Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

said sweetly.
    The old man grunted. ‘Let’s just say they provided his nightly . . . entertainments. When he’d finished off each one, he set their skulls on the steps of the central staircase with candles burning behind the eye-sockets.’ Starkins’s aged, rheumy eyes rolled in horror at the thought. ‘So it went for years, until the stormy night one of the victims broke free and cut Sir Rufus’s throat with a rusted manacle. From that day to this, whenever the Red Duke’s ghost stalks the corridors, you can hear the souls of his victims howling. They say it’s like the very staircase screams.’
    Lockwood, George and I glanced at each other. ‘So that’s the origin of the Screaming Staircase?’ Lockwood asked.
    Starkins shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Have you ever heard it?’ I said.
    ‘Not a chance! Wouldn’t catch me going into the Hall by night.’
    ‘Well, what about anyone you know? Have they heard it? Any of your friends?’
    ‘Friends?’ The caretaker’s forehead creased in puzzlement at the concept. ‘It’s not my place to have friends . I’m a servant of the Hall. Well, let’s continue the tour.’
    Old Mr Starkins took us on a rambling circuit of the house, pointing out external features, and giving us a potted guide. It soon became apparent that, in his opinion at least, every stone and tree had some horrid association. Sir Rufus and the monks had set the tone. Almost all the subsequent owners of the Hall had been mad, or bad, or a messy combination of both. As they hacked and strangled their way down the years, countless killings had taken place. Theoretically, any one of them might have contributed to the terrible atmosphere of the Hall, but the sheer volume of anecdotes was both numbing and hard to believe. I could see Lockwood struggling to keep an incredulous smile off his face, while George dawdled behind, yawning and rolling his eyes. For my part I soon gave up trying to remember all the stories, and spent my time studying the house. I noticed that, the main entrance aside, there were no obvious exits from the ground floor, except in the modern East Wing, which Mr Fairfax used. His Rolls was parked outside this side-door; the chauffeur, stripped to his shirt-sleeves despite the bitter air, stood polishing the bonnet.
    In the grounds beyond the East Wing stretched the boating lake, drab and kidney-shaped. Close by were rose gardens, and a tall round tower with ruined battlements.
    Bert Starkins pointed. ‘I draw your attention to Sir Lionel’s Folly.’
    ‘An unusual tower,’ Lockwood ventured.
    ‘Wait for it,’ George whispered.
    The old man nodded. ‘Yes, it was from the top of that tower that Lady Caroline Throckmorton threw herself in 1863. Lovely summer evening, it was. She stood astride the crenulations, skirts flapping, silhouetted against a blood-red sky, while the servants tried to coax her back in with tea and seed cake. No good, of course. They said she stepped off as casually as if she were alighting from an omnibus.’
    ‘At least it was a serene end,’ I said.
    ‘You think so? She screamed and flapped her arms all the way down.’
    There was a short silence. Wind ruffled the cold waters of the lake. George cleared his throat. ‘Well . . . it’s a nice rose garden.’
    ‘Yes . . . Built where she landed.’
    ‘A pleasant lake—’
    ‘Where old Sir John Carey perished. Took off for a swim one night. They say he swam to the middle, then dropped like a stone, weighed down by guilty memories.’
    Lockwood pointed hastily to a little cottage surrounded by shrubs and hedges. ‘What about that house—’
    ‘Never found his corpse, they didn’t.’
    ‘Really? Shame. Now, that cottage—’
    ‘It’s down there still, cradled amongst the mud and stones and old drowned leaves . . . I’m sorry, what did you say?’
    ‘That little house. What’s the appalling story about that?’
    The ancient man sucked his gums meditatively. ‘Ain’t none.’
    ‘There’s nothing?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re sure? No suicide pacts or crimes of passion? Must at least be a quick stabbing or something, surely.’
    The caretaker appraised Lockwood in a thoughtful manner. ‘Perhaps, sir, you’d be making one of your clever college jokes about me?’
    ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Lockwood said. ‘And actually I’ve never been to college.’
    ‘Perhaps you don’t believe the tales I’ve told,’ the old man said. Like cartwheels slipping in thick mud, the rheumy