An Unsuitable Death

by J M Gregson

  There was a collective gasp from the audience, an outraged shushing from the sea of faces which turned to see whence this sacrilegious outburst had come. From the eminence of his platform above them, Rennie held up his arms. “Brethren, let him speak. It is not his own wickedness that we hear but the wickedness which an evil world has bred into him!”

  Rennie was immeasurably more controlled and articulate than his challenger, who struggled to speak in the glare of collective hostility turned suddenly upon him. The young man shouted, “You had my grandmother’s savings! She signed away her savings to you, you cheat! Then you made her make a will to give you her house.”

  Rennie held up a single hand, palm towards the youth. “I do not know who you are, young sir, and I do not wish to know. Anything that has been done has been done willingly and in full knowledge. Those who follow the ways of the Lord often wish to divest themselves of possessions to bring themselves closer to Him. If they see ways in which his work can be helped, they devote what little they have to assist that work. My son, you should applaud them for that, not denigrate them.”

  The young man seemed to be disconcerted by the calm way this crime had been asserted to be a virtue, by the way he had been accused of denigrating the grandmother he had sought to protect. He had a shopping bag on the seat beside him, from which he dragged some sort of document that he now waved vaguely at the platform. “She didn’t know what she was doing! She was an old lady, whose mind was going a little. An old lady who you took advantage of, who would never—”

  “You are interrupting our worship, young man. If a relation of yours has chosen to devote her resources to furthering the work of Christ, I applaud her!” He looked round the audience that he had turned into a congregation. “I don’t think anyone here would accept that I had gained anything personally from any diversion of wealth from Mammon to the work of the Lord. Those who know me, those whom I regard as my friends, would see any such suggestion as preposterous. But perhaps you are not suggesting any such thing. I should be loath to judge you guilty of such sin. But my son, you are interrupting our prayers. I shall be happy to discuss any misunderstanding with you in private at the end of the evening, when I hope we shall be able to kneel together and pray as one to the Lord.”

  Rushton, who had sensed that the questioner was not going to survive this confrontation, had scribbled on a page torn from his diary, “Contact DI Rushton, Oldford CID”. As the young man now pushed past him and made his exit, he pushed the scrap of paper swiftly into his shopping bag. Full of incoherent fury, the youth shouted from the back of the hall. “You’re a cheat and a villain, Rennie, and the world is going to hear about it!” Then he fled from the hall and the scene of his failure.

  All eyes turned back to Arthur Rennie. He had moved to the side of the stage to address his critic, and now he stood there immobile for a moment, still as a statue, with a face full of sorrow. Then he shook his head unhappily from side to side, moved back to the centre of the stage, and stood like a Messiah in his ivory clothes beneath the central light. He intoned, “O Lord, we pray that Thou wilt forgive Thy errant servant, who has seen fit to insult Thy name and Thy works here tonight. Forgive him, Lord, for he knows not what he does.”

  There was a ragged chorus of Amens from the crowded seats in front of Chris Rushton. The DI was astounded how small had been the impact made by the single dissenting voice in this gathering. The skill with which it had been handled seemed to have increased rather than diminished the stature of the central figure in the scene. Rennie now succeeded in identifying himself even more closely with the God they wanted to worship, through a series of prayers which followed. Rushton recognised scraps of the Book of Common Prayer, fragments of the Roman Catholic Mass, even at one stage a couplet that he was sure originated in Shakespeare rather than the Bible. But the dominating source was the Old Testament, and the dominating figure in this mish-mash was the Old Testament prophet who bestrode it and drove it, as Moses had bestridden and driven an earlier charismatic movement.

  It was by any standards a skillful performance. Rushton had in his time arrested successful con men, had testified against them in court, and had always found them seedy individuals, who deceived vulnerable and pathetic, usually elderly, people and milked them of their savings. This man handled a mass audience with the skill of a stand-up comic, though his intentions were deadly serious. And like a comedian, he came alive with an audience, fed off it, became something larger and more dangerous in tandem with it than he was in a one-to-one situation. The seducer and hypocrite, whom Lambert and Hook had exposed so quickly when he was alone, was a different proposition here, in what Chris was forced to admit was his natural element.

  By the time he came to what was clearly, to a cynical policeman, the real business of the evening, he had his audience eating out of his hand. In the first few minutes of his address, Sarah Rennie and a woman at the other end of the front row had instigated the audience participation by their own enthusiastic responses to the Pastor’s rhetorical questions from the platform. But the rest of the rows did not need much prompting. They had moved from a gathering chorus of alleluias to repeating the prayers after their leader, until in the end they sought to outdo each other in their demonstrations of fervour.

