Murdering Ministers
Read Murdering Ministers Online
Authors: Alan Beechey
Copyright © 1999, 2014 by Alan Beechey
First E-book Edition 2014
ISBN: 9781615954834 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
for Mary
Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances,
You wait on nature's mischief.
âWilliam Shakespeare,
Macbeth
Sunday, December 21 (Fourth Sunday of Advent)
Billy Coppersmith realized he was possessed when he caught himself thinking about breasts during the Lord's Prayer.
If it had been the sermon, he wouldn't have been worried. Everybody's mind wandered then, especially when Parson Piltdown got onto one of his tedious theological kicks. But it had begun during the second hymn, when sixteen-year-old Michaela Braithewaite, standing one pew in front of him and slightly to the right, took in a deep breath for the last verse. And now, nothing could get the profile of her tight sweater out of Billy's mind.
It
had
to be an evil spirit. What else would make a fourteen-year-old boy think about sex all the time? Nigel warned that they were all around, waiting to snatch at the souls of the innocent and lead them into sin. Billy resolved to ask Nigel to drive out the demon when the group met for lunch after the morning service. He knew Nigel could do it. Surely he'd agree, now that they'd shared secrets? No demon was any match for Nigel's profound and infallible faith.
Billy had witnessed that faith in action a few weeks earlierâNigel grappling with the spirit of blasphemy that possessed Troy, his thin fingers gripping Troy's forehead like twin spiders, the two men shaking convulsively in unison. And then that great cry of “Satan, come out!” when Nigel flung his arms wide and crumpled senseless to the floor. “Pray!” Heather had screamed, and they all felt the spirit scuttling about the living room, searching frantically for a new host, the temperature suddenly dropping in the presence of evil, while they desperately babbled prayers for the protection of their young souls.
Or at least, Heather said that's what she feltâshe swore she could almost see itâso that's what the teenagers all agreed had happened, even using the same words. It was certainly the story he told his mocking school friends the next morning, as he tried in vain to get them to come to Nigel's prayer group. (Every new member was a victory for Christ, Nigel and Heather told them.)
Troy was the latest recruit. He was eighteen and he must have had lots of girls, but Michaela had made him join Nigel's group before she'd agree to go out with him. And Nigel spotted Troy's evil spirit the moment he swaggered into the room. Now Troy was born again, his evil dispersed to the air. Did that mean he and Michaela would have to be chaste? Or did they pray first and then make out, aware of God's eyes on them? Maybe, despite her reputation at school, Michaela was still a virgin? If so, Billy was one better than herâor worse, depending on Who was judging you. Nigel hadn't judged him.
But Billy had seen the works of good spirits, too, at Nigel's house. And like the others, he'd been struck with the Holy Spirit itself, those evenings when the excitement within the young group was palpable, almost hysterical, and Nigel had touched their foreheads, one by one, holding their gaze and muttering prayers, until he tossed them backwards and they fell to the carpet like toppled statues. And one time, Michaela had started to writhe on the floor and make strange noises that were almost like words, but not words Billy had ever heard before, and then Heather piped up that she has been visited by a spirit of interpretation, a gift from the Lord, and she began to translate the strange propheciesâsomething to do with sterility and error in God's house, and about a sign that would be coming soon. (Well, it was certainly getting close to Christmas, Billy noted, and wondered if he'd have to get Chrissie a present, even though they had broken up since that one time.)
Michaela had been speaking in tongues, Nigel explained later. It was a special gift from God. Billy started to wonder why God couldn't have delivered the message in English in the first place, but he quickly concluded that questioning God was sacrilege and wished instead that he could speak in tongues, too. Though perhaps with nobody else present at first, in case he said something embarrassing.
There was Nigel now, on the platform at the front of the barn-like church, sitting behind the Communion table with that prating idiot Parson Piltdown and the other deacons, including Billy's mother. They were all such hypocrites, not even true believers, not by Nigel's lofty standards. Parson Piltdown came from the Church of England, so it was doubtful he was even a Christian.
This was Nigel's first Communion service as a deacon. He'd already sung for them, playing that twelve-string guitar so hard to keep in tune in the cold church. (Would Nigel invite him to play his electric guitar next time he performed?) The stale pellets of bread had been distributed and consumed. Now it was time for the wine.
