Lockwood (31 page)

‘All the same,’ Lockwood said mildly, ‘we
do
have the papers. It didn’t lie about that.’

‘That was just a way of trapping us, don’t you see? It’s preying on our weaknesses. And it does that by getting into my head! It’s all right for you – you can’t hear its horrid whispering.’

‘
Oh, how mean
,’ the skull’s voice said. ‘
Anyway, be consistent. Last thing I heard, you were begging me to speak. And I don’t know why you’re being so ungrateful, either. I got you the papers – and gave you a nice little work-out too. A pathetic little spirit like Wilberforce was never going to cause you any real trouble
.’ It gave a fruity chuckle. ‘
Well? I’m waiting for a thank-you
.’

I stared across at the ghost-jar. Sunlight danced mutely on its glass sides, and there was no sign of the spectral face. But a door had suddenly opened in my mind, a memory come sharply into focus. It was from last night, up at the house – one of the voices I’d heard echoing from the past:

‘Try Wilberforce,’ the voice had said. ‘He’s eager. He’ll do it . . .’

The tones had been familiar. I knew them all too well.

‘It was him!’ I pointed at the skull. ‘It was
him
talking to Bickerstaff in the workroom! So much for him not knowing about the mirror – he was there when it was made! Not just that, he actually suggested they make Wilberforce look into it!’

The skull grinned back at me from the centre of the plasm. ‘
Impressive
,’ it whispered. ‘
You
have
got Talent. Yes, and it was
such
a shame that poor Wilberforce didn’t have the strength to cope with what he saw. But now my master’s mirror is back in the world again. Perhaps someone else will use it and be enlightened
.’

I passed these words on to the others. Lockwood leaned forwards. ‘Great – it’s being talkative. Ask it what the mirror actually
does
, Luce.’

‘I don’t want to ask this foul creature anything. Besides, there’s no way it would ever tell us.’

‘
Hold on
,’ the ghost said. ‘
Try asking nicely. A little bit of courtesy might help
.’

I looked at it. ‘Please tell us what the mirror does.’

‘
Get lost! You haven’t been very polite today, so you can all go boil your heads
.’

I felt its presence disappear. The plasm clouded, concealing the skull from view.

With gritted teeth, I repeated everything. Lockwood laughed. ‘It’s certainly picked up a few choice phrases from its constant eavesdropping.’

‘There’re a few more I’d like it to hear,’ I growled.

‘Now, now. We’ve got to detach ourselves from it,’ Lockwood said. ‘You, Lucy, most of all. We mustn’t let it wind us up.’ He crossed to the jar and closed the lever in the plastic seal, cutting off any connection with the ghost. Then he covered it with a cloth. ‘It’s slowly giving us what we want,’ he said, ‘but I think we could all do with a little privacy. Let’s keep it quiet for now.’

The phone rang, and Lockwood went to answer it. I left the kitchen too. My head felt numb, the echoes of the ghostly whispers still lingered in my ears. Thankful as I was to have some peace from the skull, it didn’t make me feel much better. It was only a temporary respite. Soon they’d want me to talk to it again.

In the living room, I took a breather. I went over to the window and looked out into the street.

A spy was standing there.

It was our old friend, Ned Shaw. Grey, dishevelled and whey-faced with weariness, he stood like an ugly post box on the opposite side of the road, stolidly watching our front door. He’d clearly not been home; he wore the same jacket as the night before, half shredded by Lockwood’s rapier. He had a takeaway coffee in one hand and looked thoroughly miserable.

I went back to the kitchen, where Lockwood had just returned. George was busy doing the dishes. ‘They’re still watching the house,’ I said.

Lockwood nodded. ‘Good. Shows how desperate they are. This is Kipps’s response to our seizure of the papers. He knows we’ve got something important, and he’s terrified of missing out on what we do next.’

‘Ned Shaw’s been there all morning now. I almost feel sorry for him.’

‘I don’t. I can still feel where he spiked me. How’s your cut doing, Lucy?’

I had a small bandage where Kat Godwin’s blade had struck. ‘Fine.’

‘Speaking of sharp objects,’ Lockwood said, ‘that was Barnes on the phone. DEPRAC’s done some research into the knife that killed Jack Carver. Remember I said it was an Indian Mughal dagger? I was right, though I got the century wrong. From the early 1700s, apparently. Surprised me.’

