“Not exactly believed,” she said. “Well, I couldn’t believe in them, when the stories didn’t even agree with each other, but let’s say there were a couple of maids whose hysterics seemed less theater and more fear. I don’t know if they hoaxed themselves into seeing something, or if someone was tormenting them on purpose. For all I know there were two ghosts wandering the halls instead of one.”

Ghost infestation? Sam wrote on the page, briefly imagining ghostly rats fleeing before a ghostly terrier.

“Do you remember the stories? The ones you found more credible?”

“Oh yes,” she said, beaming with the joy of a true gossip and storyteller. “They were both quite sad, of course. The first one was about a beggar, a village man who’d lost his family the year before, going door to door in the winter asking for food. Only the winter was uncommonly cold, and one night he crept up to the back door at Liefdehuis and asked to come in, just for a minute, to warm himself. But the servants were under strict orders about tramps, so they closed the door in his face and went up to their beds. When they came down the next morning, they found him where they’d left him, curled up on the back porch and frozen to death.”

“You’re sure it was a man?” He’d heard stories like that before, but they were almost always about older women.

Mrs. Kay tilted her head, thinking. “As sure as I can be after almost four decades,” she said, nodding, and then chuckled. “Which is to say, more sure than not, but by no means without doubts.”

Sam smiled back at her. “And the other?”

“Well,” she said, and looked over her shoulder at the door. Putting her finger to her lips, she rose and crept stealthily across the room. When she reached the sitting room door she paused, pressing her ear against the wood, and then in one sudden gesture yanked it open, nearly toppling the young maid on the other side.

“Alice,” Mrs. Kay said, “won’t you go fetch Professor Moore some of those lemon cookies Cook made yesterday? He’ll like them.”

“Y-y-yes’m,” Alice stammered, her face bright red, and almost ran from the room.