A church minister accused of murdering his wife claimed she planned her own disappearance after the pair signed a spiritualist secrecy pact.

David Chenery-Wickens said he made an oath to his BBC make-up artist wife Diane when she told him she wanted to go away.

Chenery-Wickens, 52, denies killing his 48-year-old wife who he reported missing on January 24 last year.

Her heavily decomposed body was found on a country lane near Isfield on May 15.

At Lewes Crown Court yesterday he described how he returned home on January 22 to find Diane surrounded by credit card bills and notifications of debt.

He said: “She told me ‘You’ve seen the letters I’ve been getting and there’s no work for me. I’m off.’

“She came up with this idea that if she went it would solve everyone’s problems. She said no one wanted her and she wouldn’t be missed. I told her I would miss her.

“She said: ‘The last thing I want you to do for me is to swear, as a minister, you will help me disappear.’”

Documents revealed Diane had maximised her credit cards and owed more than £17,000 to the Inland Revenue for tax on her freelance work.

The couple shared a £600,000 country cottage in Crowborough that was solely in her name.

Chenery-Wickens admitted he was unable to help financially as his only source of income was through fluctuating work as a medium, exorcist and horsewhisperer.

According to the defendant, on January 23 Diane handed over jewellery she had inherited from a much-loved godmother, estimated to be worth about £5,000, and asked him to sell it.

But when he returned with just £100 she was upset at the amount and disappeared the very next day.

He described how they had planned to go to London together but Diane got out of the car at East Grinstead station and said she’d changed her mind.

He told the jury: “She said she needed to go to East Grinstead and needed to go by herself. I had a bad feeling. I had a very bad feeling. I said: ‘We’ll keep in touch or I will call the police.’ My last sight of Diane was her walking away down Grosvenor Road – she was walking away from East Grinstead which I thought was strange.

“Her parting words to me were: ‘You will cover for me, won’t you?’”

Earlier in the trial he insisted he would never impart anything someone told him.

He said: “It remains between them, me and the spirit.”

He added that murder was against his spiritualist beliefs.

He said: “The principle is that you don’t take life – any human life or your own human life and that you don’t hurt people by words, actions or deeds. If I do, I know, as a spiritualist medium, what is waiting for me.”

David Chenery-Wickens denies murder. The trial continues.