‘I suppose so. Robin didn’t die in an artillery barrage, of course, but I agree that a soldier would have knowledge the rest of us lack. But – even allowing for all that – however cross you were that a deal had fallen through, you wouldn’t kill somebody, would you?’

  I carefully placed my spoon in my saucer. ‘Unless …’ I said.

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t kill somebody for that.’

  ‘Any other questions? I really don’t have much time.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ I said, getting up and brushing the crumbs off my dress. That must have been three – no, four – chocolate croissants; I’d tell Tuesday I’d had a small green salad.

  ‘Are you going to pay for those coffees?’ Martina asked. ‘I mean, you invited me here. I assume you’re not expecting me to pay?’

  ‘We could go halves.’

  ‘No, we couldn’t.’

  I waved at the waitress. ‘Can I pay, please? Yes, both of us. Oh, and could I have a receipt saying small green salad and Evian water?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The call came the following day. I was able to update Elsie on a few things and she was full of what she believed to be her ground-breaking discoveries.

  ‘And I think I’ve remembered where I first came across the name “Blanch”,’ I added. ‘I thought Tom must have mentioned Martina, but it wasn’t that. Then I thought it was because of this firm of venture capitalists who’ve been in the news – you know, Blanch Capital? But it wasn’t that either.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Elsie. ‘Any more things that it wasn’t?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There aren’t. Do you want to know about this or not?’

  ‘Tell me and I’ll let you know afterwards whether it was remotely worthwhile.’

  ‘Lancelot Pagham’s sister’s married name was Blanch,’ I said. ‘Morgan Blanch. I saw it going through the old newspaper reports of the trial again. She’d died shortly before the murder. Lancelot had been to visit her grave.’

  ‘So Martina could be a descendent of Lancelot’s sister? Is that what you are saying, now you’ve finally got round to saying anything at all?’

  ‘It’s possible. It’s not a common name. She obviously has some links with the area.’

  ‘Would that entitle her to any of the estate? I mean if he’d died without making a will?’

  ‘Maybe. I think she’d have needed a good lawyer, but you can go back several generations in the absence of a will or obvious heir.’

  ‘What if she’d already consulted one? A lawyer, I mean. What if she knew that, if Robin died before he married Catarina, then she’d inherit?’

  ‘Did she make any reference to the estate when you spoke to her?’

  ‘Yes, she did. She may have confused me with a lawyer at first.’

  ‘Really? She thought you were a lawyer?’ I asked.

  ‘These things happen. She wondered if I wanted to talk to her about the will. So, for once, you could be right. Like you say, Blanch isn’t the commonest name. If she is a descendant, and if she knew, it gives her a further reason for wanting Robin dead.’

  ‘If she knew.’

  We both thought about this for a moment, then Elsie added: ‘Did the colonel know that one of his ancestors was buried on the site, when he started fracking?’

  ‘He hasn’t been fracking – he’s just applied for permission to drill to find out whether it would be possible. But, no, I suspect not.’

  ‘Look,’ said Elsie, ‘you don’t suppose that Robin was blackmailing the colonel? He could be the “old man” he referred to – the one who would provide the big payday. Maybe allowing him to build a wind farm on the Herring Field was his offer for keeping quiet about whatever it was. Robin wouldn’t take it – wanted more – so Gittings killed him. He was in the army. He knows about weapons. He knows about boats. He was around that day. He could have done it.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose any of that,’ I said. ‘In the first place, Robin was going to get his money “when the ‘old man’ died”. You only get to collect from your blackmail victim while he’s alive. And there’s no evidence at all of blackmail. They actually seemed to be quite good friends.’

  ‘Tom succeeded in splitting up Robin and Sophie – with his father’s approval. That doesn’t suggest they were friends.’

  ‘True. But you’re coming up with reasons why Robin would have killed Colonel Gittings, not the other way round. I’ve talked to the police. Robin was involved in drug smuggling. There’s every chance that was the reason he died. I’m pretty certain of it, actually.’

  ‘Did Catarina say anything about drug smuggling?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ask her properly?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I bet you didn’t. I’d better come down to West Wittering. If you want something doing …’

  ‘There’s no need. The police seem to know what happened.’

  ‘But I’ll come anyway.’

  ‘You’re not planning to stay here again?’

  ‘Thank you. I’d be delighted. That’s so kind of you.’

  ‘I may be out quite a lot.’

  ‘I’ve got a key.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, I forgot to give it back to you.’

  ‘I didn’t know I’d given you one.’

  ‘It was in the box in your hall.’

  ‘I’ll see you later, then.’

  ‘Same room as last time. Oh, and chocolate biscuits in the bedroom would be good. No apples. No pears neatly sliced on a plate with a stupid white napkin. I am allergic to sliced pear with napkin.’

  ‘Are there any other instructions you’d like to give me before you hang up?’ I used all of the irony at my disposal.

  ‘I’ll text you if I think of anything,’ said Elsie.

  I was even more certain of my facts when later that day Joe gave me a call.

