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said. He noticed that he was still shaking, and he took another swallow of the whisky. “Two years ago I was drunk. Not like this— really drunk. And I thought I saw a—a ghost, and it attacked me. I—hid from it—” He gave a hitching gasp and realized to his embarrassment that he was on the verge of sobbing again, as he had been on the bridge before this woman had appeared. He shook his head and stared blindly into the fire.
    After a moment she asked quietly, “Why were you so drunk, before you saw the ghost?”
    â€œWhy,” he countered dully, “should it make a difference that we were close together, on the bridge?”
    â€œClose together and out in the open, under the nighttime sky. Oh—” She shrugged. “I think it’s like … two candle flames are more visible if they’re held together, overlapping. Those things ordinarily don’t see us very well, thank God.”
    â€œWhat … are they? The g-ghost, two years ago, I used garlic and the river to hide from it.”
    â€œDidn’t you have any garlic tonight?”
    He shook his head and again touched his damp waistcoat pocket. “Evidently not. My housekeeper is punctual about renewing the disinfectant garlic wash on the windowsills, but—these days I’m sometimes careless about carrying it with me.”
    â€œDisinfectant garlic wash,” she said, apparently savoring the jargon. “Well, I should have been carrying some myself. But you never invited one of those things in here, I hope?”
    â€œNo.” He yawned, more from tension than fatigue. “I would have, this ghost, before it attacked me—but I was outdoors, by the river. And in any case I’ve moved since.”
    â€œAh.” She reached out and took his hand. Her hand was warm from the fire, but he still didn’t look at her. “Why were you so drunk?”
    He was increasingly uncomfortable, with this conversation and also with the fact that he was alone here at this hour with this woman. Really he should summon Mrs. Middleditch.
    â€œDrunks have hallucinations,” he said, more to himself than to her. “It might have been a hallucination, the ghost; this thing tonight doesn’t prove…”
    She was still holding his hand. He glanced at her, and she was staring at him, her eyebrows raised.
    Crawford took a deep gulp of the whisky and sighed. “Oh hell. The reason I was drunk was because my wife, and my two sons, had died the night before. They said, witnesses said, that lightning struck the ferryboat they were on.” He freed his hand to refill his glass, and he gave her a haggard caricature of a smile. “What of yourself? Do you have a family?”
    â€œMy husband died—uh, six months ago. We didn’t have any children.” She stretched her arms over her head and then sat forward, staring into the fire. “But you carried garlic with you, after. And you knew to get us both into the river tonight. How is it that you know these things?”
    â€œI hate all this filthy stuff,” he said absently; then he frowned into the fire. “My parents had a history with creatures like that thing on the bridge, and they managed to elude them. They told me how. They were old and eccentric, and I didn’t entirely believe them.”
    She stared at him with no expression. “Who was the ghost? The one that you would have invited in, but it attacked you?”
    â€œIt was—it was probably a hallucination.”
    She didn’t look away.
    He pressed his palms flat into the carpet but still felt as if he were losing his balance at the top of a high precipice.
    But it was easier to go on than to stop now. “The witnesses—one of them said that my eldest son, Girard, was helping some person or—helping some person, onto the ferry from a boat that had drawn up alongside, in the moments before … before the vessel was