The Body Under the Bridge

by Paul McCuster

  A third thought came to him and it was the one he acted upon. Rather clumsily and in a voice that sounded to his ears like it came from a pimply teenager, he said, “Actually, there’s a pub just down the street, if you’ll wait here while I get my wallet. I’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t wait for her to respond. He didn’t even look at her. Clutching his jacket, he went off in search of his wallet and keys, embarrassed that she stood at the open door for such a long time. He moved from the front hall to the kitchen and around to the sitting room, frantically searching. There was a noise behind him, and he turned quickly. Mary stood there with the keys and wallet in her hand.

  “They were on the table by the front door.”

  “Ah.” It was where he always put them.

  “A drink here would be comfortable,” she said, gliding into the room. She put the wallet and keys down on a side table. “Surely you must have something. You Anglican vicars don’t abstain from everything.”

  “Hardly.”

  She placed a hand on the top of the table, her forefinger lightly caressing the wood at the edge. “We are mature adults, aren’t we?”

  The fear of embarrassment can often be stronger than any other emotion, even survival, Father Gilbert thought. He felt a powerful urge to prove that he was indeed a mature adult and that it was petty to worry about having a drink with this woman in his house.

  Her eyes were on him. He sensed her anticipation.

  “It would be better if we went to the pub,” he said without conviction.

  She took a step closer. “It’d be more comfortable here.”

  He saw in her eyes an eagerness that he suddenly realized had nothing to do with him. Perhaps she was eager to please herself or to claim a victory over a supposed man of God or to exploit anything that happened between them for her own ends. Perhaps it was only about finding the sword.

  Reaching past her, he grabbed his wallet and keys from the side table. She was so very close. He caught a hint of her perfume. He thought she might reach for him. “The pub has a better selection of drinks,” he said quickly and moved into the hall.

  She lingered.

  He reached the front door. When had she closed it?

  She entered the hall, but remained by the doorway into the sitting room.

  He opened the door. “Shall we?” It wasn’t a question.

  Her expression as she pressed past him suggested that she was a woman who did not like to be refused.

  * * *

  The George had everything Father Gilbert loved about pubs – dark wood, dim golden light, paintings of assorted artistic styles hung randomly on the walls by the various owners over the past hundred years. He loved the sound of low voices and the clinking of pint glasses.

  They settled into a corner table and ordered drinks. Father Gilbert looked at Mary Aston across the table. The battery-operated candle cast a warm glow on her face. She was beautiful, there was no denying it. To have that face gaze back, with something akin to a loving expression, would be an enjoyable experience for any man.

  There would be no loving expression from her now. “The minutes?” she asked impatiently.

  He took the page out of his jacket pocket, unfolded it, and handed it over. “This confirms what Mrs Clarke told us. The sword was moved at the request of Rachel Ainsley.”

  She read over the paragraph, then pointed to the top of the page. “What are these names?”

  He looked at the list. “They’re members of the vestry.”

  “All dead by now, I assume,” she said.

  “More than likely.”

  She kept her eyes on the page. “They may have children or grandchildren in the area.”

  “Possibly,” he said.

  She reached into a bag – more like a stylish backpack – she’d brought in with her. “Do they have Wi-Fi in this pub?”

  “Yes.” He knew only because there was a sign for it by the front door.

  Mary pulled a small laptop computer from her bag. She sat it on the table and turned it on.

  “You’re efficient,” Father Gilbert said.

  “Force of habit.” She angled the laptop so he could see the screen, then moved closer to him. Then she taunted him. “This won’t scandalize anyone, will it?”

  “Only me,” he said.

  Mary navigated the pointer to a website that purported to find anyone in the world in fifteen seconds or less. She typed the first name from the vestry minutes, narrowing the search field to England and then narrowing it further by indicating a fifty-mile radius around the postal code for Stonebridge. Of the eight names, only one had a hit: Clive Challoner.

  “That must be him.”

  “It could be a different Challoner.”

  “How many Challoners have you ever met?” she asked.

  “Not many. None, in fact.” Father Gilbert pointed to the screen. “He lives in Summerhill.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Between Stonebridge and Southaven.”

  She looked at her watch, as if considering whether or not it was too late to contact him. “Tomorrow morning,” she concluded.

  The drinks arrived. Father Gilbert had a pint of ale, Mary had ordered an exotic drink with a name evoking sun-drenched beaches. He lifted his glass in a toast. “To your good health.”

  “Thank you.”

  They drank.

  “I mean, thank you for helping me.” She rubbed her fingers around the edge of the glass. “I know this isn’t really your concern.”

  “Well, apart from my curiosity, it is my concern.”

  “Why?”

  He thought the answer was obvious, all things considered, but he said, “It involves my church, which involves me.”

  “Oh,” she said with a small pout. “I thought you might be doing it for me.”

  She’s regrouping, he thought. She’s going back to her flirtations.

  “That goes without saying,” Father Gilbert said, willing to play along now that he had no interest in allowing her to succeed.

  The screen on her laptop screen flickered. A screen saver program kicked in and the image of a pentagram, red against a black background, appeared.

