'No author,' said Mr McKinnon reprovingly, 'who pulls down a steady twenty thousand pounds a year writes tripe.'
'Well anyway, you know her stuff.'
'Who better?'
'When she died she left me five thousand pounds and her house, Honeysuckle Cottage. I'm living there now. McKinnon, do you believe in haunted houses?'
'No.'
'Yet I tell you solemnly that Honeysuckle Cottage is haunted!'
'By your aunt?' said Mr McKinnon, surprised.
'By her influence. There's a malignant spell over the place; a sort of miasma of sentimentalism. Everybody who enters it succumbs.'
'Tut-tut! You mustn't have these fancies.'
'They aren't fancies.'