‘Airfields, Miss Molly. Runways. The Yanks built hundreds of ’em round here. The man sells the gravel and buys more land, and so on, till by the end of the war he’s got more money than he knows what to do with.’

‘Was it illegal?’

‘Nah. He’s too clever to do anything illegal. Never underestimate a fellow like that, Miss Molly. It buys him what he’s always wanted: a fancy house in the village where he was born, but he always wants more.’

‘You are talking about Henry Blackman? He was born here in the village?’

He nodded. ‘So after the war he starts a property company, buyin’ and sellin’ and whatnot, managin’ houses for letting, and the rest. Employs quite a few locals, so they’s on his side anyway. And sets about becomin’ Mr Wormley, the life and soul of the village, buyin’ everyone rounds in the pub of a Saturday night.’

‘But why?’

He shook his head. ‘Who knows? To prove he belongs or summat? Because he don’t have a father, p’raps?’

‘You’re saying he’s illegitimate?’

Eli shook his head and took a puff on his pipe. ‘Well, that’d be tellin’, wouldn’t it? Who knows, but I have my suspicions. Anyway, he joins them committees and all. Pillar of the community, he becomes. Best pals with the previous fella.’

‘The previous vicar?’

‘Ran rings around him, he did.’

‘What do you mean – rings?’

The old man shook his head, relit his pipe and puffed on it silently for a few moments.

But he’d opened the door to the topic, and I couldn’t let it pass. ‘But he’s upsetting people. You included.’

‘Thass true, Miss Molly,’ he said, exhaling smoke into a cloud of gnats. ‘We never did hit it off, him and me. It’s what I knows about his dealings with the previous fella what irks him, I reckon. And he’s tryin’ to get me off of that land cos he wants to build houses on it and make even more money.’

‘Build houses?’ He’d never admitted that to Pa. ‘In those beautiful woods?’

‘That’s what they say. Been after it for years.’

I wanted so much to ask Eli more, but right then Jimmy returned, wanting to crown me with his daisy chain. After we’d said goodbye and were heading back to the vicarage, I glanced back.

Eli was still sitting there, pipe in hand, staring into space with an expression of such desolation that it broke my heart. He’d always seemed as old as the hills, but there was such a strong spark of life inside him that you never really noticed his age. Was it my imagination, having heard what I’d just heard, or did that spark really seem to be fading? Something had to be done to save Eli’s home.