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Club, the question on which the future of this particular episode in the "Ghosts and Ourselves" series might well depend.
    Jemima sipped her Planty Punch (which was actually a nonalcoholic mixture of fruit juices, beloved of the Yuppies who used the Club for its healthful pink froth).
    "By the way, have you seen the ghost, Lord Lackland?" she asked casually, following the question with a smile, as though the answer to it hardly mattered. But her precise tone, even the sheer sweetness of her slightly cat-like smile, might have been recognised by those she had interviewed on television in that famous hard-hitting programme about women's treatment in the Trade Union movement - "Sisters or Brothers?"
    "Call me Dan, for God's sake! I've hardly got used to this Lord Lackland bit. I keep looking round nervously for poor old Cousin Tommy when I hear the name!"
    "Dan then! Much nicer. And I'm of course Jemima." She smiled again, looking more cat-like than ever. "I just wondered if you'd ever seen the ghost yourself."
    Handsome Dan drank from a glass that looked as if it contained whiskey.
    "Ah, Jemima - what a pretty name that is, by the way. Do you know, I had an ancestress called Jemima, said to have been the daughter of James II, hence the name. It was originally a form of James. But you knew that." Jemima didn't. "I hope to God she wasn't," he went on. "His daughter, I mean. Not one's favourite monarch to put it mildly. Where was I? The ghost. Ah. Jemima, I see you don't yet know everything about the Decimus Ghost. Which is what we generally call him. Or it. But somehow him seems right."
    "There must be a great deal I don't know. So - enlighten me."
    "Children can see the Decimus Ghost quite safely. And many have. Down the centuries. If you believe the stories. He likes children. Because he came back the first time to save his little son. Nell - that's my funny little daughter by my first marriage, not so little now of course, fifteen? I'm hopeless about my children's ages - Nell saw him when she was quite small. And she continues to see him. If she's to be believed."
    "Have you yourself seen him often? That's really what I'm getting at."
    "Only children can see the Decimus Ghost in safety. If anyone else sees the Decimus Ghost, that's an omen."
    "An omen?" Jemima was genuinely startled. This really was news to her.
    "An omen of death. His death. Or her death. Or possibly the death of a member of the family. So - " Handsome Dan paused and drank again. "In answer to your question, Jemima, no, I haven't seen the Uecimus Ghost and I very much hope I never do." He drained his glass. It seemed like a kind of toast - to Decimus perhaps, in absentia .

III 
    A Ghost Walking
    "This is mine," said Dan Lackland to Jemima Shore. There was a peculiar note in his voice which was not exactly family pride, more like personal triumph. Lackland Court at last: as Jemima gazed at the celebrated facade of the Elizabethan house, she felt that compared to other earlier Tudor mansions she had visited, it had the air and confidence of a Renaissance palace. Here were four high storeys serrated by groups of long narrow windows, gables, a parapet and a towering roof; the chimneys were shaped like columns, and decorating the parapet she could see further obelisks and balustrades. Yet it was not architecture which engaged her: she herself was feeling something like the excitement of a lover.
    For this at last was the physical, rather than the poetical world of Decimus . . . "Mine." For an instant the word grated on her. Was she in danger of experiencing an absurd jealousy in her obsession over the dead poet? It would never do to start resenting the live owner! That would be ridiculous. Besides, Dan Lackland's remark fitted perfectly into context. He had been giving a courteous disquisition on the Meredith family history, having stopped the Mercedes to let Jemima take her first look at the mellow Cotswold stone of Lackland Court through the arched