Cat Among the Herrings (16 page)

‘I regret to inform you,’ said the young lawyer brightly, ‘that I am neither Mr Chettle nor Mr Smallbrook.’ He paused, a smile on his lips. It was clearly one of his standard jokes. ‘Mr Chettle died in 1882 and the last Mr Smallbrook – young Mr James as he was known – retired from the business in 1990. He now lives in Selsey.’

I suspected that all new visitors to the office were given this introduction. The lawyer who was neither Chettle nor Smallbrook had rattled it off fairly glibly. His name was Morton, if I’d caught it correctly, and he was quite chatty. He seemed inclined to be helpful if he could.

‘It’s a shame about Mr Chettle,’ I said. ‘If he’d still been around, he would have been able to answer my questions from first-hand knowledge.’

‘Quite,’ said Morton. ‘Your research is purely historical and, as I understand it, relates to a murder that took place in 1848?’

‘Yes. Purely historical. So, I hope I don’t need to take up too much of your time.’

‘We are always happy to help out local historians if we can. I got my assistant to dig out some papers. I should explain that there are
two
archives – one relating to the firm of Chettle and the other to the firm of Smallbrook and Dawson – the two amalgamated in 1948. Chettle represented the Gittings family as far back as we can trace our records. Smallbrook and Dawson is a relatively new concern – it dates back only to 1846. The original Mr Smallbrook and his successors dealt with the affairs of the Pagham family.’

‘So today you are the lawyers for both families?’

‘Yes. They deal with different partners. But there are no immediate conflicts of interest – neither is suing either at present.’ He laughed.

‘Robin Pagham did, however, sue Barry Whitelace,’ I said.

Morton frowned. ‘That is another matter entirely,’ he said. ‘In any case, you said your query related to the nineteenth century …’

‘So it does,’ I replied.

‘Good,’ said Morton, relieved that I had not tricked him in some way. He opened a buff-coloured envelope and took out some yellowed documents. They emerged with a faint rasping noise of old paper on old paper. He unfolded the brittle sheets carefully.

‘1848?’ I said as I glanced at the date.

‘Precisely. The transfer of the freehold of the property known as the Herring Field from Perceval Pagham to George Gittings, signed by both gentlemen.’

‘In return for a payment of £500 and “in recognition of the lease”,’ I said. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

‘This is clearly intended as the final part of a larger transaction, by which one party granted the other a lease. £500 would have been a lot to pay for the Herring Field alone. Extortionate, you might say. But if a lease had also been granted on some other property, then the payment makes more sense.’

‘But Perceval Pagham would have had no other land to lease to George Gittings.’

‘I think that must be right. I happen to know that the Paghams have lived at Greylands since the mid-nineteenth century, which they must therefore have purchased shortly after the events you are investigating, but I don’t think they owned any other land then, not in 1848.’

‘So the reference to a lease remains a mystery.’

‘Quite. There’s no lease here. Wait a minute, though – do you see that?’

I looked at the corner of the document that Morton was indicating.

‘Two small holes,’ he said triumphantly. ‘And, between them, a thin brown line. What do you make of that?’

‘Something was previously pinned to the document?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Morton, slightly disappointed that I had spoilt his great revelation. ‘That’s the mark of a pin that once attached this to something else. And the faint line of rust suggests that the pin was in place for a few years – long enough for a bit of oxidation to take place. As a lawyer you become a bit of a detective. I’d call that a pretty convincing piece of evidence.’

‘So you’re saying the lease may once have been attached to it? Where is it now, then?’

‘It must have become accidentally detached at some point – or even deliberately transferred to another file, which may have been lost. The Smallbrook archives took a direct hit from a German bomb in 1942. A great deal of historic interest was lost for ever. This is from the Chettle archives, which were frankly less well kept. Anything could have gone missing from those.’

‘I think that Perceval Pagham may have been blackmailing George Gittings,’ I said. ‘The lease could have been lost, as you say, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it never existed at all. £500 was simply the price for keeping quiet about what Perceval had seen or worked out.’

