Tony Walker

A spook can leave a physical thing.

The wet footprints on a dry floor.

In fact, I think I used that in My Niece Alice, and he sees the wet footprints.

And that stops you from writing off as a dream.

So in fact...

Yeah, there's a long tradition of this, whereby, is this a dream?

But no, and there is some physical evidence.

So everything else goes back, the car, the body, the girl, the lorry driver, because they belong to 1919.

But the glasses belong in the narrator's kitchen.

They're his glasses, so the rest of it doesn't belong to him.

Filled with his whiskey.

The ghost used them, but didn't bring them.

And maybe that's why they get left behind.

So whether Alan, in writing this or narrating this story, thought about any of that or simply needed the glasses for his plot mechanics, i.e.

without the glasses you have no reason to go to Scotland Yard, therefore you don't have any twist, therefore you don't learn it's a ghost story,

We don't know.

But I think it still works.

I thought this was a remarkably fun story.

I loved his asides.

I must say, I really like that narrator talking to... I love that style.