Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

doubt you’ve heard of the murderer Harry Crisp?’
    My eyes grew round. ‘Not the coin-in-the-slot killer?’
    ‘Er, no. That was Clive Dilson.’
    ‘Oh! You mean the one who kept heads in the fridge?’
    ‘No . . . that was Colin Buchanan-Prescott.’
    I scratched my chin. ‘In that case, I’ve never heard of him.’
    ‘Oh.’ Lockwood seemed slightly deflated. ‘I’m a little surprised. Do they have papers in the north of England? Well, it was thanks to me that Harry Crisp got put away. I was doing a sweep of the neighbourhood in Tooting, out hunting Type Twos, you see, and I noticed all the death-glows in his garden. They’d been missed because he’d cunningly scattered iron filings everywhere after the killings, to suppress the ghosts. And it turned out later that, while wearing that watch, it had been his beastly habit to lure—’
    ‘Dinner!’ George was leaning over the top of the spiral stairs, a ladle in his hand.
    ‘I’ll tell you about it another time,’ Lockwood said. ‘We’d better go. George gets tetchy if we let the food get cold.’
    If I knew straight away that I liked the oddities of my new home, I soon formed opinions about my fellow agents too. And right from the outset these opinions diverged markedly. Lockwood, I already liked. He seemed a world away from the remote and treacherous Agent Jacobs; his zest and personal commitment were clear. Here was someone I felt I could follow; someone perhaps to trust.
    But George Cubbins? No. He bothered me. I made heroic efforts not to get annoyed with him that first day, but it wasn’t humanly possible.
    Take his appearance. There was something about it that acted as a trigger to one’s worst instincts. His face wasuniquely slappable – a nun would have ached to punch him – while his backside cried out to heaven for a well-placed kick. He slouched, he slumped, he scuffed his way about the house like something soft about to melt. His shirt was always untucked, his trainers extra-big, the laces trailing. I’ve seen reanimated corpses with better deportment than George.
    And that flop of hair! And those silly glasses! Everything about him irritated me.
    He also had a particular trick of staring at me in a blank, expressionless sort of way that was somehow also rudely contemplative. It was like he was analysing all my faults, and simply wondering which I was going to display next. For my part I did my best to be polite during the first evening meal, and restrained my basic instincts, which were to hit him over the head with a spade.
    Later that night, coming down from my bedroom, I lingered for a moment on the first-floor landing. I glanced through the bookshelves, inspected the Polynesian ghost-chaser . . . and suddenly found myself standing outside the other bedroom door, the one Lockwood had said was private. It was a very ordinary-looking door. There was a faint pale rectangle marked on the wood grain, just below head height, where a sign or sticker had been removed. Otherwise it was entirely blank. It didn’t seem to have a lock.
    It would have been easy to peep inside, but clearly that would have been wrong. I was just regarding the doorspeculatively when George Cubbins emerged from his room, a folded newspaper under his arm. He glanced across. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but that’s the forbidden room.’
    ‘Oh – the door?’ I stepped away from it casually. ‘Yes . . . Why does he keep it shut?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Have you ever looked in?’
    ‘No.’ The spectacles regarded me. ‘Course not. He asked me not to.’
    ‘Of course, of course. Quite right. So . . .’ I smiled as amiably as I could. ‘How long have you lived here?’
    ‘About a year.’
    ‘So you obviously know Anthony well?’
    The plump boy pushed his glasses briskly up his nose. ‘What is this? Another interview? It had better be a quickie. I’m on my way to the bathroom here.’
    ‘Sorry, yes. I was just wondering about the house and how he came to have it. I mean, it’s got all this stuff in it, and yet Lockwood’s here on his own. I mean, I don’t see how—’
    ‘What you mean ,’ George interrupted, ‘is: where are the parents? Correct?’
    I nodded. ‘Yes.’
    ‘He doesn’t like to talk about them – as you’ll find out, if you last long enough to ask him. I think they were psychical researchers of some kind: you can tell that from all the objects on the walls. They were rich too: you can tell that from thehouse.