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For my family –

Gina, Isabelle, Arthur and Louis –

who tell the best ghost stories of all

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How about the one of the sightless blue face pressed against the cellar window? Or the apparition of the blind man holding a cane made of children’s bones? What about the evil swan that followed me home through the lonely, rain-washed park, or the giant disembodied mouth seen opening in the centre of a concrete floor? What of the milk jug that poured blood; or the empty bath from which choking gurgles sounded after dark? What of the orphan’s spinning bed, or the skeleton in the chimney; or the vile spectral pig, all bristles and yellow tusks, glimpsed snuffling through the dirty glass of a shower-room door?

Take your pick. I experienced them all. They represent a typical month’s work for Lockwood & Co. during that long and desperate summer. Most of them were written up in our casebook by George on the mornings after the events concerned, in between sips of scalding tea. He did this in his boxer shorts, incidentally, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our living room. It was a sight that was frankly more disturbing than all the hauntings combined.

Our Black Casebook has since been copied and filed away in the National Archives in the new Anthony Lockwood Gallery. The good news about that is you don’t have to negotiate the crushed crisps in the pages of the original if you want to know the details of each job. The bad news? Not every case is in there. There’s one that was simply too terrible to be written down at all.

You know how it ended. Everyone does. The city was already full of it on that last cruel morning, with the rubble of Fittes House still steaming around the bodies of the lost. But the beginning? No. That’s not yet public knowledge. For the hidden story of murder, conspiracy, betrayal – yes, and ghosts – you need the account of one who survived it. For that, you have to come to me.

My name is Lucy Joan Carlyle. I talk with the living and the dead, and it sometimes gets so’s I can’t tell the difference any more.

Here it is, then: the beginning of the end. Here’s me, two months ago. I’m dressed in a black jacket, skirt and leggings, with heavy-duty boots suitable for staving in coffin lids and scrambling out of graves. My rapier’s at my belt, a holster of flares and salt bombs is slung across my chest. There’s a spectral handprint on my jacket. My bob’s cropped shorter than before, though this doesn’t disguise where a few strands of hair have recently turned white. Otherwise I look the same as ever. Kitted out for psychic investigation. Doing what I do.

In the outside world, the stars were out. The day’s warmth was folded up and done. It was shortly after midnight – the time when spirits wandered and all sensible folk were tucked up safe in bed.

In my defence it has to be said that I wasn’t the only one doing this. Elsewhere in the small stone-clad chamber my colleagues Lockwood, George and Holly were also on hands and knees. We had our heads low, our noses near the flagstones. We swept our candles close to walls and floor. Occasionally we stopped to press fingertips into suspicious nooks and crannies; otherwise we worked in silence. We were looking for the entrance to a grave.

‘Do you lot have to bend over like that?’ a voice asked. ‘It’s making my eyes water.’

A thin, red-haired young man was sitting above us on a granite block in the centre of the room. Like the rest of our raiding party he was all in black – in his case, whopping big boots, skinny jeans and a roll-neck top. Unlike the rest of us, he had an enormous pair of bulbous goggles clamped across his face, giving him the look of a startled grasshopper. His name was Quill Kipps. He was readying our tomb-cracking equipment, laying out crowbars and coils of rope on the surface of the stone. He was also keeping watch, blinking at the shadows. His goggles allowed him to spot ghosts, if any were around.

‘See anything, Quill?’ That was Lockwood, dark hair hanging over his face. He picked with his penknife at a gap between the flagstones.

Kipps lit an oil lamp, tilting the shutters so that the light stayed low. ‘With you in that position, I’ve seen plenty. Particularly when Cubbins hoves into view. It’s like watching a beluga swimming by.’

‘No ghosts yet. Apart from our tame one.’ He tapped a large glass jar perched alongside him on the block. Green light flared evilly within, and a spectral face of unusual hideousness materialized, moving closer through a vortex of ectoplasm.

‘Tame?’ A disembodied voice that only I could hear spoke in indignation. ‘Tame?! Let me out of here and I’ll show that scrawny idiot how tame I am!’

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.’

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.

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.

‘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.

‘I think we need a fresh perspective,’ she said. ‘Lucy, can’t the skull help at all?’

