Lockwood & Co: The Whispering Skull

14

An hour later, two bruised tourist kids arrived home. We trudged through the gate and up the path, past the hanging bell and the broken line of iron tiles that I still hadn’t got round to mending. I leaned against the wall while Lockwood felt for the keys.

‘How’s your hand?’ I said.

‘Sore.’

‘Bottom?’

‘Sorer.’

‘That didn’t go so well, did it?’

Lockwood opened the door. ‘I had to see what was in his private room. There was just a chance the mirror might have been back there. But it was all racing forms and account books – and a half-finished jigsaw that his revolting son must’ve been doing. Winkman keeps the hot stuff somewhere else, of course.’ He sighed, and hitched up his enormous Bermudas as we proceeded down the hall. ‘Still, I suppose the afternoon wasn’t entirely wasted. We’ve seen what sort of fellow Mr Winkman is first hand, and we won’t underestimate him again. I wonder if George has had better luck.’

‘I certainly have!’ The kitchen door swung open. George was sitting at the table, aglow with vitality, a pencil and a breadstick protruding from his mouth. His eyes widened as he saw our outfits. ‘Blimey. Are those shorts you’re wearing, Lockwood, or are you trying to take flight?’

Lockwood didn’t answer, but stood in the doorway, casting morose eyes over the crisp packets, teacups, photocopied sheets and open notebooks littering the table. I went to put the kettle on. ‘They’re shorts,’ I said. ‘We’ve been undercover, but we’ve not had a very good day. I see you’ve been busy, though. Any progress?’

‘Yeah, I’ve been getting somewhere at last,’ George said. ‘Heat. Proper heat might just be the answer. Not solar heat, mind; that just makes the plasm shrink. I’m talking thermal. I popped that skull in the oven last night, and I tell you, it soon got that ghost nicely worked up. The plasm started twirling and coiling at 150 degrees. Turns out that’s the magic number. Soon the face appeared, and then I honestly think it started talking! Couldn’t actually hear it, of course – I needed you there for that, Luce – but if my lip-reading’s anything to go by, it knows some pretty ripe language. Anyway, it’s a giant leap, and I’m rather chuffed with myself.’ He leaned triumphantly back in his chair.

I felt a flash of irritation. The skull had recently spoken with me – and at room temperature, no less. These endless experiments seemed suddenly tiresome.

Lockwood only looked at him. I could sense the pressure building in the room. I said: ‘Yeah, we found the skull-jar in the oven this morning. We were a little surprised . . . What I was really talking about was the whole Bickerstaff thing.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got news for you on that score too.’ George took a complacent crunch on his breadstick. ‘Tell you what about ovens. They don’t make them big enough. I could barely get the jar in – and now it’s stuck! I mean, it’s a poor show. What if it had been a whopping Christmas roast?’

‘Yes,’ I said coolly. ‘How strange would that be?’ I found some mugs, plonked tea bags in.

‘Ah, but this could be such a breakthrough,’ George was saying. ‘Just think, if we could get the dead to speak to us on demand. Joplin was saying it’s been the dream of scholars throughout history, and if all it actually took was getting a couple of big ovens and—’

Lockwood gave a sudden cry; he strode forward into the room. ‘Will you stop going on about that stupid skull! That’s not our priority, George. Are we getting paid for it? No! Is it an imminent danger to people in London? No! Are we racing against Quill Kipps and his team to solve its mystery, and so prevent our public humiliation? No, we aren’t! But all those very things are happening while you bumble about with jars and ovens! Lucy and I have risked our lives today, if it’s of any interest to you.’ He took a deep breath; George was staring at him as if mesmerized. ‘All I ask,’ Lockwood said, ‘is that you please try to focus on the job in hand . . . Well? What do you say?’

George pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Sorry, can you repeat that? It’s those shorts. I couldn’t concentrate on what you were saying.’

The kettle boiled loudly, drowning Lockwood’s brief response. I made three hasty cups of tea, banging the spoon about, rattling the fridge door, trying to fill the ensuing silence. Didn’t really work. The atmosphere wasn’t fast improving. So I doled out the tea like a sullen waitress and went upstairs to get changed.

I took my time about it too. It had been a difficult afternoon, and our encounter with the Winkmans had left me more shaken than I’d admitted to Lockwood. The soft touch of the man’s hand, the implicit violence in his movements . . . I suddenly viewed my silly tourist outfit with extreme dislike. Up in my attic bedroom I dressed swiftly in my usual dark top, skirt and leggings; the heavy-duty boots too. An agent’s clothes. Clothes you didn’t mess with. It was a small thing, but it made me feel a little better. I stood at the window looking out at the dusk, and the silence of Portland Row.

I wasn’t the only one who seemed unsettled. Lockwood’s irritability was unusual. The urgent need to beat Kipps to the mirror was clearly preying on his mind.

