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Alma looked small suddenly. Not the grande dame who threw her illustrious name about and expected everyone to fawn.

There was something frail about her, as if the veneer of stateliness had fallen away to reveal a frightened little person behind.

She lifted her crystal glass to find it empty.

‘Might I have another glass of whisky, please? On the rocks. Make it double.’

Leona protested. ‘Mother …’

‘If ever I need a double, it’s now!’ Alma retorted fiercely. But the fight had gone out of her.

Mr Stirling waved at the manager and delivered her request. The young man, only too happy not to be directly involved any longer, but clearly curious to know what had gone on in that room, hurried off to pour another glass.

‘I’m afraid I have unleashed a ghost,’ said Alma. She cleared her throat as Mr Stirling stared at her in puzzlement.

‘You have unleashed a ghost?’ His eyes moved slowly over the faces of the three other women, who nodded in agreement. He wondered whether he was, in fact, dreaming because the whole situation was beginning to feel very surreal.

‘It’s the board, you see,’ Alma continued.

‘The board,’ said Mr Stirling. ‘What board?’

Alma’s shoulders dropped further, and she lifted the blue box off the floor beside her chair and placed it on the table in front of them. Her hands were trembling. She was embarrassed to have to admit such foolery. ‘The Ouija board,’ she said, tapping it with her dark red nails.

‘You were playing with a Ouija board?’ he asked, incredulous.

‘Not playing, you understand,’ she said defensively. ‘We were trying to make contact with my father, Walter-Wyatt Aldershoff.’

In all the years Mr Stirling had worked in both England and America, he had never heard anything so outlandish, and yet he didn’t disbelieve it. Only a fool believed truth was simply what one saw with the eyes. ‘Well,’ he said evenly. ‘You have clearly upset him.’

‘No, no.’ Alma was quick to respond. ‘It’s not my father. He made that very clear. It’s someone else. Someone else entirely.’

Mr Stirling arched an eyebrow. ‘Did they say who?’

‘No, they just went crazy.’

Now the proverbial cat was out of the bag, Phyllis cut in excitedly. ‘The planchette was moving all over the board. It was possessed by something horrible. Then the table started jumping about.’

‘And the candle went out,’ added Bonnie.

‘It might have been an earthquake.’ Leona rashly decided to inject some pragmatism into the discussion. ‘Let’s not rule that out.’

‘It was not an earthquake,’ snapped Alma, and the sharp tone of her voice reminded Leona of why she usually chose not to contradict her mother.

The young man returned with Alma’s glass of whisky. She put it to her lips and took a gulp. It burned all the way down to her belly, but quickly took the edge off her distress. She inhaled deeply, feeling a little better. ‘I told them to go away,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you should have been a little firmer,’ said Mr Stirling.

‘What are you going to do?’ Bonnie asked, eyes wide and fearful. They all turned to the proprietor expectantly.

‘I am going to speak to someone who knows about the paranormal,’ he said.

‘I am certainly no expert on the subject.’ He couldn’t help but shuffle uncomfortably on his chair as he said the word ‘paranormal’.

It wasn’t the sort of thing he liked to admit to believing in.

But he did most certainly believe – he had experienced one or two unexplainable phenomena himself when he’d lived in England.

However, he certainly wasn’t about to publicise the fact that there might be an unwanted entity lurking about the hotel, especially as Tanya Roseby, the CEO of Manson at no time did she believe herself to be in the wrong.

Mr Stirling nodded. No one was sorrier than him for having allowed these women to tamper with things they knew nothing about. Could Mrs Aldershoff not have tried to contact the dead in her own drawing room? ‘I suggest you all go home,’ he said wearily, getting up. ‘I will keep you informed.’

‘Maybe it will go away by itself,’ said Phyllis hopefully. ‘Now it’s had its fun.’

‘Let’s hope,’ said Mr Stirling. ‘If fun is all it’s after.’

He looked at his watch. It was now two o’clock, still time to get some shut-eye. He told Clayton to lock the door of the Walter-Wyatt drawing room and then went home to catch a few hours’ sleep. He’d deal with the poltergeist on the morrow.

The following morning, Mr Stirling awoke to rain. It had been a hot September of sapphire-blue skies and sticky humidity, but the streak had broken just before dawn and the heavens had finally opened. He wondered whether this had something to do with Mrs Aldershoff and her Ouija board.

He had barely slept. He dragged himself out of bed and went through his usual routine with a heavy head and an anxious spirit.

He had dealt with many crises in his long career, but never one to do with the supernatural.

It seemed absurd. Now, in the murky light of a dreary day, he questioned whether he had been too quick to believe Mrs Aldershoff and her friends’ version of events.

However, three things were crystal clear: the damage to the room was undeniable, the elderly ladies were too old and frail to have caused it themselves, and there was no sign of damage anywhere else in the hotel, which ruled out an earthquake.

Something otherworldly was the only explanation, unless they had smuggled someone else into the room with them, someone strong and hot-tempered.

As soon as he arrived in his office, he tracked down a reputable medium through a chain of discreet friends.

Hamish McCloud came highly recommended. Getting rid of earthbound spirits was something he apparently did on a weekly basis, there being so many souls stuck on the earth plane, unable or unwilling to move into the light.

It all sounded a bit woo-woo for Mr Stirling’s liking, but he was desperate – he could not afford for this to come out.

Not simply because it would injure the hotel’s reputation, but because it would injure his .

The very fact that he believed Mrs Aldershoff’s story would make him a laughing stock.

That aside, Tanya Roseby was the best in the business and the UK market was important to the Aldershoff.

Mr Stirling didn’t want her to be put off and choose to represent one of their rivals instead.

Hamish McCloud arrived at the hotel at eleven.

He wasn’t at all as Mr Stirling had imagined him – he’d always assumed people in that world to be hippies, pagans or just plain weird Hamish McCloud was none of those things.

He was short and stout with a cheerful round face, intelligent brown eyes and curly auburn hair encircling a bald head in the shape of a dome.

He wore a raincoat over a pair of beige chinos, a blue cashmere V-neck sweater and a check shirt.

On his feet he wore brown suede lace-up shoes, wet from the rain.

There was nothing about him that distinguished him from anyone else coming into the hotel.

He did not fly in on a broomstick or wear a wizard’s cloak. Mr Stirling was relieved.

Hamish McCloud looked concerned when Mr Stirling told him about the Ouija board. He shook his head and rubbed his cleanly shaven chin ponderously. ‘Not good,’ he said, a faint Scottish accent lacing his Brooklyn vowels. ‘Not good at all.’

‘The lady in question was trying to contact her dead father,’ Mr Stirling added, hoping more information might be helpful. ‘Her grandfather built this very building, you know.’

‘She might have tried to contact her father, but she attracted a mischievous spirit in the lower astral instead.’

‘The lower astral?’ Mr Stirling wasn’t quite sure where that was. It sounded like a planet from the Superman movies.

‘A place where dark entities lurk. The Ouija board can act as a portal to allow them into our dimension. People shouldn’t play with these things.

They’re not toys. They can be dangerous.

But let me see what I can do. Perhaps I can encourage it to go back to where it came from, or, better still, to go to the light. ’

‘If you can’t?’

Hamish looked at Mr Stirling with sympathy. ‘Then you’ll need to find someone who can.’

Hamish entered the room with Mr Stirling, who closed the door behind them. No one had been in to clear up the mess. Mr Stirling wanted to make sure that whoever – or whatever – it was who had made the mess, had gone. He did not want his staff upset by objects moving about on their own.