‘No.’ Lockwood inspected the bottle. ‘No . . . I made the final, as it happens, but I didn’t win. Is that the time? We’re sluggish today. I should go and wash.’
He sprang up, seized two slices of Swiss roll and, before I could say anything more, was out of the room and up the stairs.
George glanced at me. ‘You know he doesn’t like opening up too much,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s just the way he is. I’m surprised he told you as much as he did.’
I nodded. George was right. Small anecdotes, here and there, were all you got from Lockwood; if you questioned him further he shut tight, like a clam. It was infuriating – but intriguing too. It always gave me a pleasant tug of curiosity. One full year after my arrival at the agency, the unrevealed details of my employer’s early life remained an important part of his mystery and fascination.
All things considered that summer, and leaving the Wimbledon debacle aside, Lockwood & Co. was doing OK. Not super OK – we hadn’t got rich or anything. We weren’t building swanky mansions for ourselves with ghost-lamps in the grounds and electrically powered streams of water running along the drive (as Steve Rotwell, head of the giant Rotwell Agency, was said to have done). But we were managing a little better than before.
Seven months had passed since the Screaming Staircase affair had brought us so much publicity. Our widely reported success at Combe Carey Hall, one of the most haunted houses in England, had immediately resulted in a spate of prominent new cases. We exorcized a Dark Spectre that was laying waste to a remote portion of Epping Forest; we cleansed a rectory in Upminster that was being troubled by a Shining Boy. And of course, though it nearly cost us all our lives, our investigation of Mrs Barrett’s tomb led to the company being shortlisted for True Hauntings’ ‘Agency of the Month’ for the second time. As a result, our appointment book was almost full. Lockwood had even mentioned hiring a secretary.
For the moment, though, we were still a small outfit, the smallest in London. Anthony Lockwood, George Cubbins and Lucy Carlyle: just the three of us, rubbing along together at 35 Portland Row. Living and working side by side.
George? The last seven months hadn’t changed him much. With regards to his general scruffiness, sharp tongue and fondness for bottom-hugging puffa jackets, this was obviously a matter for regret. But he was still a tireless researcher, capable of unearthing vital facts about each and every haunted location. He was the most careful of us too, the least likely to jump headlong into danger; this quality had kept us all alive more than once. George also retained his habit of taking off his glasses and polishing them on his jumper whenever he was (a) utterly sure of himself, (b) irritated, or (c) bored rigid by my company, which, one way or another, seemed pretty much all the time. But he and I were getting along better now. In fact, we’d only had one full-on, foot-stamping, saucepan-hurling row that month, which was itself some kind of record.
George was very interested in the science and philosophy of Visitors: he wanted to understand their nature, and the reasons for their return. To this end he conducted a series of experiments on our collection of spectral Sources – old bones or other fragments that retained some ghostly charge. This hobby of his was sometimes a little annoying. I’d lost track of the times I’d tripped over electricity cables clamped to some relic, or been startled by a severed limb while rummaging in the deep freeze for fish fingers and frozen peas.
But at least George had hobbies (comic books and cooking were two of the others). Anthony Lockwood was quite another matter. He had few interests outside his work. On our rare days off, he would lie late in bed, riffling through the newspapers, or re-reading tattered novels from the shelves about the house. At last he’d fling them aside, do some moody rapier practice, then begin preparing for our next assignment. Little else seemed to interest him.
He never discussed old cases. Something propelled him ever onwards. At times an almost obsessive quality to his energy could be glimpsed beneath the urbane exterior. But he never gave a clue as to what drove him, and I was forced to develop my own speculations.
Outwardly he was just as energetic and mercurial as ever, passionate and restless, a continual inspiration. He still wore his hair dashingly swept back, still had a fondness for too-tight suits; was just as courteous to me as he’d been the day we met. But he also remained – and I had become increasingly aware of this fact the longer I observed him – ever so slightly detached: from the ghosts we discovered, from the clients we took on, perhaps even (though I didn’t find this easy to admit) from his colleagues, George and me.
The clearest evidence of this lay in the personal details we each revealed. It had taken me months to summon up the courage, but in the end I’d told them both a good deal about my childhood, my unhappy experiences in my first apprenticeship, and the reasons I’d had for leaving home. George too was full of stories – which I seldom listened to – mostly about his upbringing in north London. It had been unexcitingly normal; his family was well-balanced and no one seemed to have died or disappeared. He’d even once introduced us to his mother, a small, plump, smiley woman who had called Lockwood ‘ducks’, me ‘darling’, and given us all a homemade cake. But Lockwood? No. He rarely spoke about himself, and certainly never about his past or his family. After a year of living with him in his childhood home I still knew nothing about his parents at all.
This was particularly frustrating because the whole of 35 Portland Row was filled to overflowing with their artefacts and heirlooms, their books and furniture. The walls of the living room and stairwell were covered with strange objects: masks, weapons, and what seemed to be ghost-hunting equipment from far-off cultures. It seemed obvious that Lockwood’s parents had been researchers or collectors of some kind, with a special interest in lands beyond Europe. But where they were (or, more likely, what had happened to them), Lockwood never said. And there seemed to be no photographs or personal mementoes of them anywhere.
At least, not in any of the rooms I visited.
Because I thought I knew where the answers to Lockwood’s past might be.
There was a certain door on the first-floor landing of the house. Unlike every other door in 35 Portland Row, this one was never opened. When I’d arrived, Lockwood had requested that it remain closed, and George and I had always obeyed him. The door had no lock that I could see, and as I passed it every day, its plain exterior (blank, except for a rough rectangle where some label or sticker had been removed) presented an almost insolent challenge. It dared me to guess what was behind it, defied me to peek inside. So far, I’d resisted the temptation – more out of prudence than simple nicety. The one or two occasions when I’d even mentioned the room to Lockwood had not gone down too well.
And what about me, Lucy Carlyle, still the newest member of the company? How had I altered that first year?
Outwardly, not so much. My hair remained in a multi-purpose, ectoplasm-avoiding bob; I wasn’t any sleeker or better-looking than before. Height-wise, I hadn’t grown any. I was still more eager than skilful when it came to fighting, and too impatient to be an excellent researcher like George.
But things had changed for me. My time with Lockwood & Co. had given me an assurance I’d previously been lacking. When I walked down the street with my rapier swinging at my side, and the little kids gawping, and the adults giving me deferential nods, I not only knew I had a special status in society, I honestly believed I’d begun to earn it too.