Or was it? Maybe it was something else that bothered him. Maybe it was the skull. The skull and its whispered insinuations . . .

On my way downstairs I paused on the first-floor landing. Polynesian spirit-chasers and ghost-wards hung shadowed on the walls. I was alone; I could hear Lockwood and George’s voices below me in the kitchen.

Yes, there it was: the door that must never be opened.

There are other things in the house to fear, besides me.

An impulse overtook me. I tiptoed over and pressed my hands and ear to the wood of the door. I let my inner senses take control, listening, listening . . .

No. There was nothing. Really I should just open the door and take a look inside. It was unlocked. What could possibly happen?

Or I could just mind my own business and forget the lying, wheedling words of the foul thing in the jar! I tore myself away, set off down the stairs. Yes, I did want to delve a little deeper into Lockwood’s past, but there were other ways to do it than by snooping. Flo had mentioned an old master of Lockwood’s, who had seemingly come to some nasty end. Perhaps I could follow George’s example, and visit the Archives one day . . .

They were still in the kitchen, still at the table, nursing cups of tea. Something must have happened while I was gone, however, because ham and mustard sandwiches were now piled high in the centre of the table, together with bowls of cherry tomatoes, gherkins and crinkly lettuce. And crisps. It looked pretty good. I sat. We ate.

‘All better now?’ I said, after a while.

Lockwood grunted. ‘I’ve apologized.’

George said, ‘Lockwood’s been drawing that missing object from the Bickerstaff coffin. You know, the thing he saw in the photo. What do you think?’

I took a look at the thinking cloth. It wasn’t a very good sketch, since Lockwood can’t really draw: three or four parallel lines, with sharp ends. ‘Looks like a bundle of pencils,’ I said.

‘Bigger than pencils,’ Lockwood said. ‘More like sticks. Reminded me of those fold-up tripods the Times photographers used when they took pictures in Mrs Barrett’s tomb.’ He had a bite of sandwich. ‘Doesn’t explain where they disappeared to, though. Anyway, let’s talk business. I’ve filled George in, more or less, on what we’ve been doing the last twenty-four hours. And he’s not happy.’

George nodded. ‘Too right. I can’t believe you went blundering into Winkman’s shop like that. If he’s the man you say he is, that was a terribly rash thing to do.’

‘We had to make a snap decision,’ Lockwood said with his mouth full. ‘OK, it didn’t come off, but it might have done. Sometimes, George, we have to act on the spur of the moment. Life’s not all pootling about with ghost-jars and paperwork. Oh, don’t get mad at me again. I’m just saying.’

‘Listen, I’m in the front line too,’ George growled. ‘Who was it got a face-full of that haunted mirror the other night? I can still feel the effects now. It’s like something’s tugging on my mind, calling to me. I reckon I wasn’t far off meeting the same end as that relic-man we found, and that’s not a nice sensation.’ There were two small red points on his cheeks; he looked away. ‘Anyway, my “pootling” has rounded up plenty of good stuff, so I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. We’ve made more progress than Kipps and Bobby Vernon now, I’m sure.’

Night had fallen. Lockwood got up and closed the kitchen blinds, blocking out the darkness in the garden. He switched on a second light and sank back in his chair. ‘George is right,’ he said. ‘I phoned Barnes while you were upstairs, Luce, and Kipps isn’t doing well. He hasn’t got a lead on either Jack Carver or the mirror. DEPRAC’s holding cells are filled to bursting with half the relic-men of London, but Carver isn’t among them. There’s no clue as to his whereabouts. Barnes is a little frustrated. I told him we were following a hopeful lead.’

‘Did you tell him about Winkman?’ I said.

‘No. I don’t want Kipps muscling in on that. It’s our best hope of success, the secret auction, so long as Flo can get us news of it in time.’

‘Where’ve you been hiding this Flo Bones?’ George asked. ‘She sounds a useful contact. What’s she like?’

‘Soft-spoken, mild-mannered and gentle,’ I said. ‘Classy. You know the type. I think you’d get on well with her.’

George pushed his spectacles up his nose. ‘Really? Good.’

‘So then, George,’ Lockwood said. ‘It’s over to you. What did you find out about Bickerstaff and the mirror?’

George tidied his papers and stacked them neatly beside the remaining sandwiches. His annoyance had subsided; he now had a keen and business-like air.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘As expected, the National Archives didn’t let me down. My first port of call was the Hampstead Gazette article Albert Joplin showed us – the one about the rats. I found that and made a copy; I’ve got it here. Well, you’ll remember the basics. Our Edmund Bickerstaff works at a sanatorium – that’s a kind of hospital for people with chronic illnesses – on Hampstead Heath. He has something of a bad reputation, though the details are hazy. One night he has a private party with friends; when his body’s discovered, it’s been almost entirely devoured by rats. Yeech – even thinking about it makes me reluctant to chomp on one of these cherry tomatoes. But I will anyway.’

