With an almost apologetic air, Hanna peeled Liza’s arm from around her shoulders and stood again. “I’m sorry, I’m not in the mood to joke about this. Now can we please go and try to get another room?”

So they went down to Mr Burgh’s office. They found him sitting in a wheely chair backed against the wall, a gun on his desk. His hand was hovering suspiciously near it when they opened the door, even though they’d knocked.

Reporting the laptop missing was a formality. Liza held out little hope that it would be found, and Mr Burgh, like everybody else in the entire hotel, had other things on his mind. Getting a room reassignment was more difficult.

“The thing is,” Mr Burgh explained, “we’re actually quite a small hotel. So we do have some free rooms available, but, well …”

“But they all belonged to dead people?”

“Um … yes.”

Liza and Hanna formed a little huddle at the back of the office, talking in low voices and hoping that Mr Burgh would be polite enough not to try to listen in.

“I actually think we should take it,” said Hanna.

That wasn’t the outcome Liza had been expecting. “Really?”

“Really.” Hanna nodded. “I’m worried about a murderer, not a ghost.”

Liza almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “And you don’t think it’ll be … you know, morbid?”

“Better morbid than dead.”

It was, Liza had to admit, a compelling argument. And while moving into the room where Vivien Ackroyd had died seemed genuinely disrespectful, there were other guests who had died a convenient distance from the place they’d actually slept. Also …

“I don’t suppose we could take Mr Belloc’s room, could we?” Liza asked in her most I-have-no-ulterior-motives of tones.

Mr Burgh looked worried. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t. He’s technically still a resident.”

“Yes, but he’s dead,” Liza pointed out. “And we might be too if we have to stay in a room that’s been ransacked.”

Apparently at least slightly invested in minimising casualties amongst his guests, Mr Burgh nodded. “Yes, I was just about to say.” He produced a key from behind the desk. “I’m afraid we haven’t cleaned any of his things out. There didn’t seem much point.”

“That,” said Liza, taking the key, “will not be a problem.”

The moment they left the office, Hanna yanked Liza aside and said simply, “No.”

“It was the only way to get a new room.”

“I’m fine with the room. You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“He was”—glancing back towards Mr Burgh’s office, Liza lowered her voice—”he was a detective. If anybody knew anything about Mr B, it was Belloc.”

“Belloc, the guy who got immediately murdered the moment he actually tried to investigate anything?”

“Anyone can have a bad day.”

“That was a very bad day.”