The Warwickshire witchcraft murder - one story if any which is stranger than fiction - is not for the squeamish.

For the evidence in this, the most diabolical of all Midland unsolved murders, points to the fact that old rheumaticy Charles Walton was a human sacrifice during a pagan rite. In some primitive fertility ceremony his blood was allowed to ebb away into the ground.

That such an atrocity could take place in this day and age, within sight of a sleepy Warwickshie village, is inconceivable. Yet today police have an open mind on the part witchcraft may have played in this frightful crime.

Charles Walton, a 74-year-old hedgecutter, lived in a thatched cottage opposite the chuch at Lower Quinton, not far from Stratford-upon-Avon. When the weather was fine he worked under contract for a local farmer. He was a kindly man with many friends and no known enemies.

On St Valentine's Day, 1945, he went to work in the fields around the village carrying his hayfork and billhook. He was due back at the cottage for tea at about 4 pm, but his niece Edith found the place in darkness when she returned from her wartime factory job. At 6 pm she raised the alarm, and with a neighbour and the local farmer they went on a search of the fields.

It did not take the searchers long to find the old man.

He had a number of injuries, including broken ribs, which could have been caused by his blood-stained walking-stick which was lying in the field. But the most horrifying aspect of the killing was that the old man's throat and chest had been slashed in the shape of a cross with his own bilhook. Moreover his body had been firmly pinned to the ground with his hayfork, the prongs on either side of his neck.

The body had been turned over so that the blood could flow into the ground.

Walton had been dead since about noon. It seemed to be a completely motiveless murder and the work of a maniac. Walton carried no money and the only object missing was his pocket watch, which he may not have had with him anyway.

An autopsy was carried out by Professor J.M.Webster. Detective Superintendant Alex Spooner, head of Warwickshire C.I.D., was joined by the legendary Bob Fabian of the Yard.

But the more they probed this extraordinary killing the more baffling became the solution. There seemed a complete absence of clues and a motive, and the village folk were reticent. The Shakespeare land, steeped in tradition and folklore, became alive with rumour and suspicion.

However, it was a long time before there was a first whisper of witchcraft.

The evidence soon mounted up and even hard-headed detectives were forced to admit the astonishing possibility of a ritual killing could not be ruled out.

THE PLACE. Meon Hill is not far away from Long Compton which is reputed to have been the meeting place for a coven of witches for 300 years. There lie the Rollright Stones, a Stone Age circle assosciated with witchcraft.

THE METHOD. Walton's murder followed the exact pattern of a Druid sacrifice. It was a pre-Christian belief that life taken out of the groun had to be replaced by blood. The murder followed bad harvests.

THE TIME. The killing took place on February 14. Under the ancient calendar, which was 13 days behind ours, this would make the date February 1, a day for Druid sacrifices.

THE VICTIM. Old Walton was said to talk to the birds and animals on Meon Hill. In a folklore book, published in 1929, we are told of a local lad who had visions of headless dogs before finding his own sister dead. His name was Charles Walton. There is every reason to believe that it was the same man.

THE HISTORY. Superintendant Spooner discovered there was a similar witchcraft killing at Long Conpton in 1875. Eighty-year-old Ann Turner was murdered with a hayfork because it was thought that she was a witch. Another man had attacked an l woman and declared he would kill 16 witches in the village.

This formidable array of evidence might sound almost convincing. But over the years the story has become embellished with half-truths, sheer imagination, and stories which might be true or might not.

We are told that coven of witches still exist in deep Shakespeare land. They may drink and dance and indulge in sex orgies but I cannot accept that anyone would risk the gallows, as they did at that time, for the sake of devil worship. Perhaps the hiseous murder was no more than a coincidence.

About two miles away at Long Marston was an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. Could the old man have surprised a PoW or a group of them as they tried to escape?

His assailants were not to know he had no money or valuables. The discovery three years ago of a battered watch in what used to be Walton's back garden carried enquiries no further. There is still no evidence that Walton's watch was stolen or that he even had it with him on the day of his death.

If you rule out the work of a maniac or that the old man was attacked and robbed the can be only one explanation - witchcraft.