Too Much of Water

The seventh John Grey mystery sees the magistrate and former spy leave his Essex home for the town of Eastwold on the Sussex coast. Once a great port, in 1670 Eastwold is so depleted by coastal erosion that there are now few buildings left standing, but it still elects two MPs to Parliament, wherein lies its interest to those to whom Grey must answer.

Grey arrives with Arminta, his wife, at the house of Digby Digges, son of the dead Admiral, where they will stay for the duration of their visit. The coroner has ruled the death an accident, but votes in support of navy funding are short, and Samuel Pepys turns up to ensure that the investigation advances the election of a replacement MP who is prepared to vote the right way.

The Admiral was not popular, and few residents mourn his death, but Grey wonders why, if he was killed, he was attacked at that particular time. He also takes an interest in the drowning of the Admiral’s wife a few years earlier, and the disappearance of her lover at the same time. Grey makes progress but comes to an understanding of past events only after another murder.

His gentle questioning elicits guarded responses; the townsfolk are not keen on outsiders. Their main concern is to maximise the benefit to be gleaned as electors, entitlement being based on ownership of property now some distance offshore. Custom dictates that to complete a conveyance the parties have to be on the property - but now the closest they can get is in a small boat over the land in question.

This is all very amusing, all the more so for corresponding to much of the historical Dunwich (on which Eastwold is based), as detailed in the author’s note at the end of the book. While Grey and his wife (a very sensible woman who makes useful suggestions) are keen to discover the truth, they proceed with wit and humour which counterbalances the rather dour preoccupations of the worthies of the town.

1670 is of course quite soon after the restoration of that ‘merrie monarch’ Charles II, and something of the joyful resumption of the pleasures of life is evident in the air, although in the town old grudges and enmities from the bitter feuds of the civil war are still extant. Arminta is a confirmed royalist who is inclined to tease her husband for his one-time puritan sympathies, and Grey wisely accepts this ribbing gracefully.

The story is well told and has plenty of charm for those who like their crime set in the context of some unusual features of Britain’s political past.