The Haunted House

Nineteen and down to his last three hundred and fifty-two pounds, John Maple comes home to Sussex to find his father's house renamed Rackham Catchings, its brick hidden behind new timber aged to look Elizabethan, a bought ancestor presiding over the dining room. He wants it back at the twenty thousand his uncle put on it, and holds one card: a letter of acceptance already typed, waiting for a signature.

Bo Hellup, an American heiress with a head for business, supplies the method: if Rackham cannot be bought, it can be haunted. A cloak, a starched ruff, an eyelet hole to see through, a butler with views on rightful ownership, and a house party to convince. A country-house farce with a satirist's eye for land, money and manufactured pedigree.