To get from the London offices of Lockwood & Co. to the village of Combe Carey is a fairly simple business. All it takes is a quick taxi up the road to Marylebone Station, a leisurely wait at platform six, and finally a gentle forty-minute train ride – through rolling, grey-brown suburbs, then the wintry Berkshire fields – before you arrive below the mossy flanks of St Wilfred’s Church in old Combe Carey station. An hour and a half’s journey, tops. Easy, quick, straightforward, and as pleasant as a trip can be.
Yeah, right. That’s the theory. But it isn’t so much fun when you’re helping carry six super-massive duffel bags weighed down with metal, plus a rapier bag with four old ones stuffed inside as spares, and you have a brand-new rapier at your belt getting in your way. It also doesn’t help if your leader and his deputy both conveniently mislay their wallets, so it’s you who have to fork out for the train tickets, and pay supplements for the heavy luggage. Or that you spend so much time haggling you end up missing the first train. Yes, all that really improves your mood.
Then there’s the small matter of heading towards one of the most haunted houses in England, and hoping you aren’t going to die.
This last factor wasn’t improved en route by George giving us a full briefing on the things he’d discovered over the previous two days. He had a ring-binder filled with neatly written notes and, as the train pootled cheerily past the spires and ghost-lamps of villages hidden in the wooded folds of gentle hills, he regaled us with nasty details from them.
‘Basically, it seems what Fairfax told us was right,’ he said. ‘The Hall’s had a bad rep for centuries. You remember it started off as a priory? I found a medieval document about that. It was built by an outfit known as the Heretic Monks of St John. Apparently they “turned awaye from the laweful worshippe of God to the adoration of darke things”, whatever that means. Before long a group of barons got wind of this and burned the place down. They took over the priory’s land and divided it amongst themselves.’
‘Possibly a set-up?’ I said. ‘They framed the monks in order to nick the land?’
George nodded. ‘Maybe. Since then it’s been owned by a succession of rich families – the Careys, the Fitz-Percys, the Throckmortons – all of whom benefited from the wealth of the estate. But the Hall itself is nothing but trouble. I couldn’t find too many details, but one owner abandoned it in the fifteenth century because of a “malign presence”. It’s almost burned down two or three times, and – get this – in 1666 an outbreak of plague killed off its inhabitants. Seems a guest turned up at the door and found everyone inside lying dead, except for one little baby, left crying in a cradle in a bedroom.’
Lockwood whistled. ‘Grisly. That could be your cluster of Visitors, right there.’
‘Did they save the baby?’ I said.
George consulted his notes. ‘Yeah. He was adopted by a cousin and became a school teacher. Which is a tough break, but he was lucky to get out. Anyway, the bad vibes in that house continue right up until this century. There’ve been a succession of accidents, and the last owner before Fairfax – a distant relative – shot himself.’
‘No shortage of potential Visitors for us, then,’ Lockwood mused. ‘Any mention of this Screaming Staircase, or the dreaded Red Room?’
‘One fragment, from Corbett’s Berkshire Legends.’ George turned a page. ‘It claims two children from Combe Carey were found unconscious at the bottom of the “old steps” in the Hall. One died right away, but the other recovered sufficiently to report being beset by a “foul and devilish ululation, a cruel and unholy outcry”.’ He snapped the folder shut. ‘Then she died too.’
‘What’s a ululation?’ I said.
‘That would be the screaming.’ Lockwood stared out at the passing landscape. ‘Stories, stories . . . What we badly need is facts.’
George adjusted his glasses in a complacent manner. ‘Aha. Maybe I can help you there too.’ From inside the folder he brought out two pieces of paper, which he unfolded and set on the little table beneath the window of our compartment. The first was a hand-drawn floor-plan of a large building, showing two extensive levels, each with walls, windows and stairs carefully rendered in ink. Here and there were annotations, written in blue: Main Lobby, Library, Duke’s Chamber, Long Gallery . . . At the top, in George’s neat little handwriting, was written West Wing: Combe Carey Hall.
‘This is superb work, George,’ Lockwood said. ‘Where did you find it?’
