‘I checked the website,’ I said. ‘It’s all electronic submissions now, apparently. Still three chapters and a synopsis, though. I’ll email her and ask her to look out for your submission.’
‘She probably gets a lot of them,’ said Tom.
‘About two hundred a week, so she claims.’
‘How many does she take in a typical week?’
‘None at all,’ I said. ‘Maybe half a dozen a year.’
‘That’s encouraging.’
‘Sorry. I hate to disillusion you so early on, but it really is as bad as that. Welcome to the world of publishing.’
‘No, I meant it. It’s encouraging. I can be one of those half-dozen.’
I looked at him. Once, I thought, I had been like that. Now, if I’d been told that Elsie accepted ninety-eight per cent of submissions, I would have just assumed I’d be one of the two per cent rejected. I’d probably be right, too. Elsie had not forgiven me for deserting her and signing up with one of her rivals.
‘I had an interesting talk with Catarina,’ I said. ‘She wanted me to investigate Robin’s murder.’
‘Do you do that sort of thing?’
‘No, I don’t do that sort of thing. Well, hardly ever. And definitely not this time.’
‘Quite right. If there was anything suspicious the police would have picked it up. It would have been mentioned at the inquest.’
‘Absolutely. One thing she said was odd, though – Catarina thought Robin was about to inherit some money – “when the old man dies”, he had apparently said. You’ve no idea who that could be?’
‘None at all. I said that Robin had no close family.’
‘It didn’t need to be close family. They just had to be … well … old, I suppose. A friend perhaps?’
‘Robin had plenty of friends. The crowd he hung around with in London – I doubt many of them had money or that they would have left it to him if they had. As for Sussex … one or two members of the sailing club are fairly rich, by most people’s standards, but they have families to leave their cash to. They might include a favourite charity or two in their wills, or their old college, but they’d hardly hand it over to Robin to fritter away.’
‘So nobody who would willingly leave him a life-changing sum of money?’
‘Not willingly.’
We were both silent for a moment.
‘Unwillingly?’ I asked.
‘It would be a motive for murder.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Not Robin. He wasn’t the sort to stoop to that. At least, I don’t think so. He’d have probably tried almost anything short of blackmail to raise funds, of course. He’d talked to Dad about creating a wind farm just outside the village. That didn’t make him popular round here.’
‘The wind farm? The one Barry Whitelace was objecting to? How did your father fit into that?’
‘I think Dad was going to sell him the land. Robin was going to build the windmills and run it. But it won’t happen now.’
‘That could be what Barry Whitelace wanted to talk to Catarina about,’ I said. ‘He’d have wanted to know if there’s any chance she would still go ahead with it.’
‘It’s definitely off,’ said Tom.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. Even before he died Robin had gone cold on the idea. You think the village might have clubbed together and bumped him off to prevent a wind farm? That’s perfectly possible, of course. If you decide to take this on, you’ll need to question everyone.’
‘The whole village? I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Catarina’s already ruled that theory out, at least. Of course, I don’t think Robin was murdered at all.’
‘Nor do I. But if he had been, then I wouldn’t necessarily ignore the whole-village scenario. Feelings are still running very high indeed.’
‘So I gather. Anyway, I’m not investigating anything. Catarina mentioned one other thing, though …’
‘About the case you’re not investigating?’
‘I can still be curious about it, can’t I? She said that Robin had persuaded her to go into Chichester that day. While she was out, he’d had a visitor – just before he set out in the boat.’
‘That wasn’t mentioned at the inquest, either,’ Tom said.
‘I think the police didn’t follow it up.’
‘Why?’
‘I doubt they would have thought it relevant to a sailing accident some hours later. I also don’t think they were impressed by Catarina’s attempt to bribe them.’
‘Probably right about its relevance. I mean, Robin was alone in the boat, as far as we know.’
‘Any idea who the visitor was, though?’
‘Why should I know that?’
‘You covered the inquest. You heard all of the evidence. You probably know the village as well as anybody. You know who Robin’s friends were. You are probably better qualified than anyone to make a guess.’
‘Like I say, it didn’t come up at the inquest at all – not in any form. As for the rest, Dad knew Robin much better than I did.’
‘So I should ask your father?’
‘You could. He’s getting a bit deaf these days, so you’d have to be patient. And he forgets more than he remembers. But I’m sure he’d try. And you mustn’t be put off if he gets irritable – he’s like that a lot.’
It was not very encouraging. Anyway, I already knew Colonel Gittings a bit – we’d met at the monthly film club a couple of times, and once at a village fete. He hadn’t been very friendly on those occasions – a fact I’d put down to my being a new arrival, though he may have disliked me for all sorts of reasons. I’m not sure he rated writers very highly. On each of those occasions, we’d exchanged only half a dozen words. Later, when we’d passed each other in the street, he had shown no sign of recognising me and my half-hearted greeting had gone unacknowledged. I wasn’t that keen on trying to renew the acquaintance. And I wasn’t sure what good it would do me to know, anyway. I wasn’t getting involved. I’d made that clear to Catarina.
‘But your father was a close friend?’ I asked.
‘Yes – very much so – they saw each other quite often at the sailing club.’
‘But …’ I tried to remember what Tom had said before. ‘You mentioned something about the families not always seeing eye to eye?’
Tom looked at me blankly.
‘When we were at Greylands,’ I said.
‘Oh, that …’ said Tom. ‘But you must know the story – it’s in at least one of the local history books. I was forgetting you’re a newcomer.’
‘I’m rarely allowed to forget it,’ I said.
‘The Gittingses have owned land in the parish since the seventeenth century at least,’ said Tom. ‘But we’re recent arrivals compared with the Paghams. It’s recorded that Sir Walter de Pagham held three fiefs by knight’s service in Pagham, Earnley and West Wittering during the reign of King John.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll have to stick around a bit longer before I qualify as a local. So what was the cause of friction between you? Punch up over a leylandii hedge? Or was it the sheep stealing you mentioned?’
‘No, nothing that serious. Just murder.’
‘Murder? What, one of your ancestors killed one of his?’
‘The other way round, according to the judge. One of his killed one of mine. Actually it was a great-great-great-great-uncle in my case. It’s quite a well-known story in the village, because it occasioned the last public hanging in these parts. I could tell you all about it if you’re interested. There’s a possible miscarriage of justice angle to it. It might make a good plot for your next book – that could be more profitable than acting as Catarina’s gumshoe.’
‘Yes, in the sense that Catarina’s offering me no fee of any sort. You don’t want the story for a book of your own?’
‘I don’t write crime novels. Anyway, delving in family history like that for fun and profit seems a bit in bad taste. And of course, you may decide there’s not much to it. Lancelot Pagham’s motives were never revealed. If he really was guilty, then it was just a bit of senseless Victorian violence.’
‘Most real crime is,’ I said. ‘Senseless violence, I mean. It’s only in books that there is a decently convoluted motive, disputed wills, missing relatives and proper red herrings.’
‘You find that a convoluted plot and lots of red herrings are a winning formula?’
‘Not so far,’ I said. ‘But I’ll keep trying. I’ll also email Elsie and let her know your manuscript is on its way. She may not represent me any more, but at least she’ll recognise the name.’