Over in the jar, the translucent face was still talking animatedly. I could just see the old brown skull clamped to the base of the glass beneath it.

‘… and eat them. Then I’ll freeze his toenails off. That’ll fix him.’

‘Oh, you’re not still going on about Kipps!’ I said. ‘I thought you’d finished ages ago.’

‘That’s not true. It’s because we do sort of believe you that we’re standing here right now.’

The skull snorted rudely. ‘If you took my word in any conventional sense, you’d be sitting at home with your feet up, rotting your innards with tea and chocolate biscuits. But no. You have to “double-check” my story.’

‘Are you surprised? You say that Marissa Fittes isn’t dead, but is actually alive and well and pretending to be her supposed grand-daughter, Penelope Fittes. The same Penelope Fittes who is head of the Fittes Agency and probably the most powerful person in London. That’s quite a claim to make. You’ll forgive us if we need to check it out for ourselves.’

The face rolled its eyes. ‘Piffle. Know what this is an example of? Skullism.’

‘You’ve heard of racism. You’ve heard of sexism. Well, this is skullism, pure and simple. You’re judging me by my outward appearance. You doubt my word solely because I’m a skull lurking in a jar of slime-green plasm. Admit it!’

I took a deep breath. This was a skull known far and wide for its outrageous whoppers and virtuoso fibbing. To say it sometimes stretched the truth would be like saying George sometimes stretched the seat of his trousers when tying his shoelaces. On the flipside, the ghost had saved my life more than once and – on certain important matters – hadn’t always lied. ‘That’s an interesting point,’ I said, ‘and I look forward to discussing it with you later. In the meantime, help me out. We’re looking for the entrance to a crypt. Do you see a ring or handle?’

‘Do you see a pulley, winch or any other mechanism for opening a hidden trapdoor?’

‘Oh, of course there’s a door,’ the ghost said. ‘Why didn’t you ask me? It’s obvious enough from up here.’

I relayed this to the others. Holly and Lockwood acted as one. They vaulted up onto the block beside Kipps. Lockwood grabbed one of the lanterns and held it out in front of him. He and Holly both rotated, scanning the floor, faces locked in concentration. The light washed slowly over the flagstones like water, spilling up against the base of the walls.

‘This is pitiful,’ the skull said. ‘I saw it straight off, and I don’t have an eyeball to call my own. Well, I’m sorry, but you’re not getting any more clues from—’

‘There!’ Holly grasped Lockwood’s arm. He held the lantern steady. ‘There!’ she said. ‘See that little flagstone set inside the bigger one? The big one is the trapdoor. Pull up the small stone and we’ll find the ring or handle hidden underneath!’

George and I ran over, bent close to where she pointed. As soon as she said it, I knew that she was right.

‘Brilliant, Holly,’ Lockwood said. ‘That must be it. Tools ready, everyone.’

It was at times like this that Lockwood & Co. was at its fluent best. Knives were brought out, and the cement around the smaller stone cut free. We levered it up with crowbars; Lockwood pulled it aside. Sure enough, a hinged bronze ring lay beneath, set into the larger stone. While George, Holly and I loosened the edges of this stone, Lockwood and Kipps tied ropes around the ring, testing and double-testing the knots, making sure they could take the strain. Lockwood was everywhere at once, softly giving orders, helping with every task. Energy crackled off him, spurring us all on.

‘Isn’t anyone going to thank me?’ The skull watched disgustedly from its jar. ‘Thought not. Good job I’m not in the business of holding my breath.’

Within minutes we were in position. Lockwood and Kipps stood by the first rope; they would lift the stone. On the opposite side, the second rope hung slack. George and I held this – it was our job to support the flagstone once it was lifted, and help lower it quietly back onto the floor. In the centre, by the ring, Holly knelt, ready with the crowbars.

The room was still. Up on the wall our lantern light quivered on the iron head of Marissa Fittes. It was as if she was watching us, her eyes glittering with malevolent life.

At moments of maximum tension Lockwood always made it his business to be the calmest of all. He smiled at us. ‘Everyone ready?’ he asked. ‘Right – let’s go.’

