“That’s enough!” It was my voice. My chair fell back; I was on my feet. “You know nothing about Holly—or any of us. Leave her alone!”
“Oh, Miss Carlyle.” The lady turned to me, then, and for the first time I felt the full ferocity of her smile. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you didn’t take me up on my offer the other week. We could have done great things together. But there we are, there’s no use crying over missed opportunities…which brings me to you, Mr. Kipps.”
Thus for the first time Penelope Fittes acknowledged the existence of Quill Kipps, who stood behind the door, shrinking back against the trash can as if trying to compress himself out of existence. As she turned her smile on him, he flinched.
“I hear you’ve been busy, too, Quill,” she said, “frolicking around with spectacles that don’t belong to you. What fun. I hope you’ve enjoyed spending time with your new friends. But in all your excitement, don’t forget the important thing, which is that by your own choice you are an outcast from my agency, and henceforth barred from all significant work and status. Backsliders like you will not be tolerated, and I shall make an example of you. Your pension will be confiscated; your reputation destroyed. I will see to it that you never work for any reputable psychic investigation company again.”
“It’s all right, Kipps,” Lockwood said. “You can work for us, if you want. We’re not reputable.”
Kipps said nothing; he was very pale, his nose and lips a purplish blue. He looked almost dead from fear and mortification.
“Well, I’d better be going,” Penelope Fittes said. “There’s so much to be done….You know, life is strange, isn’t it, Anthony? You refused my earlier offer—yet now, inadvertently, you’ve done me more of a favor than I could ever have imagined. Thank you for the tea.” She rose, looking around the kitchen a final time. “This is such a nice little house. So charming, so vulnerable. Have a lovely morning.”
With that she went out. By the window, Sir Rupert Gale finished George’s sandwich. Then he took a dish towel from the draining board, wiped the grease from his hands, and dropped the cloth into the sink. Smiling at us, he left the room. We heard the front door close, his footsteps fade on the path outside; shortly afterward, Ms. Fittes’s car purred away into the bright spring day.
We all remained exactly where we were, sitting, standing, shrouded in silence—Lockwood in his chair, George and Holly on either side of the table, me at the far end, Kipps by the door. No one looked at anyone else, but we were all aware of how still the others were, how rigid. We stayed there, joined together by a little web of shock.
Then Lockwood laughed. The spell broke—we all stirred, as though waking from a dream. We looked at him where he sat, smiling broadly, eyes glittering.
“Well,” he said, “they’ve made their position pretty clear, haven’t they? We’re supposed to keep our noses out of this.”
Kipps shifted his feet as if they pained him. George coughed slightly.
“So let’s have a show of hands,” Lockwood went on. “Who agrees that we should be obedient little agents, do what she says, and keep our noses clean?”
He looked around at us. None of us said a thing.
“Okay.” Lockwood straightened the Thinking Cloth, making it nice and neat. “That’s good to know. So, hands up, whoever thinks that in fact we ought to do the opposite of what she said. Whoever thinks that since Penelope has chosen to take the gloves off so completely, we are quite within our rights to make her the target of our subsequent investigations? No matter what threats she and that preening cad might make.”
We all silently raised our hands. Even Kipps, though he made it look as if he was really intending to scratch the back of his head and only did it as an afterthought, with a tentative, half-bent arm. All of us raised them, there in that room where the spring sun shone brightly through the window.
“Excellent,” Lockwood said. “Thank you. I’m glad, because that’s what I think, too. Let’s clear up breakfast. George, why don’t you put the kettle on? It’s time for Lockwood and Company to get to work.”
Two minutes later I was standing at the sink, doing the dishes, staring out at nothing, when I noticed a green glow coming from behind the dishcloth. I flipped it away—to find the ghost in the jar watching me. For once, its face was only mildly repulsive. It looked very sober and serious. “Nice speech from Lockwood, there,” the skull said. “Very prettily done. I could almost believe for a minute you weren’t doomed. Which I suppose was his intention. So…fill me in. I caught a peek from under that cloth. Who was that who just came in?”
“Penelope Fittes.”
“Who’s she?”
“Head of the Fittes Agency. And ruler of all London, it now appears—in her own mind, at least. Get with the beat. I thought you knew that.”
“Oh, I’m just a poor old skull, I am. A bit slow on the uptake. So that’s Penelope Fittes, is it? Head of Fittes House? Granddaughter of old Marissa who started it all?”
“Yes. And she suddenly isn’t quite as friendly as we thought….What’s with you? Why are you laughing?”
“No reason….How old would you say she was?”
“What, are you thinking of proposing marriage? How do I know?”
“I see she had a bodyguard with her,” the skull said. “That blond fellow with the peach fuzz mustache.”
I grunted. “Yeah. Sir Rupert Gale. A nasty piece of work.”
“Yes, a smiling, blue-eyed killer. But it’s no surprise. She always did have someone there to do her dirty work.”
“Who did?”
“Marissa Fittes.”
“We’re talking about Penelope.”
“Mmm…yes. Better rinse that plate again, Lucy. Still has ketchup on it.”
I went on with the dishes, staring out into the garden. At my side, the skull continued to chuckle witlessly to itself.
“All right,” I said finally. “Let me in on the joke.”
“I met Marissa once,” the skull said. “I spoke with her. I told you that, remember?”
“Yes. I know. She put you in that jar.”
“It’s pretty weird to see her standing there again.”
“Does Penelope resemble her?” I thought of the wizened old woman in the photographs at Fittes House. But that was at the end of Marissa’s life; perhaps earlier, she’d looked more like Penelope.
“You could say that. She’s no different than she was fifty years ago. Eek, it freaks me out, and I’m a skull in a jar. Anyway, don’t let me distract you. You’ve moved on to the silverware now. Ooh, jammy knives and eggy spoons. Exciting times.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re losing me. Run that past me again.”
“How has she managed to do that, I wonder? Because she really is no different. Eighty years old or more, and she almost looks younger, if anything.”
I gazed at the ghost. It gazed at me. Then its eyes rolled in opposite directions.
“Let me put it in words of few syllables so you can understand, Lucy. Penelope Fittes isn’t Marissa’s granddaughter. She’s her.”
I stopped where I was, with my hands in the soapy water, and stared at the jar. Behind me, George was putting tea bags into cups. The kettle was boiling. Lockwood and Kipps were arguing about something. Holly was in the garden, shaking crumbs off the Thinking Cloth. And all the time the ghost in the jar was watching me with its black and glittering eyes.