The problem with being a crime writer was that the more Tom tried to divert me from the aftermath of the 1848 murder, the more I felt obliged to look into it. It was unusual, after all, that the death of a member of the family by hanging had somehow acted as a catalyst for the resurgence of the Paghams. A day spent in the library and a little online research revealed that the change in fortunes had been gradual, but that it had actually begun very soon after the murder of John Gittings.
Perceval Pagham had, at the time of the killing, been a labourer on the Gittings’ estate – that had been clearly reported in the accounts of the trial. Yet the 1851 census returns showed him as a farmer and the owner of Greylands Farm, as it was then described. Greylands had been extended in the late nineteenth century, but even in the 1850s, it must have been a substantial house. A little more research showed that he had enlarged the holding in 1875 and 1876. An obituary in the Chichester Observer dating from 1902, recorded him as a significant landowner. His daughter had predeceased him, without marrying. His only son, Cecil, became a Justice of the Peace and had five sons of his own – four of whom had died in the trenches in the 1914–18 war. Gawain alone, another Pagham to be named after one of Arthur’s knights, came through it and succeeded his father in 1930. Gawain, too, had been a JP and had been awarded a CBE for some unspecified services to the state. He had made further acquisitions of land in 1935 and 1950, passing on the estate to Robin’s father, Roger, in 1970. Roger had made the final additions to the estate with a further purchase in 1984.
These acquisitions, from first to last, had been mainly from the Gittings family. This in itself was not strange. There is a limited market for small parcels of land. You cannot show up with a trailer and pack ten acres into it and drive away. The most likely purchaser, if you are considering selling a few fields, is the farm next door. The Gittings and Pagham properties had been side by side.
What had induced the Gittings to sell was not clear, but their decline had mirrored the Paghams rise. Early census returns listed them as landowners. I knew that Tom’s father had spent most of his career in the army. The obituary for Tom’s grandfather stated that he was an accountant. His great-grandfather was listed as a smallholder and grain merchant. They were not impoverished but clearly needed to earn their living.
Then I noticed something odd. Each Pagham acquisition coincided with a Gittings death. George had died in 1875, his eldest son John in 1876, his grandson, also John, in 1935, and so on. It couldn’t be a coincidence. So what was it?
‘No biscuits today?’ asked Josie. ‘I’m amazed you can put that many away and stay as thin as you are.’
‘My guest returned to London a couple of days ago,’ I said.
‘Your agent?’
‘That’s right. Elsie’s my agent. Sorry – I mean she used to be my agent.’
‘So now she just comes down … what? … to eat your biscuits?’
I pocketed my change with a shrug. That seemed a fair summary of our present contractual status. Then, seeing the shop was empty, I asked: ‘Josie, you know the village as well as anyone … Have you ever heard anything about a feud between the Gittings and the Paghams?’
She frowned. ‘Well, like I said, young Tom Gittings played fast and loose with Robin’s fiancée.’
‘I mean earlier – maybe much earlier. You know that a Gittings was murdered by a Pagham back in the 1840s?’
‘A bit before my time.’
‘But you’ve heard about it?’
‘It’s our most famous murder. It’s got its own entry on Wikipedia.’
‘So, did that lead to anything later?’
Josie leant forward, as she often did if she wanted to impart some local gossip.
‘Not really,’ she said, somewhat disappointingly. ‘But I do remember my gran saying something very odd about them.’ She surveyed the empty shop for a moment then continued: ‘She’d have only been a little girl at the time, but she told me she’d seen Albert Gittings and Cecil Pagham outside the Memorial Hall one time – a couple years after the First War, that would have been. There’d been some sort of event there, opening the hall and commemorating the men who’d been killed. Well, Cecil had lost four sons, hadn’t he? It was only Gawain, who was a bit funny, who’d survived. He’d not been called up for some reason. Anyway, Albert Gittings turns round and says to Cecil, four down and one to go, eh? Now that was a horrible thing to say at any time, and this was just after this event, whatever it was, to commemorate the dead.’
‘What did Cecil say?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Josie with a laugh. ‘Gran never told me that. She just told me what Albert said. She was that shocked – even though she was a mite herself. Four down and one to go. She clearly never forgot it. Did I give you your change?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’d better get back. I need to make a phone call.’
‘Death duties,’ said Elsie, at the other end of the line. ‘It’s obvious. The head of the family dies. They have to sell a few fields to pay the tax. The Paghams are waiting with the cash.’
‘How come it’s always the Gittings who have to sell? Death duties would have hit both families. The Paghams held onto what they had.’
‘You don’t listen to the Archers, do you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’ It was a radio programme I rarely missed.
‘OK. The Gittings are the Grundys – always mismanaging their farm and lurching from crisis to crisis. The Paghams are the Archers, buying up the village bit by bit and getting all the best lines in the script.’
I thought about this. I couldn’t see Derek Gittings mismanaging anything.
‘The problem with that,’ I said, ‘is that there was no inheritance tax back in the 1870s – I’ve checked and there was just succession duty at about one per cent. It would have been an annoyance, but not ruinous. Death duty didn’t come in until 1894 – the first time it would have applied would have been when the grandson, John, died in 1935.’
‘I’m losing track of all these Johns – they do seem to have wanted to keep the memory of the original one alive.’
‘That’s the son of the second John Gittings and the nephew of Albert.’
‘The Albert who wished the Paghams dead?’
‘That’s the one. And why the animosity?’
‘Because a Pagham had killed a Gittings?’ suggested Elsie.
‘Tom doesn’t think so. He reckons John was a victim of Gittings on Gittings violence, with Lancelot Pagham as collateral damage. There was a clear motive too – both Gittings boys were after the same girl and one of them had got her pregnant. George Gittings gave evidence that did for Lancelot and saved his own skin in the process. People must have talked about it.’
‘Well, if it was a known miscarriage of justice, then you’d have expected the Paghams to have hated the Gittings,’ said Elsie, ‘not the other way round. And it would scarcely have still been going on seventy years later.’
‘Cecil Pagham was the nephew of Lancelot. Albert was the nephew of John Gittings. In one way it was all still pretty close. But I take your point that it’s all the wrong way round. Unless Tom’s mistaken – if the judge was right and Lancelot really was the killer, then it makes more sense.’
‘We need more evidence,’ Elsie said. ‘Something that will help make sense of it all.’
But the next bit of evidence I was to unearth would prove to be the oddest yet.