He and Kipps pulled. At once, smoothly and without noise, the flagstone moved. It lifted up as if on oiled hinges, and a waft of chill air rose from the crack beneath.

Holly pushed the crowbars under it in case the others faltered, but there was no need. With surprising swiftness, Lockwood and Kipps pulled the flagstone upright. Now it was George and I who had to support its weight. Our rope went taut; we took the strain.

The hinged slab wasn’t nearly as heavy as I’d have guessed – perhaps it was some special hollow stone. Slowly we began to lower it on the other side.

We eased the flagstone down. It met the ground with a sound like a mouse sighing.

When Holly shone her torch into it, we could see a flight of stone steps leading steeply into blackness. Beyond the steps the light was swallowed utterly.

There was a brief silence. Now that we had gained access to the crypt, the enormity of what we were about to do fell over us. It was like the darkness hanging above our heads had suddenly, silently, shifted lower. Marissa’s face watched us from the wall.

We all stood there quietly, using our Senses. None of us got anything. Our belt thermometers showed a steady twelve degrees, and we detected no supernatural chill, no miasma, malaise or creeping fear. There was no immediate likelihood of an apparition.

‘Good,’ Lockwood said. ‘Collect your things. We’ll proceed as planned. I’ll go first. Then George, followed by Holly and Luce, with Quill at the back. We’ll turn our torches off, but carry candles. I’ll have my rapier; the rest of you keep your weapons ready too. Not that we’ll need them.’ He gave us his best grin. ‘We don’t believe she’s there.’

But a nameless dread had stolen up on us. In part it was the power of the iron face, and of the name inscribed in stone. And it was also the feel of the dank air rising from the hole. It coiled around us, entwining us with unease. We gathered our things slowly. George passed among us, flicking his lighter, igniting our candles. We lined up, hefting rapiers, clearing throats, readying our belts.

Kipps looked at me. ‘You’re right, Lucy. Maybe I’m being overly cautious. I mean, it’s not as if our tip came from an evil talking skull that probably wishes us all dead, is it?’

Everyone glanced over at the open rucksack I was carrying. I’d just put the jar inside. The ghost’s face had disappeared now; only the skull was showing. Even I had to admit that its death-black sockets and leering toothy grin weren’t entirely reassuring.

‘I know you set great store by that skull,’ Kipps went on. ‘I know it’s your best mate and all the rest of it, but what if it’s wrong? What if it’s simply mistaken?’ He glanced up at the wall. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She might be waiting for us down there.’

Another moment and the mood would have shifted irrevocably. Lockwood stepped between us. He spoke with crisp decision. ‘No one needs to worry. George, remind them.’

‘Sure.’ George adjusted his spectacles. ‘Remember, all the stories say that Marissa Fittes gave orders for her body to be placed in a special coffin. We’re talking iron inlays and silver casing. So, if the skull’s wrong and her body is there, her spirit won’t be able to bother us,’ he said. ‘It’ll be safely constrained.’

‘Oh, that’ll only be for a second, and we’ll have our defences in place by then.’

‘The point is,’ Lockwood said, ‘no ghost is going to attack us on the way down. Right, George?’

‘Not saying there are. Just that there might be some.’ George pushed his glasses up his nose and gave an encouraging flourish with one hand. ‘Anyway, Lockwood – the stairs await! Off you go.’

Lockwood did a sort of reverse swivel. Now he was facing George. ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘What traps are these?’

We all were. We gathered around George, who did something with his shoulders that was probably meant to be a casual shrug. ‘Oh, it’s just silly rumours,’ he said. ‘Frankly I’m surprised you’re interested. Some say Marissa didn’t want grave-robbers interfering with her tomb, so she took precautions.’ He paused. ‘Some say these precautions might be … supernatural ones.’

‘When was this little fact going to be mentioned?’ I demanded. ‘When a Spectre put its fingers around my neck?’

George made an impatient gesture. ‘It’s probably nonsense. Besides, it would have been a distraction earlier. It’s my job to distinguish between solid fact and rumour.’

‘No, that’s my job,’ Lockwood said. ‘Your job is to tell me everything so I can make the judgement.’

There was a heavy pause. ‘Do you lot always argue like this?’ Kipps asked.

