Jonathan Stroud - Lockwood & Co - The Screaming Staircase

Lockwood shook his head. ‘I think he was too busy trying to kill us, Mr Barnes.’

‘And who can blame him.’ Barnes appraised us sourly. ‘By the way, one of the helmets seems to lack its eye-piece. Any idea where it might be?’

‘No, sir. Perhaps it didn’t have one.’

‘Perhaps not . . .’ Rewarding us with a final searching glare, Barnes went to organize our departure from the Hall. We stayed where we were, slumped together on the library chairs. We didn’t talk. Someone brought us another cup of tea. We watched the daylight spread across the fields.

When clear-up specialists re-entered Combe Carey some weeks later, they found its supernatural activity much diminished in strength. Their first job, acting on our report, was to dredge the well. There, at a considerable depth, they found the ancient bones of seven adult males, previously bound together, but now much mangled and mixed with fragments of silver and iron. The remains were retrieved and destroyed, and after that, as Lockwood had predicted, the rest of the house soon fell in line. A number of secondary Sources were discovered beneath the flagstones of the lobby and in old chests in one of the bedrooms, but with the monks’ bones gone, most of the peripheral Type Ones also faded clean away.

Lockwood had lobbied hard for us to be involved in the final cleansing of the Hall, but our bid was turned down flat by the estate’s new owners – a nephew and a niece of Fairfax, who had taken control of his company. They disliked the house, and sold it soon after it had been made safe. The following year it became a prep school.

Fairfax himself had no direct heirs. It turned out that he had never married, and had no children of his own. So perhaps Annabel Ward had been the love of his life, after all.

The remains of the locket were swept up and removed by Barnes’s men in a special silver-glass canister. Whether the ghost-girl’s spirit remained tied to it, or whether (as I myself believe) she had permanently departed, I don’t know, because I never saw it again.

The body of the missing Fittes agent was recovered from the well room that same night and taken away by his modern equivalents. Some time later, Lockwood received a letter from Penelope Fittes herself, head of the agency and a direct descendant of its founder, the legendary Marissa Fittes. She congratulated us on our success, and thanked us for locating the body of her childhood friend and colleague. His name was Sam McCarthy. For the record, he’d been twelve years old.

26

HORRORS OF COMBE CAREY

BLOODY TERRORS OF ‘RED ROOM’

SCREAMING STAIRCASE SECRETS REVEALED

Exclusive interview with A. J. Lockwood inside

For some days, rumours have been circulating about recent events at Combe Carey Hall and the sudden death of its owner, the noted industrialist Mr John William Fairfax. Inside today’s Times of London we are proud to reveal the true extraordinary story of that night, as told by one of its main protagonists, Anthony Lockwood Esq. of Lockwood & Co.

In an exclusive conversation with our reporter, Mr Lockwood describes the horrific cluster of Type Two Visitors his team uncovered at the Hall, the secret passages they explored, and the terrors of the notorious ‘death well’ hidden at the heart of the house.

He also explains the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Mr Fairfax, who suffered a heart attack after being ghost-touched during the final confrontation. ‘He entered the wing against our advice,’ Mr Lockwood says. ‘He was a brave man, and I believe he wanted to witness the Visitors for himself, but it’s always perilous for a non-operative to enter an affected zone.’

Mr Lockwood also speaks openly about new developments in the Annabel Ward murder case. ‘Fresh evidence has emerged,’ he says, ‘which proves that the original suspect, Mr Hugo Blake, had nothing to do with the crime. Although the identity of her killer remains an unsolved mystery, we are delighted to assist in rescuing the reputation of an innocent man. It’s all part of the service we like to provide.’

Full Lockwood interview: see here .

John Fairfax obituary and appreciation: see here .

Today’s most up-and-coming psychical detection agencies: see here .

A week after our return to London, when we’d slept long and fully recovered from our ordeal, a party was held at 35 Portland Row. It wasn’t a very big party – just the three of us, in fact – but that didn’t stop Lockwood & Co. from properly going to town. George ordered in a vast variety of doughnuts from the corner store. I bought some paper streamers, and hung them up around the kitchen. Lockwood returned from a trip to Knightsbridge with two giant wicker hampers, filled with sausage rolls and jellies, pies and cakes, bottles of Coke and ginger ale, and luxuries of all kinds. Once this lot was unloaded, our kitchen virtually disappeared. We sat amid a wonderland of edible delights.

‘Here’s to Combe Carey Hall,’ Lockwood said, raising his glass, ‘and to the success it’s brought us. We got another new client today.’

‘That’s good,’ George said. ‘Unless it’s the cat lady again.’

‘It’s not. It’s Chelsea Ladies’ College. They report an apparition in the dormitories, a limbless man seen shuffling across the bathroom floor on his bloody stumps.’

I took a sausage roll. ‘Sounds promising.’

‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it too.’ Lockwood helped himself to an enormous slice of game pie. ‘That latest Times interview certainly did the job. We’ve got the right kind of publicity at last.’

George nodded. ‘That’s because we didn’t burn Combe Carey down. Though, having said that, we did kill our client. I suppose there’s always room for improvement.’

Lockwood refilled our glasses. We ate in companionable silence.

‘I’m just sorry,’ I said after a while, ‘that Barnes made you lie about Fairfax. He should have been publicly revealed for what he was.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Lockwood said, ‘but we’re talking about a very powerful family here, and one of the most important companies in England. If their top man were exposed as a murderer and scoundrel, there’d have been terrible repercussions. And with the Problem worsening daily, that’s not something DEPRAC was prepared to consider.’

I put down my fork. ‘Well, so what if there were repercussions? This fudge isn’t really justice , is it? No one’s ever going to know the truth now about Fairfax, or about Annie Ward, or how—’

‘Thanks to you, Lucy,’ Lockwood interrupted, ‘the ghost of Annie Ward got exactly what she wanted. Justice has most definitely been done. In fact it’s a great result, whichever way you look at it. Annie Ward gets her murderer, Fairfax is punished, Barnes gets his cover-up . . . And since Barnes needs us to keep quiet about the true nature of the case, he’s had to let me go to The Times with all the other juicy details. So that means we’ve got our free publicity too. Bingo. Everybody’s happy.’

‘Except Fairfax,’ George said.

‘Oh yes. Except him.’

‘I wonder what else DEPRAC’s concealing?’ I said. ‘Did you see how quickly they moved into that place, and started taking away material? It’s almost as if they were more interested in Fairfax’s suit and helmet than in his crimes. That helmet was so bizarre . . . I would have loved to take a closer look at it.’