‘Which was?’

‘That George had murdered his brother. Another man had hanged for it.’

‘You don’t say? How exciting. And that’s the murder you’re researching? £500 sounds quite cheap to cover up a homicide, even in 1848.’

‘There were further transfers of property in 1875 and 1876?’

‘Yes, I looked those up too, as you requested. I can see why you wanted them now, but I don’t think they take you any further forward. Straightforward transfers of leasehold agricultural land at about the price one would expect. Nothing furtive or underhand. If there was blackmail, as you say, it’s not apparent from those deals. And George died in 1875, so would have been beyond blackmail.’

I paused for a moment. ‘Leasehold land?’ I said. ‘I’d assumed the Gittingses held the freehold.’

Morton consulted the papers again. ‘Held on a very long lease by the look of it – over nine hundred years still remaining. Every bit as good as freehold, really, though there may have been some ground rent to pay.’

‘Does it say who the freeholder was?’

‘Nope. You’d have thought it might, wouldn’t you? But if the land was properly identified – and there are maps here – then they may have thought that was irrelevant. It was probably the Church – they owned a lot round here. We still have to look out for chancel repair obligations in leases and freeholds. The bishop had a palace on Cakeham Road.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘The grandest beach hut in the area. And then there were later transfers of property in the twentieth century?’

‘I believe so. But I had understood your query related only to the earlier ones? Land transfers are, of course, matters of public record, but I would have needed to consult the families concerned before showing you anything that might relate to a living person. So, I could go up to the nineteen fifties, say …’

Morton flicked through the file and frowned.

‘Something interesting?’

‘How odd. A letter to Colonel Gittings’ grandfather, I think. It says that he could appeal to a Lands Tribunal if he wished, but there would be a danger of losing the entire lease – it therefore had to be his decision. That doesn’t sound at all likely. Very bad advice from us, I think. We must have known that was wrong.’

‘Why would he go to a tribunal anyway?’

‘Oh, if he thought that the terms of the lease were unfair in some way. But even if the tribunal found against you, you’d just be back where you were. There wouldn’t be a penalty of any sort.’

‘Anything more on that in the file?’

‘No, just the letter from us to him. They’d obviously spoken before and wanted to put it on record. A bit of a mystery. Still, it doesn’t seem to relate to your project and it’s none of my business, anyway.’

‘You don’t deal directly with the Gittings family yourself?’

‘No. The Paghams and the Gittingses each deal with one or other of the partners. I am some way yet from being that.’ He smiled again. ‘I should say “dealt” of course. The Pagham family sadly no longer exists.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But you are presumably still dealing with Catarina over the estate?’

I saw him shudder slightly. ‘Not I, I am pleased to say, but the relevant partner does. Yes, an interesting lady. She does not seem to understand that our role is to advise her on the law as it stands – not the law as she wishes it to be.’ Then, deciding he might have said rather more than he should about a client to somebody who clearly knew Catarina, he started to stuff the papers back into their respective envelopes.

‘I suppose that work relating to the will is now more or less complete?’ I said.

He looked up and shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Another month or two until probate is granted,’ he said. ‘At least. Are you by any chance a beneficiary?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not in any way.’

Morton nodded, reassured. ‘It’s just that we’ve had one or two queries. One lady has been very tenacious.’ He frowned as if trying to remember something. ‘Actually, her enquiry was not unrelated to what you are doing,’ he said. ‘She claimed to be descended from Perceval Pagham’s sister. Interesting, no doubt, but of no relevance. Robin Pagham had made a will and she was not mentioned. End of.’

‘Martina Blanch?’ I asked.

Morton stopped stuffing envelopes, realising perhaps that he might just have breached yet another confidence. Then, deciding that Martina was neither a client nor anyone else to whom he owed a duty of care, he continued: ‘That’s right. I keep forgetting what a small world it is down here. Everyone knows everyone. Not like London. Of course, she would have been correct that, if there had been no will, we’d have needed to cast back several generations to see if there was an heir. Nobody likes to see money going quite needlessly to the Treasury. But there
was
a valid will, properly signed and witnessed. She was very insistent on the last point. She implied that it might be a forgery. A forgery! Well, we put her right on that, I can assure you. We are executors, so there could be no doubt at all of its validity. Cast iron.’