George scratched his pudgy nose. ‘The Royal Architectural Society on Pall Mall. They’ve got all sorts of plans and surveys there. This one was done in the nineteenth century. Look at the great staircase: it’s an absolute monster. Must dominate the hall. The other plan’ – he swapped the papers over – ‘is much older; might even be medieval. It’s a very rough sketch, but it shows the place when it was still basically the ruins of the priory. It’s much smaller, and there are lots of rooms that must have been knocked down when they rebuilt it as a house, because they’re not on the later map. But look, you can see that the massive staircase is already there, and also the areas that became the lobby and Long Gallery. The Long Gallery was the monks’ refectory, where they ate. Some upstairs rooms correspond to the nineteenth-century plan too. So between them,’ George said, ‘these plans tell us where the oldest regions of the West Wing are.’
‘And that,’ Lockwood said, ‘is where the ultimate Source is most likely to be. Excellent. We’ll start our searches in those areas tonight. What about the other material I asked you for, George? Can I have a look?’
George produced a slim green file. ‘There you go. Everything I could find on Mr John William Fairfax. As he said, he inherited the place six or seven years ago. Didn’t seem put off by its reputation. Anyway, you’ve lots of articles on him there – interviews, profiles, that sort of thing.’
Lockwood settled back with the file. ‘Let’s see . . . Hmm, seems that Fairfax is a firm advocate of fox hunting. Likes hunting and fishing . . . Supports a lot of charities. Ooh, and he was keen amateur actor in his youth . . . Look at this review: “Will Fairfax gives an intense performance as Othello . . .” The mind boggles. But it makes sense, in a way. He’s a bit theatrical even now.’
‘That’s not really relevant, is it?’ I said. I was still studying the floor-plans, tracing the curve of the staircase, pondering the location of the infamous Red Room.
‘Oh, it’s good to have the full background to a job . . .’ Lockwood became engrossed. Conversation faltered; the train rushed on. Once or twice I touched the front of my coat, feeling a small hard outline hanging beneath: the case containing the ghost-girl’s locket. I’d kept it on me, safe, just as Lockwood had instructed. I hoped he was right; that we’d soon bring that story to a conclusion. Assuming, of course, that we survived the night in Combe Carey Hall.
Outside the village station, a car was waiting for us. A tousle-haired youth lounged against the bonnet, reading an old issue of True Hauntings. As we staggered out under our burden, like three trainee Sherpas back from Everest, he lowered the magazine and regarded us with callous amusement mixed with pity. He touched his forelock in a slightly ironic gesture. ‘Mr Lockwood, is it? Got your message. I’ll take you to the Hall.’
Our bags were stuffed into the back, and with some difficulty George and I squeezed in alongside. Lockwood bounded round to the front beside the driver. The taxi veered out into the road, sending ducks squalling across the village pond and me sprawling headlong onto George’s lap. Grimly, I levered myself upright. The lad whistled through his teeth as we drove between stark grey elms.
‘No extra ironwork on the car, I see,’ Lockwood said, by way of conversation.
‘No need, round here,’ the boy replied.
‘Safe district, is it? No Visitors around?’
‘Nope. They’re all up at the house.’ The boy turned sharply to avoid a pothole, so that I was flung bodily across George’s lap again.
George looked down at me. ‘Want a hand? You can stay there if it’s easier.’
‘No. No, thank you. I can manage.’
‘You mean Combe Carey Hall?’ Lockwood was saying. ‘Good. That’s where we’ll be staying tonight.’
‘In the new wing? Or with old Bert Starkins the caretaker?’
‘In the main house.’
There was a pause, during which the youth took his hands off the wheel to cross himself, touch a small religious icon on the dashboard and spit ritually out of the window. He looked in the rear-view mirror in a ruminative manner. ‘I like that red duffel bag,’ he said. ‘I could do with one for my football gear. Mind if I nip up to the Hall tomorrow and ask for it? Mr Fairfax wouldn’t be wanting it, would he? Nor old Starkins.’
‘Sorry,’ Lockwood said. ‘We’ll still have need of it tomorrow.’
The youth nodded. ‘I’ll drop by anyhow,’ he said. ‘No harm in seeing.’