Parson Piltdownâit was Nigel's name for him; Billy had to remember to call him Mr. Piltdown if they spokeâlifted the chalice.
“After the same manner also He took the cup,” he intoned, in that stupid posh voice he used for readings, “when He had supped, saying, âThis cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.'”
And Nigel himself brought the wine to the congregation! Billy snatched the tiny shot glass from the tray as Nigel passed it. Their eyes met, and Nigel gave him a small smile, an acknowledgment of the promises they had made to each other. Communion wine was awful, Billy had already discovered, with a foul, lingering aftertaste and no alcohol to speak of. But he'd enjoy this glass.
After the wine was distributed, Piltdown served the deacons on the dais. Then he took a glass for himself. He turned to the quiet, expectant church, raising his glass as if proposing a toast.
“Let us drink together, in remembrance of Him.”
He drained the glass and sat down again, on the largest chair in the middle of the platform. The small, scattered congregation drank their wine, dropped their empty glasses into metal rings attached to the pews, and bent their heads in noiseless prayer. An odd, reverent silence fell over the church.
Billy didn't lower his headâhe didn't know why not. But that meant he was able to watch as Nigel, setting his glass clumsily on the table, rose slowly to his feet. Was he going to speak?
Nigel coughed twice, the second cough folding into a gurgle, as if unseen hands were pressing on his throat. The deacons, disturbed in their meditations, lifted their heads one at a time to watch him. Even Michaela and Troy looked up from the depths of their prayers.
Nigel stood, breathing heavily. Then he pressed his hands to his face, his eyes staring in astonishment at something only he could see, floating above the pews. Billy saw Piltdown exchanged a worried look with his mother, sitting beside him. Only old man Potiphar, the oldest deacon, seemed undisturbed and rapt in prayer.
Now Piltdown crept over and tried to whisper in Nigel's ear. But Nigel paid no attention. He continued to stare ahead, as if his neck had turned to stone, like Lot's wife gazing at the cities of the plain. His breath had become labored and audible. Piltdown looked awkward and lost.
Suddenly, Nigel gave a great cry, and his arms began to tremble. The noise continued, animal-like and increasingly desperate. He moved forward on unsteady legs, twitching, like a badly manipulated puppet. Then, with an intense convulsion, his legs flailed and he tipped forward, pivoting over the rail that ran along the platform.
Troy leaped to his feet. “He has been struck by the Holy Spirit!” he shouted, his voice drowning Nigel's thick groans. “Praise the Lord!”
And now Michaela jumped up and left the pew, standing in the aisle and lifting her arms in supplication. This time, Billy didn't notice her chest.
“Praise the Lord!” she cried. “God is with us.”
The familiar murmur passed among the other teenagers in Nigel's group, and Billy too found himself rising and shouting his praises as the young people danced into the aisle and gathered around Nigel at the front of the church. The man was now lying on his back on the dusty floor, his arms and legs convulsing, making strange, breathy noises as he shook.
“He's speaking in tongues,” squealed another girl. “Who has been given the gift of interpretation?”
“I have,” shouted Michaela quickly. “This is the sign! This is the sign of a new day, when the children shall lead and the old shall be driven from the temple. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!”
The others took up the cry, and one began to sing a mindless, repetitive chorus. Soon they all joined in.
In that moment, Billy understood all that Nigel had been teaching. And although he was singing and dancing with the others, part of him watched the scene with fascination: his young friends jumping around the body, their arms clutching at heaven like windswept palm leaves; the deacons on the platform struck dumb and motionless in their spiritual impotence; the other communicants standing in their places, trying to see what was happening but not daring to step forward.
And Nigel himself, Nigel now revealed at last as the great prophet of the Second Coming, as he'd surely hinted, almost levitating from the ground in his desire to float up to his God, his whole body one uncanny arc, with only his head and heels in contact with the floor. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, indeed!
But who was that woman, Billy wonderedâthe one now sprinting down the aisle from the back of the church, her amazingly curly hair floating wildly around her head? She wasn't a church member. Was she some sort of messenger from God? An Angel?