  ‘Thanks for sending Tom Gittings over to do a DNA test. That should prove who the body in the Herring Field was.’

  ‘I didn’t send him.’

  ‘You must have put the idea into his mind.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We’ve also got a bit more information on Robin Pagham. My two drug smugglers are a bit vague about dates, but they think that on the day Robin died they’d given him some Rohypnol and some cocaine to take ashore.’

  ‘And they think he might have sampled the goods en route?’

  ‘Well, that would be the last piece in the jigsaw, wouldn’t it? He takes too much, loses control of the boat. It explains everything, really.’

  ‘I’ll tell Elsie not to come down, then,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I think she’s just coming to get away from the diet her assistant is trying to put her on.’

  Coincidentally I ran into Tom a little later in the village – I say coincidentally, but it’s a small village and we know each other’s habits. So it just happened that I was standing outside the pub at six o’clock.

  I told him what I’d heard about Robin. He nodded absently. ‘I suppose I’m not that surprised he was involved in something of the sort,’ he said. ‘It’s funny the things that come out after somebody is dead.’

  ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Did Martina Blanch ever mention that she was distantly related to Robin?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘One of the reasons she first visited West Wittering was that her family came from this part of the world. She pointed out a gravestone to me – Morgan Blanch – her great-great-great-grandmother, I think. We later worked out that Morgan would have been Lancelot Pagham’s sister.’

  ‘She might have stood to inherit something if Robin had died without making a will,’ I said.

  ‘Really? You can go that far back?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘But Martina might have known?’ I asked.

  ‘She was interested in history and genealogy and stuff. I think she once mentioned she’d done a family tree back to the 1660s. If she’d married Robin, she’d have got it all anyway, but she didn’t. Well, the past is coming back to haunt all of us at the moment – I mean the body in the field.’

  ‘Did you decide to go ahead with that DNA test?’ I said.

  He looked at me slightly suspiciously. ‘Yes, I did. If the body is an ancestor of mine, I feel I ought to ensure that he’s properly buried.’

  ‘Does your dad know?’

  Tom’s face was a bit sheepish. ‘I’ll tell him later.’

  ‘He wouldn’t approve?’

  ‘God knows. He’s been a bit odd lately. Moody.’

  ‘The field’s still yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, the plan to sell it to Robin is obviously dead.’

  ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Your father was annoyed when Robin changed his mind.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Sophie,’ I said. ‘Well, indirectly.’

  ‘Yes, he was. Furious.’

  ‘Why didn’t your father just go ahead with the wind farm himself, if it was such a good scheme?’

  ‘I asked him that. He said it wouldn’t work that way. He said he’d explain one day, but he couldn’t now.’

  ‘It had to be Robin?’

  ‘Yes. Nobody else. He was cross because he said that Robin was hoping to get the field for nothing one day.’

  ‘He hoped your father would just give it to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s no chance Robin was blackmailing your father?’

  ‘Blackmail? No, of course not.’

  ‘Something in his past? Something from his time in Ireland, say?’

  ‘He was in the army. Everything he did was totally legit.’

  ‘But a lot of it was secret?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So, why else would he just give Robin the field? What hold did Robin have over him?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But whatever it was, Robin will never lay his hands on it now that he’s dead.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Elsie

  I wasn’t sure which flower bed I’d parked on last time, so I just steered the mini onto the nearest one available, avoiding the daffodils that seemed to have sprung up everywhere.

  In the middle distance I could see somebody working away with a spade, so I wandered round to the side of the house. Catarina was digging the vegetable patch. She worked efficiently and methodically, only partially hampered by the fact that her high heels were sinking into the mud. She paused, swore briefly in what I assumed was her native language, then set to again.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit early for that?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me. ‘Is spade there if you want to help.’

  I walked over and fetched the second spade, which had been thrust into the earth a short way off.

  ‘OK, Cat, what do you want me to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Dig,’ she said. ‘Then put cocaine in pile by lilac and heroin in pile by azaleas.’

  I noticed that there were already two neat little piles on the lawn – packets wrapped in oilcloth and stained with mud.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right time to harvest heroin?’ I asked. ‘I’m sure my old man used to leave it in the ground until Easter. Said it had a better flavour.’

  ‘We dig now. By Easter police come back with sniffing dogs.’

  Though I like it to remain my little secret most of the time, I do know how to use a spade, having helped my dad on his smallholding many years ago, before I worked out that it was easier to buy it all ready-chopped in plastic bags at Waitrose. After I’d removed a foot or so of soil I struck drugs – the spade made contact with the outer covering of another package.

  ‘Careful!’ Catarina called across to me, ‘don’t tear fabric. If bag leak, heroin not good for cabbages.’

  I dug more carefully and gathered in a fine crop of narcotics. ‘There must be thousands of pounds-worth of stuff here,’ I said. ‘Did you grow it all from seed?’

  ‘Robin buries it,’ said Catarina. ‘He thinks I not see, but women take an interest in their husbands’ gardens. Is natural.’

