The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(2)
I sat back on my heels, brushing my fringe out of my eyes. ‘Best not call the skull tame, Kipps,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t like it.’
The face in the jar bared serrated teeth. ‘Too right I don’t. Lucy, tell that boggle-eyed fool that if I was out of this prison I’d suck the flesh off his bones and dance a hornpipe with his empty skin. You just tell him that.’
‘Is it offended?’ Kipps asked me. ‘I can see that horrid mouth moving.’
‘Tell him!’
I hesitated. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s fine, really. It’s cool with it.’
‘What? No I’m not! And what’s he doing tapping my glass like I’m some kind of goldfish? I swear, when I get free of this, I’m going to catch Kipps and pull off his—’
‘Lockwood,’ I said, tuning out the ghost, ‘are you sure there’s a trapdoor in here? We haven’t got much time.’
Anthony Lockwood straightened; he was kneeling in the centre of the floor, one hand holding his penknife, the other running distractedly through his hair. As usual, our leader was impeccably dressed. He wore a dark jersey instead of his long coat, and soft-soled pumps instead of his normal shoes; these were his only concessions to the demands of breaking and entering a national monument.
‘You’re right, Luce.’ Lockwood’s pale, thin face was as relaxed as ever, but his brow had an elegant kink in it that told me he was concerned. ‘It’s been ages, and there’s still no sniff of it. What do you reckon, George?’
With a scuffling George Cubbins levered himself up into view from behind the granite block. His black T-shirt was dirty, his glasses askew, his pale hair spiked and matted with sweat. For the last hour he’d been doing the exact same thing as the rest of us, but somehow he’d contrived to get completely covered in a layer of dust, mouse droppings and cobwebs that no one else had even seen. Such was George’s way. ‘All the accounts of the burial mention a trapdoor,’ he said. ‘We’re just not looking hard enough. Particularly Kipps, who isn’t looking at all.’
‘Hey, I’m doing my job,’ Kipps said. ‘The question is, have you done yours? We’re risking our skins tonight because you said there was a way in.’
George unwound a cobweb from his glasses. ‘Of course there is. They lowered her coffin through the floor into the crypt. A silver coffin. Nothing but the best for her.’
It was noticeable that George didn’t care to mention the name of the person whose tomb this was. Noticeable too that even the thought of that silver coffin gave me a hollow prickling in my gut. I got the same feeling whenever I glanced at the shelf at the far end of the chamber – and looked at what was sitting there.
It was an iron bust of a woman in late middle age. She had an imperious and austere expression, with hair swept back above a high forehead. The nose was sharp and aquiline, the mouth thin, the eyes astute. It was not a pleasant face exactly, but strong and hard and watchful, and we knew it very well indeed. It was the same face as the one on our postage stamps and on the cover of our agency manual; a face that had shadowed us from early childhood and entered all our dreams.
Many remarkable things had been said about Marissa Fittes, the first and greatest psychic investigator of us all. How, together with her partner, Tom Rotwell, she had devised most of the ghost-hunting techniques that operatives like us still used. How she had improvised her first rapier from a snapped-off iron railing; how she’d conversed with ghosts as easily as if they were flesh and blood. How she’d created the first psychical detection agency; and how, when she died, half of London came to watch as her coffin was carried from Westminster Abbey to the Strand, the streets strewn with lavender flowers, and all the agents in the city marching along behind. How the bells in every church had rung as she was interred beneath her mausoleum, which was still maintained by the Fittes Agency as a special shrine.
Remarkable things …
The final one was that we didn’t believe she was buried there at all.
The Fittes Mausoleum, in which we stood, lay at the east end of the Strand in central London. It was a compact, high-ceilinged chamber, roughly oval in shape, built of stone and swathed in shadow. Apart from the big sarcophagus-sized block of granite in the centre of the room (which had the single word FITTES carved into the top), the place was empty. There were no windows, and the iron doors that led to the street were closed and tight.
Somewhere beyond those doors stood two sentries. They were only kids, but they had pistols and might have used them had they heard us, so we had to go carefully. On the upside, the place was clean and dry and smelled of fresh lavender, and there weren’t any obvious body parts lying underfoot, which instantly made it preferable to most of the other places we’d been that week.
But equally, there didn’t seem to be anywhere for a trapdoor to hide.
Our lanterns flickered. Blackness hung over our heads like a witch’s cloak.
‘Well, all we can do is keep calm, keep quiet and keep looking,’ Lockwood said. ‘Unless anyone’s got a better suggestion.’
‘I’ve got one.’ Holly Munro had been zealously combing the floor at the far end of the room. Now she got to her feet and joined us, light and silent as a cat. Like the rest of us, she was in stealth mode: she had her long dark hair clipped back in a ponytail, and wore a zip-up top, skirt and leggings. I could go on about how well the all-black get-up suited her, but why bother? With Holly, that was a given. If she’d gone around wearing nothing but a dustbin suspended from her shoulders by a pair of spotty braces, she’d have somehow made it look svelte.