  He pointed. “A pentagram?”

  Mary looked at it as if trying to remember why it was there. “I was researching religious symbols on my last job. This screen saver program downloaded from one of the websites I used. I’ve been meaning to get rid of it, but haven’t taken the time. Why?”

  Father Gilbert told her about the pentagram carved into the wall of the church cellar. “Has that symbol ever been associated with the Woodrich Set?” he asked.

  “Not specifically,” she said, punching a button to make the screen saver disappear. “I know people think of it as a symbol of evil. But, historically, it was often the opposite – used to ward off evil rather than invite it.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She nodded. “As symbols go, it wasn’t one of the more popular ones around. A German magician used it during the Renaissance. It appears in Goethe’s story of Faust. And there was a French occultist who put it back into the spotlight late in the nineteenth century. Aleister Crowley used it as part of his Thelemite cult. Then, in the past half-century or so, Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan nabbed it. That’s how it has become known more recently. Heavy metal bands and other wannabes started using it.”

  He took another drink. “What does the symbol mean?”

  “That depends on who’s using it and when.”

  “Give me the overview.”

  She took out a piece of paper and a pen and drew a pentagram as she talked. “Well, the pentagram, or pentacle, was thought to have power because it can be made without lifting the pen off the page.”

  “I remember that from grammar school.”

  “You – and a lot of kids throughout history. That’s one reason some scholars believe it shows up as often as it does in ancient settings. Kids are simply trying to show off their dexterity by
making something fancy out of a continuous line. And it’s also found in nature – the starfish and creatures like that. In fact, the five points were thought to represent the five elements of nature: air, light, wind, fire, and water – with a parallel to our five-fingered hands. Pythagoras and his disciples said it was a sacred symbol representing the harmony of mind and body.”

  “Nothing diabolical in that,” Father Gilbert observed.

  “A few historians believe the pentacle was used by the early Christians to represent the five stigmata of Jesus. Or that the continuous, unending line symbolized the coming together of the beginning and the end.”

  “The Alpha and the Omega.”

  “In the Middle Ages, it was used to ward off evil,” she said. She shifted in her seat to face him. He was aware of the way her leg brushed against his. “Though, from the church’s point of view, I could understand why it fell into disfavour. The Gnostics used it, as did the Manichaeans and lots of other heretical sects. It was also connected to alchemy. It became popular with the Freemasons, too.”

  Father Gilbert remembered some of these details from theological college and from a few BBC documentaries. “The Freemasons called it the ‘blazing star’—”

  “With the G in the middle.” She draw a capital G in the centre of her pentagram. “To remind everyone of the blessings that light and life have given to everyone on earth.”

  He looked at her drawing. “The ‘G’ meant…?”

  “‘God’ or ‘gnosis’ or ‘geometry’,” she said. “Or ‘glory’ – which is how some Satanists use it, representing the glory and power of the individual, the ego.”

  Father Gilbert mused on this as he gazed at the pentagram. “There was some significance to the star being upright or pointed down. I get that confused.”

  “Pointed up, it’s a representation of white magic. Down is associated with black magic.” She pointed to the symbol. “You see, when it’s pointed down, the shape resembles a goat’s head. Goats are an important symbol in satanic rites, a corruption of God’s sacrificial lamb. And there’s the separation of sheep from goats at the last judgment.”

  “And it’s your screen saver?” Father Gilbert asked, teasing.

  She smiled. “It’s either protecting my computer, or bewitching whoever uses it. What have I got to lose?”

  “Maybe your soul,” Father Gilbert said. He meant to sound playful, but it didn’t come out that way.

  She glanced at him very seriously and closed her laptop. She tucked it back into her bag. She crumpled up the paper and took another sip of her drink. “Care to join me for my drive to Summerhill tomorrow?”

  “I would, but I’d have to check with my boss first.”

  “The Bishop – or Mrs Mayhew?”

  “The latter.”

  They finished their drinks and slid out from behind the table.

  Mary sighed. “I’m staying at the Traveller’s Inn – or whatever it’s called. It’s boring. No character.”

  Her eyes met with his again. He was supposed to make her a better offer.

  “I’ll walk you back to your car,” he said.

  Mary had parked across the street from the vicarage. She thanked Father Gilbert again for his help. There was no lingering this time, no further suggestion of anything that might happen between them. He watched her drive away until the red brake lights had disappeared around the corner at the bottom of the street. Turning to go inside, he caught sight of a car a few doors away. A four-door saloon. In the half-glow of the streetlamp, he saw the silhouette of a man sitting in the driver’s seat.

  He stepped through his front door and closed it. Without turning on any lights, he went to the window of the front room and peered out.

  The saloon drifted by without its headlights on, the driver hidden by shadow and a reflection of light on the door window. As it passed under a streetlamp, Father Gilbert saw that the car was red.

  * * *

  He paced as he went through his nightly examination of conscience – an ancient spiritual exercise that was meant to expose any obvious sins of the day and to tease out those that may have been buried.

  He thought about temptation. It is far better to avoid temptation, one of the saints wrote, than to try to control it. It is far better to resist it at once than to try to reason with it.