Lockwood gave a bland smile. ‘Usually. I sometimes think incessant bickering is the oil that lubricates our efficient machine.’

‘I don’t like anything that much! Now, can everyone please shut up?’ Lockwood gazed around at us. His dark eyes locked on ours, holding our attention, steadying our collective purpose. ‘Traps or no traps,’ he said, ‘we can handle this. We have two hours to check the tomb, close it up and be ready to go when the sentries change again. Do we want to learn the truth about Penelope Fittes and Marissa? Of course we do! We’ve worked wonders to get here, and we won’t panic now. If we’re right, there won’t be anything to worry about. If we’re wrong, we deal with it, as we always do.’ He smiled. ‘But we won’t be wrong. We’re on the verge of something big here. It’s going to be good!’

Kipps adjusted his goggles dolefully. ‘Since when has anything good happened in a crypt? It’s going to be ropy by definition.’

But Lockwood was already heading down the stairs. Beyond him, light flickered on the iron face. Its thin lips seemed to smile as we descended into the dark.

OK, let’s just pause for a moment while we’re still at the top of the stairs. Nothing nasty’s jumped out at us. No traps have been sprung. We’re all alive and well. That makes it a good time to consider just how the five of us (five and a bit, if you include the skull) came to be there at all, descending illegally into the most famous tomb in London.

I don’t mean the mechanics of how we got inside the mausoleum, though that’s a story in itself: the long nights George spent watching the movements of the guards; the weeks Kipps spent shadowing the sergeant with the key; the stealing of the key (this a masterpiece of timing, with Holly distracting the sergeant while Lockwood pinched it from his jacket, took a wax impression and returned it, all in thirty seconds flat); finally the forging of a replica, thanks to an underworld contact of our disreputable friend Flo Bones. I don’t even mean how we snuck in during the changing of the guards.

For the answer to that we have to go back five months, to a walk that Lockwood and I took through a dark and frozen landscape. This little stroll completely shook up how we operated and changed the way we saw ourselves.

Why? Because, entirely unexpectedly, we had stepped out of our world and into another place. Where was this place? That’s hard to say. Some call it the Other Side; I guess it has other names too, which people in the old religions and the ghost-cults use. But from what I saw it wasn’t a heaven or a hell; just a world very similar to our own, only freezing cold and silent and stretched out under a black sky. The dead walked there, and it was their home – while Lockwood and I were the interlopers. Ours was the unnatural presence in their endless night.

We had ventured there by accident, and only just managed to escape, but we discovered that there were other living souls who had deliberately chosen to explore that forbidden path. One was no less a person than Mr Steve Rotwell, grandson of Tom Rotwell and head of the giant Rotwell Agency. He had been carrying out experiments, sending employees (protected by iron armour) through a gate or portal to the Other Side. His exact purpose we could not tell. When he attempted to silence us, our confrontation ended with Rotwell’s death and the destruction of his secret research facility. The repercussions of this were far-reaching. For a start, Rotwell’s was taken over by its arch-rival, the Fittes Agency, headed by the formidable Ms Penelope Fittes, who swiftly set about establishing herself as the most powerful woman in Britain.

But there were darker consequences too. Our experiences had indicated that there was a strong connection between the activity of spirits – in particular their keenness to return to our world – and the presence of living persons on the Other Side. It seemed that when the land of the dead was invaded, the dead became active, and much more likely to invade the land of the living. This discovery was of vast importance. For more than fifty years the Problem – the epidemic of ghosts infesting Britain – had spread and worsened, confounding all attempts to understand or halt it. We held in our hands a clue to the possible cause, and we itched to spread this news.

This edict had come from none other than Penelope Fittes herself. She didn’t know about the strange journey Lockwood and I had made (we had told nobody but our friends), but she knew something of what we’d discovered at the Rotwell Institute, and she wanted no word of it getting out to the ordinary population. It wasn’t a friendly piece of advice, either, more a coolly delivered threat. We were under no illusions about what would happen to us if we chose to give up our silence and go our own way.