Then he remembered: She was that good-looking police detective who'd been asking all those questions yesterday. What was she doing here, at church, on this Sunday morning of all mornings? And what was she shouting, trying to make herself heard above the elated, singing, dancing teenagers?
“Let me through!” she was yelling. “Let me through, and stand back, everybody! Please!”
“Nigel is bringing us God's word,” Michaela protested, weeping with joy.
“He's not bringing you anything,” the detective snarled, as she tried to pull the dancing children out of her way. “Can't you see? He's dying!”
Tis the Season to Be Jolly
Sunday, December 14 (Third Sunday of Advent)
Sitting down had clear advantages over kneeling, Oliver Swithin had decided. If anyone ever asked him to create a new religionâ“Swithinism” had a lilt to it, but it might be a bit hard on lispersâhe would make sure that everybody sat down for the prayers. For one thing, the position was more naturalârather like perching on the toilet, with much the same spirit of supplication and hope for a blessing.
And it was quicker. At his parents' parish church, the vicar's call to prayer would have been followed by several noisy seconds of cracking knees and the odd territorial grabs for hassocks. (Or were those cushions called “cassocks”? Not being much of a churchgoer, he could never remember the difference. Both words sounded vaguely like Scottish mountain ranges. Or indelicate parts of the body.)
“Amen,” said the minister, at the end of a brief prayer that seemed largely improvised, like the many others that had preceded it. The tiny congregation mumbled a brief echo of the word, and Oliver realized that his mind had been wandering again. He shifted position on the uncomfortable pew and scribbled “Cassocks?” on his reporter's notepad.
“My text for today's sermon,” the young man in the pulpit continued, “can be found in the gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter fifteen, verses ten and eleven.”
“And the best I can get, even with four-hundred-speed film, is a thirtieth of a second at f-two-point-eight,” Ben Motley whispered loudly into Oliver's ear as he loaded a new roll of film into his Canon.
“Our days are numbered,” murmured Oliver.
“I'm reading from the Revised English Bible,” the minister continued. A thick-necked, elderly man sitting in the pew in front of Oliver and Ben stopped flipping the pages of his well-thumbed King James's Bible and snapped it shut.
“âHe'âthat is, Jesus, of courseââcalled the crowd and said to them, “Listen and understand! No one is defiled by what goes into his mouth; only by what comes out of it.”'”
The minister repeated the last sentence with quizzical pauses, a look of concentration on his ruddy, good-natured face, as if he'd momentarily forgotten why he'd chosen the text. The elderly man and his wife seemed to take it as scriptural dispensation to unwrap sweets.
Ben lurched away and tiptoed closer to the front of the church, training his camera on a small group of sullen teenagers sitting close to the left wall. Apart from this cluster, there were about a dozen worshippers, but the large, plain, nineteenth-century building with its parallel rows of high-backed pews could clearly hold a congregation thirty times as large. A group of older ladies had huddled like shamefaced latecomers in the rear pew, under the shelter of a dark balcony, although Oliver knew they'd been there at least twenty minutes before the service began.
The minister had already explained to the congregation that the evening's service would be photographed by Ben Motley, a man famous for his “spirited pictures of sporting women.” Since Ben's notoriety actually came from his portraits of female celebrities and society dames at the point of orgasm, Oliver had to credit the clergyman's subtlety. And once past the embarrassment of being stared at by churchgoers, he was equally relieved to hear himself introduced as a “leading writer of instructive works for children,” who was there to write an article about the United Diaconalist Church. If the congregation had found out the whole truth, they might have regarded Oliver's presence as one of the first signs of the Apocalypse.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't going to be Oliver's article, but the work of Finsbury the Ferret, the character he had created for his series of children's books called
The Railway Mice
. After several slender volumes of innocent tales (and months of negligible royalties), published under Oliver's pseudonym O.C. Blithely, the introduction of Finsbury into the series had made each subsequent book an automatic best seller, and gave British popular culture a new hero in the shifty, foulmouthed, evil-tempered beast. Oliver's friend and housemate, Geoffrey Angelwine, was a member of the public relations team devoted to squeezing as much mileage out of Finsbury as possible, and he had pushed Oliver into writing a piece for
Celestial City
, a new online guide to London Sundays, as a dry run for Finsbury's potential career as an opinionated commentator on the foibles of bipeds.