  Good advice when temptation is an outside force to be reckoned with. But when it was intertwined with one’s own rationalizations, that was something different. The line between temptation and action was razor thin and easily passed over without resistance, control, or reasoning.

  Deliver us from evil… that I so readily embrace.

  That night Father Gilbert dreamt of goats’ heads and druids cavorting around a bonfire in a moonlit field. One druid, with a thick beard and a heavy brown robe, wielded the Woodrich sword and struck down another man. He then knelt and, like a dog at a brook, lapped at the man’s flowing blood. The image jolted Father Gilbert awake.

  He lay in a cold sweat. It occurred to him that the Woodrich Set hadn’t been made by Thomas Cromwell for Jeremy Woodrich in the time of Henry VIII, but may have existed further back in history. And he wondered if Cromwell had given the Set to Woodrich not as a gift but to get rid of it.

  Climbing out of bed, he went to the sink in the bathroom to get a drink of water. He didn’t turn on the light, not wanting to blind himself. He fumbled for the glass. It was normally to the right of the sink next to his toothbrush holder. Why wasn’t it where he’d left it? He moved his hand further along the counter and brushed the side of the glass. It tumbled over the edge and smashed on the tiled floor. He stepped back, worried about his bare feet. Reaching around the doorframe, he found the light switch and turned it on. The light dazzled his eyes. He waited for them to adjust, then looked down at the mess. Shards of glass glittered brightly in the space between the sink and the bath. He knelt, picking up the largest pieces and tossing them in the bin. He’d have to get the dustpan and brush from the kitchen. He stood up.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he registered that something wasn’t right about the mirror. He blinked, trying to focus on what he was seeing. A pentagram, in red, was drawn on the surface of the mirror with what might have been blood.

  As he stared at the symbol, he saw a movement in the reflection.

  A man, dressed in a red eighteenth-century uniform, stood behind him, a sword raised.

  Father Gilbert spun around as the blade sliced through the air.

  CHAPTER 18

  The story goes that J. B. Phillips, an Anglican clergyman and the translator of a popular edition of the New Testament, suffered from deep depression later in his life. Phillips was bedridden from the illness. The famous writer C. S. Lewis arrived on two occasions to say a few words that were particularly meaningful to Phillips at that time.

  Phillips was comforted.

  The only problem was that Lewis had died a few days before.

  Puzzled by this appearance of a dead man – who looked radiant with good health – Phillips confided the encounter with a retired Bishop who lived nearby. The Bishop said simply: “This sort of thing is happening all the time.”

  Father Gilbert thought of this story as he sat at his desk the next morning. His head hurt. There was a piercing pain just over his right eye, precisely where the blade of the sword might have hit, had the swordsman not disappeared right before the blade should have made contact.

  “Are you all right?” Father Benson asked. He stood in the doorway, a mug in his hand. “You look tired.”

  “I didn’t sleep very well,” Father Gilbert said. He took a bottle of paracetamol from his desk drawer, spilled out three tablets, and downed them with his tea.

  “Any reason for your lack of sleep?” Benson asked as he sat in the guest chair.

  He’d spent most of the night awake. He prayed, read from his Bible, and thought through the meaning of the encounter. As with the others, he couldn’t think of a single rational reason for it. Had it been no
thing but a dream, he would have chalked it up to a nightmare caused by the day’s events. He had no intention of mentioning any of this to Father Benson. He shrugged.

  “Mary Aston?”

  Father Gilbert looked up at Benson. “What about her?”

  Benson smiled. “Have you heard from her?”

  Was he suggesting something?

  “We talked,” he said simply, then told him about their conversation.

  Benson nodded, impressed. “It was clever of her to search the internet for the names of the vestry members.”

  “Mrs Mayhew,” Father Gilbert called out and regretted it as someone stuck a needle into his right eye.

  Mrs Mayhew appeared at the door. “Yes, Father?”

  “Clive Challoner?” he asked.

  “The verger’s son?”

  He was impressed with her instant recall. “I assume so. Does he live in Summerhill?”

  “Yes, if he hasn’t moved in the past twenty years. That’s where he lived when he was a parishioner here.”

  “He hasn’t attended since I arrived.”

  “He stopped coming just then,” she said.

  “Because of me?”

  “He didn’t say.” She looked troubled. “Is this about that sword?”

  “He might know something about it.”

  “Would you like me to phone him?”

  “Mary Aston is going to speak to him,” Father Gilbert said.

  She frowned. “Then you may want to pay him a visit to undo the damage. I’ll find him for you.”

  “Damage?” Father Gilbert asked.

  Benson managed a small smile. “Apparently Mrs Mayhew and Mrs Clarke had a chat on the phone after our tea yesterday. Both women think Mary is… well…”

  “Aggressive?” Father Gilbert offered. His experience with her the night before certainly proved it.

  “Not the word they used, but a suitable one.” He lifted the mug to his lips. It was red, with faded lettering on the side for some long-forgotten event.

  Father Gilbert thought about the red car parked in front of his house the night before. “Do we know anyone who drives a red saloon?”