The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(58)
In this I was quite wrong. Lockwood not only had a plan; it was already well under way. I discovered afterwards that he had been devising his response to the attack on George almost from the moment it happened. During his long vigil in the hospital his initial shock had hardened into furious intent. He’d had plenty of time to explore his options, make decisions and set his strategy in motion. But I only began to realize this when Quill Kipps showed up later that afternoon with a bulging plastic bag in his hand.
‘Here you are, Lockwood,’ he said, pouring the contents out onto the kitchen table. ‘Four black balaclavas, four sets of thin black gloves. Got them from a seedy little shop in Whitechapel. I completely cleaned them out of sinister protective clothing. There’s going to be a lot of disappointed criminals in the East End till they get their next delivery.’
‘Excellent.’ Lockwood was inspecting a balaclava. ‘I see they’ve got mouth holes and everything, so we can speak to each other easily. That’s always useful. Great work, Quill. How’s the surveillance been going?’
‘Nicely.’ Kipps tapped his rucksack. ‘I’ve got photos too.’
‘Superb. Will it be feasible?’
‘At the worst, we might have to duff up a few pensioners.’
‘I think we can cope with that.’
Holly and I had been following this exchange like it was a tennis match, heads turning in bafflement from Quill to Lockwood and back again. Now Holly raised a hand. ‘There’ll be some duffing up going on right now,’ she said, ‘if you don’t start filling us in. No ifs or buts, please. Tell us what’s going on.’
Lockwood grinned. ‘Certainly. We’re going to complete George’s research for him. Who’s up for a spot of burglary?’
A fly on the wall, lured perhaps by the prospect of one of Holly’s cakes, wouldn’t at first have noticed anything unusual about our meeting in the living room that afternoon. So many missions had been planned there – why was this so different? But it was. There weren’t any cakes, for starters – it would have seemed wrong to eat anything with George lying stricken just upstairs. No cake, no tea and no George. And we weren’t discussing ghosts, either. We spoke in hushed tones, our faces pale and grim.
Kipps got the proceedings going. He took out a packet of grainy black-and-white photographs and spread them across the table. They mostly showed an elegant black door with whitewashed pillars on either side. A succession of elderly, well-dressed men and women were coming out of it. One in particular caught my eye.
‘I know him,’ I said, pointing to a snap of a man with white hair. He had a big, bulging forehead and a slight stoop; his long black frock coat was decidedly old-fashioned.
Lockwood nodded. ‘Yes. The secretary of the Orpheus Society. This is their front door.’
The Orpheus Society was a very exclusive club in central London. Prominent industrialists and businesspeople formed its membership. Its official purpose was to research aspects of the Problem, but we happened to know that this research took a decidedly practical turn. The goggles that Kipps wore, which allowed him to see ghosts despite his advanced age of twenty-two, were an Orpheus Society creation. And Penelope Fittes – or Marissa, as I was forcing myself to think of her – was closely associated with their underhand activities. We had visited their headquarters once, and found a plush and ornate townhouse festooned with oil paintings, marble statues and quiet, closed doors.
‘I don’t need to remind any of you,’ Lockwood went on, ‘that when George was attacked, he’d got a copy of Occult Theories, this important lost book written by Marissa. Rupert Gale took it from him. As far as we know, there are only two other copies in existence. One, in the Black Library of Fittes House, is too well guarded for us to reach. But the other’s here at the Orpheus Society, and that’s the one I intend to steal tonight. We needn’t be embarrassed doing this, because these Orpheus people are definitely in on the whole Marissa thing. Remember that old secretary talking to us when we visited? He said that their main concern was winning a battle – not just against ghosts, but against death itself. Which is pretty much what we think Marissa is trying to do.’
‘She founded the society in the first place,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’ Lockwood looked at each of us in turn. ‘Everyone up for this?’
‘Of course,’ Holly said. ‘Why do you even ask?’
Kipps shuffled forward on his chair. ‘OK, so I’ve been surveying the society HQ for the last two days,’ he said, ‘watching who goes in and out, seeing what the security procedures are. It’s always locked up at eleven p.m. sharp. After that there’s no chance of getting in by the first-floor windows – they put up iron ghost-grilles after dark. A second snag is that the building’s never empty. They seem to stay mainly on the lower floor, but activity goes on there for most of the night.’
‘What kind of activity?’ I asked.
‘No idea. Could be meetings, weird occult experiments, or maybe they just doze in front of the fire. The members are mostly ancient. You can see that from these photos I took of them leaving in the mornings.’
We inspected the pictures. ‘They’re a bit fuzzy,’ Holly said.
‘If George was here,’ I remarked, ‘we’d have floor plans of the building, a full list of accredited members and a potted history of the organization.’