‘No . . . I’d still say “irritating” about sums it up.’
‘So what did it tell you?’ Lockwood asked. ‘What searing insights did it give?’
I looked at him. He was sitting back, sipping his cocoa. As always, despite the rigours of the night, he seemed composed. He was fastidious, self-possessed, always in control . . .
There are other things in this house to fear, besides me.
‘Um, nothing very much,’ I said.
‘Well, there must have been something.’
‘Did it talk about the afterlife?’ George said eagerly. His eyes shone bright behind his spectacles. ‘That’s the big one. That’s what everyone wants. Old Joplin told me he goes to scholars’ conventions about it. What happens after death. Immortality . . . The fate of the human soul . . .’
I took a deep breath. ‘It said you were fat.’
‘What?’
‘It talked about us, basically. It watches us and knows our names. It said—’
‘It said I was fat?’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Fat? Fat? What kind of otherworldly communication is that?’
‘Oh, it was all like that!’ I cried. ‘Just meaningless stuff. It’s evil, I think: it wants to hurt us, get us fighting amongst ourselves . . . It also said I was blind to things around me . . . I’m sorry, George. I didn’t mean to insult you, and I hope that—’
‘I mean, if I was interested in my weight, I’d buy a mirror,’ George said. ‘This is just so disappointing. No piercing insights about the other side? Shame.’ He took a bite of sandwich, slumped regretfully in his chair.
‘What did it say about me?’ Lockwood asked, watching me with his dark, calm eyes.
‘Oh . . . stuff.’
‘Such as?’
I looked away, took a sudden interest in the sandwiches, and made a big show of prising a plump one clear. I held it fastidiously in my fingers. ‘Oh good, ham. That’s fine.’
‘Lucy,’ Lockwood said, ‘the last time I saw body language like yours was when we were chatting to Martine Grey about her missing husband, and afterwards found him at the bottom of her freezer. Don’t be so shifty, and spit it out.’ He smiled easily. ‘It’s honestly not going to get me upset.’
‘It’s not?’
‘Well, I mean, what did it say?’ He chuckled. ‘How bad can it have been?’
‘OK, so it told me . . . I mean, I didn’t believe it, obviously, and it’s not something I care about, no matter what the truth may be . . . It implied you had something dangerous hidden in that room. You know, the room upstairs. On the landing,’ I finished lamely.
Lockwood lowered his mug; he spoke flintily. ‘Yes, I know the one. The one you can’t stop asking about.’
I gave a hoarse cry. ‘I didn’t bring it up this time! The ghost in the jar did!’
‘The ghost in the jar. Oh yes. Who just happens to have the same obsession as you.’ Lockwood folded his arms. ‘So tell me, what exactly did the “ghost in the jar” say?’
I licked my lips. ‘It doesn’t matter. You obviously don’t believe me, so I’m not going to say any more. I’m off to bed.’
I got to my feet, but Lockwood got up too. ‘Oh no, you’re not,’ he said. ‘You can’t just throw out wild assertions and then swan off like a prima donna without backing them up. Tell me what you’ve seen.’
‘I haven’t seen anything. I keep telling you, it . . .’ I paused. ‘So there is something.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You definitely implied there was something to see.’
We stood there, glaring at each other. George took another sandwich. At that moment the phone rang, out in the hall. All three of us jumped.
Lockwood swore. ‘Now what? It’s four-thirty in the morning.’ He went out to answer it.
George said, ‘Looks like Marissa Fittes was right. Type Three ghosts do mess with your head and play with your emotions. Look at the two of you now, arguing over nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing,’ I said. ‘This is a basic issue of trust, which—’
‘Looks like a whopping great zero from where I’m sitting,’ George said. ‘This ghost also called me “fat”: do you see me reacting?’
The door opened, Lockwood appeared. The anger in his face had been replaced with puzzlement and some concern.
‘This night’s getting weirder,’ he said. ‘That was Saunders at the cemetery. There’s been a break-in at the chapel where they were keeping the Bickerstaff coffin. One of the night-watch kids was hurt. And you remember that creepy mirror? It’s been stolen.’
III
The Missing Mirror
9
That phone call wasn’t the last one we got that morning. Another came four hours later, around eight a.m., when we were trying to get some kip. Our ordinary responses in such circumstances would be to either (a) ignore it (Lockwood); (b) ask them politely to ring back (George); or (c) send them away with a shrill torrent of abuse (me: I get grumpy with lack of sleep). However, since it was Inspector Barnes of DEPRAC, summoning us to an urgent meeting, we didn’t have these options. Fifteen minutes later, dazed and breakfastless, we squeezed into a taxi and set off for Scotland Yard.
It was another perfect summer’s morning in London, the roads full of sweet grey shadow and sparkling dappled light. Inside the taxi, things were noticeably less sunny. Lockwood was whey-faced and monosyllabic, while two harvest mice could have made hammocks from the bags under George’s eyes. We said little as we drove along.
This suited me. My head was full to bursting. I wound down the window and closed my eyes, letting the fresh air blow cool and clean across my mind. The events of the evening jostled for attention – the apparition at the cemetery, the skull grinning in its jar, my argument with Lockwood – yet at the same time, everything also seemed unreal.
The skull’s warnings most of all. Stumbling my way downstairs to the taxi, the sight of the forbidden door on the landing had given me a brief, sharp pang. But the power of the ghost’s words shrivelled with the sunlight, and I knew I had been wrong to let them affect me. The thing was a liar. It sought to snare me, just as George had said. As a Listener, I had to beware.
Still, the actual conversation had been real enough. And no one else in London – perhaps no one since the great Marissa Fittes – had ever had one like it. The thought gave me a sleepy thrill as I sat there in my fuddled state. Was it the skull that was unique – or was it me?
I realized I was smiling to myself. I opened my eyes abruptly; we’d reached Victoria Street and were almost at our destination. The taxi idled in traffic, just outside the vast offices of the Sunrise Corporation. Adverts for their latest products – new lavender grenades; slimmer, lighter magnesium flares – gleamed on billboards above the forecourt.
George and Lockwood sat slumped and silent, gazing out into the day.
I sat up straight, shifted my rapier to a more comfortable position. ‘So what does Barnes want, Lockwood?’ I asked. ‘Is it Bickerstaff?’
‘Yes.’
‘What have we done wrong now?’
He grimaced. ‘You know Barnes. Does he need a reason?’
The taxi moved on, pulled up outside the shimmering glass facade of Scotland Yard, where DEPRAC had its headquarters. We got out, paid, and trudged inside.
The Department of Psychical Research and Control – or DEPRAC, as it was more conveniently known – existed to monitor the activities of the dozens of agencies now in existence throughout the country. It was also supposed to coordinate the national response to the ongoing epidemic of hauntings, and there apparently existed vast research laboratories in iron bunkers deep below Victoria Street, where DEPRAC scientists wrestled with the conundrums of the Problem. But it was in its incessant attempts to control independent agencies such as ours that the department most often entered our lives, particularly in the form of its dourly pedantic operational director, Inspector Montagu Barnes.