‘Where was it stolen from, though?’ George said. ‘Which museum?’

‘Oddly enough, no museum has reported it missing. We don’t know where it’s from. An almost identical one is kept in the Museum of London. It was found in the tomb of a British soldier in Maida Vale Cemetery a couple of years ago. The chap had served in India, and had all sorts of curios buried with him. They were dug up, checked by DEPRAC, and put on show. But that dagger’s still safely in its case, so where
this
one comes from is a mystery.’

‘I still think it comes from the Bloomsbury Antiques Emporium,’ I said. ‘And our friend Winkman.’

‘He
is
the most obvious suspect,’ Lockwood agreed. ‘But why didn’t he take back his money? Hurry up with the dishes, George. I want to look at the papers we found.’

‘You could always give me a hand,’ George suggested. ‘Speed things up a little.’

‘Oh, well, you’re almost done.’ Lockwood leaned casually against the counter, looking out at the old apple tree in the garden. ‘What do we know?’ he said. ‘What do we actually
know
after last night? Have we made any progress with this case or not?’

‘Precious little that might get us paid by Barnes,’ I said. ‘Winkman has the bone glass, and we still don’t know what it’s
for
.’

‘We know more than you think,’ Lockwood said. ‘Here’s the way I see it. Edmund Bickerstaff – and, it seems, this chap in the jar here – made a mirror that has a very nasty effect on anyone who looks into it. It was supposed to do something else – the skull spoke of it giving you enlightenment – but they were happy to let others take the risk. Wilberforce looked in and paid the price. For unknown reasons – maybe because Bickerstaff panicked and fled – Wilberforce’s body was left at the house; by the time it was discovered, the rats had been at work. But what happened to Bickerstaff? He was never seen again; but
somebody
buried him and the mirror in Kensal Green, with urgent instructions to leave them be.’

‘I think that somebody was Mary Dulac,’ George put in. ‘Which is why I want to find those “Confessions” of hers so badly.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Whoever did it, Bickerstaff was buried. We dug him up. His ghost was released, and it
nearly
got George.’

‘The mirror nearly got George too,’ I said. ‘Would have, if we hadn’t blocked it so quickly.’

‘You say that,’ George said. He was staring out into the garden. ‘But who knows? Maybe I’d have been OK. Perhaps I’d have been strong enough to withstand the dangers and see what the mirror contained . . .’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, I’m finished. Pass me that towel.’

Lockwood passed it. ‘The modern mystery,’ he said, ‘goes like this: somebody tipped off Carver and Neddles about the glass. Carver carried out the raid, though Neddles died. Carver sold it to someone – we assume Julius Winkman – for a lot of cash, but afterwards was murdered, we don’t know by whom. What we
think
we know is that Winkman has the bone glass, and
that’s
the essential fact that is going to win us this case over Kipps and his idiot gang.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘There, am I right? How’s that for a summary?’

‘Very good.’ George and I were sitting at the table with an air of expectation. ‘I think we should look at the Bickerstaff papers now.’

‘Right.’ Lockwood settled himself beside us, and from his jacket drew forth the crumpled documents he had taken from the haunted room the night before. There were three pages, great sheets of parchment, mottled with the marks of decades of concealment – damp, dirt and the nibbling of worms. Each sheet was covered on both sides with lines of spidery, inky handwriting – mostly tight-spaced, but here and there broken up by small drawings.

Lockwood tilted the papers towards the window, frowning. ‘Drat,’ he said. ‘It’s in Latin. Or is it ancient Greek?’

George squinted at the writing over the top of his spectacles. ‘Obviously not Greek. Might possibly be some medieval form of Latin . . . Looks a bit weird, though.’

‘What
is
it with mysterious documents and inscriptions that they always have to be in some old dead language?’ I growled. ‘We had the same problem with the Fairfax locket, remember? And the St Pancras headstone.’

‘You can’t read any of this, I suppose, George?’ Lockwood asked.

George shook his head. ‘No. I know someone who
can
, though. Albert Joplin’s good with all sorts of historical stuff. He was telling me about a sixteenth-century Bible he found in one of their cemetery excavations; that was in Latin too, I think. I could show these papers to him and see if he’ll translate. Swear him to secrecy, of course.’

