The Empty Grave

by Jonathan Stroud

  On such an occasion, the morning after our visit to the Fittes mausoleum, Lockwood, George, and I were sitting at the kitchen table. Holly had gone out to Arif’s store to fetch further supplies; the surface of the table was littered with open jam jars, eggcups, butter dishes, and toast crumbs, but we still felt hungry. At one end of the table, the ghost-jar was striped by sunlight coming through the blinds. We had our mugs of tea. George, who had eaten well, was sitting in his chair with a hideous wooden mask propped up on his lap. He was using a damp tea towel to wipe the dust off it. Lockwood had a pen and was doodling on a corner of the Thinking Cloth, the tablecloth on which we noted down ideas, while simultaneously glancing at a newspaper leaning against the ghost-jar. In the jar itself, the ghost was dormant; the plasm stirred lazily in the late morning sun, like green water in a deep and weedy pool.

  I sat quietly next to Lockwood, enjoying the companionable silence. My muscles ached, my head was cloudy. Lockwood had a scrape on his left temple, and the lenses of George’s spectacles were soft with grave dust. Our exertions hung heavy on us. But we had not yet spoken of the night before.

  “Lots of news this morning,” Lockwood said, indicating the paper.

  I opened an eye. “Good?”

  “No.”

  “Bad?”

  “Baddish and bad. Two things, and neither particularly great for us.”

  “Let’s have the baddish one first,” George said. “I prefer my misery to come at me in stages, so I can acclimatize on the way.”

  Lockwood reached out for his mug of tea. “The baddish one is just the usual. Dullop and Tweed this time. They’ve agreed on terms with the Fittes Agency. Old Mr. Dullop is retiring, and the company’s being absorbed into Fittes, effective immediately.”

  “What does Tweed have to say about it?” I asked.

  “Nothing. He got killed by a Solitary years ago.”

  I frowned. “Another small agency swallowed up…” I looked toward the window, where bright blue sky shone above the houses at the bottom of the garden. “There aren’t many of us left.”

  “Adam Bunchurch is still holding out,” George said. He was dabbing at the teeth of the wooden mask. “Did you hear about last week? They made him quite a decent offer to close down, but he went berserk and threw the Fittes guy out on his ear.”

  “Didn’t think he had it in him.” Lockwood sat back in the chair and gave a tentative stretch. “Not sure he’ll last long with open rebellion like that. Ahh…my back is killing me this morning. I blame your skull, Lucy.”

  “It’s not my skull. I just talk to it. You mentioned some bad news.”

  “Oh. Yes. Guess what? They’ve let Winkman out.”

  George lowered the tea towel in shock, and I opened my eyes wide. “Julius Winkman?” I said. “I thought he got ten years.”

  “He did!” George cried. “For selling illegal psychic relics! And incitement to violence! And desecration of burial sites! He’s not been in jail two years! Where’s the justice in that?”

  This was George all over. True, justice was important, but it wasn’t what I was worrying about. It was our testimony that had put Julius Winkman away. And Winkman was a vindictive man.

  “Out early for ‘good behavior,’ allegedly,” Lockwood said. He flicked the paper with a fingertip. “Says here he was met outside the prison by Adelaide, his wife, and Leopold, his darling little son. Then he drove away, swearing to turn over a new leaf and never be a naughty black marketeer again.”

  “He’ll be after us,” I said. “He wants us dead.”

  Lockwood grunted. “Him and all the rest. Maybe he’ll lie low.”

  George turned the mask over dubiously. “Doubt it.”

  We all fell silent for a time. But it was a clear, bright morning, and our fierce satisfaction from the night before still lingered, burning away our doubts and fears.

  “What’s that you’ve drawn, Lockwood?” I asked, eyeing the Thinking Cloth. “Looks like a piece of angry broccoli.”

  “What? Are you insulting my excellent sketch of a wild-haired ghost?” Lockwood threw down his pen. “I suppose drawing’s not my strong suit. I was trying to capture the face of that Revenant. I got a good look at the end, when it broke clear of the bones. Thought George might figure out who it was, if he had a visual aid to help him.”

