If Lockwood and Co.'s members had known what we were facing as we stood on the crumbling brick doorstep of the boarding house, Chadwick Homes, we would have turned tail and marched back down the busy street without a regret or miss thought.
The warm summer air gave way to the nightly chill as we stared up at the impressive building with blissful ignorance.
"Late Victorian, isn't it, George?" Lockwood whistled. Our leader's charismatic smile and long sweeping coat were immaculately fixed and imperturbable.
"Or Edwardian," George adjusted his glasses. "The building records aren't in the archives."
I looked up at the ironwork and the gables roof that loomed over the streets, a sinking feeling of foreboding and discomfort. The taxi ride here, I had been preparing for this moment, one that every agent dreaded. Staring up at the house that you would spend the next few hours and possibly take your last breath in. That is something very real and very serious and each of us took that moment with such reverence, none of us spoke for several seconds as we took in the sights, sounds and emotions of the house before us.
The gables and wood work may have once been white but where now stained with mold and overgrown with ivy. The stones were gray and withered, the ancient brick having seen many people on this doorstep. My overall feeling was of ancient power and rancor.
Under the chains and salt packets in my rucksack, a distinctively moaning voice echoed in my inner ear. "Ooh, this one will be exciting. A real undertaking." It chuckled to itself. "Did you see what I did? Undertaking? Like the undertaker?"
"If you are referring to the deadliness of this job by saying we'll need an undertaker by the time we're through with it," I said, coolly as I could manage, what with the never ceasing irksomeness of the skull and the eerie atmosphere of the house where we would spend the night hunting what lurked in the dark. "You need serious help."
"I'm a skull in a jar," it sighed. "The only help I need is to get out of this wretched silver glass. So what do you say, Luce, this time you'll let me out?"
"Not a chance," I whispered. Though he was right about the house. It was very ominous. I could feel my courage leaking through my boots. Though the skull was the bane of my existence and had caused me several shouting matches, projectiles that had missed their mark and the loss of six mugs of tea that it had startled me into dropping, it had saved me from ghost touch on multiple occasions. It had also nearly gotten me ghost touched on an equal number of occasions… it was a work in progress.
Whatever the status of my relationship with my haunted skull, I was very glad that Lockwood had insisted on the employment of our entire agency. Me, George, Holly, Kipps, Flo Bones and Lockwood himself would be cracking this case together, something that was an unusual occurrence. Not that anything about this job was normal. The very nature we received this booking was, in itself, bizarre.
We had gotten this particular case that very morning, the land lady coming to call in a terrible state, dripping with tears and rain over the carpets. The hammering of her fists on the wood of the front door had woken us all, rousing us from the comfy warmth of our beds, and into the hall with rapiers and robes at the ready. George opened it and we all prepared to swing. Our Client was, needless to say, unamused. Her scream would have woken the dead, or at least, jumped them into the living world.
After tea was brewed, our client consoled and the company gathered in the sitting room in the most disgruntled state we had ever been in, Lockwood began the interview. He sat back in his dressing gown, a thick patient smile spreading across his tired face like butter.
"Perhaps you could elaborate to the nature of your call?" he said, pouring her a cup of tea and forcing it into her hands.
She sniffed with as much dignity as she could muster after seeing George in his night clothes and dabbed at her eyes with a hanky. (I too would like that image erased from my eyes). "I'm here about a haunting."
Lockwood's smile took on that thin, "that much is obvious" curl and he nodded for her to go on.
"My name is Meredith Hodge. I've only just moved here from New York, after my nana died. She left me her boarding house and she died so suddenly we didn't have much time to make other arrangements." She took a sip of her tea and made a face. Americans, no accounting for taste.
Lockwood murmured his condolences but Ms. Hodge didn't wait for him to finish. "I was very lucky that most of my grandmother's boarders stayed on but I do have two new tenants, a college- though you call it university, I suppose- student and a widow. It started a few nights ago, with flashing lights in the halls and footsteps on the stairs. I hardly noticed it to be honest."
"But the phenomena has grown in strength?" Holly asked, she had been scribbling notes on her legal pad but when Ms. Hodge had started to explain the haunting, her face took on a delicately hesitant look. If flashing lights and footsteps were all it was doing, the visitor could be a weak type one. In other words, a total waste of our time.