‘So it doesn’t mention him being shot, then?’ I said, remembering the corpse in the iron coffin, and the round hole in its forehead. ‘Not shot and then eaten?’

‘Nothing about that at all. But it’s quite possible the newspaper didn’t get the story entirely right. Some of the specifics may have been missed or left out.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘That whole rats story sounds daft to me. Find other newspaper accounts?’

‘Not as many as you might expect. You’d think the rats would have made all the front pages, but there’s very little. It’s almost as if the story was being deliberately suppressed. But I did find a few references, some extra details. One theme that keeps coming up is that Bickerstaff had a nasty habit of hanging around graveyards after dark.’

‘No shame in that,’ I said, crunching on a gherkin. ‘We do that too.’

‘We aren’t seen creeping home after midnight with a bulging bag over our shoulders, and grave-dirt dripping from our shovels. One paper says he’d sometimes have a servant lad with him, poor kid dragging heaven knows what behind him in a heavy sack.’

‘Hard to believe no one arrested him,’ I said. ‘If there were witnesses . . .’

‘It may be that he had friends in high-ish places,’ George went on. ‘I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, a couple of years later the Gazette reports that someone went into Bickerstaff’s house – it had been standing empty; I guess no one wanted to buy it – and discovered a secret panel in the living room. And behind that panel they found . . .’ He chuckled, paused dramatically. ‘You’ll never guess.’

‘A body,’ I said.

‘Bones.’ Lockwood took some crisps.

George’s face fell. ‘Yeah. Oh, I suppose I’d given you the clue. Anyway, yes, they found all sorts of body parts stacked in a hidden room. Some of them seemed very old. This confirmed that the good doctor had been going round digging up things he shouldn’t, but precisely why he should do so wasn’t clear.’

‘And this didn’t make the headlines, either?’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ve got to admit that’s odd.’

‘What about Bickerstaff’s friends?’ I said, frowning. ‘Didn’t Joplin say there was a whole gang of them?’

George nodded. ‘Yes, and I made progress here. One article gave the names of two of his supposed associates, people who were meant to have been at this final gathering at his house. They were young aristocrats named’ – he consulted some notes for a moment – ‘Lady Mary Dulac and the Honourable Simon Wilberforce. Both were rich, with reputations for being interested in strange ideas. Anyway, get this . . .’ George’s eyes glinted. ‘From other references I’ve found it seems Bickerstaff wasn’t the only one to disappear in 1877. Dulac and Wilberforce also vanished around that same time.’

‘What, as in never-seen-again vanished?’ I said.

‘Right. Well, certainly in Wilberforce’s case.’ He grinned at us. ‘Of course there were rewards offered, questions asked in Parliament, but no one seems to have openly made the connection with Bickerstaff. Some people must have known, though. I think it was hushed up. Anyway, now we move on ten years, to the sudden reappearance of Mary Dulac . . .’ He rummaged in his stack of papers. ‘Where is it? I’m sure I had it. Ah, here we go. I’ll read it to you. It’s from the Daily Telegraph, in the summer of 1886 – a long time after the Bickerstaff affair:

‘Madwoman Captured: The so-called “Wild-woman of Chertsey Forest”, a scrawny vagabond whose demented howls have caused consternation in this wooded district for several weeks, has at last been apprehended by police. Under interrogation at the town hall, the lunatic, who gave her name as Mary or May Dulac, claimed to have been living like a beast for many years. Her ravings, matted hair and hideous appearance disturbed several gentlemen present, and she was quickly removed to Chertsey Asylum.’

A silence fell after George finished.

‘Is it just me,’ Lockwood said, ‘or do bad things happen to people who have anything to do with Bickerstaff?’

‘Let’s hope that doesn’t include us,’ I said.

‘I haven’t got to the bottom of the Dulac business yet,’ George added. ‘I want to go to Chertsey, check out the Records Office there. The asylum was shut in 1904. Among the items listed as being removed from its library and taken to the Records Office at the time was something called “The Confessions of Mary Dulac”. To me, that sounds worth reading.’

‘It certainly does,’ Lockwood agreed. ‘Though I suppose, being a madwoman’s confessions, it might just be about eating bugs and things in the woods. Still, you never know. Well done, George. This is excellent.’

‘It’s just a shame there’s nothing about that mirror,’ George said. ‘It killed that guy Neddles in the cemetery, and it did something weird to me. I can’t help wondering if it was involved in Bickerstaff’s death as well. Anyway, I’ll keep looking. The only other interesting thing I found out was about that hospital Bickerstaff worked at – Green Gates Sanatorium on Hampstead Heath.’

