Inside, the oil lamp which normally hung in the passage now stood on Huw’s desk, next to the TV.

‘Power’s gone,’ someone said. They were all standing around in the lamplight looking guilty like small boys. There was a smell of burning.

‘Ah, Huw, ah…’ The Rev. Charles Headland flicked at the letter-box mouth of the VCR. ‘Some of us wanted to have another look at that lady. Couldn’t make up our minds. Dodgy items, poltergeists.’

‘It was mainly me,’ said Barry Ambrose, the worried vicar from Wiltshire. ‘I half-believed her, but I think I’d have wanted to go back and talk to her again.’

‘Yes.’ Huw closed the door of the room. ‘That was what they did. It was a rector in Northampton. He felt bad about them recording the first interview on tape for the likes of us, and just giving her a token prayer, so he went back to talk to her in private.’

Merrily felt a tension in the room.

‘Sorry, Huw.’ Charlie held up his hands, something ribboning and rustling there, and glistening in the lamplight. ‘Don’t know what happened here.’

Holding up the video cassette. About four yards of tape had become unravelled.

‘Screen went blank. Ejected the tape, and the damn thing was on fire. Had to rip it out and stamp on it. Extraordinary thing. Wasn’t your only copy, was it?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Huw accepted the remains of the video. ‘Coming to the end of its shelf-life anyway, that particular case-history.’

‘Need a new player, too, I’d guess.’

Merrily leaned in and saw that the lips of the machine were scorched and warped. She’d never known this happen to a VCR before.

‘That’s the fourth one in two years,’ Huw said. ‘It’s a right difficult place, this.’

‘Jesus.’ Merrily’s legs felt weak; she clutched at a chair. ‘You’re not saying…?’

‘No, luv. I don’t say anything, me.’