Ms. Hodge nodded eagerly. "Objects floating, broken mirrors, doors slamming, blood on the walls. Then, last night I found the widow, Mrs. Stewart, dead!" She squeezed her eyes shut with such drama that I was positive she must have been auditioning for some sort of theatre production and not talking about the death of her own tenant.
"How exactly?" I asked, leaning forward.
"What?" Ms. Hodge's eyes popped open, losing their starlet glamour.
"How exactly did you find her? Was she laying down? Was she sitting up right? Anything unusual?"
Meredith's face paled, all dramatization gone as she remembered how she had found the body. Her eyes filled with tears as she choked. "She was hung from the ceiling, neck broken."
"So, a suicide?" George asked. "If it was, you'd be better off going to the police, Ms. Hodge."
"No. it wasn't. There was no rope."
"I beg your pardon," Lockwood said, putting down his tea with interest.
"There was no rope. Her neck was broken but she was suspended in midair. I found her there this morning. The paramedics couldn't get her down, until they used salt and iron." Lockwood and I shared looks of curiosity. We had never heard of a phenomena lasting so long after death. Ms. Hodge looked at us with such fear that I felt a twinge of sympathy for her. "I know about London's problem though we don't have such things in the states. Do you know what could have done this?"
Holly told her that a one or two night analysis of the site and the house could produce some idea of what kind of visitor caused this. "After that we can take eliminate and protect the house."
Ms. Hodge sniffed and took the offered handkerchief from Holly. She looked pale and tired, with dark circles under her eyes. She appeared to be holly's age or a little older. She had come into the darkness that was London willingly and she had no idea what she had gotten herself into.
"Just a few questions, Ms. Hodge then we'll let you collect yourself alone while we discuss." Lockwood sent her his most comforting smile and she met his gaze with slightly lifted spirits. "Did your grandmother seem harsh or angry at all near her death? Did she ever mention some unfinished business to you or your family?"
"No, everyone said she was a darling old lady, bit of a clean freak but sweet. I never got to see her very often. My dad didn't like her and neither did my mom. They had some sort of feud before I was born."
"Another question, you mentioned that a few of your grandmother's old clients stayed on. Did any of them see the blood or hear the footsteps?"
Ms. Hodge frowned, twisting the ends of her long blonde hair between her fingers thoughtfully. "No…now that you mention it, only Brady, Ms. Stewart and I ever heard or saw anything."
"Right," Lockwood mused, he twisted his head to meet my gaze. It was a surprised, sort of look that said, "Did you hear what I just heard because it may be of later relevance." I got that look directed at me quite often and it was the only way I could keep track of what he was scheming next. "Third question, Ms. Hodge, you mentioned some kind of feud between your parents and your grandmother. Can you elaborate on that?"
"Oh," Meredith shifted uneasily in her seat. "It happened a long time ago. I wasn't there…" her voice trailed away. Looking up at our expectant faces she cleared her throat. "As I said, it was a long time ago."
George snorted into his cup of tea. Ms. Hodge, to her credit, ignored him.
"Thank you Ms. Hodge. We'll call you this afternoon with our decision and make further arrangements then." Lockwood stood with Ms. Hodge and smiled as Holly showed her out the door. Over her shoulder, she called back. "You don't understand Mr. Lockwood, if this ghost is not dealt with, there may not be anything to come back to by this evening."
"A bit dramatic, isn't she?" George said as we heard Holly firmly shut the door behind our interviewee.
"Just a bit," Lockwood said distractedly, falling back into his armchair with a flop of pillows and dressing gown. "So..." he drew out the O in a long and thoughtful sound.
"So, what?" Holly asked, coming back into the room. "Are we discussing yet, Luce?"
"No, I'm afraid not." I shook my head ruefully. "The discussion has yet to begin, we're still at the scheming and thinking stage."
"That's disappointing, I dearly love to discuss things." Holly blew out her cheeks in regret.
"Oh, stop it you two," Lockwood moaned, flinging his arm across his face to block out the light from the lamps.
"Stop what?" Holly and I said at the same time.
"Stop ganging up on me." He waved his free hand at George. "Defend me, why don't you?"