This, by itself, was outrageous enough: the woman at the heart of the fight against the Problem was telling us not to explore its possible cause. Quite what her motive might be was unknown, but it was hard to imagine an innocent explanation. Yet there was something else, something more disturbing still; and for that insight we had the ghost in the jar to thank. Long ago it had spoken with the great Marissa Fittes; now it had seen Penelope – and had big news for us. According to the skull, Penelope was Marissa – they were precisely the same person.

However much we might distrust Penelope Fittes herself, it was clearly not easy to establish the truth of this extraordinary claim. But we could check one thing.

The stairs were steep and narrow. We descended slowly, step by careful step. Lockwood was at the front, then George, with Holly and me following. Kipps brought up the rear. Each of us held a candle raised at head height, and so our circles of light fused together, making a little radiant worm or caterpillar inching its way into the earth.

Behind us, the dim grey cone of lantern light seeping through the trapdoor faded from view. To our right was a wall of neat stone blocks, shiny and gleaming with moisture. To the left was an open, unknown space, which our candlelight could not penetrate. Lockwood risked a brief flick of his torch, revealing a shocking well of black that made us all flinch towards the right-hand wall. Then, disconcertingly, this wall vanished too, and we were descending with an abyss of darkness on either side.

Your head did weird things in such a place. Your legs shook; you no longer had full control over your muscles. You kept feeling you were about to lurch aside and plunge into oblivion. The problem was compounded by the need for high psychic alert, the fear of something rising towards you out of the dark. Every couple of steps we had to stop and use our Talents, and this straining against the silence made your head spin even more.

It didn’t help that the skull in my rucksack insisted on doing a running commentary, constantly adding little reminders of the peril we were in.

‘Ooh, this is a nasty bit,’ it said. ‘Careful you don’t suddenly step sideways and plunge horribly to your death.’ And: ‘What’s it like, falling in pitch darkness? I wonder.’ Or simply: ‘Crikey, don’t trip now!’ And so on, until I threatened to toss it over the edge.

The wall returned, and at that point the steps veered abruptly to the left, going down no less steeply.

The green glow at my shoulder flared with sullen light. ‘I’m bored,’ the ghost said. ‘It’s Lockwood’s fault. He’s such a dawdler.’

‘He’s like an old granny crossing the road. I’ve seen algae move faster.’

It was true that Lockwood was taking it steadily. Down beyond the heads of the others I could see him, on the fringe of the candlelight, stooping, peering, patiently checking each slab before treading on it, inspecting the wet stones of the wall. That was where he always was – at the forefront of the group, standing between us and the darkness. How poised and graceful he was. His presence gave me courage, even in a place like this. I smiled at him. He couldn’t see me, of course. It didn’t matter.

‘You all right, Lucy?’ That was Kipps at my shoulder. ‘Got wind or something?’

‘Just saw you grimacing there. Tell you what, my goggles are misting up. Wish we’d get to the bottom of this wretched vault. Lockwood’s taking his time.’

We both fell silent. Down we went, with the coils of candle smoke binding us together, and Lockwood calm and tireless at our head. For a while there was nothing but stone and smoke and silence, and the shuffle of our boots in the dark.

That was the skull roaring like a howler monkey in my ear. The sudden psychic outburst made me cry out in fright. I jerked forward, jabbing my candle flame directly into Holly’s neck. She cried out too, and barged into George; George stumbled and kneed Lockwood in the backside. Lockwood, who had just been bending over to inspect the stair below, lost his balance entirely and tumbled down the next six steps, falling head over heels, bump, bump, bump. He dropped his rapier, his candle disappeared over the edge. He finished upside-down, long legs waving in the air.

Dead silence. Everyone stood frozen, listening for the creak of moving traps, for shifting stones, for the rustling of grave-cloths. Personally all I could hear was the raucous cackling of the skull. Nothing happened. Lockwood got stiffly to his feet. Picking up his rapier, we hurried down to join him.

‘I don’t know what you’re so fussed about.’ This was the skull, a few moments later. We were clustering around the jar, bog-eyed and livid, while the face grinned out in high delight. ‘You know me,’ it said. ‘I’m excitable. Can I help it if I get caught up in the action?’

‘You endangered us all,’ I snarled. ‘If Lockwood had triggered a trap—’

‘But he didn’t, did he? Let’s be positive! We now know those last twelve steps are safe because Lockwood’s bum tested them for us.’