  ‘So, he wasn’t just bringing it ashore, then?’

  ‘He go out in boat. Bring back packages. Sometimes men come to collect. Sometimes he hide here if not safe to collect straight away. When Robin die, much drug in garden. Too much drug. Police come to house and search. They find nothing. But I think – next time may search garden. So I phone gang boss.’

  ‘He’s in the Yellow Pages?’

  ‘This is your irony?’

  ‘No, I’m genuinely curious. Life is full of surprises.’

  ‘Is that your irony?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not Yellow Pages. I have number already.’

  ‘As you do.’

  ‘Police catch some smugglers. They bring photographs to me and say do I know them? Of course I do not say it – do police think I am some sort idiot girl? – but I know them. And I know who they work for. So, I phone him. I say get your ass round here, moron, or police take all your drugs. He come tonight with white van and man with AK47.’

  ‘Is this package heroin or cocaine?’ I asked.

  Catarina felt it briefly. ‘Cocaine, obviously,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll put it by the lilac tree, then,’ I said.

  Later, over coffee and yummy cakes, Catarina said: ‘Maybe you not tell Ethelred about heroin.’

  ‘You think he might not approve?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘I agree. He wouldn’t grass you up, but knowing that he had condoned a felony would trouble him, poor thing. He would lose sleep. Now that the drugs have gone, by the way, do you think that the stories of ghosts in your garden will also stop?’

  ‘You think I spread ghost stories to keep peasants away from vegetable patch?’

  ‘Not if you say you spread the rumours for some other reason. Do you mind if I help myself to another cake or two by the way? You can’t get these in London – or at least, I can’t.’

  ‘You have secretary?’

  ‘I have an assistant.’

  ‘You must get her to go out and buy. I give you address of good baker.’

  ‘What an excellent idea. I’ll do that. Digging certainly gives you an appetite. Did you hear, by the way, that they’d dug up a body in the Herring Field?’

  ‘Old body. Just bones.’

  ‘Ethelred thinks it’s an ancestor of Tom Gittings. Do you know why Robin didn’t buy the Herring Field when it was offered to him?’

  ‘No, but Field is useless. I wonder if he wants field to bury stuff in – much better than garden – police not look there – but maybe too close to path. People walk there and see. That man, Whitelace. He is always there. Watching.’

  ‘Colonel Gittings apparently said that Robin was the only person it was worth selling the field to. Colonel Gittings wouldn’t have been involved in drugs too?’

  ‘I think colonel is like Ethelred. Not take drugs.’

  ‘True, it was only a thought. Maybe he just meant that only Robin had land adjoining it. I know what else I wanted to ask you: did you know somebody named Martina Blanch?’

  ‘She girlfriend of Robin’s. They have fight. But she come back.’

  ‘She visited Robin after they broke up?’

  ‘Yes. Once. Maybe twice. I do not know how often. You cannot watch your man all the time. You try, of course, but is not possible. Even with CCTV. I say to Robin, you not see that woman again. She on make. You screw her again and I kill her.’

  ‘But you didn’t kill her,’ I said.

  ‘Not even acid,’ said Catarina tolerantly. ‘I go fetch more cake.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ‘You could have saved yourself a journey,’ I said to Elsie. ‘There’s nothing to investigate. Robin died when he was smuggling heroin.’

  ‘Catarina doesn’t think it’s the drug smugglers.’

  I smiled. ‘Why, does she know them personally?’

  ‘A bit,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ I joked. ‘She’s got their phone number or something?’

  ‘It’s probably in the Yellow Pages,’ Elsie said enigmatically. ‘Don’t you think it’s interesting, though, about Martina?’

  ‘That she kept in touch with Robin? Yes, I suppose so. But she’d already said that she no longer bore him any ill will. Catarina clearly saw her off.’

  ‘She stood to inherit a lot of money if Robin died without a will.’

  ‘But he did make a will,’ I said. ‘He left his money to Catarina. Then he died smuggling drugs. He wasn’t killed by Martina or Derek Gittings or Sophie or Barry Whitelace or anyone else in the village.’

  ‘Your problem, Ethelred, is that you lack imagination.’

  ‘I thought that, as a writer, imagination was one thing that I did have.’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ said Elsie, ‘but your problem is that your books are all very similar – I mean that they have the same stock characters and standard plots, continually working the same theme of a mysterious death that could only have been committed by a closed group of between six and twelve suspects, all of equal suspectability. Their motives are invariably ones that Agatha Christie would have recognised and had, in many cases, already rejected as too improbable. So, imagination? No, it’s not your strong suit.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘when you say “don’t take this the wrong way”, you mean that there is a right way to take all that?’

  ‘It is offered in the spirit of honest, constructive criticism. You probably haven’t had much of that lately.’

  ‘There are some advantages in not having an agent,’ I said.

  ‘But very few,’ said Elsie. ‘As for your last agent … that Janet person.’

  ‘Janet Francis,’ I said.

  ‘Precisely. That Janet person, as she is better known in the book trade. Completely wrong for you.’

 

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