The editor of
Celestial City
, fearful of missing the bandwagon for the zeitgeist du jour (although Oliver had speculated that you had to be really slow to miss a bandwagon), had jumped on the publication of an ex-Spice Girl's recovered memories of her former life as Saint Theresa of Avila as a harbinger of the nation's millennial spiritual awakening. He had decided that an atheist ferret's satirical take on a small suburban church would make pleasant online reading for Christmas, especially if the pages included pictures by an absurdly handsome photographer whose career was entirely based on sexual ecstasy.
Oliver always liked working with Ben, partly because his friend and landlord owned a black Lamborghini, and partly because the attention Ben inevitably attracted gave Oliver an excuse for barely being noticed himself. Now in his mid-twenties, he had more or less accepted that, Ben or no Ben, his unkempt fair hair, cheap glasses, and that certain absence of firmness about his jaw were hardly the assets that would capture the interest of a sultry stranger across a less-than-crowded place of worship. Besides, he reflected proudly, he had a steady girlfriend now.
But what had intrigued Oliver about the assignment was the name of the minister of the selected church: the Reverend Paul Piltdown. Oliver had gone to school with a Paul Piltdown. And a call to the manse in the north London suburb of Plumley confirmed that this was indeed the same Pauly Piltdown who'd shared his first copy of
Playboy
and with whom he'd played baccarat during long winter lunchtimes, using rules learned from a James Bond novel. Which explains why Oliver was sitting in church that Sunday evening, thinking of rude things for Finsbury to say about the service and, despite his agnosticism, feeling thoroughly guilty about it.
Oliver had long suspected that his school friend would find a vocation in the church, ever since Pauly's whispered confession as a twelve-year-old that he thought he might look good in a cassock.
(Ah, that's the difference!)
But this church? In the sixth form, Piltdown had been addicted to High-Church Anglicanism, and when Oliver had last seen him, seven years earlier, he'd been heading off to Cambridge with ambitions for a bishopric, an almost gymnastic addiction to genuflecting, and a best blazer that always smelled faintly of incense. Yet instead of the surplices and stoles he had coveted as a teenager, Piltdown's only religious attire this evening was a white clerical collar, worn with a rumpled navy-blue suit that sat awkwardly on his hefty, rugby-player's body.
His surroundings were similarly unadorned. Above the dark oak wainscoting, the only ornamentation on the sallow walls was a row of dimly glowing electric heaters, which were doing little to lift the temperature on that damp December evening. Since there was no altar, Piltdown had conducted most of the simple service from behind a sturdy wooden table, set firmly on the lowest level of a carpeted platform. This platform, which stretched almost the full width of the building, rose a couple of levels behind the minister, presumably for a choir, but instead of an elaborate reredos or dazzling stained glass window, Piltdown's backdrop was the pipe array of a sizeable organ, painted an ugly battleship gray. (The hymns, however, had been accompanied by a young woman who played an upright piano, on the floor to the left of the platform.) The space struck Oliver as more like a theater than a church.
Piltdown had only left his station to deliver the sermon, when he had climbed the steps to a high pulpit, rising out of the right-hand side of the stage like a submarine's conning tower. The one touch of color in the church was a garish, appliqué banner pinned to this pulpit, proclaiming JESUS IS LORD in childish lettering.
“As we draw close to Christmas,” the minister was saying, unconsciously patting his thatch of thick, wild hair, “our thoughts naturally turn to that well-known story of our Savior's birth. Perhaps we first learned it from Nativity pageants performed by children, just like the one our own Sunday School will be performing during our Christmas Eve carol service. I myself can remember playing a king one year, wearing a splendid cardboard crown covered with silver foil and my new dressing gown with the gold piping as a robe⦔
Piltdown glanced across to the younger people, seeking a smile or nod that would accompany a similar reminiscence, but they remained unmoved. Most were staring dully at their hands while he spoke, avoiding his eyes. They had shown little enthusiasm during the earlier parts of the service, rising wearily to mouth the three or four hymns and bending over so deeply in the pews during the long prayers that they practically disappeared. Perhaps they were playing baccarat?