We drove uphill, through straggling woods, amid a tangled grid of cold, dark fields lined with winter greens. ‘You ever been inside the Hall?’ Lockwood said.
‘What? You think I’m mad?’
‘You must know something about it, though. About its haunting.’
The youth turned abruptly up a narrow side-lane, a miracle of last-minute steering, so that everything in the back of the car shifted violently to the left, and my head was brutally sandwiched between the window-glass and some soft portion of George’s face. For a few seconds I heard nothing except him breathing in my ear; by the time he prised himself loose, with much gratuitous fumbling, we had passed through a tumbledown gateway and were racing up a long straight drive.
‘. . . murdered, hidden, and never found,’ the boy was saying. ‘That’s how it all began, I reckon. Everyone round here knows it. One death leads to another, and so becomes a chain of deaths that’ll keep on growing as long as the house shall last. Whole place should be burned down and salt sown on the ashes – that’s what my mum says. Not that we can get the owner to see that kind of sense. He’s so set on his little experiments. So: here we are. That’ll be ten pounds fifty, plus two for the extra bags.’
‘Interesting,’ Lockwood said. ‘Particularly the first bit. Thanks.’
We had come to a halt at the terminus of the gravel drive. Through my window I saw rolling parkland, spotted with oaks and beeches, and part of the lake I’d noticed in Fairfax’s photograph. It all had a wild, unkempt look. The grass was high, and the lakeshore overgrown with matted sedge. On the other side, past George, I could just make out the pale trunk of a tree, two vast urns on plinths and, behind it all, the blank grey stone of a house.
Lockwood was busy talking with the driver. I got out and helped George with the bags. Combe Carey Hall rose vast and tall above me. The air was dank and chill.
Far above, long brick chimneys sprouted like horns against the clouds. This left-hand portion of the house, which I assumed to be the older, western, wing, was mostly of ancient stone, switching to brickwork near the roof and on the margins. It had a great number of windows, of many sizes and at a variety of levels, each one blankly reflecting the grey November sky. Cracked columns supported an ugly concrete portico above the double entrance doors, which were reached by a splaying flight of stairs. A monumental ash tree, of considerable age and size, stood by the far end of the wing. Its bone-white branches pressed against the bricks like the legs of giant spiders.
To the right of the entrance stairs, the smaller, eastern, wing was also brickwork, but of clearly modern construction. By a curious accident of architecture, the wings were set at a slight angle to each other, so the effect was of the entire house subtly reaching out to encircle me. It was an ugly, oppressive mongrel of a building and I’d have disliked it intensely, even if I hadn’t known its reputation.
‘Lovely!’ Lockwood said cheerily. ‘Here’s our hotel for the night.’ He had been talking animatedly with the driver for a surprisingly long time. As I watched, he handed over a wad of notes – considerably more than £12.50 – and a sealed brown envelope.
‘You’ll deliver it, won’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s important.’
The youth nodded. In a shower of gravel, his taxi roared away, leaving behind a smell of fear and petrol, and the sight of an elderly man descending the steps of the house.
‘What was all that about?’ I demanded.
‘Little package I needed posting,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘Hush,’ George whispered. ‘This must be “old Bert Starkins”. He is old, isn’t he?’
The caretaker was certainly very ancient, a tight and desiccated thing from which all softness and moisture had long since been extracted. Where Mr Fairfax had been bullishly vigorous despite his age and infirmity, this man was more like the ash tree by the house: gnarled and twisted, but holding tenaciously to life. He had a shock of grey-white hair, and a narrow face that disintegrated, as he drew near, into a web of lines, a limestone pavement of incised clints and grykes. His clothes carried an air of sombre correctness: he was dressed in an old-fashioned tail coat of dark black velvet, from the sleeves of which grey, liver-spotted fingers protruded. His striped trousers were incredibly thin, his shoes as long and pointed as his nose.
He came to a halt and surveyed us dismally. ‘Welcome to Combe Carey. Mr Fairfax is expecting you, but is presently indisposed. He will be ready to receive you shortly. In the meantime, he’s asked that I show you round the grounds and introduce you to the Hall.’ His voice was broken, querulous, like the rustling of willow fronds.
