Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

football gear. Mind if I nip up to the Hall tomorrow and ask for it? Mr Fairfax wouldn’t be wanting it, would he? Nor old Starkins.’
    ‘Sorry,’ Lockwood said. ‘ We’ll still have need of it tomorrow.’
    The youth nodded. ‘I’ll drop by anyhow,’ he said. ‘No harm in seeing.’
    We drove uphill, through straggling woods, amid a tangled grid of cold, dark fields lined with winter greens. ‘You ever been inside the Hall?’ Lockwood said.
    ‘What? You think I’m mad?’
    ‘You must know something about it, though. About its haunting.’
    The youth turned abruptly up a narrow side-lane, a miracle of last-minute steering, so that everything in the back of the car shifted violently to the left, and my head was brutally sandwiched between the window-glass and some soft portion of George’s face. For a few seconds I heard nothing except him breathing in my ear; by the time he prised himself loose, with much gratuitous fumbling, we had passed through a tumbledown gateway and were racing up a long straight drive.
    ‘. . . murdered, hidden, and never found,’ the boy was saying. ‘ That’s how it all began, I reckon. Everyone round here knows it. One death leads to another, and so becomes a chain of deaths that’ll keep on growing as long as the house shall last. Whole place should be burned down and salt sown on the ashes – that’s what my mum says. Not that we can get the owner to see that kind of sense. He’s so set on his little experiments. So: here we are. That’ll be ten pounds fifty, plus two for the extra bags.’
    ‘Interesting,’ Lockwood said. ‘Particularly the first bit. Thanks.’
    We had come to a halt at the terminus of the gravel drive. Through my window I saw rolling parkland, spotted with oaks and beeches, and part of the lake I’d noticed in Fairfax’s photograph. It all had a wild, unkempt look. The grass was high, and the lakeshore overgrown with matted sedge. On the other side, past George, I could just make out the pale trunk of a tree, two vast urns on plinths and, behind it all, the blank grey stone of a house.
    Lockwood was busy talking with the driver. I got out and helped George with the bags. Combe Carey Hall rose vast and tall above me. The air was dank and chill.
    Far above, long brick chimneys sprouted like horns against the clouds. This left-hand portion of the house, which I assumed to be the older, western, wing, was mostly of ancient stone, switching to brickwork near the roof and on the margins. It had a great number of windows, of many sizes and at a variety of levels, each one blankly reflecting the grey November sky. Cracked columns supported an ugly concrete portico above the double entrance doors, which were reached by a splaying flight of stairs. A monumental ash tree, of considerable age and size, stood by the far end of the wing. Its bone-white branches pressed against the bricks like the legs of giant spiders.
    To the right of the entrance stairs, the smaller, eastern, wing was also brickwork, but of clearly modern construction. By a curious accident of architecture, the wings were set at aslight angle to each other, so the effect was of the entire house subtly reaching out to encircle me. It was an ugly, oppressive mongrel of a building and I’d have disliked it intensely, even if I hadn’t known its reputation.
    ‘Lovely!’ Lockwood said cheerily. ‘Here’s our hotel for the night.’ He had been talking animatedly with the driver for a surprisingly long time. As I watched, he handed over a wad of notes – considerably more than £12.50 – and a sealed brown envelope.
    ‘You’ll deliver it, won’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s important.’
    The youth nodded. In a shower of gravel, his taxi roared away, leaving behind a smell of fear and petrol, and the sight of an elderly man descending the steps of the house.
    ‘What was all that about?’ I demanded.
    ‘Little package I needed posting,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
    ‘Hush,’ George whispered. ‘This must be “old Bert Starkins”. He is old, isn’t he?’
    The caretaker was certainly very ancient, a tight and desiccated thing from which all softness and moisture had long since been extracted. Where Mr Fairfax had been bullishly vigorous despite his age and infirmity, this man was more like the ash tree by the house: gnarled and twisted, but holding tenaciously to life. He had a shock of grey-white hair, and a narrow face that disintegrated, as he drew near,