The last few weeks of doing little to nothing were getting tiring. Since most visitors didn't appear during the summer, Holly, George and I went on a few cases a month, and when we weren't busy working, we'd sit at home, mostly in silence, in need of topics for conversation. We always had a cup of tea sitting on our laps.
It was never too warm for tea.
Some days, when we had the whole day off, I'd just stand at the window, playing scenes in my head where Lucy would come home early, bright and jolly, scowling at the ghost jar. I missed her.
Once or twice I also imagined her running up to me with my letter, and throwing herself into my arms, but I pushed those thoughts aside. It wasn't going to happen.
Today, we had a job to do at St. Paul's cathedral, where two lurkers were noticed sitting in two seats, just staring blankly into space.
I gathered my kit, and noticed a new, rather large scratches on the hilt of my rapier. It was old and I needed a new one.
The cab driver was waiting outside for us. He wasn't the usual driver we had, always sticking his nose into our business. He was very large, but quiet, and he looked melancholic, but as I tried to say something to him, I noticed he had a claw-mark down one eye, so I assumed he was not the type I'd like to befriend.
We entered the cathedral, and immediately noticed to chairs that stood out from the rest. They were old and rusty, whilst the rest were polished and shiny.
'Those are the seats where the visitors will appear.' Said George in a monotonous voice.
I put down my bag. 'We should lay out some iron chains around them, no, one chain should be fine, they're only type ones.'
I looked around, to see if there were any more clues to where the sources could be. Nothing. I needed Lucy's psychic touch right now.
After he finished laying out the iron chains, George began taking temperature measurements and holly was admiring a beautiful portrait of a tall, Indian woman. She was the empress of India around two hundred years back. Could she be one of the ghosts?
'Lockwood, look.'
It was holly, she was brushing off some dust from the back of one of the old chairs.
'It's hard to believe this place is still in use, would you look at all this dust? Look, here, on the back, there's a metal slab. It's not iron. It would be interesting to see what Lucy could have said.'
Holly blew on the slab, and particles of dust came whirling off it like smoke.
'It's got something written on it. A name- "Anjali Bhavsar"- that's her alright, the empress.'
I went over to the portrait of the empress and for some reason, she already looked ghastly in life. I wasn't exactly excited to see how much more ghost like she had become after death.
'What about this chair?' I bent over to blow off the dust from the slab on the second chair.
'I'm afraid it's almost completely illegible.'
George curiously walked over to where I was tracing the few carved letters on the slab.
'Interesting,' he said 'knife slashes, very interesting.'