‘Joplin said it burned down, didn’t he?’ I said.

‘Yeah. In 1908, with quite a loss of life. The site remained undeveloped for more than fifty years, until someone tried building a housing estate there.’

Lockwood whistled. ‘What were they thinking? Who builds houses on the site of an old Victorian hospital that burned down in tragic circumstances?’

George nodded. ‘I know. It’s almost the first rule of planning. As you’d expect, there were enough supernatural disturbances for the project to be shelved. But when I was looking at the plans I discovered something. Most of the site’s just grassland now: a few walls, overgrown ruins. But there is one building standing.’

We looked at him. ‘You mean . . .’

‘Turns out Bickerstaff’s house was set slightly away from the main part of the hospital. It wasn’t touched by the fire. It’s still there.’

‘Used for what?’ I said.

‘Nothing. It’s derelict, I think.’

‘As you’d expect, given its history. Who in their right mind would go there?’ Lockwood sat back in his chair. ‘Great work, George. Tomorrow you nip down to Chertsey. Lucy and I will try to pick up Jack Carver’s trail – though how we’ll do that, I haven’t a clue. He’s well and truly disappeared. Right, I’m off upstairs. I’m totally bushed, plus it’s high time I got out of these shorts.’

He made to rise. At that moment there was a knock at the front door. Two knocks. A brisk tap-tap.

We looked at each other. One after another we slowly pushed our chairs back and went out into the hall.

The knocking came again.

‘What time is it, George?’ Lockwood didn’t need to ask, really. There was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece, a grandfather clock in the corner and, from his parents’ collection, an African dream-catching timepiece that told the hour using ostrich feathers, cheetah bones and a revolving nautilus shell. One way and another, we knew what time it was.

‘Twenty minutes to midnight,’ George said. ‘Late.’

Far too late for any mortal visitor. None of us actually said this, but it was what we were all thinking.

‘You replaced that loose tile in the iron line, of course, Lucy,’ Lockwood said as we looked down past the coats and the table with the crystal lantern. The only lights in the hall were the faint yellow spears spilling out from the kitchen. Various tribal totems hovered in the fuzzy half-dark; the door itself could not be seen.

‘Almost,’ I said.

‘Almost finished?’

‘Almost got round to starting.’

Another double-knock sounded at the end of the hall.

‘Why don’t they ring the bell?’ George said. ‘The notice clearly says you have to ring the bell.’

‘It’s not going to be a Stone Knocker,’ I said slowly. ‘Or a Tom O’Shadows. Even with the break in the iron line, they’d surely be too weak . . .’

‘That’s right,’ Lockwood said. ‘It won’t be a ghost. It’s probably Barnes or Flo.’

‘That’s it! Of course! Flo. It must be Flo. She goes out at night.’

‘Of course she does. We should let her in.’

‘Yes.’

None of us moved along the hall.

‘Where was that recent strangling case?’ George said. ‘Where the ghost knocked on the window and killed the old lady?’

‘George, that was a window! This is a door!’

‘So what? They’re both rectangular apertures! I can be strangled too!’

Another knock – a single one, a clashing reverberation on the wood.

‘Oh, to hell with this,’ Lockwood snarled. He strode down the hall, switched on the crystal lantern, snatched up a rapier from the umbrella-stand beside the coats. Bending close to the door, he spoke loudly through the wood. ‘Hello? Who is it?’

No answer came.

Lockwood ran a hand through his hair. He flicked the chains aside, undid the latch. Before opening the door, he looked back at George and me. ‘Got to be done,’ he said. ‘It might be someone who needs our—’

The door burst open, knocking into Lockwood; he was flung back hard against the shelves. Masks and gourds toppled, crashing to the floor. A hunched black shape careered into the hallway. I caught a glimpse of a white, contorted face, two madly staring eyes. Lockwood tried to bring his rapier round, but the shape was on him, clawing at his front. George and I sprang forward, came pelting down the hall. A horrid gargling cry. The thing fell back, away from Lockwood, out into the lantern-light. It was a living man, mouth open, gulping like a fish. His long gingery hair was wet with sweat. He wore black jeans and jacket, a stained black T-shirt. Heavy lace-up boots stumbled on the floor.

George gasped. Realization hit me too.

‘Carver,’ I said. ‘That’s Jack Carver. The one who stole . . .’

The man’s fingers scrabbled at his neck, as if he were trying to pull words loose from his throat. He took one step towards us, and another – then, as if newly boneless, his legs gave way. He collapsed forward onto the parquet flooring, striking his face hard. Lockwood pushed himself away from the shelves; George and I halted, staring. All three of us gazed at the body laid out on the hall before us, at the twitching fingers, at the dark stain spreading out beneath him; most of all at the long curved dagger driven deep into his back.