‘Thank you,’ Lockwood said. ‘Are you Mr Starkins?’
‘I am, and I’ve been caretaker here for fifty-three years, man and boy, so I know a thing or two about the place and I don’t care who knows it.’
‘I – I’m sure you do. That’s excellent. Where shall we put our bags?’
‘Leave them here. Who’s going to take them? Not the Inhabitants of the Hall, I’m sure; they don’t stir before sundown. Come then, I’ll show you the gardens.’
Lockwood held up a hand. ‘Excuse me, but it’s been a long journey. Do you have . . . any facilities nearby?’
The net of wrinkles grew deeper; shadows enveloped the old man’s eyes. ‘When we get to the house, boy. I can’t escort you now. Mr Fairfax wants to show you the interior himself.’
‘It’s a bit urgent.’
‘Well, you could give me directions.’
‘No! Impossible.’
‘I’ll just nip behind one of those urns, then. No one will know.’
Starkins scowled. ‘Up the steps, across the lobby, little room to the left of the stairs.’
‘Thanks so much. Won’t be a moment.’ Lockwood hurried away.
‘If he can’t hold it in now,’ the old man said, ‘how will he cope tonight, when the light begins to drain away from the Long Gallery?’
‘Er, I don’t know,’ I said. Lockwood’s behaviour had slightly perplexed me too.
‘Well, we don’t have to wait for him,’ Starkins went on. He pointed up at the western wing. ‘This stonework marks the oldest portion of Combe Carey. It’s the shell of the original priory – you can see one of the chapel windows there – built by the notorious Monks of St John. Ah, they were a wicked order! It’s said they turned away from God to the worship of—’
‘– darke things,’ I murmured.
Starkins looked at me askance. ‘Who’s doing this tour, me or you? But you’re right. Such depraved sacrifices and rituals . . . Ooh, it’s terrible to think of it. Well, the rumours spread, and finally the priory was sacked by the barons. Seven of the wickedest monks were thrown down a well. The rest were burned inside the building. Yes, they all died screaming inside those walls! By the way, I’ve prepared your beds in the guest rooms on the first floor. There’re ensuite bathrooms too. You’ve all the mod cons.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Is the well still open?’ George asked.
‘No. You could still see a disused well out here in the courtyard when I was a lad, but they sealed it up with an iron plug, years ago, and buried it in sand.’
George and I scanned the silent building for a time. I was trying to work out which, in Mr Fairfax’s photograph, had been the window with the apparent spectral figure standing at it. It was very hard to tell. There were several potential candidates, seemingly up on the first or second floor.
‘Are the monks the ultimate Source of the haunting, do you think?’ I asked. ‘Sounds like they must be.’
‘It’s not my place to speculate,’ Bert Starkins said. ‘Might be the monks; then again, it might be mad Sir Rufus Carey, who built the first Hall from the ruins of the priory in 1328 . . . Ah, here’s your weak-bladdered friend back. About time too.’
Lockwood was pattering towards us, a spring in his step. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Have I missed anything?’
‘We were just hearing about mad Sir Rufus,’ I said.
Starkins nodded. ‘Yes. He was known hereabouts as the Red Duke, on account of his flaming hair and addiction to spilled blood. It’s said he brought his enemies to a torture chamber deep inside the house, where . . .’ He hesitated. ‘No, I can’t say more, not with a young girl present.’
‘Oh, go on,’ George said. ‘Lucy’s terribly jaded. Look at her. She’s seen it all.’
‘I have seen a lot,’ I said sweetly.
The old man grunted. ‘Let’s just say they provided his nightly . . . entertainments. When he’d finished off each one, he set their skulls on the steps of the central staircase with candles burning behind the eye-sockets.’ Starkins’s aged, rheumy eyes rolled in horror at the thought. ‘So it went for years, until the stormy night one of the victims broke free and cut Sir Rufus’s throat with a rusted manacle. From that day to this, whenever the Red Duke’s ghost stalks the corridors, you can hear the souls of his victims howling. They say it’s like the very staircase screams.’
