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‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Phyllis replied with a sigh. ‘I never thought I’d be playing with a Ouija board in the middle of the night.’

‘We’re not playing ,’ Alma corrected irritably.

Phyllis looked contrite. ‘I didn’t mean playing. Of course, I didn’t mean that.’

Alma’s face took on a self-righteous quality in the flickering glow of the candlelight.

She rested a finger on the planchette. The nail was coated in claret-coloured polish, the knuckle swollen with arthritis.

No amount of jewellery or paint could disguise the ageing body, but Alma had standards and she resolutely stuck to them.

Bonnie inhaled sharply, as if about to plunge into a cold pool, and placed her finger beside Alma’s.

Phyllis joined her, and, finally, Leona.

The room seemed to hold its breath. Alma, when she spoke, adopted the tone of a priest in the pulpit.

‘Now, I solemnly call out to my father, Walter-Wyatt Aldershoff, to come forward and make himself known.’

The women did not look at each other but focused their attention on the planchette, alert to even the slightest movement, should it occur.

It did not occur. Alma could feel her heart beating hard in her chest, the force of it reverberating into her neck and throat.

If she remembered rightly, when her grandmother had summoned spirits, it had sometimes taken a few minutes to get a result.

Being an amateur, Alma presumed it might take longer for her .

‘I repeat. I summon my father, Walter-Wyatt Aldershoff, to make himself known to us.’

Still nothing.

Bonnie relaxed her shoulders; she would prefer it if the planchette didn’t move.

Phyllis, on the other hand, was now hoping something would happen.

They had come this far; it would be disappointing to go to bed without having received a message from beyond the grave.

Even a simple ‘Hello’ would be worth the inconvenience of staying up late.

A few minutes passed. The planchette remained still. Leona dared not look at her mother. She couldn’t bear to witness the disappointment or to reveal her scepticism. Alma wanted so badly to communicate with her father, but Leona knew it was futile. The dead were dead and couldn’t speak.

Alma wondered whether one had to believe in the board, in which case the chances of it working were slim.

She hoped her father might communicate through it, but deep down she didn’t believe that he would.

Nonetheless, it was a last resort. The Potemkin Diamond was in this building, somewhere, she was certain of it.

The various renovations to the property had not brought to light anything significant, so the Potemkin Diamond must, surely, still be here.

Alma knew that her grandfather, being a playful man, had incorporated into the architect’s plans secret compartments here and there in which to hide his valuables – he’d never have settled for anything as obvious or pedestrian as a safe.

One of those ‘clever little hiding places’, as he liked to call them, which his wife and son had known about, had been an invisible cupboard built into a decorative pillar in the bar.

In there he used to hide his glass of whisky from his wife when he heard her approaching across the hall.

Eventually, the bar had been destroyed by developers and so had the secret compartment.

But Alma knew there were others, among them the very clever little hiding place where he had concealed the Potemkin Diamond.

After his death, only his son had known its whereabouts.

However, Walter-Wyatt died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of fifty-six, taking the secret with him.

He had not concealed the fact that, like his father before him, he had intended to share the information with his son, but destiny had not allowed it for he had only had daughters. He had died before choosing an heir.

The only clue Alma had was the tiny key.

She had found it the previous week when sorting through her things – she didn’t want to leave Leona to have to deal with drawers and cupboards full of useless knick-knacks when she died.

Among those useless knick-knacks was a velvet-lined box containing an assortment of buttons and beads that had belonged to her mother.

Alice Aldershoff had loved to collect pretty things.

Alma had run her fingers through them, wondering why she had forgotten all about them, for they might have done nicely for her own dresses and jackets.

She had been overcome, suddenly, by a wave of nostalgia, for she could see in her mind’s eye her mother choosing buttons with her dressmaker, Mrs Varga, when her fingertips had settled unexpectedly on the key.

Alma had recognised it at once for her father had always worn it beneath his shirt and took pleasure in taking it out and showing it to her.

‘This is the key to the clever little hiding place where I keep the Potemkin Diamond,’ he would say, and he would tease her, telling her that if she was clever enough to find the hiding place, he’d give her ten dollars.

Of course, she never found it. Her mother must have put the key in the button box for safekeeping, even though without the lock the key was useless.

But now she had found the key, all she needed to do was find the clever little hiding place the key unlocked.

If only her father could come back from the dead and tell her where to find it.

Alma blinked. Her jaw stiffened, her chin lifted, the air was drawn into her nose as she contemplated failure. And then, something happened.

The planchette moved.

Very slightly, but clearly with a force that had nothing to do with their fingers, it shifted.

Bonnie gasped. Phyllis opened her mouth in astonishment.

Leona’s eyes narrowed – she wondered which of the old ladies was making it move.

They all stared at the planchette. Suddenly the candle flame began to sizzle and jump wildly on the wick.

It seemed to grow, throwing dancing shadows over the walls.

Bonnie glanced at them in alarm. They looked like demons released from captivity below ground.

The planchette slid to the word Hello . It was so swift and certain, Alma, Phyllis and Bonnie were in no doubt that Walter-Wyatt Aldershoff had, indeed, chosen to make himself known.