George only helped himself to another biscuit. "Come on, Lockwood, enough thinking. Like the lady said, the ghost will have killed them all before you're finished. "
"Don't you think that was just a bit twee even for us?" I said. "I mean, she hasn't even been in London that long. She doesn't know how bad things are. She might have a stone knocker or an incredibly weak poltergeist and is making it out to be something much larger than it really is."
"She might be but we won't know unless we go and check it out." Lockwood ruminated in silence for another few seconds that sat up. "I want Kipps and Flo coming with us this time."
"For a stone knocker?" George protested. "Come on, I agree with Lucy, it's going to be easy. We don't need them."
And yet Lockwood stood firm. Holly called Kipps and George sought out Flo. They all agreed to come. And as the day drew on and I pondered what Ms. Hodge had said, I started to think that maybe we had underestimated this. Maybe it wasn't all smoke and mirrors as I had originally thought. Lockwood demanded we prepare with the urgency and seriousness of a type three ghost. George even went as far as to order triple the amount of salt bombs and six extra-large boxes of teabags. Everyone thought Lockwood and co. were prepared for anything. And yet, standing there on the boarding house stoop, my preparedness leaked out of my boots. This granny's horror house was a mystery of shadow and death in my inner thoughts.
"All right" Lockwood clapped his hands and the sound bounced off the building and echoed off down the street like a gunshot. We all jumped and quickly pretended like we hadn't. "I want everything set up well before nightfall. Underestimating the visitor is not something I would like to do and I have suspicions that there are two, one a hell of a lot more powerful than the other."
Kipps readjusted his googles, peering up at the Victorian spires of the house. "A grandmother haunting her granddaughter. What a terrifying thought."
George coughed. He took out his manila folder of research which he had compiled that morning at the archives. "This granny served 20 years in prison for attempted manslaughter and was tried for murder and go away twice. Is your grandmother a murderer in life and in death, Kipps?"
Flo straightened her hat and glowered at Kipps. "Mine was a florist and a drug dealer. Don't underestimate the elderly: that's my motto."
"What else did you find, George?" Holly said quickly, trying to steer the conversation away from drug dealing and homicide.
"Pearl Rosemary Simmons, died last year from cancer that had been diagnosed two years before that. One daughter, Isabelle who married an American and moved to New York to get away from The Problem and most likely her mother. Three grandchildren all in their early twenties. Isabelle was raised in foster care when Pearl was in prison."
"That could be their feud but why didn't Ms. Hodge tell us about it?" I asked. "She lied through the skin of her teeth, did you notice?"
"We can't always have clients firmly planted on the moral high ground, Luce," George said. "That's what makes our job so interesting, you've got ghosts and the clients trying to kill you."
Lockwood coughed. "Thank you George for that cheery insight into the life of an agent. If you have any more relevant details that would be wonderful."
"Actually I do." George snapped open his folder with an air of triumph. "You know how Ms. Hodge said she was a bit of a clean freak? Well, I snitched a copy of her medical records. Schizophrenia and get this, obsessive compulsive disorder in the form of, and I quote, 'extreme and violent cleanliness'"
Kipps shook his head in dismay. "The visitors keep getting weirder and weirder,"
"Right," Lockwood grinned at us all. "Divisions; Ms. Hodge has gathered the remaining tenants for us to interview in the parlor. 1st floor, on the left according to George. Holly and Kipps will take Mr. Brady Tomlin and Teagan Wylltson, while George and Flo interrogate Dr. Matthew Potter. Do me a favor, you two, and don't grill him to hard. Remember last time?"
"That was a completely different scenario, Lockwood." George protested but Lockwood ignored him, instead turning his bright and fully lit smile on me. "That leaves me and Luce to check out the building. The place is enormous and it'll take a longtime to get readings so, we'll get started right away. When you lot are done interviewing, we'll meet up again and make a safe place for the tenants-Ms. Hodge refuses to have them leave.
"After that, at 9 0'clock, we'll camp in the widow's room. Once she's quiet, we'll move on to the main haunting. Then we celebrate, have tea and go home: everyone's happy."
"Except the ghosts," Kipps said.
"Oh, yeah, except them." Lockwood looked round at us all. "Clear?"
We all shuffled into the assigned pairs and nodded. "Clear."
All joking was over and our lived were on the line again; I shifted my mindset into agent mode. I sharpened my psychic senses and shifted them into high gear. I would need my wits about me in this house.