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He lifted up his own drink, which was clearly just pink grapefruit juice, but Kelly smiled, appreciating the effort nonetheless.

She followed Martin through the ancient but cosy bar and out through a set of swinging double doors into the garden.

A cool breeze was blowing down from the hills, but the sun was still high enough in the sky to cast the land in golden shadows and leave the outlines of the hills and the hangman’s tree seen as silhouettes against the darkening sky.

‘Do you mind if I record you?’ Kelly said, pulling out her phone.

‘Be my guest,’ Martin replied. ‘Although be warned that you won’t be the first record-keeper to have caught voices other than mine on your recordings. It is my suggestion that, in order to avoid disrupting your sleep with hideous nightmares, you wait until sunrise before reviewing what you may have taken down upon these tapes.’

Kelly laughed at the wonderfully archaic way that he referred to her smartphone’s voice recorder. ‘I’ll take my chances, if that’s okay. Let’s have Howling Gail do her best.’

Martin lifted a swift hand. ‘Did you hear something?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I thought I heard a little twist of the wind, as though Gail had heard that you might not believe in her. And it would come as no surprise to me were you not to be visited by her at some point during your stay.’

‘I’d encourage her to do her best,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe, I just tend to like to see things with my own eyes. I’m a kind of wannabe believer, I suppose you’d say.’

‘Those are the best kind. The ones that always speak the most truths,’ Martin said. ‘And now, without further ado, let me tell you about this grand old inn.

‘It dates back originally to the twelfth century, when it would have been used as a coach house to rest weary horses and their riders as they travelled the length and breadth of Britain, messengers passing through to relay the king’s word out to the provinces, so to speak.

‘It is said that the inn, then known simply as the Speckles Arms, was here even before the church, although there is no record to prove either way.

‘All I know, and all my father knew before me—my family has been in possession of this fine establishment for generations—is that it has stood for far longer than anywhere else in the village, and it holds within these walls all the history of Briar Speckles that you could ever wish to know.

‘If only these walls could speak, what secrets they would give up! Alas, these secrets will remain so forever.’

‘So tell me about Howling Gail,’ Kelly said, trying to get him back on track.

He had been flourishing his arms around as though rehearsing for a stage play, and she was worried about being late to meet Ambrose.

‘Do you see that tree on the hill?’

‘Yes. It’s something of a hangman’s tree, is it not?’ Kelly said.

‘I see that you’re a fan of the paranormal too,’ Martin said.

‘Well, it is kind of spooky, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It is indeed.

‘Now, our story of Howling Gail begins some six hundred years ago, when a minister from London moved down here to Devonshire in order to take over the church from the recently deceased priest before him.

‘Finding himself alone, the man of the cloth decided to take a wife in the village. But in such a small community there were few eligible women, just the daughter of the village’s poor blacksmith. The man’s name was Roger Blakely, and his daughter’s name was Gail.

‘Gail Blakely had few prospects. Her father, by all accounts, was a raging alcoholic, and her mother had died in childbirth, taking Roger’s unborn son with her, leaving him to bring up Gail by himself—something that, by all accounts, he wasn’t particularly adept at.

‘And Gail, from a young age, had been fending for herself.

‘However, despite this misfortune and poor start in life, Gail was a beauty. And even though she worked her father’s forge when he was unable to lift his head from the pillow, she maintained her beauty, and she was never short of an admiring eye or a backwards glance, even if, as a poor girl, she had few suitors.

‘And now this priest—he needed a wife. And as a man both of God and of charity, he saw no better option than to take Gail Blakely, despite their age difference being some thirty years.’

‘That is quite a gap,’ Kelly said. ‘That’s older than my father.’

‘Alas, poor Gail had no other option but to wed the elderly priest, but, believe it or not, at first their marriage was a happy one. Gail was a dutiful wife, and the priest was a kind and considerate husband.