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The woman's hysteria was slowly beginning to subside. She had clearly been the victim of nothing more than a bad dream, I rationalised. As Simpkins continued to calm and reassure her, I looked at a luggage tag casually discarded on a small and elegant writing table in the corner of the cabin. Irene Lamb, it said, followed by a smart address in Belgravia.

I turned, with a half-formed query struggling for release. I looked at the woman. If I had been human and interested in such aesthetic concepts as beauty then I would have been obliged to find her strikingly beautiful. She had short dark brown hair. And her eyes, also deep brown, contained hints of a hidden loneliness behind them. I asked the obvious question and then immediately wished I had not.

'What did you see?'

'A ghost,' she replied, in a lucid, tranquil moment amid the maelstrom of distress within which she was trapped. 'It was there. I saw through it.'

A ghost? A transparent one at that? Oh, really ...

'It's gone,' I noted, without adding that I did not believe it had ever been there in the first place. Such rationality was something best left for the cold light of a new day.

Simpkins stood and picked up a fine woollen cardigan from the dressing table. 'You're ice cold, my ducks,' he said, slipping the garment around the woman's shoulders. She looked up and gave him a watery smile, wiping the remaining tears from her eyes. 'Try to get some sleep,' he continued, making for the door and indicating that I should go with him. 'It'll all look better in the morning.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Better in the morning.'

She did not look at all convinced.

Simpkins stepped outside and I followed, giving Miss Lamb a final, slightly concerned glance before I left the room. I felt a bit of a fraud, having been of no help either in calming the woman or in finding a reason for her traumatic experience. 'Pleasant dreams,' I said.

It was a fatuous comment, which did not receive the withering sarcasm that it richly deserved.

'That was ... interesting,' noted Simpkins in the corridor.

'Who can explain the stuff of nightmares?' I asked, feeling stupid and illequipped for such a debate, particularly here and now. I spoke the words simply to ensure that the conversation did not drift to a conclusion on such a sour note.

'If it was a nightmare, of course,' said Simpkins with a cheery grin that belonged in a different situation entirely. 'You've surely noticed how cold this ship is?'

Now he came to mention it, I had. But that was something for which I did have a rational explanation.

'We're in the North Atlantic in October,' I ventured. 'It's hardly the Tropics.'

'That's what I thought,' he replied. 'At first.'

I was curious. There was an unspoken yet dreadful implication that his opinion on this matter had now changed. I followed him to the end of the corridor. He jangled his keys, put them in his coat pocket and cast a glance in both directions as though what he was about to tell me was a secret never to be repeated. I drew closer and asked my question in a conspiratorial whisper.

'You have another explanation?' I was keenly aware of just how ridiculous this query sounded. Rationalism, a good and treasured friend to me over many years, waved a little white flag of surrender and then wearily crawled off in search of a bed for the night.

Simpkins nodded, the cheerful smile gone from his face and replaced by

something harder. He gave me an enigmatic look that could have been surprise at my ignorance or contempt at my inability to grasp the blindingly obvious. If Simpkins thought that I was a gullible fool, ripe for a piece of japery, he didn't show it. 'There have been many rumours,' he began.

'Rumours?' I interrupted, incredulity rising within me. I knew exactly in which direction I was being led.

'There's some as say that this ship is haunted, he continued at last. 'A ghost ship,' he added with a slight quiver in his voice.

I was,