“And what do we find when we actually study the Christmas story in the scriptures?” Piltdown went on. “Do we find a harsh innkeeper turning Mary and Joseph from the door of the crowded inn, with his tender-hearted wife running after the couple to offer accommodation in their stable? No. Do we find an ox and an ass? No. Nor do we find a stable, for that matter. Or three kings, whom tradition has named for us.”
“If I could get up to that balcony,” Ben whispered, perching beside Oliver as he reloaded his camera again, “I could do a great overhead shot pointing down on the pews. But the door's locked.”
Oliver swiveled to look up at the shallow balcony behind and above them, but from the low angle he could only make out more high-backed pews in the darkness. Lowering his gaze, he met the stern eyes of a middle-aged woman in the rear pew. She winked at him. He smiled weakly and turned around again, wondering what he was missing on television at that moment.
Paul Piltdown had been speaking now for fifteen minutes on the need for Christians to promulgate the biblical facts of the Nativity story without the accretions of tradition and myth. He paused suddenly, and although he did not utter a blessing, it was clear the sermon was over. Piltdown beamed around the church, coughed, and glanced down at his notes.
“Now before our final hymn,” he continued, “I'm going to ask our good friend Nigel Tapster to share his musical witness.”
Piltdown sat down in the pulpit, sinking from sight, and a man sitting among the teenagers rose to his feet and sidled out of his pew. He was tall and rangy, with a balding head and a sparse, straggling beard that had been fussily shaped to his chin. His gray suit seemed a size too small. He stooped to pick up a large twelve-string guitar, which had been lying in a case beside the piano, and passed its leather strap over his head and one arm. The teenagers all seemed suddenly far more animated, and smiled and whispered to each other as Tapster reached the platform.
He paused, his head down, as if listening intently to words whispered urgently into his ears. Ben's camera clicked several times. Then Tapster lifted his gaze, looking around the church with dark, intense eyes.
“Friends, dear friends,” he said, his voice reedy and nasal. “The Reverend Piltdown has just told us what the world believes when it shouldn't. I'd prefer to sing about what the world doesn't believe when it should.” He strummed the guitar strings, wincing momentarily.
“It's no good, I'll have to send it back to the shop to be tuned,” he said apologetically, stepping off the platform and rummaging in the guitar case. One of the boys in the group let out a short, loud laugh. It echoed sharply off the bare walls of the church, as if the building was swatting away the unfamiliar sound. Tapster blew softly into a pitch pipe, fiddled with the tuning heads, and returned to the platform. “You know, not many people play the twelve-string guitar,” he muttered, “because it takes a lot of pluck.”
The joke was old and weak, but perhaps it was new to the young people, because they all laughed heartily for as long as it took Tapster to finish tuning the instrument. He played an E major chord, nodded with satisfaction, and began to strum in a different key. It was hardly an infectious rhythm, but within two bars, the young people were already swaying in time with the music. Tapster began to sing, very badly.
The song seemed to consist of little more than three chords and the word “Alleluia,” but the youngsters were clearly enjoying it more than anything else in the service. Two or three of them began to clap, and the woman who had been playing the piano earlier now started to shake a tambourine in an arrogant fashion.
The performance ended, and Tapster stepped down from the platform, reverently replacing the guitar in its case. Oliver noticed that the young people mostly had their eyes closed now, with half-smiles on their faces, and one was raising a hand to the ceiling, as if asking God for a bathroom break. The old man in front of Oliver grunted.
Piltdown rose in the pulpit and announced the final hymn. The tambourine player stepped over to the piano and played the introduction to “As With Gladness, Men of Old.” Oliver wondered if Tapster would return the earlier compliment and accompany her on the maracas.
After a final blessing and a moment of silent prayer, Piltdown came down from the pulpit and stalked along the aisle on the right-hand side of the church. His flock meanwhile began to gather personal belongings and fidget in their pews. The young people were the first to escape, shuffling up the left aisle and through a heavy velvet curtain that hung below the balcony and separated the sanctuary from the narthex beyond. Tapster stayed behind, collecting his guitar. The pianist waited for him. Oliver passed his hymn book to a young girl of around thirteen, who was already steadying a teetering pile with her chin. She grinned and hurried away.