This is the final article in the series inspired by Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. books.
Unlike Anthony Horowitz's little Diamond Brothers stories, which may have inspired a few scenes in Jonathan Stroud's books, the Lockwood books can be extensively quoted from and commented on without much of the main action in the stories being revealed. This means that associated topics such as temptation and glamour can be discussed in detail without spoiling the books' accounts of the young psychical detection agents' exciting adventures and dangerous assignments and the variety of characters they encounter along the way.
I found more commentary-inspiring material in the Lockwood books than I originally expected. Most of it has been covered in previous articles, but there is still a little more to say about falling under the spell of a glamorous image and bright angels who are really dark demons.
Predatory ghosts, cult leaders, glamour, temptations and threats have been featured in separate articles; this article about Penelope Fittes and the 'master' she worships includes all these elements.
Towards the end of The Empty Grave, it is revealed that the glamorous Penelope Fittes, who as previously described tempts Anthony Lockwood and his colleagues and shows her true, and very unpleasant, colours when thwarted and rejected, maintains her young and attractive appearance by very sinister means and is herself in thrall to someone with a glamorous image, someone who has all along been in the background helping her with her unsavoury activities.
Penelope Fittes is under the spell of a golden ghost or Visitor called Ezekiel.
Needless to say, Ezekiel's glittering image conceals an inner self that is the exact opposite of what he appears to be, and he too shows his real, and very unpleasant, self when threatened and defied.
Ezekiel is a high-level ghost. Penelope first saw him as being "fair of form and wise of countenance". He became her beloved spirit adviser, someone who would help her transcend her baser nature and make her pure.
Anyone who knows something about cult leaders and how they make members feel part of an elite group would recognise this ploy and think, “Here we go again!” and, “Same old, same old.”
When Anthony Lockwood and the others first encounter Penelope Fittes, they see a tall and beautiful woman. Anthony thinks that she is much nicer than he was expecting. When they first encounter Ezekiel, they see a tall golden shape with a coronet of white fire, too radiant to look upon.
The luminous figure with its fiery crown becomes black with anger when its existence is threatened:
“The radiant form shrank and hardened, became a dark and bestial shape with glowing eyes and gaping mouth...”
Ezekiel tells Penelope that Lucy Carlyle is stubborn and not like them and they must kill her.
In his change from angel to demon, Ezekiel brings to mind the cult leader Maharishi Yogi, who showed anger and hatred when defied, and August Strindberg's Secret Friend, who at first was "my good angel" then became a "demon of vengeance" and made many sinister threats when Strindberg wouldn't do what he wanted him to do.
As for Penelope Fittes, her real appearance is just as repulsive as Ezekiel's and she behaves just like other thwarted tempters when Lucy Carlyle rejects her offer of eternal youth and an alliance.
This final threat shows how evil she really is:
“Good-bye, Lucy. After you’re dead, I’m going to seek out your companions and watch Ezekiel suck the flesh from their bones. Think of that happening to your darling Anthony as you die.”
She would have done it too!
These articles stress how important it is to avoid falling under the spell of someone with a very glamorous image and to resist their temptations. It is essential to ask what their motives might be and what they are hiding.
It is also advisable to ask whether they too have been tempted and offered power. Are they just trying to pass on what they are getting and treat others as they themselves have been treated? Are they part of a metaphysical multi-level marketing chain? Perhaps we should think of Ezekiel as Penelope Fittes' upline!
These articles stress the point that appearances can be deceptive: what matters most is not what we see but what is below the surface. The traditional saying that all that glitters is not gold is very appropriate in the cases of Ezekiel, Penelope Fittes and other tempters.
There is another side to this: just as a golden, glamorous surface can conceal a black interior, the converse sometimes applies.
In the final showdown scene, Lucy Carlyle has been fighting Ezekiel and Penelope Fittes on her own and getting the worst of it when Anthony Lockwood suddenly arrives and joins the party.
He has been fighting battles of his own and is in a terrible state. He is weak, his face is bashed about and his clothes are ruined. He looks a complete mess and not at all like his usual self, yet to Lucy he seems even more himself: he radiates energy and brightness; his good qualities and strong spirit shine through, transcending the rough and battered outer image.
His radiance is very different from that emitted by Ezekiel and Penelope Fittes, which conceals their shrivelled spirits. It is the real thing, not fool's gold.
Many other writers have made the point that it is unwise to judge by appearances only, as what you see may be the opposite of what you get.
William Shakespeare says this in Twelfth Night:
“Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks o’erflourished by the devil.”
More words of wisdom from William Shakespeare:
Tolkien says something similar in The Fellowship of the Ring in the scene where Frodo has to decide whether Strider is a friend or a spy for the Enemy. Strider has a very rough appearance, but Frodo thinks that one of Sauron's spies would ”seem fairer and feel fouler”:
“'I see,’ laughed Strider. ‘I look foul and feel fair. Is that it? All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost .’”
A TV series based on the first two Lockwood & Co. books has been developed for Netflix. I am not a subscriber, and after watching the trailer and a few other short clips on YouTube I am going to stay that way!
I looked at some Lockwood & Co. reviews. They are mostly favourable, but one of them reports that the characters use 4-letter words. This does not happen in the books, and in my opinion they are the better for it.
Luckily, I was prepared to be disappointed: I have learned to expect films and TV series that are based on books to contain miscast actors, some of whom look nothing like the descriptions of the people they portray, and characters, dialogue and scenes that are not in the books.
Where I see some books as angels, I often see their film adaptions - and the people responsible for them - as demons!
This DVD could be seen as yet another example of something that is less good on the inside than it appears on the surface:
