The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(36)
‘What was it?’ I shone my torch up at the ceiling. Nothing but ropes, cobwebs, floating dust.
Holly bit her lip. ‘I heard a horrid little laugh above me. When I looked up … I thought it was one of the weights they put on the ends of ropes to help pull up the scenery. But it was too long, and thin, and white for that. I aimed my torch up and … and it was a woman hanging there. Hanging by the neck and spinning slowly round, her dress all lank and still, her legs as thin and white as candles … I’m afraid I dropped my torch. When I looked again, the thing was gone.’
‘Sounds dreadful,’ Lockwood said. ‘It was La Belle Dame, of course. Did you see her face?’
‘Do you know what,’ Holly said, ‘I’m so glad I didn’t. There was too much hair.’
George had been slower to arrive than Lockwood and me. His glasses flashed as he looked around. ‘Seems she’s testing our resolve,’ he said. ‘What with the bloody casket Lucy saw—’
He never finished. Another scream made us all jump. It was higher and shriller than Holly’s, so we knew that it was Kipps. We were still reacting when he burst in through a door at the back of the wings. He skidded to a halt, ripped off his goggles and pointed back the way he’d come. ‘There! There!’ he cried. ‘In the tank! Do you see her? The poor drowned girl!’
We all hurried to the door. ‘There’s no tank there, Quill,’ Lockwood said. ‘It’s just an empty corridor.’
Kipps took a deep breath. ‘I know that. Of course I know that. I heard Holly, and I was running here when I turned the corner and saw it. A great long tank with a body in it! Her head was underwater, her arms all limp and dangly, her long hair stretching out like river-weeds …’
Lockwood nodded impatiently. ‘There’s no need to get poetic. Did she leap out and attack you?’
‘No, she didn’t, as it happens. But she was very white and pasty, and also very dead. Believe me, that was bad enough.’
‘Looks as if you got The Captive Mermaid,’ George said as we walked back out onstage. Our psychic Senses were quiet now. For the present the ghost had gone. ‘Holly had The Hangman’s Daughter, and we know Lucy got The Sultan’s Revenge. La Belle Dame’s going through her full repertoire.’
‘She’s giving us her greatest hits,’ Lockwood said. ‘But gruesome as these images are, they’re all just an act – or not even that: they’re the echo of an act. The ghost’s messing with our minds. Question is: what’s next?’
I glanced out at the dark expanse of seats, then back at Lockwood. ‘Have you or George seen anything?’
‘No.’
‘You’re the only ones who haven’t.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe we’re just resistant to these things.’
‘Well,’ George said, ‘none of this has changed the state of play. We still have to locate the Source, find out how the thing’s managed to come back.’
‘It’s not just a question of how.’ Lockwood’s eyes narrowed as he stared out over the auditorium. ‘It’s a question of why … What’s the motivation?’
‘La Belle Dame’s a malevolent spirit,’ I said. ‘That’ll do for now, surely.’
‘Yes, only I’m not necessarily thinking about the ghost …’ Whatever train of thought Lockwood was following looped him back into the present. ‘Right, we’ll continue making sweeps of the theatre. Her visitations so far have been fleeting. Sooner or later she’ll hang around long enough for us to react. Then we’ll deal with her. Any questions?’
No one had any. Chocolate was shared, and drinks taken. We began our rounds again.
Hours passed and bled together. Outside was darkness; inside, the theatre’s soft gold glow. The ghost appeared to have exhausted its resources with its three separate visitations. I left the auditorium and walked the passages and soft, carpeted landings of the Palace Theatre. Sometimes, when climbing the long curved stairs, I had the sensation that I was being followed but, whenever I looked back, saw nothing but the electric candles flickering in their sconces, and the frozen, laughing faces on old posters on the walls.
Periodically I glimpsed some of the others from afar: Lockwood striding purposefully across the stage, Holly taking readings high in the upper circle. To begin with we stayed near each other, but as the night grew older and nothing happened, we drifted further apart. I began to relax a little. Even the sporadic phenomena of the early evening had petered out to nothing.
At an unknown point the skull and I found ourselves (for the second or third time) in the room of automata known as Tufnell’s Marvels. It was a dark, winding corridor, with brightly coloured mechanical toys arrayed in glass cases on either side. Some were simple figures – hinged bears and clowns and grotesque policemen that could move or dance; others were complex little scenes showing real-life tragedies, such as the Great Fire of London, that would come to brief, cog-driven life if you put your money in.
First thing I did, as always, was check the temperature and use my Senses. As before, I got nothing. I peered at the exhibits, and as I did so, a memory rose unbidden in my mind. ‘I used to see these things at the country fairs,’ I said, ‘when I was a little kid. My sister Mary gave me the money to make one go once …’