Lockwood, George and I glanced at each other. ‘So that’s the origin of the Screaming Staircase?’ Lockwood asked.
Starkins shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Have you ever heard it?’ I said.
‘Not a chance! Wouldn’t catch me going into the Hall by night.’
‘Well, what about anyone you know? Have they heard it? Any of your friends?’
‘Friends?’ The caretaker’s forehead creased in puzzlement at the concept. ‘It’s not my place to have friends. I’m a servant of the Hall. Well, let’s continue the tour.’
Old Mr Starkins took us on a rambling circuit of the house, pointing out external features, and giving us a potted guide. It soon became apparent that, in his opinion at least, every stone and tree had some horrid association. Sir Rufus and the monks had set the tone. Almost all the subsequent owners of the Hall had been mad, or bad, or a messy combination of both. As they hacked and strangled their way down the years, countless killings had taken place. Theoretically, any one of them might have contributed to the terrible atmosphere of the Hall, but the sheer volume of anecdotes was both numbing and hard to believe. I could see Lockwood struggling to keep an incredulous smile off his face, while George dawdled behind, yawning and rolling his eyes. For my part I soon gave up trying to remember all the stories, and spent my time studying the house. I noticed that, the main entrance aside, there were no obvious exits from the ground floor, except in the modern East Wing, which Mr Fairfax used. His Rolls was parked outside this side-door; the chauffeur, stripped to his shirt-sleeves despite the bitter air, stood polishing the bonnet.
In the grounds beyond the East Wing stretched the boating lake, drab and kidney-shaped. Close by were rose gardens, and a tall round tower with ruined battlements.
Bert Starkins pointed. ‘I draw your attention to Sir Lionel’s Folly.’
‘An unusual tower,’ Lockwood ventured.
‘Wait for it,’ George whispered.
The old man nodded. ‘Yes, it was from the top of that tower that Lady Caroline Throckmorton threw herself in 1863. Lovely summer evening, it was. She stood astride the crenulations, skirts flapping, silhouetted against a blood-red sky, while the servants tried to coax her back in with tea and seed cake. No good, of course. They said she stepped off as casually as if she were alighting from an omnibus.’
‘At least it was a serene end,’ I said.
‘You think so? She screamed and flapped her arms all the way down.’
There was a short silence. Wind ruffled the cold waters of the lake. George cleared his throat. ‘Well . . . it’s a nice rose garden.’
‘Yes . . . Built where she landed.’
‘A pleasant lake—’
‘Where old Sir John Carey perished. Took off for a swim one night. They say he swam to the middle, then dropped like a stone, weighed down by guilty memories.’
Lockwood pointed hastily to a little cottage surrounded by shrubs and hedges. ‘What about that house—’
‘Never found his corpse, they didn’t.’
‘Really? Shame. Now, that cottage—’
‘It’s down there still, cradled amongst the mud and stones and old drowned leaves . . . I’m sorry, what did you say?’
‘That little house. What’s the appalling story about that?’
The ancient man sucked his gums meditatively. ‘Ain’t none.’
‘There’s nothing?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure? No suicide pacts or crimes of passion? Must at least be a quick stabbing or something, surely.’
The caretaker appraised Lockwood in a thoughtful manner. ‘Perhaps, sir, you’d be making one of your clever college jokes about me?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Lockwood said. ‘And actually I’ve never been to college.’
‘Perhaps you don’t believe the tales I’ve told,’ the old man said. Like cartwheels slipping in thick mud, the rheumy eyes swivelled round to George and me. ‘Perhaps none of you do.’
‘No, no. We do,’ I said. ‘We believe every word. Don’t we, George?’
‘Almost all of them.’
Bert Starkins scowled. ‘You’ll discover very shortly whether or not what I say is true. In any case, there’s no ghost in that cottage because that’s where I live. I keep it clean of Visitors.’ Even from a distance the iron defences dangling from the tiled roof were clear.
The old man said no more. He stalked onwards, rounded the final corner and led us back to the front of the house, where we discovered our duffel bags had been moved to the top of the entrance steps, and a tall, emaciated figure stood at the open doors, waving his iron-handled walking stick in greeting.
