“Was it a fire at the pub?” I remember burn damage when we came for Hugh’s dad’s funeral. Roof repairs, charred stone, all fixed up and freshly painted by the time we moved here permanently a few months later.

“The third was from fire. Sam, that’s Lannie’s son, he died from choking. He’d gone to the toilet and latched the door, the poor fool, so no one could help.”

I never knew Lannie had children. I’m tempted to ask, but don’t dare interrupt. This is the longest stream of consecutive words I’ve ever gotten out of Matty Clare.

“As they found him,” he goes on, “Mary Whitmer brushed up against a bad socket. That killed her and started the fire that took Gus.”

“So that was three, and then yours, and Hugh’s father, and…?”

“Last one was drowning. The American.”

I jolt to a stop, staring at him. “There was an American here last time?”

“A poet.” He points to the upstairs of a timber-framed cottage to the west, a holiday rental that’s hardly ever occupied. “Lived up there.”

“Nobody told me another American had lived here.”

“He wasn’t here long. He knew about the tithe. He was taken by it; it had a certain romance for him, I don’t know. I think he probably killed himself, to be honest. That’s the only way I can figure it, why he would have been out there, his clothes all folded on the beach, no towel, no note. I don’t know for sure. He was an odd one. But Lord Treadway…” He glances at me, a queasy look in his eye. “Hugh’s father, that is. He tried to save him. Pulled him out, gave him CPR, did everything as if we were on the mainland on any other day.”

“Was that wrong?” I feel weirdly defensive of a relative I never met. “You make it sound like a stupid thing to do.”

“Not at all. It was absolutely the right thing to do. Even if you can’t change the outcome, if it’s all set and settled in advance like some folks here think, you’ve still got to try, haven’t you?”

The question brings me right back to college, my old philosophy lectures. If fate exists, can it be fought? Should it be? It was all so theoretical then.

“I think he felt some guilt too that this should happen to a guest, as it were.” Matthew sighs. “Someone not even English. I understand it. But I regret it. Wish he hadn’t done it.”