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ghost burst into tears.
    Arthur looked at the apparition with bewilderment,“Jumping Jehoshephat!  Who are you?”
    The ghost composed himself enough to say,“I’m the spirit formally known as the Grey Monk.  We’ve met before: I haunt Turtlington Manor.”
    “I’m sure I’d recall meeting any spirit so…”Arthur paused looking for the word,“em, unique.”
    “Like I said, I was the Grey Monk; I’ve had a make-over since then.”
    There were at least a dozen‘grey monks’in England, and Arthur had met over half of them, but he still couldn’t remember this one.  He was about to ask more when a fresh outburst of sobs erupted from the tragic ghost.
    “I was just trying to do my job,”he wailed,“you know - frightening people.”
    Arthur nodded sympathetically,“So what happened?”
    “I was attacked.”
    “Surely being dead already takes the worry out of being attacked?”
    Uncontrollable sobbing wracked the strange form of the ghost.  Arthur looked anxiously at the door.  He was worried people would hear.
    The ghost saw his glance and snapped angrily,“So what if someone comes in.  I could scare them!  I’d scare them right out of here and all the way home.”
    Arthur looked doubtfully at the ghost’s ill-fitting grey boiler suit, but decided not to argue. “Who attacked you?”he asked earnestly.
    “I don’t know, but they were professionals.” 
    “Professional what?”
    “I don’t know!  They were not scared of me.  They had weapons that could have killed…”he stopped and corrected himself,“that could have destroyed me.”
    “So why have you come to me?”Arthur asked, glancing back at the door.
    “Oh stop looking at the door, I can scare whoever comes in.  Of course I can.  I’ve terrified people for centuries.  I leave them nervous wrecks.  Of course I do.  I’ve done it for centuries.” His voice trailed off.
    Arthur smiled to himself and repeated the question,“Why did you come to me?”
    “I came to you for two reasons.” As he spoke the ghost abandoned his‘updated’image, and returned to the shape of a fat, bald, grey monk.  His attempts to be scary had drained him of the little energy he had remaining.  He looked unimaginably tired and very transparent.  
    “First because you know both worlds better than anyone.  I thought if someone from the living were trying to wipe out the dead you might have heard something about it.”
    Arthur rubbed his forehead looking genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything.”
    The Grey Monk looked at the dirty floor through his feet. “There is another reason I came to you.”
    “Yes?”asked Arthur, his mind still on the‘professional’ghost hunters.
    “I came to you because I heard them say, that after some Egyptian fellas, their next target is‘the highwayman,’and they were going to find him in London.”
    Arthur straightened up at these words. “Thank you.  Thank you for letting me know.” Arthur looked at the sad, weary, barely visible form in front of him.
    “I owe you one for the information: receive such help as I can give you,”he said to the ghost, and taking a sprig of rosemary from his pocket, he chanted quietly,“ Sit tibi terra levis .”
    The ghost vanished.  Arthur took a deep breath, and strode out through the bar into the night.
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
    Dead Men Walking
     
    Everything was closed; the streets were empty.  Iona had been walking for hours.  She found herself outside her front door again but couldn’t bring herself to go back inside.  She turned away from her house, following, without much thought, the path of Arthur’s first ghost walk.  It was almost midnight.  Some shops were shuttered; others had dim night-lights that made their windows appear a faint shadow of their daytime displays.
    She clenched and unclenched her fists as she walked, playing over and over in her mind the latest argument she had had with her mother.  For a moment she