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and sighs. Type Twos, more powerful and more dangerous, can sometimes deliver a few half-intelligible words that Listeners like me are able to pick up. These too are often repetitious – imprints on the air that seldom alter, and are often connected to the key emotion that binds the spirit to the earth: terror, anger, or desire for vengeance. What ghosts don’t do, as a rule, is talk
properly
, except for the legendary Type Threes.
    Long ago, Marissa Fittes – one of the first two psychical investigators in Britain – claimed to have encountered certain spirits with which she held full conversations. She mentioned this in several books, and implied (she was never very forthcoming about the
details
) that they had told her certain secrets: about death, about the soul, about its passage to a place beyond. After her
own
demise, others had tried to achieve similar results; a few even claimed to have done so, but their accounts were never verified. It became a point of faith among most agents that Type Threes existed, but that they remained almost impossible to find. That’s certainly what
I’d
believed.
    Then the spirit in the jar – that selfsame one with the horrid goggly face – had talked to
me
.
    I had been alone in the basement at the time. I’d knocked over the ghost-jar, twisting one of the levers in its stopper, so that the hidden grille was exposed. And all at once I heard the ghost’s voice talking in my head –
really
talking, I mean, addressing me by name. It told me things too – vague, unpleasant things of the
death’s coming
variety – until I turned the lever and shut it up.
    Which may have been a mistake, because it had never spoken again.
    Lockwood and George, when I told them about my encounter, had reacted at first with vast excitement. They raced to the basement, took out the jar and swung the lever; the face in the jar said nothing. We tried a series of experiments, turning the lever differing degrees, trying at different times of day and night, sitting expectantly beside the jar, even hiding out of sight. Still the ghost was silent. Occasionally it materialized as before, and glared at us in a resentful, truculent manner, but it never spoke or seemed inclined to do so.
    It was a disappointment to us all, for different reasons. Lockwood was acutely aware of the prestige our agency would have gained from the event, if it could be proved. George thought of the fascinating insights that might be gained from someone speaking from beyond the grave. To me it was more personal, a sudden revelation of the terrifying potential of my Talent. It frightened me and filled me with foreboding, and there was a part of me that was relieved when it didn’t happen again. But I was annoyed too. Just that one fleeting incident, and both Lockwood and George had looked at me with new respect. If it could be repeated, if it could be confirmed for all to see, I would in one fell swoop become the most celebrated operative in London. But the ghost remained stubbornly silent, and as the months passed, I almost began to doubt that anything significant had occurred at all.
    Lockwood, in his practical fashion, had finally turned his attention to other things, though in every new case he made sure to double-check what voices, if any, I could hear. But George had persisted with his investigations into the skull, attempting ever more fanciful methods to get the ghost to respond. Failure hadn’t discouraged him. If anything, it had increased his passion.
    I could see his eyes gleaming now behind his glasses as he studied the silent jar.
    ‘Clearly it’s aware of us,’ he mused. ‘In some way it’s definitely conscious of what’s going on around it. It knew your name. It knew mine too – you told me. It must be able to hear things through the glass.’
    ‘Or lip-read,’ I pointed out. ‘We
do
quite often have it uncovered.’
    ‘I suppose . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows? So many questions! Why is it here?