It was Big John Little, the village inebriate, who late one night stumbled about in the flower-beds beneath the bedroom window of Little Gidding’s hated postmistress, Mae Holliday, shaking his huge fist and bawling out to her that she was a mouldy old witch he wished were dead…

Prophetic words Big John was later to regret when Mae Holliday is found lying dead, murdered, in front of the altar in Gidding Cathedral’s Lady Chapel, staked through the chest with one of his withies.

Was Mae Holliday really a witch, a member of a coven meeting secretly in the derelict old brewery in the village?