The guests bequeathed by the Fullaloves turned up on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. They were men of Jonathan’s age, and, according to themselves, were respectively an archaeologist and a naturalist. The Bronze Age in Scandinavia and Denmark was Gregory Mansell’s object of worship; Miles Obury studied British mammals, particularly badgers. During the previous summer he and Bill Fullalove had been out at night in the woods to try to photograph these animals and had built a watcher’s platform in a tree. They took Mrs Bradley to see it, and Obury informed her that, owing to the legend of the ghost, the wood was called Groaning Spinney.

Obury and Mansell were agreeable and sociable persons, and the evening at the manor passed pleasantly. At just after half-past ten Deborah and Mrs Bradley went to bed, and Obury announced his intention of going up to the wood again to see how his badgers were getting on. Mansell, laughing, said that he would go with him and see whether it was the ghost’s night to haunt at the top of the spinney. They took a nip of Jonathan’s Christmas bottle of Scotch and set off in high fettle for the small wood which mounted the hill in the direction of the Fullaloves’ bungalow. Mansell was particularly jovial. He was a complete sceptic with regard to ghosts and was not in the least afraid that he might see this one.

Jonathan did not accompany them because, in accordance with a humane custom introduced by Deborah, the maids had been granted Christmas leave from tea-time on Christmas Eve until ten o’clock in the morning of the day following Boxing Day, and he did not propose to leave his wife alone in a very lonely house. He did not realize that Deborah felt perfectly safe with Mrs Bradley there.

He lit a cigarette, stoked up the fire, went out to the kitchen to impound sausage rolls and mince pies in case his guests came in hungry, and then he sat down, picked up a book, and took no more notice of time. But at a quarter past eleven there came a quiet tap at the window. Jonathan was not at all startled. He had been accustomed for years (before his marriage) to admitting eccentric or delinquent friends by all manner of entrances to all manner of enclosures – school dormitories, College rooms, lodgings, fortified places of various types in various parts of the world, and once, against Admiralty regulations, to a submarine. So now he stepped over to the window and asked quietly who was there.

The reassuring and well-known voice of Bill Fullalove answered him.

‘Thought I wouldn’t knock at the door, in case I disturbed your missus.’

‘All right,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’ll go to the door and let you in. Come round to the front, will you? … Well, now, what can we do for you?’