    ‘Well, it belonged to my parents then. It’s mine now. And yours, of course, for as long as you work here.’
    ‘Thanks. Tell me, did your parents—’
    ‘I’ll show you the kitchen now,’ Lockwood said. ‘I think George is making dinner.’ He started down the stairs.
    ‘What’s through there?’ I asked suddenly. There was onedoor he hadn’t mentioned: no different from the others, set close beside his own.
    He smiled. ‘That’s private, if you don’t mind. Don’t worry, it’s not very interesting. Come on! There’s still lots to see down here.’
    The ground floor – comprising sitting room, library and kitchen – was clearly the heart of the house, and the kitchen was where we would spend most time. It would be the place we’d assemble for pre-expedition tea and sandwiches; also where we’d gather for a fry-up late the morning after. Its appearance reflected this fusion of work and leisure. The surfaces had all the usual domestic clutter – biscuit tins, fruit bowls, packets of crisps – but also bags of salt and iron, carefully weighed and ready to go. There were rapiers propped behind the bins and plasm-stained workboots soaking in a bucket. Oddest of all was the kitchen table and its great white tablecloth. This cloth was half covered with a spreading net of scribbled notes, diagrams, and also drawings of several Visitor sub-types – Wraiths, Solitaries and Shades.
    ‘We call this our thinking cloth,’ Lockwood said. ‘It’s not widely known, but I located the bones of the Fenchurch Street Ghoul by sketching out the street-plan here, over tea and cheese on toast at four o’clock in the morning. The cloth lets us jot down memos, theories, follow interesting trains of thought . . . It’s a very useful tool.’
    ‘It’s also good for exchanging rude messages when a casehasn’t gone well and we’re not talking to each other,’ George said. He stood by the cooker, tending the evening stew.
    ‘Er, does that happen often?’ I asked.
    ‘No, no, no,’ Lockwood said. ‘Almost never.’
    George stirred the stew implacably. ‘You wait and see.’
    Lockwood clapped his hands together. ‘Good. Have I shown you the office yet? You’ll never guess where the entrance is. Look – it’s over here.’
    It turned out that the basement offices of Lockwood & Co. were reached directly from the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly a secret door – the handle was in plain view – but from the outside it looked like nothing more than an ordinary closet. It had precisely the same size, colour and handle shape as all the other kitchen units set around the walls. When you opened it, however, a little light came on, revealing a set of spiral stairs curling steeply down.
    At the bottom of the iron stairs lay a string of open, bare-brick rooms, separated by arches and pillars and stretches of plastered wall. They were lit by a large window looking onto the overgrown yard at the front of the house, and by angled skylights set into the ground along the side. The largest area contained three desks, a filing cabinet, two tatty green armchairs and a rather wonky bookshelf that Lockwood had assembled to hold his paperwork. A big black ledger sat resplendent on the central desk.
    ‘Our casebook,’ Lockwood said. ‘It’s got a history of everything we investigate. George compiles it and cross-references everything with the files up there.’ He gave a little sigh. ‘He likes that sort of thing. Personally I take each assignment as it comes.’
    I glanced at the box-files on the shelf. Each one had been neatly labelled by type and sub-type: Type One: Shades ; Type One: Lurkers ; Type Two: Poltergeists ; Type Two: Phantasms – and all the rest. At the end of the row was a thin file marked Type Threes . I stared at this.
    ‘Have you actually encountered a Type Three?’ I asked.
    Lockwood shrugged. ‘Hardly. I’m not even sure they exist.’
    Through an arch off the main office was a side-room, completely empty except for a rack of rapiers, a bowl of chalk dust, and two straw-filled Visitor dummies hanging from a ceiling beam on iron chains. One