“Can I get you a nice cup of hot milk, my lady?” she asked, proving that she knew perfectly well how to address me if she tried.

“Yes, that would be very . . .” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

I crawled into bed and soon Queenie reappeared with a tray with hot milk and digestive biscuits on it.

“Get that down yer. That will perk you up no end,” she said. “I had the cook add some brandy to it. ‘She ain’t half upset,’ I told the cook. ‘I don’t know who done it to her, but I won’t half give him a piece of my mind if I ever catch him.’”

The thought of Queenie giving this Cockney address to a royal cook would normally have appalled me. You can tell how deep in my own misery I was that I didn’t even care. Queenie went over and adjusted the curtains. Then she stopped, peering out of the window.

“’Ere,” she said. “There’s that ruddy ghost again. Just like before. Something white moving around the courtyard.”

Curiosity got the better of despair. I climbed out of bed and went to join her at the window. It was pitch-black in the courtyard, apart from the thin sliver of light shining down from my window. The archway itself was in absolute blackness but I could just vaguely see something white drifting about.

“Give me my overcoat, Queenie,” I said. “I’m going down to see.”

“Oh, miss, you don’t want to go down there. I don’t trust them ghosts,” she said.

“You can come with me to keep an eye on me. Come on.”

“Me, miss?” she asked as I was already heading for the stairs. “I ain’t going out there for love nor money. And you shouldn’t either. What if you get haunted or possessed?”

“You can stand in the doorway and call for help if I yell.”

She followed me unwillingly down the stairs. And grabbed my arm as I was about to go out into the darkness. “I don’t think you should go out there. If it’s one of them ghosts, just leave it to mind its own business.”

“I have to see for myself, Queenie,” I said. I didn’t add that I was wondering if the ghost was Countess Irmtraut prowling around or snooping. Nobody had any good reason to be in a courtyard that went nowhere at this time of night.