Diana Dors fans have turned detective to help solve the mystery of her missing millions - with witches, missiles, cats and clothes-makers all in the frame.

The Argus reported last week how the late actress is believed to have left £2 million after her death in 1982 but left only a handwritten message in a secret code as a clue to the whereabouts of the cash.

Her eldest son Mark Dawson finally managed to decipher the message with the help of Sussex codebreakers Inforenz. One of the clues suggested a Brighton link to the name "Pyewacket".

Readers of The Argus have called to say they remember a clothes shop called Pyewacket in St George's Road, Kemp Town.

Pyewacket was also the name of a witch's cat in the play and film Bell, Book and Candle and Ms Dors is thought to have spoken the name in 1972 Hammer horror film The Amazing Mr Blunden.

Before Ms Dors died of cancer she handed Mr Dawson a scrap of paper covered in more than 300 seemingly-random, pencilled-in letters.

She told him that cracking the code would reveal where her £2 million fortune was stashed, but that her husband Alan Lake could explain the clues.

However, he committed suicide five months after Ms Dors's death without passing on the key to the code.

Inforenz, set up two years ago by Patcham resident Andy Clark, realised Ms Dors had used the 16th-century Vigenere cipher and cracked it to produce a list of places and names.

They suspect the references correspond to people and places Ms Dors used to manage her bank accounts.

Pyewacket the clothes shop was opened in St George's Road by Doris Gibbs in 1976, with her family helping her make the clothes she sold.

The shop was around in the Seventies and Eighties but a women's gift shop called Pardon My French now stands in its place.

Owner Mait Foulkes, who opened Pardon My French last year and lived in the area for six years, could not shed any light on the Pyewacket connection.

Sharon Weston, from Brighton, hoped the shop could help Mr Dawson track down the money while Karen Puttock thought a Lloyds Bank across the road could be significant.

Rita Langford, of Woodingdean, Brighton, said: "I remember it being a clothes shop, but I don't think it has been there for about 15 years now."

However, Carol Jarvis, of Brighton, said the shop, which sold expensive clothes such as cashmere coats, closed as recently as seven years ago.

She said: "I hope her son cracks it and gets his £2 million. It has been a long wait for him."

Staff at Lloyds in St George's Road were unaware of any Diana Dors connection.

Bell, Book and Candle, by playwright John Van Druten, had a successful Broadway run before being made into a 1958 film starring James Stewart, Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon.

Novak's character casts a love spell on Stewart, a publisher who is engaged to her childhood enemy.

Pyewacket is a Siamese cat belonging to Novak's high priestess and who helps her cast the spell.

By falling in love, Novak's character loses her powers as a witch and is no longer able to control her cat.

The film is thought to have inspired the Sixties sitcom Bewitched.

Ken Morris, of Hailsham, said: "It may not be a coincidence that Pyewacket featured in a play and a film and Diana Dors was an actress."

Maureen Smith, of Seaford, said: "In The Amazing Mr Blunden, Diana Dors played a horrible old witchy type of woman, who shouted 'Pyewacket, Pyewacket!' to scare children away. Perhaps her bank accounts were saved under names of characters from her films."

Joan Tullett, of Brighton, on the other hand, said: "As soon as I read the word Pyewacket my mind associated it with one of her films, but I'm not sure it was The Amazing Mr Blunden."

Pyewacket has been commonly used in folklore as a name for witch's cats.

Seventeenth Century English witchfinder-general" Matthew Hopkins described Pyewacket as a name that "no mortal could invent".

In March 1644 he arrested a woman in Essex and deprived her of sleep for four days before she confessed the names of her animal familiars - which included Pyewacket.

The name was also given to a guided missile aircraft developed by the Convair/Pomona division of General Dynamics in the late-Fifties.

Pyewackett - with a double T - was the name of an English folk band which ran from 1975 to 1989, and also the name of a pet cat belonging to Kate Bush.

A spokesman for Inforenz said their main involvement with the investigation had now finished, but they would pass Mr Dawson any promising leads.