Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

better.’
    ‘They spelled my name wrong,’ I pointed out.
    ‘They didn’t mention me at all,’ George said.
    ‘Well, in all the essentials, I mean.’ Lockwood grinned round at us. ‘Page six of The Times . Best bit of publicity we’ve ever had. This is the turning point. Things are finally looking up.’ He shivered and moved his boots from one foul-smelling portion of compost to another.
    It was almost eight p.m., the day after our trip to the Archives. We were standing in a mucky gooseberry patch in a dark and chilly garden, waiting for a ghost. It wasn’t the most glamorous assignment known to man.
    ‘Temperature?’ Lockwood asked.
    ‘Still dropping.’ George was checking his thermometer. It glowed faintly amid the tangles of the gooseberries. Up in the house, the lights were masked by drab curtains. A dog barked a good way off. Twenty feet away from us, the thin black branches of a willow tree hung like frozen shafts of rain.
    ‘Miasma’s intensifying,’ I said. My limbs were heavy, my brain tugged by alien emotions of futility and despair. The taste of decay was bitter in my mouth. I took another mint to freshen things up.
    ‘Good,’ Lockwood said. ‘Shouldn’t be too long.’
    ‘Telling DEPRAC about Annie Ward,’ George said suddenly, ‘is all well and good. But I still don’t think you should have got the press involved so early. The police investigation’s hardly started, has it? We don’t know where it’s going.’
    ‘Oh yes we do. Barnes wasn’t very pleased that we’d beaten them to the girl’s identity, but he was very interested in the connection to this Hugo Blake. He looked him up in their records. Turns out he’s something of a successful businessman, but has been in prison several times for fraud, and once for serious assault. He’s a nasty piece of work. And we were right: he’s still alive and well, and living here in London.’
    ‘So they’re bringing him in?’ I said.
    ‘They were going to do it today. Probably arrested him already.’
    ‘Ghost-fog coming,’ George said. Faint tendrils had risen from the earth, coldly luminous, thin as spaghetti, winding between the willow and the wall.
    ‘What do you hear, Lucy?’ Lockwood asked.
    ‘Still the same. Wind in the leaves. And a rasping squeak, squeak, squeak.’
    ‘Rope, you think?’
    ‘Might be.’
    ‘George – see anything?’
    ‘Not yet. What about you? Death-glow still off-ground?’
    ‘Well, it wouldn’t have moved, would it? Yeah, still up there among the branches.’
    ‘Can I have a mint, Lucy?’ George said. ‘Forgot mine.’
    ‘Sure.’
    I handed the packet round. Conversation lapsed. We watched the willow tree.
    Despite Lockwood’s high hopes for his article, we had not yet felt any benefits from its publicity, and this evening’s vigil represented the last case remaining on our books. Our clients, a young married couple, had regularly experienced feelings of unease and terror near the bottom of their urban garden. On recent nights their children (aged four and six) had reported looking from the house and seeing ‘a dark, still shadow’ standingamongst the trailing branches of the tree. The parents, who were with the children on each occasion, had seen nothing.
    Lockwood and I had carried out an initial survey of the area that morning. The willow was very old, with high, thick branches. We’d both noticed faint background phenomena in the vicinity, mainly miasma and creeping fear. Meanwhile George, who had been at the Archives all day, had investigated the history of the house. He had discovered one significant incident. In May 1926 the owner, a Mr Henry Kitchener, had hung himself somewhere on the premises. The exact location was not specified.
    We had reason to suspect the tree.
    ‘I still don’t know why you mentioned me but not the necklace,’ I said. ‘You make it sound like Annie Ward told me personally who killed her, which we all know is rubbish. Ghosts don’t communicate clearly enough. Psychic connection is a fragmentary thing.’
    Lockwood chuckled. ‘I know, but it doesn’t hurt to emphasize what a star you are. We want other clients to come running, eager for your services. And I deliberately didn’t mention the necklace, partly because I’m holding that back for future articles, and partly because I haven’t told Barnes about it either.’
    ‘You didn’t tell Barnes?’ George said incredulously. ‘Even about the inscription?’
    ‘Not yet. He’s