‘It’s gone too far this time,’ Holly said. ‘I vote we take it to the furnaces tomorrow.’

‘Oh, don’t be so harsh,’ Kipps said. ‘I’m grateful to the skull. That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I’ll treasure the memory on my deathbed. Anyway, I assume you haven’t brought the ghost along for its personality. The best thing is to put it to good use.’

There was much sense in Kipps’s words, and everyone acknowledged it. I moved to the front of the group, just behind Lockwood, with the skull peering from the top of my rucksack.

‘This is great,’ it said. ‘The best seat in the house. With luck I can watch Lockwood trip over his own feet again. So, fill me in. What do you want me to do?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Scour the rest of the stairs for snares, levers, wires, flip-stones, ghost-traps, and anything else that might threaten us. You see something, you let it rip. Otherwise keep silent. Not another word. Agreed?’

‘Hey, relax. Just doing my job. There’s a trap on the next step, I think you’ll find.’

And sure enough, when I stabbed my torch on, I could see a thin wire stretched across the step below us, just at ankle height.

‘Yes, and maybe something more than that.’ Lockwood indicated where the wire disappeared into a small groove cut into the wall. He lifted his candle; one of the stones above was larger than the rest, and seemed less well embedded too. ‘Think this might’ve dropped on our heads after we’d tripped and fallen?’ he asked. ‘It’s possible.’

One after the other we stepped down over the wire. The evident but unknown malice of the trap sent a chill through all of us. Lockwood wiped perspiration from his brow.

‘We owe the skull for that, at least,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep on. It can’t be far now.’

We continued down the slowly curving stairs. The skull remained silent. There were no more dangers to be seen. At last our questing candlelight bent and folded against the carved stones of a wide, almost semicircular archway. The stairs stopped just short of the arch, ending at a paved expanse of floor.

No one spoke. We were all on high alert. We used our psychic senses, probing ahead of us into the dark. Nothing was seen or heard. I ran my fingers over the walls too, in case Touch might pick up something, but the stone was blank. Our thermometers showed a temperature of seven degrees: chilly, but not exceptional. It gave no cause for concern.

That didn’t mean we were putting our rapiers away. Lockwood and I set down our candles and switched on our torches. With weapons at the ready, we walked slowly beneath the arch into a large stone room.

The burial chamber of Marissa Fittes was a high, domed space, with an oval outline that echoed the shape of the mausoleum far above. Our torch beams crossed and re-crossed it, picking out the same curved walls of closely fitting blocks, the same clean flagged floor. There were no doors, no niches, no alcoves to be seen. But in the middle of the vault …

Our beams speared inwards to meet at the central point. This was a raised rectangular plinth of smooth grey stone, a few feet high, with bunches of dried lavender propped against it. It had the word FITTES inscribed along the side.

The coffin had been covered with a magnificent silver drape emblazoned with the famous Fittes symbol – a rampant unicorn.

‘Don’t want to rush to any conclusions,’ Lockwood murmured, ‘but I think we might be there.’

George too spoke in a whisper; it was not a place for noise. ‘That’s the special coffin in which she supposedly lay in state. Three days in Westminster Abbey, with mourners filing by. Then they brought her here.’

‘If she is here,’ I said. I was Listening again. No, it was OK. Everything was still.

‘That’s what we’ve come to find out.’ Lockwood walked purposefully across the vault. In the briskness of his movements he was allaying our unspoken fears. ‘Won’t take five minutes, then we’re gone. Do it like we practised. Chains at the ready.’

Time and again, in the peace and comfort of 35 Portland Row, we’d gone through this part of the operation. We’d known it was the crunch point, when fear might make us forget essential things. So we’d rehearsed on a sofa in our living room, circling it with iron chains, looping their ends carefully, sowing salt and iron filings on the floor, setting up lavender candles at regular distances all the way round. Good protective measures, carried out swiftly and well. In moments we had the plinth surrounded in this manner, sealing in the coffin – and whatever it contained.

