Chapter 1
The policeman, passing through Moreston Square at three o'clock in the morning, saw lights still burning in the windows of the top-floor flat at 16. And he smiled to himself. That would be Miss Ruth Callice's flat. The chimes from St. Jude's Church rang the hour, rippling through the little eighteenth-century square and lapping it in security. Police-Constable Davis glanced up at a quarter-moon over the rooftops. No more, he thought, of one thing. These narrow red-brick houses, these white-painted window-frames and pane-joinings, wouldn't burst or burn amid a nightmare of noise. At least, P. C. Davis amended with the skepticism of all his tribe, not just yet.
In front of the door of number 16 stood a heavy shiny car, a new one to rouse envy. Again he looked up at the lighted windows, lulling against rooftop and sky.
Miss Callice was — nice. And he didn't mean it in any smug or smarmy way, either. Young, good-looking, but (still his mind would find no better word) nice. There were people up there, the men in black ties or white, the women in high-cut or low-cut dresses, sometimes as late as three in the morning, like this. But never any disturbance; seldom any drunks. They went in talking; they came out talking. What did they find to talk about?
At that moment, in the living-room on the top floor, John Stannard, K. C, was employing his most measured tones.
"Let's suppose, Ruth, your theory is correct. In that case, what would be the most dangerously haunted place in the world?’
Miss Callice, on the sofa under silver-shaded wall-lamps, made a protest.
"I didn't say it was my theory," she pointed out, and looked at her two companions. "It doesn't necessarily mean I believe in—"
"Say it," Stannard urged dryly. "Don't be afraid of a word; or you'll never get near the truth. Say it. 'The supernatural.' "
It. would have been difficult to tell Ruth Callice's age, though she could not have been more than twenty-eight. And P. C. Davis's definition of niceness would be hard to analyze even by closer observers.