‘Robin would not smuggle drugs,’ said Catarina. ‘This I know for sure.’

‘But think,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it explain his death? If he had some sort of argument with the smugglers out at sea? I mean, it didn’t make sense that he died in reasonably calm weather and it didn’t make sense that somebody in the village killed him. But once you get in with drug dealers, it’s another ball game, as they say. And the stranger who visited him – couldn’t he be from the gang?’

‘So, who is Old Man Robin talks about?’

‘I don’t know – the head of the gang?’

‘And why money when he dies? Gang boss may cheat you all the time, but can’t pay when dead.’

‘OK, I’m not saying the drug business explains everything. But the police are convinced Robin was involved in shipping drugs into the country. They asked me about it.’

‘What you say them?’ Any mention of officialdom provoked immediate and unqualified suspicion in Catarina.

‘I couldn’t tell them anything because I don’t know anything.’

‘They ask where he lives?’

‘No, but I guess they would have that information … you mean there are still drugs in the house?’

‘Robin not smuggle drugs.’

‘OK. My advice to you, Catarina, is that there should not be drugs in the house when the police come.’

‘They will find nothing.’

I nodded. My point wasn’t that the police should find nothing but that there should be nothing to find. But even if the police did search and find drugs, it was unlikely that Catarina would be blamed. Robin had form, as you might say, and until probate had been granted, it was still his house. ‘You know, I assume, that the police found a body in the Herring Field – it’s been there a hundred years or so, though. No connection with Robin’s death. But Robin was going to put a wind farm there.’

‘Is not Robin’s land. Is Colonel Gittings’. That man Witless …’

‘Whitelace?’

‘Him. He ask me if I make wind farm on it. I say, not mine.’

‘But Robin was going to buy it?’

‘He not tell me.’

‘Fair enough. Have you heard, by the way, the rumours about ghosts in your garden?’

‘Who says there are?’

‘Everyone, it would seem. The local kids are terrified to come anywhere near here.’

‘They are stupid. Superstitious peasants. They believe anything.’

‘So, you’ve seen no ghosts?’

‘There is no such thing as ghost. Just Mafia and tax collectors.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

 

My second meeting was at a cafe in Chichester. I had been sitting quietly for ten minutes while Tom read and reread The Murderer and the Devil.

‘So, what do you make of it?’ I asked.

‘Sounds like our family, all right,’ said Tom. He pulled a face. ‘Judging from the story here, it would seem to have been pretty well known that George was the murderer and that Lancelot Pagham was innocent.’

‘In other words, what you’ve always thought too. But I’m not sure that means everyone knew then. Sabine Barclay-Wood lived not far away. He might have known and talked to Perceval Pagham. Perceval might have given him the true story – or spun the good reverend a yarn. But the detail of the empty coffin is intriguing. I’m not saying that one of your ancestors was taken away by the devil but, since almost everything else seems to be true, I do wonder if the bit about the empty grave isn’t based on some rumour that was going round at the time.’

‘But why would they do that? And there’s no evidence other than this story …’

‘There’s another detail that you don’t know. That body they found the other day at the Herring Field – it dates from around 1874 or 1875. George died in 1875.’

‘So you think the body is George’s?’

‘I think it’s possible that something terrible may have happened in 1875 – something that caused the family to have George buried in unconsecrated ground by the harbour rather than in the churchyard – taken by the devil, if you like – then they went through a mock funeral afterwards for the sake of decency. And the burial was in some haste if they left three pounds four shillings in his pockets.’

‘But no more than possible. We really can’t be certain the body is George’s.’

‘No, we can’t. It’s a strange coincidence, of course – it’s the right date and it’s on his land and it sort of all fits in with the Murderer and the Devil story. But you’re absolutely right – beyond that, it’s just my speculation. I’ve no doubt that DNA testing could be arranged if you were curious enough.’

‘It can’t really be that important,’ said Tom uncertainly. ‘I mean, it has no bearing on anything now.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘It was all a long time ago.’

 

Afterwards, I went to the library. I couldn’t help feeling that if there was anything suspicious about George’s death, it might come out in the obituary – not that he’d been carted off by the devil, clearly, but perhaps a suggestion that it had been sudden and unexpected. Since I knew the date he died, it was not too difficult to find.

A list of other mourners followed – men and women with surnames that can still be found on the gravestones in the churchyard. Nothing much to go on there – certainly not some sudden and unforeseen event like a house call from Satan. But there was something odd all the same – it was George’s second son, Albert, who had led the mourners, not his first son, John. Thinking about it, I had already made a record somewhere that John had died soon after his father. I checked my notebook – yes, he’d died in 1876. I called up that volume as well.

We are deeply saddened to announce that Mr John Gittings, of Greylands House, passed away on January the fifth after a long and painful illness. His son, also John Gittings, succeeds to the estate, reputed to be the largest in West Wittering. Since John Gittings Junior is a minor, his uncle Mr Albert Gittings will become his guardian. The late Mr Gittings’ father, Mr George Gittings, died last year.

The ‘long and painful illness’ would explain why he was not at his father’s funeral. That would also mean that, throughout 1875 and maybe for longer, both father and eldest son were in effect invalids, leaving Albert to run the farm. But there was no clue as to why this should have necessitated a burial in a marshy field near the cold, grey waters of Chichester Harbour.