Lockwood pursed his lips; he tapped the table in indecision. ‘DEPRAC’s got language experts, but they’d share everything with Barnes and, through him, Kipps as well. OK, I don’t much like it, but it may be we haven’t got a choice. You can go and visit Joplin. No – better still, see if he’ll come here. We don’t want Ned Shaw jumping you and nicking the papers the moment you step outside.’

‘What about those drawings?’ I said. ‘We don’t need an expert for them, do we?’

We spread the parchments out across the table and bent close to consider the little pictures. There were several, each done in pen-and-wash, each showing a distinct episode in a narrative. The art was rather crude, but very detailed. It was immediately obvious, from the style of the figures, from the clothes they wore, and from the general scenes, that the images were very old.

‘They’re not Victorian,’ George said. ‘I bet these originally come from a medieval manuscript. Maybe the text does too. Bickerstaff found this somewhere, and copied it all out. I reckon this is where he got the inspiration for his ideas.’

The first illustration showed a man in long robes stooping beside a hole. It was night; there was a moon in the sky, suggestions of trees in the background. Inside the hole was a skeleton. The man appeared to be reaching into the hole and removing a long white bone. With his other hand he held up a thin crucifix to ward off a faint pale figure that was rising beside him, half in and half out of the ground.

‘Grave-robbing,’ Lockwood said. ‘And using iron or silver to keep the ghost at bay.’

‘He’s just as dumb as us,’ I said. ‘It’d be
so
much simpler to do it during daylight.’

‘Maybe he
has
to do it at night,’ George said slowly. ‘Yeah . . . maybe he
has
to. What’s the next picture show?’

The next one was another robed man, presumably the same person, standing beside a gallows on a hill. Again the moon was up, massed clouds banked across the sky. A decomposing corpse hung from the gallows tree, a thing of bones and rags. The man appeared to be in the process of cutting off one of the corpse’s arms using a long curved knife. Once again he held the crucifix aloft, this time to keep at bay
two
spirits: one that hung vaporously behind the body on the gallows, the other standing ominously behind the gallows post. The man had an open sack beside him, in which the bone from the first picture could be seen.

‘He’s not making many friends, this fellow,’ Lockwood said. ‘That’s two ghosts he’s annoyed.’

‘That’s just the point,’ George breathed. ‘He’s
purposefully
seeking out bones that have a Visitor attached – he’s seeking out Sources. What’s he do next?’

He was doing more of the same, this time in some kind of brick-lined room. Alcoves or shelves in the walls were filled with piles of bones and skulls. With his sack lying open at his feet, the man was selecting a skull from the nearest shelf, while rather nonchalantly flourishing the crucifix behind him at
three
pale figures – the first two resentful ghosts, and a new one.

‘It’s a catacomb, or ossuary,’ Lockwood said. ‘Where they used to store bones when the old churchyards got too full. These three pictures show all the best places for finding a Source. And the fourth—’ He turned the parchment over, and broke off.

‘Oh,’ I said.

The fourth picture was different from the others. This one showed the man alone in a stone chamber, with the sun shining over fields beyond an open door. He stood at a wooden table, where he worked to construct something from several pieces of bone. He seemed to be somehow sewing the bones together, and attaching them to a small round object.

A piece of glass.

‘It’s a guide,’ I said. ‘It tells you how to make the bone glass. And that idiot Bickerstaff followed the instructions. Is there a fifth picture?’

Lockwood picked up the last piece of parchment and turned it over.

There was.

In the centre of the illustration was the bone glass, standing upright on top of a low pillar or pedestal. Ivy wound around the pedestal, which was also decorated with large pale flowers. To the left side stood the man, stooping slightly as he faced the pedestal. One of his hands was cupped above his eyes, which gazed towards the glass with an expression of fixed intensity. Well might he do so, because on the opposite side of the pillar was what appeared to be a whole crowd of individuals in ragged robes and vestments. All were cadaverously thin. Some still had faces, with wisps of hair stuck to the back of their skulls; others were already skeletons. There were hints of bone beneath the robes, and bony legs and feet. In short, none of them looked too healthy. They all faced the bone glass as if looking back towards the man with as much interest as he was studying them.

We stared at the parchment, at the massed ranks of little figures. There was a deep silence in the sunny room.