  Chris had been waiting to hear the request for money he knew must surely come. But it struck no jarring note with this audience when it did. Looking along the rows of rapt faces, Rushton saw few that were troubled by the switch: for them, the transition from prayers to monetary demands was clearly a seamless one. Rennie moved from a denunciation of the worship of the false God of Mammon to a generalised account of the dangers of wealth and opulent living. He quoted the story of the young man whom Christ told to sell all his possessions if he wished to become a disciple.

  Then he brandished a finger on an outstretched arm, Gladstone-like, at his audience and intoned the quotation Chris had been waiting for as if it came newly minted from his fertile mind: “Brethren I say unto you, It is harder for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” He paused, lowering his arm in slow motion to his side. “Harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. In other words, impossible. Think on that, brethren.” Some echoed the word “impossible”. The hissing sibilants passed like a whispered message along the rows. Others shouted “Alleluiah!” and nodded at each other in the discovery of this somber truth.

  Rennie was suddenly quieter, intensely serious. “That is why I do not apologise as others might for divesting you of money and possessions. In the harsh and evil world in which we live, the Word of the Lord cannot be spread without resources. It is glorious work, brethren, and money cannot be better spent. But the reason I do not apologise for asking for your support is that I am offering you the chance to tread securely on the narrow path which leads to Heaven. Only those who divest themselves of the possessions of this world can hope to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Brethren, I am offering you tonight the chance to take the first faltering steps along that road. And I say unto you, once you have stripped away the dross of possessions, once you have divested yourself of the fool’s gold that sinful men take as the trappings of success, your tread along the path of virtue will become stronger and surer, until it becomes a triumphant march. And in the end, it is we who have forsaken the trappings of this life who will march together towards Salvation!”

  His wife and his other front-row acolyte now passed collection plates along the rows of the audience. Rushton saw Sarah Rennie flick a ten-pound note into the plate as she transferred it from the first row to the second, and there was a good deal of paper money amidst the pound coins by the time the platters had completed their journey.

  Arthur Rennie had remained on the platform throughout these minutes, kneeling in prayer, transformed into an image of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Nor was he foolish enough to finish on the note of acquisition. He rose again to his full height, congratulated his audience
upon their taking this opportunity to divest themselves of what he called “the dross of Satan”, and led the way in prayers which united them in an emotional commitment to “the Lord and His paths, which had seemed lost but are now revealed once again unto us”. The date and place of the next meeting were announced and enthusiastically received.

  Many of his followers remained to talk at the end of the formal proceedings. Covenant forms were produced for those who sought to regularise their commitment, while Sarah Rennie offered her services to two elderly enthusiasts who sought to revise their wills to aid the work of the Pastor.

  It was a good half-hour after the formal ending of the meeting before Detective Inspector Chris Rushton was able to have the Rennies to himself. It was Rushton who had prepared the formal statements for them to sign as summaries of their exchanges with Superintendent Lambert, but they had seen him only very briefly. Sarah Rennie had tipped the contents of the collection plates into a copious handbag by the time Rushton emerged from the shadows of the now-darkened hall to the platform at the front which was still brightly lit. They seemed surprised to see him, but Chris was sure that Arthur Rennie at least had been aware of his patient, watchful presence in the shadows.

  “I am Detective Inspector Rushton from Oldford CID. And that was an impressive performance, Mr Rennie,” said Chris. “You had them eating out of your hands by the end, didn’t you?”

  Rennie refused to take offence. “The Lord speaks, not me, Inspector Rushton. He expresses himself through me: I am merely his channel. If you are saying that on this occasion those who were drifting along the paths of unrighteousness saw the error of their ways, then I am gratified.”

  “Gratified to the tune of several hundred pounds, from what I saw. With the prospect of more to come, from covenants and legacies. Quite a profitable business, evangelism. For some.”

  “Whatever we collect will be diverted swiftly to the work of the Lord,” said Sarah Rennie stiffly.

  “I wonder whether the people of East Sussex would agree with that,” said Rushton.

  The reaction was disappointing. He had expected bluster, denials, indignation. Instead, Arthur Rennie said quickly and calmly, “We have nothing to answer for to you about East Sussex, Inspector. If you have anything more to say on the subject, then charge us. Otherwise, the subject is closed.”

  “‘Put up or shut up’, as they say. Well, you know that the police there haven’t a case to take to court.”

  “Then I suggest you leave the matter, Inspector Rushton, before you get yourself into trouble with the laws of slander,” said Rennie.