‘As predicted, it’s a Wilson and Edgar special edition, lead-lined, silver casing, double clasps. Should have a counterweighted hinge, so it opens to the touch.’ George spoke calmly, but there was sweat running down the side of his face. This was not a normal tomb, and all of us were clammy with nerves. Holly’s face had blanched; Kipps looked as if he was trying to chew off his own bottom lip. Even the skull at my shoulder had gone quiet, the green glow dulled almost to nothing.

Lockwood took a deep breath. ‘OK, so this is my job.’ He looked around at us. ‘Old Marissa started everything – the agencies, the fight against the Problem. That’s her legacy, which everyone takes for granted. But we know something else is going on. And part of the answer lies inside.’

George and Kipps held their candles ready. Holly and I unclipped magnesium flares.

The coffin was at waist height. With a delicate touch, as if pulling a blanket off a sleeping child, Lockwood took the unicorn drape and drew it to the foot of the coffin, where he let it fall to the floor. The lid was pristine, shimmering with reflected torchlight. It had two double clasps. Lockwood flicked them open – one, two – each falling against the coffin side with a clink that set my heart juddering.

This was the moment. If the skull’s story was true, the coffin would be empty.

Lockwood took hold of the lid and pushed it upwards. In the same motion, he jumped back beyond the iron chains.

George was right: the lid must have had some kind of concealed counterweight, because it continued to open, smoothly and soundlessly, of its own accord. It tipped up and up and over – and came to a gentle halt, hanging back at an angle.

Kipps and George lifted their arms. Light from their candles scooped out the slot. Now we could see that the interior was upholstered in red silk …

For a few seconds no one spoke. Holly and I had our arms raised, flares cupped in our hands. The others were likewise frozen, rigid, breath rasping between bared teeth. We stared at the shrouded shape. It had an awful kind of gravity that held us all transfixed.

‘What?’ Faint green light flared sullenly within the glass. ‘This had better be good. I can’t hang around. There’s too much silver here for me.’

A pause followed. ‘Oh, well. Could be any old corpse in there. Might be a pile of half-bricks wrapped in sacking. I can tell you one thing: it’s not Marissa. Uncover the face and see.’

The light faded. I told the others what the skull had said. None of us much enjoyed hearing it.

The body of that quiet someone in the coffin was not wrapped tightly, but instead concealed by a loose cloth. Whoever pulled it back would have to step inside the chains, reach in close to the shrouded thing.

‘Easy enough …’ Lockwood said again. ‘It’s just a dead body like any other, and we’ve all seen plenty of those.’

Without hesitation he stepped over the iron chains, reached into the coffin, took hold of a corner of the cloth and, with a fastidious movement, flicked it away. Then he jumped back. We all flinched with him. As Lockwood said, we’d seen enough decomposed bodies to want to be as far away as possible when the dreadful sight was revealed.

Long grey hair lay thick and lush across an ivory pillow. It cradled a gaunt white face, the skin flowing like wax beneath our candlelight. It was the face of a woman – an aged, wrinkled woman, bony, with a nose curved thin and sharp like the beak of some bird of prey. The lips were closed tight; the eyes too. It was recognizably the same face as on the iron bust upstairs, only older and frailer. What was awful about it was that it didn’t appear to be long dead, but only sleeping. It had been miraculously preserved.

No one spoke. No one moved. At last a blob of hot wax from his candle dripped onto Kipps’s hand. His yelp broke the spell.

She didn’t finish the sentence, but we knew what she meant. Before Marissa Fittes’ spirit stirred. I’d had the same thought. But I also felt a rush of anger that we’d risked so much for nothing. ‘That wretched skull!’ I said.

Quill Kipps cursed. ‘What fools we are! We’ve risked everything for this!’ He gestured wildly around the tiny vault. ‘We’ve got to get out sharpish. She won’t be happy we’ve desecrated her resting place. Come on, Lockwood! We’ve got to get out.’

‘Yes, yes …’ Of all of us, Lockwood had been the least affected by the dead woman in the coffin. He bent forward over the chains, gazing at the pallid face. ‘She seems relaxed enough so far,’ he added. ‘In fact she’s positively chilled. How did they keep her like this, I wonder?’

