Swanseashire has many strange stories. Most of them improved with darkness, distance, and someone else paying for the cider. But few were stranger than the case of Sir Humphrey Crafty D’Og: a ghost who had escaped death, taxes, and most forms of responsibility — but not the little problem of his body wandering off without him.
It began on a damp autumn evening. The sort of evening that gives mist a bad name. The old manor crouched in the gloom, trying to look ancestral rather than merely expensive to heat. Inside, Sir Humphrey drifted through the corridors, recounting Cavalier triumphs to the mice. The mice, being practical creatures, had learned that history was shorter if you kept moving. His noble head, with flowing locks and a moustache that seemed to have been designed by committee, hovered towards the place where the east tower had once stood. The tower, sadly, had lost an argument with progress. It was now a car park and several recycling bins.
Then Sir Humphrey felt the familiar absence. First a suspicion. Then a certainty. Then the sort of realisation no gentleman wants to have in public: he was missing everything below the chin. His body — velvet doublet, breeches, boots, and all the other equipment required for looking important — had gone off on its own. Gravity, which has never cared for breeding, seized the moment. Sir Humphrey’s head drifted down between “Glass & Tins” and “Mixed Plastics”, where the council had thoughtfully provided categories for almost everything except disembodied nobility.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Sir Humphrey, with the weary dignity of a man whose lower half had formed a breakaway government. “Body? Kindly stop behaving like a committee and return at once.”
This was not, regrettably, the first time. Sir Humphrey’s body had the stealth of a cat, the judgement of a goose, and the punctuality of a small railway. Usually, he pursued it with spectral determination. Tonight, reduced to an opinion with hair, he could only wait among the bins and hope no one mistook him for specialist waste.
Fortunately, Crafty Dog Towers employed Blodwen. She was a kitchen maid with red hair, quick hands, and the sort of common sense that is often mistaken for bravery by people who own portraits of themselves. Under Cook’s iron supervision, she made scones so light they seemed to reject gravity on principle. That evening, she had been sent out with the recycling. Even haunted houses, after all, produce packaging.
Blodwen approached the bins, humming one of her grandmother’s old tunes. It was the sort of tune used for keeping rhythm while doing unpleasant jobs. Then the bins spoke. This was not customary — even in a house where the curtains occasionally sighed.
“Excuse me,” said a deep, mournful voice. “Down here. No, not the bottles. The aristocrat.”
Blodwen looked round the bins. To her lasting credit, she did not scream. She made only a small noise — like a kettle reconsidering its career. There, hovering a few inches above the ground, was Sir Humphrey’s head. It wore the expression of a man betrayed by his own infrastructure. She recognised him from the portraits in the Great Hall, where he looked nobler, grander, and much more attached.
“Good evening,” said the head, attempting a bow. It came out as a wobble, but intent counts for something among the dead. “I find myself briefly separated from the rest of my argument.”
Once Blodwen found her voice, she stammered, “S-Sir Humphrey? Is that really you?”
“Indeed,” said Sir Humphrey. “I have mislaid my body. A regrettable habit of mine — or rather, of its. If you could assist, I should be obliged as both a grateful ghost and an embarrassed gentleman.”
Blodwen had been raised to help people in difficulties and not to ask too many questions before breakfast. So, very gently, she lifted the head. It was lighter than expected, which was fortunate. The responsibility was heavy enough. Together they set off through the yard, while an owl watched from the roof with the air of a critic awaiting the second act.
The old stable contained boxes, rusty tools, and spiders with the calm confidence of long-term tenants. Blodwen searched bravely. Sir Humphrey gave instructions. Most were useless. All were beautifully phrased. The body was not there.
“Perhaps it has gone inside,” Sir Humphrey suggested. “It always admired rooms with high ceilings. Gave it ideas.”
They entered the Great Hall. Ancestral portraits stared down with the smugness of people who had never been asked to justify their furniture. Sir Humphrey, carried in Blodwen’s arms, addressed the shadows in a tone normally reserved for unreliable servants and minor cavalry.
“Body! Present yourself immediately. A gentleman may misplace his hat, his temper, or — in politics — his principles. But his torso really ought to remain in communication.” Blodwen suggested, quite sensibly, that he keep his voice down before the household woke up and had to form opinions.
The hall replied with creaks, echoes, and the distant hoot of the owl, who was clearly following events with professional interest.
The library was next. It was a room full of books whose chief occupation was gathering dust and making visitors feel undereducated. Sir Humphrey had once come there to wrestle with the mysteries of existence. On this occasion, existence appeared to be winning by an embarrassing margin.
“If you do not return at once,” Sir Humphrey declared, “I shall be forced to take stern measures.” He paused. Blodwen waited. The pause grew longer. It became the sort of silence in which bad ideas quietly expire.
“When I have shoulders again,” he added, “I shall put them to excellent use.”
They searched the drawing room, the dining hall, and the wine cellar. In the cellar, Sir Humphrey became wistful in the way ghosts do when remembering drinks they can no longer enjoy and prices they can no longer complain about.
At dawn, they found the body in the kitchen garden. It was wandering among the vegetables with the solemn air of a man inspecting troops. It paused before a cabbage as if receiving advice from it. For a headless torso, it looked annoyingly self-satisfied.
“There it is!” cried Blodwen, hurrying towards the wayward body.
“There,” said Sir Humphrey. “My body has always been vulnerable to leafy authority. Blodwen, if you would be so kind, reunite us before it joins local government.”
Blodwen placed the head upon the body. There was a shimmer. A pop. And a brief moment in which the universe looked the other way and pretended this sort of thing happened all the time. Sir Humphrey straightened, brushed invisible dust from his doublet, and resumed being a complete nuisance with impeccable manners.
“My dear Blodwen,” he said, bowing, “you have performed a noble service. I am, in every possible sense, much obliged.”
Blodwen smiled. “Glad to see you back in one piece, Sir Humphrey.” She curtsied. Privately, she resolved that future trips to the recycling would involve a lantern, a rolling pin, and perhaps a signed statement from Cook.
Sir Humphrey drifted into the morning mist, leaving Blodwen with a story she would tell for years. It was proof, if proof were needed, that in a proper old house, even the recycling could become a matter of life, death, and administrative inconvenience.
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