Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

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 acrossthe 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 orderto 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.
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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