‘Oh, sure. You just need the right herbs and oils, and natron, which is a kind of salt. Dunk her in that, it dries her out – though you mustn’t forget to remove the intestines and pull the brains out through the nose. It’s a messy business. Imagine one of Luce’s worst head colds: that’s the amount of gunk you’re dealing with. After that, you’d stuff her various cavities with—’

‘Right, so mummification is possible,’ Kipps interrupted. ‘We get the idea.’

‘All the same,’ Lockwood said, ‘I’ve never heard of a mummy looking quite like this …’ As he spoke, he stepped across the iron chains again.

‘It’s like she died yesterday.’ He reached in, put his fingers to the side of the face.

‘Ah, yes …’ There was a softly noxious peeling sound, as of skin coming away.

Holly put her hand over her mouth; George made a noise like a throttled cat. Kipps clutched my arm.

Lockwood stood back. He had the old woman’s face dangling between his fingers.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s just a mask.’ He smiled at us. ‘A plastic mask … And check this out …’ His other hand came up. The grey-white wig hung heavy, matted and shapeless, like something that had been teased out of a plughole. ‘A mask and wig,’ he said, laughing. ‘It’s fake. Everything’s just fake … Everyone OK?’

To be honest, that might have been stretching it. For a moment none of us moved. Then our shock and relief spilled over. Kipps began laughing. Holly just stood there, shaking her head, hand still on her mouth. I realized I’d been holding my flare ready all this time. My fingers hurt. I put it back in my belt.

‘Lockwood,’ I said, ‘that is so icky. That is the ickiest thing I’ve ever seen you do. Which is saying something.’

‘It’s not really icky.’ Lockwood considered the thing lying in the coffin. ‘It’s just a dummy. Come and see.’

We all stepped over to the coffin. Sure enough, shorn of its coverings, the head resting on the ivory silk pillow wasn’t human at all. It was made of wax. It had the correct dimensions, with a rough nose shape, and shallow indents where the eyes would be, but there were no real features, just the bubbles and pits of yellowish wax, smooth in places, rough in others.

‘What a con!’ George bent over the coffin, holding his spectacles as he stared quizzically at the dummy. He pulled the shroud further away, uncovering a wax torso, and rough, spindly wax arms crossed over the breast. ‘Life size, and probably the correct weight, so no one guessed when they were carrying it. The mask was there just in case anyone looked in.’

‘She’s not there,’ Lockwood said. ‘This whole mausoleum is built on a lie.’

‘Unbelievable.’ Kipps was still laughing softly to himself. He reached into the coffin and struck the waxen chest with his knuckles, making a hollow tapping sound. ‘A dummy! And we were all so frightened …’

I wanted to laugh too. It was the sheer release of the tension that had been building up all night. Everyone felt it. Holly got out some chocolate, began offering it around. Thermos flasks of coffee were located. We leaned back against the coffin.

Lockwood frowned. ‘Maybe. It’s only half the story, don’t forget. Marissa’s not here. So where is she?’

Tap, tap … Behind us, Kipps rapped out a jaunty little rhythm on the wax. ‘A dummy!’ he said. ‘We can’t keep this quiet. We show the mask, tell DEPRAC, get the press down here.’ He reached out for the chocolate. ‘Thanks, Holly. Don’t mind if I do.’

Holly handed out the last piece. ‘The difficult thing is knowing who to trust,’ she said. ‘Half of DEPRAC’s in Penelope’s pockets.’

‘Decisions for tomorrow,’ Lockwood said. ‘Thing to do now is get back topside before the guards change again.’

‘OK, Quill,’ I said. ‘Maybe you can stop that now. It’s getting a little irritating.’

‘I have stopped,’ Kipps said. ‘I’m eating my chocolate, same as you.’

Everyone looked at Kipps, leaning against the plinth beside us. He held up both hands in confirmation. The tapping noise continued. We stared at one other. We swallowed our chocolate in unison. Then we looked behind us.

Something protruding from under the rumpled shroud was striking the side of the coffin, making the tapping sound. It was a cupped wax hand, twitching and jerking in spasms. As we watched, the trembling extended up the arm, and all at once the whole wax dummy was shaking, as if in protest at the coils of ghost-fog now rising from the grave.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BEST BOOK AWARD

NOMINATED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL

Also by Jonathan Stroud

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