The mystery takes an amusing turn once the clever young Constable Peregrine Twitten starts second-guessing his superiors.
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Starting in 1814, he combined his studies with extensive travelling in Europe, particularly with the aim of learning languages. A visit to France, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1814 nearly ended in disaster when the boat he was on capsized. He suffered another bad experience during his first ever visit to his future home town, Brighton, in February 1816. An armed robber accosted him in a twitten near Pool Valley and shot at his head when he refused to give up his money.
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They set about the various tasks with energy and enthusiasm, also stumbling on a mystery concerning the statue. Miss Cadell-Twitten hints that she knows the answer, but refuses to tell them because they accidentally frightened her bird Augustus. Plans to fire the cannon are scotched by the police sergeant, until an opportunity arrives just before Christmas, when they succeed in sinking a makeshift raft. Immediately afterwards, a blizzard starts and they help Mr Ramsgill gather in his scattered flock.
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The gathered crowd below are (quite unnecessarily) concerned for his safety, except for Miss Cadell-Twitten, who is still seething about the ejection of the birds from the church. Arthur poses in an empty niche, which Mr Pritchard explains once held a statue of the Virgin Mary. The same day, the three friends set off to explore High Force on the moors, to see the waterfall and the tiny abandoned church of Little St. Mary's. Peter has an accident with his bicycle, aptly named the Yellow Peril.
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It replaced the original burial ground, which was full by 1760, and a small private plot "scarcely larger than the space covered by a small room" which had been created soon afterwards for the Browne family. This is on the other side of The Twitten from the main graveyard. The oldest headstones in the original part of the burial ground date from 1730 and 1731. In 1815–16, some of the Gunsfield land had been used by Robert Chatfeild junior's sons John and Robert to build a pair of single-sex schools.
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An exceptionally heavy snowfall cuts off the moor, and even with a snow plough it is a struggle to return to the Grange through the deep drifts. David, the only one who can manage the snowshoes, checks on Bird Cottage and finds Miss Cadell-Twitten suffering from exposure. Grateful for her rescue, she tells them where to find the statue, which is recovered and returned to All Saints. The novel ends with a two-gun salute, as the Admiral and Guns set off in the spring in their new boat to explore the coastline of the British Isles.
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There was no purpose-built chapel in the 17th century, though: a cottage built in 1672 on a twitten (narrow lane) off East End Lane may have served as the congregation's meeting place. In 1716, the group registered another house in the village as a place of worship. The Jointure, a timber-framed 16th-century building on the site of a Wealden hall house (of which some traces remain), was owned by a family of Dissenters. (In the 20th century it was the home of artist Frank Brangwyn for several decades.) The chapel (right) was built on to the site of an earlier cottage (centre) which was later extended to the south (left).
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It stands at the end of the twitten leading to the churchyard, which has been left slightly overgrown to conserve wildlife. A mid-19th-century rector planted the churchyard and rectory grounds with a wide range of trees, many of which survive—including Bhutan pines and oaks from Somerset. There are many Victorian tombs and grave-markers in the churchyard, including some rare wooden grave-boards and some with wooden cross-pieces set between stone balls. Another of Huth's sons, Alfred Henry Huth—who also became a book-collector and author, and who died in 1910—is commemorated by a memorial tablet inside the church; its style was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "neo-late 17th- century".
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The village of Wick formed around Wick Manor, established after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It has an ancient Roman Brick/clay making site, (this now lies under a road called 'Potters Mead', off Courtwick Road). Wick had an Art Deco era Steam Laundry built in the 1920s, it has now been demolished. An Alleyway or Twitten that passes by the site of the former True Blue public house, is known locally as 'Dark Alley' due to the black clinker surface laid down along its route. During the early 1990s some areas of Wick had developed a reputation for drug and alcohol addiction, high teenage pregnancy, and low ‘community esteem’ this resulted in the establishment of a Christian charity called "The WIRE project" to address these issues.
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Bolney is on the ancient London–Brighton road about north of Brighton and southeast of the market town of Horsham. The main road now bypasses the village to the east. Neither a settlement nor a church was recorded in the Domesday survey of 1086. The parish was first recorded as Bolneya or Bolne in the 13th century, and was one of 12 in the Hundred of Buttinghill in the Rape of Lewes. Despite the absence of earlier written records, some sources date the present church's origins to about 1100, around the start of the Norman era, and most others attribute it to that period without specifying a date. One study, however, suggested an earlier construction date based on the design and decoration of the south doorway, which was stated to have little in common with standard Norman work: comparisons were drawn instead with similar Saxon doorways at 8th- to 11th-century churches elsewhere in England and at nearby Wivelsfield. The 16th-century tower was erected solely by the efforts of villagers. The church was built on hilly ground overlooking Bolney from the south, and was reached by a twitten (a narrow lane) from the village street.
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