  “If he uses that, he’ll end up doing his research in the grocery store.” When I shut my eyes, I could see the ghost’s livid form hovering over me. “It was a man in late middle age,” I said, “with a very lined, lived-in face. Long gray hair. That’s all I can remember—it was his words that struck me more. You off to the Archives again, George?”

  “In a bit. We’ve got a client coming in an hour.” George set the wooden mask down on the table between the butter dish and the cornflakes. With the dust gone, its bright colors showed through. Exotic feathers plumed from its top like frozen smoke. “What do you think of this baby?” he said. “Polynesian shaman’s mask. Got it from Jessica’s room.” He glanced across at Lockwood. “I opened the last crate yesterday. Hope that’s okay.”

  Lockwood nodded. “Fine. Anything else good so far?”

  “Maybe. Some things I want to show you, actually, after our second breakfast.”

  I was gazing at the shaman’s mask, at its beetling brows and ferociously snarling mouth. “Think this has any power?”

  “I think there’s some psychic energy in it,” George said, “but I’m not as sensitive as you. Might be worth taking a look later, Lucy, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure…” Suddenly I couldn’t wait any longer; I had to get it off my chest. “Lockwood, George,” I said, “what are we going to do?”

  They both knew what I meant, of course. Our visit to the mausoleum had been weighing on us all morning. It’s quite something when being chased up a staircase by a disintegrating Revenant isn’t the most memorable thing about a job, but that was certainly the case here. The missing occupant of the tomb preyed on our minds.

  “I’ve been thinking about Marissa,” Lockwood said, “and I believe all we can do is go on as before. There’s so much we still don’t understand, and it would be dangerous to admit to breaking into her tomb without some proper answers. So we keep our noses clean, do ordinary cases, stay out of trouble. Meanwhile, we follow all lines of inquiry. In particular, George continues to research the link between Marissa and the woman we call Penelope.”

  George nodded. “The Fittes family’s been at the heart of the fight against ghosts since the beginning. If we want to find a solution to the Problem, we’ll need to sort this puzzle out, too. Regarding our waxy friend from last night, I’ll look at some newspapers from Marissa’s last years while I’m at the Archives. It’s just possible I’ll get wind of an associate of hers who disappeared around that time. The ghost definitely knew her, you think, Luce?”

  “It knew her,” I said, “and it was very annoyed.”

  “Someone close to her, then. Someone betrayed and murdered.”

  “To be honest,” Lockwood said, picking up his mug again and frowning at the cold tea inside it, “that ghost is just a sideshow. Our priority is to find out what happened to the woman who’s supposed to be in that tomb. Who’s supposed to have died twenty years ago. Lucy, try to get some sense out of that stupid skull. We’re following its lead, after all. I still feel it’s the key to all this.”

  “Someone mention me?” A ripple ran through the murky depths of the jar. The ghost’s face materialized behind the glass. Never exactly pleasant, today it seemed more than usually repulsive, like a damp corpse that had been stepped on.

  I glared at it. “Can’t you look less foul for once? You’re making the milk go sour.”

  “So I’m a bit the worse for wear,” the skull said. “I was up all night, wasn’t I? As were all of you. You look knackered, Lockwood’s black-and-blue, and Cubbins has some vile disease that leaves yellow blotches on his chin.”

  “George has recently been eating egg,” I said.
“But none of that’s important. You and I need to discuss Marissa.”

  The eyes narrowed. “Wrong. We need to discuss my freedom. We had a deal.”

  I hesitated. “Not here,” I said at last. “Not now. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Later? What’s that mean? Six weeks? A year? I know your feminine wiles.”

  “Oh, God. In a few minutes.”

  The face scowled. “Sure, I’ve heard that before. Meantime, there’ll be some new crisis that distracts you, and I’ll still be stuck here, tapping my fingers in this glassy prison.”

  “You don’t have fingers,” I growled, “and I don’t believe time is of much relevance to you, being dead. And anyway, nothing’s going to come up to distract me in the next few minutes. So stop complaining!” I looked up. “Hey, Holly.”