George’s obituary suggested, moreover, that he was, to the very last, well respected in the village, where he sat on the council and performed some unspecified duties at the church – a churchwarden, perhaps. If he were a known murderer, or even suspected of being one, it is unlikely that these things would have been the case. A fortiori if he was believed to be in league with the devil.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the final part of the Murderer and the Devil story was simply made up. And why not? Plenty of writers take some factual event and then embroider it a little. In this case the author had taken a little-known rumour about John Gittings’ murder and added a neat gothic twist at the end.

I googled Sabine Barclay-Wood.

There was a copy of Happy Recollections of a Sussex Clergyman in the library, though it took some time to locate it. It had been privately printed and was in the form of a diary, which Barclay-Wood must have maintained over a number of years (or invented – I was beginning to doubt him as a reliable source). It was chatty and anecdotal. He sounded like the sort of person who, once they had buttonholed you, would be difficult to shake off. I finally found what I was looking for in an entry nominally attributed to 3 February 1902.

Dined with the Rector at West Wittering – a tedious journey along almost impassable roads but in the knowledge that I would drink good port and hear a good story or two after our meal. In fact I was rewarded with a tale that the present incumbent’s predecessor had told him, years ago, about a parishioner who vanished without trace. My colleague would tell me only that the man’s name was George and that he had been a very respectable party, a parish councillor and a churchwarden of long-standing. Then one day he had ceased to attend church entirely and failed to appear at council meetings. In a small village all sorts of rumours spread, including that witchcraft or worse was involved. By and by, the worthy rector had called at his house to enquire whether George was sick but was given many plausible stories by the family to put him off. It took a year for him to discover the truth, which so shocked him greatly. It seems that George had committed some crime many years before and blamed it on a poor fisherman who hanged for it (a story that it must be possible to verify elsewhere). At this point the tale became a little confused, my colleague having opened a third bottle of port – but he said that George died and, though the clergyman had doubts about doing so, he was given a Christian burial in the churchyard. The ending of it all was this, however: some years later the grave was reopened so that George’s wife could be laid to rest. George’s coffin could be made out – rotten and broken though it now was – but there was no sign of George – no shroud, no bones, not a tooth had survived. The gravediggers said that he must have been taken by the Devil. My colleague suggested that it was most likely that George was never in the coffin that they buried, but why that should be and where George went, was something he could never say. Drove back in the rain – one oil lamp gave out just after Birdham because, like the Foolish Virgin, I had neglected to have it refilled – but I got home safely, thanks be to God.

 

Then a little further on, I found this:

 

Out of curiosity I have examined some old newspapers in Chichester library. It would seem that in 1848 one John Gittings was murdered and a fisherman named Lancelot Pagham was hanged for it. John Gittings had a brother named George, who was present at the trial, and who may be the George referred to in the tale of The Murderer and the Devil (as I intend to call it). George Gittings attempted to give evidence for the fisherman, but Pagham’s impertinence towards the court seems to have swayed the judge against him. ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring’. verb. sap.

 

Finally I came across this:

 

At a bookshop in Chichester I found an ancient volume entitled Queer Stories of Old Cornwall. The bookseller assured me that it was rare and the stories largely unknown – he had never seen the book before in all his days. I bought it as a curiosity, thinking to compare my own Sussex stories with the Cornish ones. While I was paying, an old farmer came into the shop. On hearing him addressed as Mr Pagham, I enquired if he was from the family of that name who lived in West Wittering. He said he was and, after some discussion, admitted freely that it was his brother who had been hanged, most unjustly as he insisted. I asked him about George Gittings. He said that he would not hear a word against him – that he had been very kind to the family and given them money. Then he told me something very odd indeed about the Herring Field where the murder had taken place – how it had passed to the Gittings family as a permanent reminder. By this time my purchase had been wrapped, and I went on my way. I have to say that the gifts to the family are a nice touch that I shall add to the story, illustrative of contrition. Of course, if there was no true Repentance in his heart then his Good Works would have been to no avail. And the Devil would have been perfectly at liberty to take him. I shall most certainly point out that very valuable moral.

So there was the reference to the Herring Field again as a burden to the family that owned it. I flicked through the volume to the end, but I could find no more on the murder, other than a brief note for June 1904 that his book of Sussex Tales had been published and that he hoped it would be well reviewed and that sales would be brisk. He never mentioned it again.

 

It had been a long day, but I felt I had to phone Barry Whitelace to let him know that the body, whoever it was and however it got there, was not Bronze Age. He seemed a little distracted.

‘Thanks, Ethelred,’ he said.

‘I thought you’d like to know,’ I added. ‘I suppose it’s stopped the investigations for the wind farm for a bit.’

‘It wasn’t for a wind farm,’ he said. ‘It was for fracking. Test drill hole.’

‘Derek Gittings was contemplating fracking?’

‘Apparently. Or some company was willing to pay him to be allowed to test there.’

‘I see,’ I said. Then I asked: ‘How’s Jean?’

‘She died yesterday,’ he said.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘No reason why you should. Life goes on.’

‘It somehow puts the rest into perspective, though,’ I said. ‘I mean, the whole question of what happens to the Herring Field must seem wholly unimportant now.’

‘Quite the reverse,’ he said. ‘I’ll continue to do just whatever I have to do – whatever that proves to be – to preserve it for her. From my point of view, it’s holy ground.’