‘What’s the matter, Maggie?’ said a man at her side, obviously glad to turn the conversation away from bricks and mortar. ‘Looking for something?’

Mrs. Ampleforth, whose still lovely skin under the abundant white hair made her face look like a rose in snow, bent forward over the cream-coloured satin bedspread she was embroidering and smiled. ‘I was only thinking,’ said Maggie, turning to her host whose recital had paused but not died upon his lips, ‘how surprised the owls and bats would be if they could come in and see the change in their old home.’

‘Oh, I do hope they won’t,’ cried a high female voice from the depths of a chair whose generous proportions obscured the speaker.

‘Don’t be such a baby, Eileen,’ said Maggie’s neighbour in tones that only a husband could have used. ‘Wait till you see the family ghost.’

‘Ronald, please! Have pity on my poor nerves!’ The upper half of a tiny, childish, imploring face peered like a crescent moon over the rim of the chair.

‘If there is a ghost,’ said Maggie, afraid that her original remark might be construed as a criticism, ‘I envy him his beautiful surroundings. I would willingly take his place.’

‘Hear, hear,’ agreed Ronald. ‘A very happy haunting-ground. Is there a ghost, Charles?’

There was a pause. They all looked at their host.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, who rarely spoke except after a pause and never without a slight impressiveness of manner, ‘there is and there isn’t.

The silence grew even more respectful.

‘The ghost of Low Threshold Hall,’ Mr. Ampleforth continued, ‘is no ordinary ghost.’

‘It wouldn’t be,’ muttered Ronald in an aside Maggie feared might be audible.

‘It is, for one thing,’ Mr. Ampleforth pursued, ‘exceedingly considerate.’

‘Oh, how?’ exclaimed two or three voices.

‘It only comes by invitation.’

‘Can anyone invite it?’

‘Yes, anyone.’

There was nothing Mr. Ampleforth liked better than answering questions; he was evidently enjoying himself now.

‘How is the invitation delivered?’ Ronald asked. ‘Does one telephone, or does one send a card: “Mrs. Ampleforth requests the pleasure of Mr. Ghost’s company on—well—what is to-morrow?—the eighteenth August, Moaning and Groaning and Chain Rattling. R.S.V.P.”?’

‘That would be a sad solecism,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘The ghost of Low Threshold Hall is a lady.’

‘Oh,’ cried Eileen’s affected little voice. ‘I’m so thankful. I should be less frightened of a female phantom.’

‘She hasn’t attained years of discretion,’ Mr. Ampleforth said. ‘She was only sixteen when—’

‘Then she’s not “out”?’

‘Not in the sense you mean. I hope she’s not “out” in any sense,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, with grim facetiousness.

There was a general shudder.

‘Well, I’m glad we can’t ask her to an evening party,’ observed Ronald. ‘A ghost at tea-time is much less alarming. Is she what is called a “popular girl”?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Then why do people invite her?’

‘They don’t realize what they’re doing.’

‘A kind of pig in a poke business, what? But you haven’t told us yet how we’re to get hold of the little lady.’

‘That’s quite simple,’ said Mr. Ampleforth readily. ‘She comes to the door.’

The drawing-room clock began to strike eleven, and no one spoke till it had finished.

‘She comes to the door,’ said Ronald with an air of deliberation, ‘and then—don’t interrupt, Eileen, I’m in charge of the cross-examination—she—she hangs about—’

‘She waits to be asked inside.’

‘I suppose there is a time-honoured formula of invitation. “Sweet Ermyntrude, in the name of the master of the house I bid thee welcome to Low Threshold Hall. There’s no step, so you can walk straight in.” Charles, much as I admire your house, I do think it’s incomplete without a doorstep. A ghost could just sail in.’

‘There you make a mistake,’ said Mr. Ampleforth impressively. ‘Our ghost cannot enter the house unless she is lifted across the threshold.’

‘Like a bride,’ exclaimed Magdalen.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘Because she came as a bride.’ He looked round at his guests with an enigmatic smile.

They did not disappoint him. ‘Now, Charlie, don’t be so mysterious! Do tell us! Tell us the whole story.’

Mr. Ampleforth settled himself into his chair. ‘There’s very little to tell,’ he said, with the reassuring manner of someone who intends to tell a great deal, ‘but this is the tale. In the time of the Wars of the Roses the owner of Low Threshold Hall (I need not tell you his name was not Ampleforth) married en troisièmes noces the daughter of a neighbouring baron much less powerful than he. Lady Elinor Stortford was sixteen when she came and she did not live to see her seventeenth birthday. Her husband was a bad hat (I’m sorry to have to say so of a predecessor of mine), a very bad hat. He ill-treated her, drove her mad with terror, and finally killed her.’

The narrator paused dramatically but the guests felt slightly disappointed. They had heard so many stories of that kind.

‘Poor thing,’ said Magdalen, feeling that some comment was necessary, however flat. ‘So now she haunts the place. I suppose it’s the nature of ghosts to linger where they’ve suffered, but it seems illogical to me. I should want to go somewhere else.’

‘The Lady Elinor would agree with you. The first thing she does when she gets into the house is make plans for getting out. Her visits, as far as I can gather, have generally been brief.’

‘Then why does she come?’ asked Eileen.

‘She comes for vengeance,’ Mr. Ampleforth’s voice dropped at the word. ‘And apparently she gets it. Within a short time of her appearance, someone in the house always dies.’

‘Nasty spiteful little girl,’ said Ronald, concealing a yawn. ‘Then how long is she in residence?’

‘Until her object is accomplished.’

‘Does she make a dramatic departure—in a thunderstorm or something?’

‘No, she is just carried out.’

‘Who carries her this time?’

‘The undertaker’s men. She goes out with the corpse. Though some say—’

‘Oh, Charlie, do stop!’ Mrs. Ampleforth interrupted, bending down to gather up the corners of her bedspread. ‘Eileen will never sleep. Let’s go to bed.’

‘No! No!’ shouted Ronald. ‘He can’t leave off like that. I must hear the rest. My flesh was just beginning to creep.’

Mr. Ampleforth looked at his wife.

‘I’ve had my orders.’

‘Well, well,’ said Ronald, resigned. ‘Anyhow, remember what I said. A decent fall of rain, and you’ll have a foot of water under the tower there, unless you put in a doorstep.’

Mr. Ampleforth looked grave. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that. That would be to invite er—er—trouble. The absence of a step was a precaution. That’s how the house got its name.’

‘A precaution against what?’

‘Against Lady Elinor.’

‘But how? I should have thought a draw-bridge would have been more effective.’

‘Lord Deadham’s immediate heirs thought the same. According to the story they put every material obstacle they could to bar the lady’s path. You can still see in the tower the grooves which contained the portcullis. And there was a flight of stairs so steep and dangerous they couldn’t be used without risk to life and limb. But that only made it easier for Lady Elinor.’

‘How did it?’

Why, don’t you see, everyone who came to the house, friends and strangers alike, had to be helped over the threshold! There was no way of distinguishing between them. At last when so many members of the family had been killed off that it was threatened with extinction, someone conceived a brilliant idea. Can you guess what it was, Maggie?’

‘They removed all the barriers and levelled the threshold, so that any stranger who came to the door and asked to be helped into the house was refused admittance.’

‘Exactly. And the plan seems to have worked remarkably well.’