  There had been sounds in the hall. Holly Munro appeared at the door, carrying her cotton shopping bag. She surveyed us briefly, running a hand through her long black hair.

  George eyed the bag. “Get the doughnuts, Hol?”

  “I got them.” Her voice sounded odd. She walked past us, and began to set out the groceries on the sideboard. She moved swiftly, forcefully, clattering everything down. Her face was set, her lips pressed tight together.

  “You all right, Holly?” I asked.

  “Not really.” She crumpled the bag on the counter and took a glass from the drainer. “I ran into Sir Rupert Gale by the store.”

  At once we all focused on her. Sir Rupert was an associate of Penelope Fittes, a master swordsman and a dangerous man. He was a fixer, someone who got his hands dirty on her behalf, and he was known to put pressure on her opponents. He had crossed paths with us before.

  “Here we go,” the skull said. “Cue crisis.”

  I shut the lever on top of the jar. “What was he doing there, Hol?”

  “He was waiting for me.” Holly filled the glass from the tap and took a long drink, as if to wash away an unpleasant taste. “Ugh! He is so foul!”

  Lockwood was very still in his chair. “Did he threaten you?”

  “Not in so many words, but the implication was there. You know what he’s like. Stands too close to you, all pink and smiling, with too-strong aftershave. He was just checking that we weren’t ‘overextending’ ourselves—that’s what he called it. ‘Sticking to safe projects’ and ‘simple hauntings.’ Not investigating Penelope, in other words.”

  “Oh, we’re being very good, of course,” Lockwood said. “What else did he say?”

  “It was all a coded warning. How if we took on anything too ‘difficult,’ it would end badly for us. ‘We wouldn’t want anything unpleasant to happen to our favorite little agency.’ Gah!” She set the glass down by the sink. “Oh, and he wanted to know where we were last night.”

  Lockwood and I exchanged glances. “What time last night?”

  “After midnight. He says he has information that we weren’t in.”

  “They’re spying on us again,” I said. “What did you say?”

  “I said I didn’t know, that I’d already gone home by then,” Holly said. “He caught me by surprise, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s all right,” Lockwood said easily. “We’ve got our story ready, remember? We’ll say we were in Kentish Town, dealing with a couple of really boring Stone Knockers. George can forge the paperwork.”

  “Already done,” George said. “Holly, you look upset. Crack those doughnuts open.”

  “Thanks, I’ll have an apple.”

  He shook his head sadly. “You’ve got to learn that when you’re stressed, an apple doesn’t cut it….I feel quite shaken myself, come to think of it.” His eyes flitted to the sideboard.

  “Yes, grab the plates, George,” Lockwood said. “We’ll all have one.”

  And we all did, even Holly. George was wise in such matters; a doughnut made the world seem almost right again. Almost, but not entirely. Because the world wasn’t right. Marissa wasn’t in her tomb. Winkman had been freed from prison. And Holly’s little encounter wasn’t an unusual one at all.

  Traditionally, the activities of all psychic detection agencies were overseen by DEPRAC, the Department of Psychic Research and Control, which operated out of Scotland Yard in central London. DEPRAC had the power to punish misbehavior and ensure high professional standards. Sometimes fines were levied and, in rare cases, companies shut down. But generally the department concentrated more on researching the Problem than bothering agents in the field.

  Since Penelope Fittes had taken command of the Rotwell Agency, however, things had begun to change. Ms. Fittes now controlled three-quarters of all agency activity in London, and she had at once set about bringing the rest to heel. Fittes personnel began to occupy many senior posts at Scotland Yard. New rules came into force. Henceforth, independent detection agencies, with their limited resources, had to confine their efforts to small-scale hauntings. Not only that, they had to submit to regular DEPRAC inspections to ensure they were acting professionally. Any firm in breach of these rules would be immediately closed down. Allegedly this was for public safety; in reality it was a means of monitoring our actions.

  As the smallest agency of all, Lockwood & Co. found itself at the center of official attention. We were subjected to random house calls. We were stopped in the street and asked to show papers to prove what jobs we were on. And we were followed as we went about our work. I don’t mean there were spies standing outside our doorway all the time. Instead, we were forever looking over our shoulders and finding nothing—until, one day, with grim inevitability, there would be a smirking boy trailing us to Baker Street Station, or a man in a hat standing outside Arif’s store, brazenly watching as we trooped by. Sometimes several such incidents happened in a week; other times a fortnight would go by with nothing. The casualness was part of the intention. It reminded you that they thought you almost worth ignoring.

  In all this we sensed the hand of Penelope Fittes. She wanted to keep close tabs on us. Still, it was Lockwood & Co. she was dealing with. We weren’t easily cowed.

  When the random DEPRAC visits happened, for instance, the scene they found at 35 Portland Row would be as follows: George would be at the sink in the basement trying to scrub ectoplasm out of his jeans. Lockwood would be in his bathrobe, hair ruffled, palely sipping a mug of tea and making notes on the Visitors disposed of the night before. Holly and I might be slowly sorting through a mess of equipment, or stacking Sources ready for transport to the furnaces. In short, it was a picture of weariness and discipline; of a tiny agency functioning successfully, but at full stretch. The representatives would ask to look at our casebook, take copies of our recent invoices, ghost-records, and client reviews, and after enjoying tea and biscuits and a boatload of Lockwood’s tousled charm, head on their way.

  Once they’d left, we’d shut the door, lock it, and get on with the things we were really doing. Outwardly, we kept up a facade of ordinary, small-scale cases. Beyond that, we had an agenda of our own. This double life had its challenges, and each of my colleagues coped with it in their own way.

  Holly met it as she did all obstacles, with brisk efficiency that looked a problem in the eye and didn’t blink. Whether it was breaking into the Fittes mausoleum, or standing up to interrogation in the street, she always maintained her trademark Munro cool. It was hard to imagine her ever losing this quality, and somehow, despite everything, that made me confident that nothing really dreadful could or would happen in this world. Her unflappable demeanor used to make me seethe, yet now I found it a source of reassurance. Come what may, I knew Holly’s hair would swish like gossamer as she walked; her clothes would flow effortlessly around her curves; her skin would glow with that same coffee-colored luster that spoke of close association with mineral water and green bean salads, and contrasted, reprovingly, with my famous burger-and-biscuit complexion. No, Holly would always be the same, and that made me happy.

  George’s steeliness was of a different sort. To strangers, it might have see
med that he had none. He was too soft, too scruffy, too disheveled. If he’d ever knowingly shared a room with a hairbrush, there was precious little sign of it. His doughy, featureless face lacked signposts to a personality, let alone a strong opinion. Even those enemies who knew of his fame as a researcher saw this quality as something negative. They thought him a passive absorber of information, a shuffler of papers—someone better wedged safely in a study chair than facing supernatural terrors in the field.

  In this, as in everything, they were entirely wrong. George’s researching prowess, his ability to tramp from library to library, spending endless dusty hours hunting for the smallest clue, was based on ferocious determination and an iron will. If he hunted for something, he found it; if he found something, he clung on like a terrier and shook it until all the relevant facts fell out. He was relentless. He took the mystery behind the epidemic of ghosts as a personal affront, and the more pressure the Fittes Agency exerted to stop us from investigating it, the deeper George dug in. He would not be denied.

  And then there was Lockwood. Lockwood, most of all.

  He was the center around which we revolved—all of us, even Quill Kipps, our former enemy and new associate; even Flo Bones, the terror of the tide line, one of the most outstanding relic-women of the city, at least in terms of smell. Mostly unnoticed among the ghost-filled streets of London, Kipps and Flo both went about quiet errands on our behalf. They did so because Lockwood asked them to, and that was enough.

  The secret to his pull, and to his resilience in the face of the Fittes Agency’s spying and intimidation, was his combination of enormous energy and otherworldly calm. Few things fazed him; he remained coolly detached, absorbing pressure with a tilted eyebrow and a small, wry smile, before translating it into swift, sure action. Ghosts had always felt the brunt of his forcefulness; now he brought the same qualities to bear on his living enemies. In so doing he galvanized his friends, even as he kept us all at arm’s length.