“Mr. Gregory would have asked you the same question that I just did, make no mistake about it,” I told the innkeeper. “And I’ll tell you something else—if you’d failed to answer, he would have picked up his bag and gone straight home.”

He glared at me, clearly unaccustomed to being spoken to like that. My dad had taught me to be polite and to display good manners, even if the person I was dealing with was rude. So while I stared back without blinking, I kept my expression mild and my tongue still. I waited for him to speak.

“A girl died in that room exactly a month ago tomorrow,” he said at last. “I employed her in the kitchen, and sometimes, when it got busy, she helped out by serving ale in the bar. She was fit and strong, but one morning she didn’t get up, and we found her dead in bed with a terrified expression on her face and blood all down the front of her nightgown. But there was no sign of any wound on her body. Since then her ghost walks, and I can’t let the room—or any of the others, for that matter. Even down in the ale room, we can hear her pacing back and forth. There should have been a dozen people taking that room by now, with more to come. It’s affecting my business badly.”

“Have you seen her ghost?” I asked, wondering how strong the manifestation was. Some ghosts could only be heard.

“There’s been no sign of her down here or in the kitchen. The sounds all come from the bedroom, but I’ve never been in there after dark when she walks, and I wouldn’t ask my staff to do so, either.”

I nodded and offered him my best sympathetic expression. “What about the cause of death?” I asked. “What did the doctor have to say?”

“He seemed as puzzled as everyone else but thought it might have been some sort of internal hemorrhage, possibly in her lungs; she’d coughed up blood.”

I could tell that the man wasn’t convinced by this explanation, and indeed he continued. “It was the look of horror on her face that made us all uneasy. The doctor said seeing all that blood coming out of her mouth might have terrified her and caused her heart to stop. Or she might have carried on bleeding inside. To my way of thinking, he didn’t really have any idea why she died.”

It was strange and horrifying. I had to get to the bottom of the mystery, and I knew the best way to go about it.

“Well, hopefully I’ll be able to tell you more tomorrow,” I replied, “after I’ve talked to her ghost. What’s her name?”

“Her name was Miriam,” the innkeeper replied.

With that, I gave a nod and walked off down the street. Before long I turned down a passageway that brought me round the back of the inn to the edge of the churchyard I’d seen through the bedroom window. I opened the ornate trellis gate and took the narrow path through the tombstones that brought me past the small church.