The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(29)
I held up a hand. ‘Don’t tell me. About a beautiful girl who hanged herself for love?’
‘Hey,’ George said. ‘Got it in one. You are good.’
Holly scowled. ‘Did any of these women in her shows get to live at all?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. They were mostly drowned, stabbed, poisoned or thrown from a height. The point is, they all seemed to die – then La Belle Dame would spring back onstage, alive and well and taking the wild applause of the crowd.’ George blinked at us doubtfully. ‘So I suppose in a sense they all lived in the end.’
Holly snorted. ‘Not in my book, they didn’t. What an appalling creature.’
‘And now,’ Lockwood said, ‘she’s come back as a malignant ghost with vampiric tendencies. We’ll have to tread carefully tonight.’
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about that,’ I said. ‘I reckon you should let Holly and me tackle this one.’
Lockwood gazed at us. ‘Alone? While George and I twiddle our thumbs at home?’
‘Why not?’
‘Not a chance. It’s far too dangerous.’
‘I agree with Lucy here,’ Holly said. ‘Clearly La Belle Dame has particular power over addled young men. Lucy and I would be far less vulnerable than you.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s true. George and I have dealt with attractive female ghosts before …’ Lockwood chuckled fondly. ‘Remember the Hoxton Bathhouse, George?’
George took off his glasses and inspected them. ‘Do I? Not half.’
‘Besides, there’s no mystery about the two victims so far,’ Lockwood went on. ‘Both Charley Budd and Sid Morrison displayed classic patterns of psychic vulnerability.’
‘That’s right,’ George said. ‘Didn’t you notice? According to Tufnell, the kid who died was totally lovelorn, practically starving himself through romantic misery. If a barrel in a dress had rolled past him, he’d have gone scampering after it. As for Charley Budd, he was sickly. It may be that he subconsciously wanted release: that’s why he followed the ghost. In other words, neither of the victims was physically or mentally strong.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Holly said. ‘You mean the ghost could sense their weaknesses?’
George nodded. ‘Exactly. We all know Visitors sense anger and sorrow. They’re attracted to people who give off strong emotions. Perhaps they’re also drawn to weakness and despair. These two were enfeebled in different ways … They both had weak connections to life. Each was clearly vulnerable to some cut-price supernatural glamour.’
‘Which we aren’t,’ Lockwood added. ‘End of story. George and I will be fine. Won’t we, George?’
‘Yep, we’re cold-eyed professionals,’ George said. ‘Can I have that handbill back, Lucy? I want to stick it in my casebook as a fold-out spread. Thanks, that’s fine.’
With that the meeting broke up. Lockwood went off to Mullet’s; the rest of us did paperwork. Then Holly and I practised with our rapiers until we were hot and thirsty and the straw dummies hanging in the basement were full of holes. Motes of straw dust floated in the air. Outside Portland Row the afternoon drew on. Somewhere in London a chained boy impatiently awaited death. The first stars showed in the sky.
8
To get to the Palace Theatre, Stratford, in the East End of the city, we had to take the tube, which ran until almost nightfall. Shortly before four, George, Holly and I put on our work-belts and snapped our rapiers into position. We locked up Portland Row and walked to Baker Street Station, carrying our bags of iron. The ghost-jar, sealed and silent, was in my rucksack. Lockwood was still at Mullet’s, and would travel separately. We would meet him at the theatre door.
It had been a pleasant early autumn day, heavy with warmth that piggybacked on six weeks of hard, hot weather. The streets were still busy, but with that faint electric charge that always builds up as dusk approaches. The people moved ever more quickly, their faces set, intent on getting home before the hours of the dead began. The sun was low now. Slanting rays sliced the houses into triangular slabs of light and shadow.
As we neared the Marylebone Road, we passed a darkened alley. From among the bin bags piled in its mouth rose a misshapen figure. It lurched towards us, arms out, rags fluttering, carrying with it the smell of waste pipes and carrion.
Holly jumped; I reached automatically for my rapier.
‘Hullo, Flo,’ said George.
Although it wasn’t instantly apparent to the casual observer, the shape was female and possibly not much older than me. She had a roundish, mud-flecked face from which piercing blue eyes blinked shrewdly. Her hair, lank, dirty and yellow, was scarcely distinguishable from the ragged edges of her wide straw hat. She wore rubber boots and a long blue puffa jacket that never came off, whatever the weather. What might lie beneath it was the stuff of whispered legend.
This was Ms Florence Bonnard, aka the notorious relic-woman Flo Bones. Relic-men and -women were professional scavengers, many armed with decent psychic abilities, who loitered around cemeteries, refuse tips and other places on the margins of society, looking for Sources that had been overlooked by normal agents. They then sold these – to ghost-cults, to black-market collectors, even to DEPRAC itself; basically to whoever offered the best price. Flo’s patch consisted of the murky banks of the Thames, and these she roamed with a sinister hessian bag that contained God knew what damp horrors. She liked liquorice, George and Lockwood, in a somewhat unclear order, and just about tolerated me. Along with Kipps, she was an important, if unofficial, associate of Lockwood & Co.