Alma blanched. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said in surprise.

She blinked hard at the unexpected stinging of tears at the backs of her eyes.

She hadn’t anticipated feeling emotional, or teary; Alma Aldershoff didn’t do tears.

But at once she was a child again, in the presence of her father, hoping for approval, longing for affection that never came.

‘Is that really you?’ she asked. Hope flared in her chest. Did her father’s soul live on?

Was he coming now to speak to her through this magical board? Could it be this easy?

The planchette vibrated. Bonnie’s face contorted with fear, but she was more afraid of Alma’s wrath were she to pull her finger away than of the spirit now communicating through the planchette, so she left her finger where it was.

With another sweeping movement the planchette slid onto the word N o, taking the four fingers with it.

Alma gasped. ‘You’re not Walter-Wyatt Aldershoff?’ she asked in a small voice.

The planchette vibrated once more and then shuddered. But it remained most determinedly on the word N o.

Alma’s throat grew tight. The temperature in the room plummeted. It was suddenly very cold. She cleared her throat. ‘Then who are you?’ she managed to say.

At that moment, the candle went out. Bonnie whimpered in panic. Then the table began to shake. ‘If it’s you, Phyllis, stop it at once!’ Alma demanded, glaring at her friend accusingly through the semi-darkness. ‘It’s not amusing.’

‘It’s not me,’ Phyllis replied as the table shook more violently.

‘Nor me,’ Bonnie added. ‘I wish it was.’

Leona felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck even though she couldn’t bring herself to believe that a ghost was doing the shaking. ‘Well, it’s not me, neither,’ she said.

‘Then who is it?’ Alma asked in a tremulous voice.

The planchette began to make large circles on the board. Round and round it went, with the ladies’ fingers circling with it.

‘Enough!’ Alma shouted, taking her finger off the planchette.

‘Leona, turn on the lights at once!’ Leona was only too happy to bring the seance to an end.

She made her way across the room, illuminated weakly by the streetlights outside that shone through the gap between the curtains.

She found the switch and flicked it. The lights lit up the terrified faces of the women and the rattling table that showed no sign of stopping.

Leona looked at it closely, certain that either Phyllis or Bonnie was the culprit.

‘What’s moving it?’ Phyllis asked, lifting her hands off the table to show that it wasn’t her and leaning back to look beneath it.

‘Well, it’s not my grandfather,’ said Leona. ‘I’m sorry, but if it’s you, Bonnie, I think you should own up. It’s not fair on Mom.’

Suddenly everything began to move. Books, paintings, lamps, ornaments, chairs, even the floor appeared to tremble as if an earthquake were rumbling beneath Manhattan. Bonnie cried out. ‘Alma, what have we unleashed?’ Leona reached for the walking stick and thrust it at her mother.

‘I don’t know.’ Alma seized the stick and heaved herself off the chair. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong.’

‘You did nothing wrong, Mom. It’s an earthquake, quite obviously.’

‘We need to leave at once,’ said Bonnie, pushing out her chair and making for the door.

‘Wait!’ Alma exclaimed. Bonnie froze, hand hovering above the knob. ‘Leona, the box. Put the board back in the box. No one must know what we were doing.’

‘We can’t just leave it like this,’ said Phyllis. ‘We need to tell it to go away.’

‘You’re right.’ Alma pulled back her shoulders, drawing on the unfailing Aldershoff mettle that coursed through her veins.

‘Be gone!’ she commanded, thumping her stick three times on the floor.

That sounded like the sort of thing her grandmother might have said and three was traditionally a magic number, was it not?

‘Be gone, bad spirit. This is no place for you. Go back to where you came from at once.’

But the spirit wasn’t listening, or more likely it didn’t care. It felt as if a cold wind was blowing through the room, causing everything to shake, and it was getting more violent. ‘It’s not going away,’ said Phyllis in a wobbly voice. ‘In fact, it’s getting angrier.’

‘Maybe it’ll go of its own accord, if we leave it alone,’ said Alma hopefully.

Bonnie nodded. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ She turned the knob and the four women burst into the hall, shutting the door firmly behind them.

The slick young man behind the reception desk looked at them in bewilderment.

The ladies appeared as if they’d seen a ghost. One or two hotel guests looked up from their smartphones and stared.

Concerned that something had not been to their liking and aware that Mrs Aldershoff – she insisted on being called by her maiden name – was an important person, the young man crossed the room to speak to them.

‘Is everything all right, madam?’ he asked in a low voice, directing his question at Alma.

Alma took a breath and lifted her chin. She was about to tell him that everything was perfectly fine when she faltered.

She couldn’t bring herself to lie. It wasn’t in her nature.

And, besides, she couldn’t silence the din coming from the other side of those double doors or pretend that it had nothing to do with them.

The young man frowned and looked past her.

It sounded as if they had left someone in the room, a furious someone who was now on the rampage.

There came a smashing noise. A lamp, or a vase, shattering on the floor.

Alarmed, the young man strode to the doors and opened them. What he saw made him cry out in horror.