Lockwood by Jonathan Stroud Read Free Book Online Page A

‘Oh, come on. You love all that mystery about him. Just like you love that pensive, far-off look he does sometimes, as if he’s brooding about important matters, or contemplating a tricky bowel movement. Don’t try to deny it.
I
know.’
    I looked at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘All I’m saying,’ I said, ‘is that it’s not right, the way he keeps everything to himself. I mean, we’re his friends, aren’t we? He should open up to us. It makes me think that—’
    ‘Think what, Lucy?’
    I spun round. Lockwood was at the door. He’d showered and dressed, and his hair was wet. His dark eyes were on me. I couldn’t tell how long he’d been there.
    I didn’t say anything, but I felt my face go pink. George busied himself with something on his desk.
    Lockwood held my gaze a moment, then broke the connection. He held up a small rectangular object. ‘I came down to show you this,’ he said. ‘It’s an invitation.’
    He skimmed the object across the room; it flipped past George’s outstretched hand, skidded along his desk and came to a halt in front of me. It was a piece of card – stiff, silvery-grey and glittery. Its top was emblazoned with an image of a rearing unicorn holding a lantern in its fore-hoof. Beneath this logo, it read:
----
    The Fittes Agency
    Ms Penelope Fittes
    and the board of the Estimable Fittes Agency invite
    Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle and George Cubbins
    to help celebrate the 50th Anniversary
    of the company’s founding at
    Fittes House,
    The Strand,
    on Saturday 19 June at 8 p.m.
    Black Tie     Carriages at 1 a.m.     RSVP
----
    I stared at it blankly, my embarrassment forgotten. ‘Penelope Fittes? Inviting us to a party?’
    ‘And not just
any
party,’ Lockwood said. ‘
The
party. The party of the year. Anybody who’s anybody will be there.’
    ‘Er, so why have
we
been asked, then?’ George gazed over my shoulder at the card.
    Lockwood spoke in a slightly huffy voice. ‘Because we’re a very prominent agency. Also because Penelope Fittes is personally friendly to us. You remember. We discovered the body of her childhood friend at Combe Carey Hall. At the bottom of the Screaming Staircase. What was his name? Sam something. She’s grateful. She wrote telling us so. And maybe she’s kept an eye on our more recent successes too.’
    I raised my eyebrows at this. Penelope Fittes, Chairman of the Fittes Agency and granddaughter of the great psychical pioneer Marissa Fittes, was one of the most powerful people in the country. She had government ministers queuing at her door. Her opinions on the Problem were published in all the newspapers and discussed in all the living rooms of the land. She seldom left her apartments above Fittes House, and was said to control her business with an iron fist. I rather doubted she was overly interested in Lockwood & Co., fascinating though we were.
    All the same, here was the invitation.
    ‘Nineteenth of June,’ I mused. ‘That’s this Saturday.’
    ‘So . . . are we going?’ George asked.
    ‘
Of course
we are!’ Lockwood said. ‘This is the perfect opportunity to make some connections. All the big names will be there, all the agency heads, the big cheeses of DEPRAC, the industrialists who run the salt and iron companies, maybe even the Chairman of the Sunrise Corporation. We’ll never get another chance to meet them.’
    ‘Lovely,’ George said. ‘An evening spent in a crowded, sweaty room with dozens of old, fat, boring businesspeople . . . What could be better? Give me a choice between that and fighting a Pale Stench, I’d go for the flatulent ghost any time.’
    ‘You lack vision, George,’ Lockwood said disapprovingly, ‘and you also spend far too much time with
that
thing.’ He reached out and, just as I had done, tapped his nail on the thick glass of the ghost-jar. It made a faint, discordant sound. The substance in the jar stirred briefly, then hung still. ‘It isn’t