The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

After the dazzle of strip-lights and chromium Tristram was glad to find himself out on the promenade deck, which was deserted. It was nearly three hundred years since he had been to sea, returning from the French Court in considerable disgrace, having lost his dispatches; but, aided by the traditional adaptability of the ghost and the aristocrat, he noted with unconcern the tremendous pace at which the waves were flying past and the vast scarlet funnels towering above, which seemed to him to salute the moon so insuitably (he was a poet, remember) with great streamers of heavy black smoke. As he paced the deck he meditated the opening rhymes of a brief ode to the heavens . . .

Meanwhile, in the the convenient shadow of Lifeboat 5, a stout politician was surprised to find himself proposing marriage to his secretary, who with a more practised eye had seen it coming ever since Southampton. He was warming up to it nicely. Not for nothing had he devoted a lifetime to the mastery of circumambient speech.

“And though I cannot offer you, my dear, either the frivolities of youth or the glamour of an hereditary title, I am asking you to share a position which I believe to carry a certain distinction—” Here he broke off abruptly as Tristram appeared in the immediate neighbourhood and leaned dreamily over the rail.

There was an embarrassing silence, of which the secretary took advantage to repair the ravages of the politician’s first kiss.

“Would you oblige me, Sir, by going away?” he boomed in the full round voice that regularly hypnotised East Dimbury into electing him.

Tristram made no answer. He was trying hard to remember if “tune” made an impeccable rhyme to “moon”.

“Confound you, Sir,” cried the Politician, “are you aware that you are intruding upon a sacred privacy?”

Tristram genuinely didn’t hear. He was preparing to let “boon” have it, or, if necessary, “loon”.

The Politician heaved his bulk out of his deck chair and fetched Tristram a slap on the shoulder. But of course as you can’t do that with a properly disembodied matured-in-the-wood ghost, all that happened was that the Politician’s hand sank through Tristram like a razor through dripping and was severely bruised on the rail. It was left to the secretary to console him, for Tristram was gone.

And then, rumours of Tristram’s strange interludes percolating through the ship, all at once he became the centre of a series of alarming enfilading movements. The young Tuppenny-Berkeleys and their friends, who had been holding a sausage-and-peignoir party in the swimming-bath, bore down upon him waving Leberwursts and crowing “Tally-ho! The jolly old Laughing Cavalier!” Cavalierly was the way he treated them. Sweeping off his hat to young Lady Catherine, he nodded coldly to the others and walked straight through his brother, a young Guardsman, who was to dine out on the experience for nearly half a century.

The main staircase was already blocked with excited passengers. At the top of it stood the Chief Stewardess, a vast and imposing figure. Just for fun (for he was beginning to enjoy his little outing – and so would you if you had been stuck in a mouldy library for three hundred years) Tristram flung his arms gallantly round her neck and cried, “Your servant, Madam!” The poor woman collapsed mountainously into the arms of a Bolivian millionaire, who consequently collapsed too, in company with the three poorer millionaires who were behind him.

At this point the Captain arrived and advanced majestically. To the delight of the company Tristram picked up a large potted palm and thrust it dustily into his arms² Then, with a courtly bow to the crowd and a valedictory gesture of osculation, he disappeared backwards through a massive portrait of Albert The Good.

On the way back to No. 3 Hold he sped through the Athenian Suite. In it the new lord of Moat Place lay on his bed in his pink silken underwear, pondering on the triumph with which in a few months he would spring upon the markets the child of his dreams, his new inhumane killer for demolishing the out-of-date buildings of the world, Plugg’s Pneumatic Pulveriser.

Tristram took one look at him and disliked him at sight. On the bed table lay a basin of predigested gruel. Inverting it quickly over Mr Plugg’s head, he passed on to disappear into the bowels of the ship.

Blowzy Bolloni and Redgat Ike sat at a marble-topped table sinking synthetic gin with quiet efficiency. They had spent the afternoon emptying several machine-guns into a friend, so they were rather tired.

“I’ve given Bug and Toledo the line-up,” Bolloin said. “It’s a wow. Toledo’s in cahoots with one of Plugg’s maids and she spilled the beans. The stuff’s in his new safe in the library – see? Any hop-head could fetch it out. Is that oke?”

“Mebbe it’ll mean a grand all round, eh?” asked Redgat.

“Or two.” And Bolloni winked.

“That’ll be mighty nice. You want my ukulele?”

“Yeah. But I got a hunch heaters’ll be enough.”