The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(34)

With a clatter of boots the others joined us, Lockwood at their head. He put a hand on my arm. ‘Lucy—’

‘She was here,’ I said. ‘I saw the casket. Did none of you see the blood?’

Kipps picked up my sword and handed it to me, hilt first. ‘We saw you, playing hopscotch on the chairs.’

‘But La Belle Dame—’ I glared at the newcomers. ‘Were either of you sitting at the back just now?’

Tracey shook her head. The tall girl regarded me coolly. ‘Not me. I just came in.’

‘And you saw nothing odd here, in the aisle?’

‘Just you.’

She was a tall young woman, broad of shoulder and square of chin. Her blonde hair was tied back in a rough plait. She was very large and cross and real.

‘The ghost was here,’ I said again. ‘I acted on it. That’s what I do.’

‘No one’s doubting you, Lucy,’ Lockwood said. He flashed his smile at the two girls. ‘You’re Tracey, aren’t you? Nice to see you again. And you …?’

Mr Tufnell had been slowest to make it from the stage. The effort had left him gasping. ‘This good lady,’ he wheezed, ‘who your friend almost decapitated, is Sarah Parkins, our stage manager. She’s the one who saved Charley Budd the other day.’

I scowled at her. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Charmed.’ She curled her lip at me. ‘I came in to tell you, Mr Tufnell, that Charley Budd’s started howling again. He’s upsetting everyone. You’re going to have to come out, try to soothe him.’

The theatre owner was dabbing at his curls with a vast lacy handkerchief. ‘Bless me; if I live another night, it’ll be a miracle. Yes, yes, I’ll be out directly. Mr Lockwood, I must leave you to your work. Tracey, you stupid girl, I don’t know what you’re doing back in here hanging onto Sarah’s skirts. Haven’t you chores to do outside?’

The girl had flinched at his words; she spoke sullenly. ‘I was frightened out there, what with the screaming. Sarah said I could come in—’

‘Against my express instructions! Do it again, you’ll feel the back of my hand.’

‘Actually,’ Lockwood said smoothly, ‘I’m glad they’re both here. I was hoping to ask them some questions. They’ve each seen La Belle Dame: they’re both witnesses to the ghost.’ He gave the girls the full warmth of his attention. ‘Is there anything you can tell us about this Visitor? Where you saw it? The way it made you feel? Anything might be useful, no matter how small.’

‘I gave you the relevant details,’ Tufnell said. He was looking at his watch.

‘Tracey?’ Lockwood went on. ‘You saw it most clearly, I believe. On the stage – and in the wings. You saw it with poor Sid Morrison.’

The girl’s face was grey and haggard. ‘Yes.’

‘The Spectre was beautiful, I understand?’

‘Not to me.’ She looked away. ‘But I think Sid found her so. She was up on the stage there, wrapped in a golden light.’

‘Perhaps the stage is the Source,’ Holly said. ‘That’s where the woman died.’

Sarah Parkins, the stage manager, shook her head. ‘I don’t think it can be. It’s not the original stage. The bloodstained boards were ripped out and burned, right after La Belle Dame’s death. Same with the actual sultan’s casket. You can read all about it in books on theatre history.’

‘Ah, she’s a clever girl, our Sarah is,’ Mr Tufnell said. ‘And committed to Tufnell’s, despite our troubles. Though I says it as shouldn’t, she was fond of poor Sid in particular. I’m much obliged to her for carrying on in such tragic circumstances. Ain’t I, Sarah? But now we really should go.’

‘All right,’ Lockwood said. ‘If there’s nothing more—’

‘It’s not the stage you should be looking at,’ Sarah Parkins said as they turned to leave. ‘I saw the ghost in the dressing-room corridor. Girls saw it on the balcony, and down in the basement …’ She waved her arm up towards the dim, silent reaches of the auditorium. ‘Be careful. You never know where it might show up next.’

No sooner were we alone than we set off on a careful inspection of the haunted building. We immediately discovered that the Palace Theatre was a complex and sprawling structure. It had three distinct areas, connected by a variety of stairs and passages, and each gave us some cause for psychic concern.

At the heart of the theatre was the auditorium itself, with no fewer than three levels of seating – the stalls on the ground floor; the first-floor balcony, or lower circle; and the steeply inclined upper circle near the roof. We took a number of psychic readings on every floor, and detected traces of supernatural activity: fleeting chills, subtle miasmas, a pervading sense of unease that came and went almost at random.

The second area was the ‘front of house’. This included the foyer on the ground floor, and two other public spaces directly above, from which the circle seats were reached. There were two staircases, each lined with faded plush carpets. One of these seemed colder than the other, for no discernible reason. Next to the foyer on the ground floor was a dark, narrow exhibition space containing Tufnell’s Marvels, which turned out to be a collection of mechanical devices that moved if money was fed into them. We treated this area with extreme caution, as we’d encountered haunted automata before, but despite the presence of several mechanical clowns, which so often cause trouble, the room seemed psychically quiet.