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It was with great regret that Mr Stirling escorted Hamish McCloud to the front door. ‘What do you suggest I do?’ he asked him as a damp wind swept into the hotel.

Hamish turned to Mr Stirling with a face full of pity. ‘I’m afraid some spirits don’t want to leave.’

‘And you can’t make them?’

‘Not really. Not if they refuse to go. You’ve got a stubborn spirit here, Mr Stirling.’

‘But if he creates havoc in the hotel, the guests will leave. We’ll be out of business within the week.’

Hamish scratched the dome of his head. ‘You could dabble with priests and shamans, but I doubt they’ll make a blind bit of difference in this case.

’ Mr Stirling’s heart sank lower. ‘However, there is someone who might be able to help you. She has a reputation of succeeding where others have failed. But you’d have to fly her over from England. ’

‘I’d fly her over from Australia if I thought she could get rid of it.’

‘I think she’s the only person who can. She’s rather extraordinary. You can contact her through the College of Psychic Studies in London. Her name is Pixie Tate.’

Mr Stirling nodded. ‘Pixie Tate. I’ll think about it. Thank you, Hamish.’

‘In the meantime, I suggest you leave the room as it is and lock the door. People going in and out might make the situation worse, and, if you’re lucky, the spirit might stay in there.’

‘I will do that.’

‘Good luck.’

Mr Stirling watched Hamish disappear up the wet street and then went straight to his office and wrote down the name Pixie Tate so he didn’t forget it.

He’d bear her in mind. But he wasn’t sure the situation was bad enough to fly someone out from England.

Perhaps this Lester chap would leave of his own accord, if he existed at all.

Alma returned by taxi to her small apartment in Brooklyn.

She went straight to her sitting room and sank into her favourite armchair where she stared into the half distance, lost in thought.

Ever since hearing the name Lester she had been feeling a little sick.

For a start, the fact that the medium had mentioned that particular name proved to her that the soul lived on, because if Hamish McCloud had been a fraud he would not have come up with the name Lester.

Who was called Lester? No one but the famous jockey, Lester Piggott, and Lester Ravenglass.

That should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t.

It was unsettling. Sure, she wanted proof of an afterlife, but not from Lester!

Then there was the question of why Lester had come through when her father had not?

Surely, Lester couldn’t help her find the Potemkin Diamond.

Lester was a menace, clearly, or he wouldn’t have destroyed the room.

What did he want? She had specifically called out to her father – why had he not responded?

Why had Lester barged his way in? She had not invited him to the seance!

As far as she was aware Lester had lived and died in England, so why had he turned up here in New York, on Fifth Avenue?

She knew he had come out to New York before she was born to court her sister, Esme.

Her parents had been thrilled that their daughter was going to become a viscountess.

The Aldershoffs had had enormous wealth, but they’d lacked pedigree.

By marrying their daughter into the British aristocracy, they’d secured their place at the very pinnacle of New York society, which had been more important to them than almost anything else.

The most important thing, of course, as Alma remembered bitterly, had been having a son, but at the time of Esme’s wedding to Lester they’d no longer held out any hope of that happening.

Then Alice had got pregnant at the age of thirty-nine and Alma had been born, to great disappointment all round.

She pushed that painful thought aside and focused instead on Lester.

But she knew precious little about him for just as soon as Alma had been old enough to ask questions, her sister had been divorced and back in New York, and Lester’s name had no longer been mentioned.

Well, she wasn’t going to get any answers now. Anyone who knew anything was dead.

She could, however, find out when and how Lester had died.

Her granddaughter was good at technology.

As a member of the British aristocracy, his death would surely be documented.

She’d call Leona and ask her to get Gemma to do some research for her.

However, research wasn’t going to help her find the Potemkin Diamond, nor was it going to get rid of the ghost. Alma knew she could just walk away – after all, there was nothing she could do to help poor Mr Stirling.

But the diamond was in the building somewhere and she needed it.

She desperately needed it. Finally, she had the key in her possession.

If it was the last thing she did on this earth, she would find the lock!

It would be the only unselfish thing she had ever done in her life.

Mr Stirling decided not to tell any members of staff the truth about the incident in the Walter-Wyatt drawing room.

He instructed Clayton to fob them off with a story about a group of young people who’d had a drunken party in there and made a great mess of the room.

Until it was repaired, the door would remain shut and the room out of bounds.

In spite of the readiness with which they seemed to accept the lie, they exchanged whisperings and suspicious glances, and tossed about various conspiracy theories in low voices when out of earshot.

The drawing room was quiet. Mr Stirling hovered about the double doors every now and then anxiously listening out for movement, but there was nothing.

Just silence. He was relieved. Perhaps it had been a small earthquake, after all.

Nothing to worry about. Panic over. By lunchtime he was beginning to feel a little foolish for having believed Hamish McCloud and for listening to the ranting of four elderly ladies.

But, one by one, small signs that whatever had created havoc in the drawing room was now working its way around the hotel began to occur in the most alarming fashion.

At lunch in the dining room, new arrivals Mr and Mrs Sanchez, who had travelled all the way from Spain, were celebrating the first day of their honeymoon when Mrs Sanchez noticed her champagne flute slowly sliding across the table.

At first she laughed, thinking it was something to do with a sloping floor, but, then, when she felt what she later described to Mr Stirling as a ‘cold breath’ on her neck, she screamed and ran out of the room, followed by her extremely concerned husband.

Mr Stirling managed to calm her down, explaining that the floor was indeed a little uneven (it wasn’t) and that the window was open, thus creating a draught.

The young woman took a while to be convinced, but convinced she was in the end.

They decided they wouldn’t move hotels after all, and returned to the dining room where nothing else untoward happened.

But Lester, if it was Lester, had not finished being mischievous.

That afternoon, a couple of children who were running up and down the corridor outside their parents’ room were terrified out of their wits when a ghost suddenly materialised at the end of the corridor and screamed at them.

They both saw it – a misty white apparition with a big mouth, before it apparently disappeared.

That report sounded a bit exaggerated to Mr Stirling, especially as the more attention the children got the wilder their description of the ghost became, but it did not make easy listening. Something was going on.

Mr Stirling could ignore Lester no longer.

The children were gleefully racing about the lobby telling everyone their story and some of the guests were beginning to look a little concerned.

Lester’s mental construct, as Hamish McCloud had called it, was obviously not confined to the Walter-Wyatt drawing room.

He was now on the move around the rest of the hotel.

Something had to be done. Mr Stirling decided to call the College of Psychic Studies and ask about Pixie Tate.

He was left frustrated, however. The college told him that they would contact Pixie Tate and get back to him as soon as they had spoken to her.

He hoped they’d be able to give him her telephone number so that he could call her himself.

He explained that this was a matter of the utmost urgency.

The woman at the college was very understanding but did not oblige – he imagined they received panicked calls all the time and thought nothing of it – but really, they couldn’t imagine what he was dealing with over here.

He waited until evening, but they didn’t call back.

Fortunately, there was no further evidence of Lester bothering the guests, but Mr Stirling had a very uneasy feeling.

For one, the hotel had begun to feel distinctly cold.

Not a normal cold, either, but a kind of damp cold.

The kind of cold one might expect to feel in an old house that hadn’t been lived in for a long time.

An unfriendly cold. He told himself he was just being paranoid, but when an elderly guest complained of it and a bullish man demanded he turn down the air conditioning, he realised he wasn’t the only one.

The Aldershoff, which only the day before had been hospitable and welcoming, was beginning to feel distinctly resentful.

He left that evening with a heavy heart.