‘I’m very pleased for Catarina’s sake,’ I said.

‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Have you made a will, by any chance, Mr Tressider?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Do let us know if we can help you with it.’

‘I’m not planning to die in the near future,’ I said. ‘But I’ll give it some thought.’

‘Okey-doke,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t leave it too long if I were you.’

Morton’s request was one of those random reminders of your own mortality that ambush you from time to time. It was also a reminder that, if I made a will, I had no idea who I would leave my wealth (such as it was) to. My old college? The Crime Writers’ Association? The National Trust? Or should I leave no will and give some lawyer the pleasure of casting back through generations of Tressiders to discover some unknown third or fourth cousin that I’d never met? My father had occasionally spoken of an uncle of his in Cornwall – he might have had children and, by now, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but I had no idea where they were to be found. My mother had had three sisters, but all had died childless. Like Robin Pagham I was the end of the line that stretched back to Adam and Eve but would go no further – a sort of evolutionary dead end, like the pterodactyl or the steam locomotive.

Jean Whitelace’s funeral was another reminder. It was, as Whitelace himself had predicted, a small gathering. We occupied only the first two rows of pews in the church, and did not fill them entirely. It seemed a small recompense for sixty-odd years of life and friendship. The service was short, the sky overcast and undecided for the interment. Jean was buried quite close to Robin’s grave, where the earth was still fresh and a simple wooden cross marked the spot, awaiting a more permanent memorial stone in due course.

Whitelace turned – we had just finished the prayers for his wife and the coffin had been lowered – to look at Robin’s grave.

‘Bastard,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘He had his moments,’ I conceded, thinking of his treatment of Martina as much as anything.

‘Did his lawyers have anything to tell you about the Herring Field and when it was transferred?’

‘It looks like blackmail,’ I said, replacing my hat on my head. The wind was still cold. ‘George Gittings paid Perceval £500 to keep quiet and was given the Herring Field as a reminder of his crime. So, the story you showed me seems more and more accurate. The Gittings’ land is all leasehold, by the way – probably with the Church as freeholders, according to the man I spoke to.’

‘Same with the Herring Field? Leasehold? That would be useful.’

‘Would it?’

‘Of course. If there’s a freeholder, their permission would be needed for any development. If it’s the Church they might think twice about granting it for a wind farm or gas field.’

I thought about it. ‘True, but the Herring Field was definitely transferred freehold. I’m sure of that. How odd that that one field should have been different from all the surrounding ones.’

‘It probably doesn’t matter now.’

‘Tom says there are no plans to take it further.’

‘I should think not.’

I looked across the churchyard to where Tom was talking
to the rector. There was to be no food, no drinks following the funeral. Either it had not occurred to Whitelace that it was expected of him or he had despaired of the task of making sandwiches, even for so few. Another mourner approached and I said my goodbyes to him and made my way over to Tom.

‘I didn’t know her well,’ said Tom. ‘But I thought I should come – I knew there wouldn’t be many here. Those who knew Jean liked her a lot, but Barry Whitelace hasn’t endeared himself to the village. He jumps into things without realising what effect he has on people. He blunders through life like an absent-minded elephant.’

‘I guess so,’ I said.

‘Almost the first thing that he did after he arrived was to put round a letter accusing Robin of setting up an illegal wind farm without planning permission – that was when he and my father were talking about the sale of the field. Of course, he wasn’t at a stage where he needed permission for anything. Robin might have laughed it off. But it was the language Barry Whitelace used. He called Robin a failed actor, which really hurt. He also drew people’s attention to his criminal record and questioned whether he was a fit person to run anything. Robin went straight to his lawyers and Whitelace backed off. Maybe elephant is the wrong comparison – rhino might be better. Clumsy, shortsighted and about to become extinct, but better not to get in his way.’