  Arthur Rennie had collected considerable sums of money in the area around Chichester by mounting a revivalist campaign on the lines of his present “Mission to Herefordshire”. There had been copious gifts from ageing widows, deeds of covenant a-plenty, and two useful legacies. The police had prepared a case and been ready to move. Then one of their key witnesses, a ninety-one-year-old man who had been tricked into making a gift much larger than he intended, had died suddenly and inopportunely of natural causes, and two others had been bought off by having most of their money returned. No one enjoys going into court and saying under oath that he has been a gullible fool, and that makes it difficult to mount a case against people like the Rennies. The case had collapsed like a house of cards, and now Arthur Rennie was bold enough to taunt Rushton with that knowledge.

  The DI said hastily, “I wanted to talk to you about a much more serious crime. The murder of your daughter, Tamsin Rennie.”

  Sarah Rennie bristled with anger. “We have said all we have to say about Tamsin. She was a child of Satan, and it is with Satan that she will now spend eternity.”

  “She was your child, Mrs Rennie. And it was not Satan but some human being who is still walking about the streets of our city who killed her and has to be apprehended for that crime.”

  “And what is that to do with us?”

  Rushton resisted the impulse to say that any mother must surely be concerned to locate her daughter’s killer. They had been down that road before; it led nowhere that was profitable. “I wish to check out some of the details of your statements.” He made it plural, hoping to imply that their statements contradicted each other at some points, though there were in truth no significant differences. “We have now interviewed over fifty other people, and you may be able to illuminate some things for us.”

  Arthur Rennie said coolly, “Inspector, it seems to me you may be casting your net over too small an area, if you are presuming that Tamsin’s murderer is walking free on the streets of Hereford. As I understand it, she was involved with drugs. Was, I believe you told us, a heroin addict. Surely that means it is possible that her killer comes from that violent world, which stretches far beyond the walls of Hereford.”

  It was cool and reasoned, far removed from the high-blown Messianic vein in which he had conducted the public part of the evening. A calculating, intelligent opponent, this man; Rushton was interested to note that his only comment so far on the death was to point to something which led suspicion away from him and his extraordinary wife. Chris said, “That is a fair enough point. How much do you know of Tamsin’s addiction and its consequences?”

  Sarah Rennie said fiercely, “Nothing! We did not want to know of it. She defied us and cut us off when she sold her soul to Satan.”

  Rushton said, almost as if she had not spoken, addressing his question directly to Arthur Rennie, “We now know that she was dealing in drugs. Have you any idea who her supplier might have been?”

  “No.” Was it someone coming to her flat in Rosamund Street?”

  “That would be unusual, but not impossible. The short answer is that we do not know, as yet. Did Tamsin herself give you any indication, perhaps unwittingly, of who might have been providing her with drugs? It’s likely, you see, that the same person eventually provided the supplies for her to sell on.”

  “No.” His answer came promptly, too promptly, and Rushton realised that he was anxious to prevent any discussion of his own visits to his dead stepdaughter. “What about this boyfriend she seemed to have acquired, this actor or whatever he was?”

  “Tom Clarke? No. We’ve questioned him extensively, and are satisfied that he has no connections with the supply of heroin.”

  “Then we can’t help you any further. That’s right, isn’t it, Sarah?” He invoked his wife nervously, at odds with his previous confidence, anxious to be rid of this line of questioning, and Rushton was certain in that moment that the wife knew nothing of her husband’s sexual encounters with her daughter.

  Sarah Rennie said harshly, “My daughter ceased to be mine over a year ago. She had become an instrument of the devil, using her flesh to further the designs of Satan. Now we hear that she was using illegal substances to further her evil pleasures and descend deeper into the pit of hell. Do not ask me to show compassion for her. I showed her the paths of righteousness, and she rejected them.”

  “That does not prevent you from showing her some compassion in death. Surely you would wish whoever killed her to be brought to justice?”

  There was a burning intensity about Sarah Rennie as she said, “‘If thy right hand scandalise thee, cut it off’. She scandalised me, and I cut her off.”

  She’s driven by the same fanatical fury as those masochistic saints who enjoyed torturing their own flesh, thought Chris. She genuinely believes all this claptrap, genuinely worships the man who has brought it to her. Arthur Rennie is a charlatan through and through, but this mistaken woman is that most dangerous of creatures, a fanatic who believes she has discovered the truth.

  Rushton turned to Arthur Rennie and said, “We’re checking again on everyone’s whereabouts at the time when Tamsin died. I believe that you claim to have been at home with your wife on the evening of Wednesday, August 17th.”

  “Not claim, Inspector Rushton. I was. We even watched a little television. A thing we rarely do, but it pays us to be acquainted with the ways of the world we
spend so much of our time fighting. And some of the programmes are innocent enough, if trivial and demeaning to the human spirit. In fact, we watched Coronation Street that night, purely because it is the soap opera most popular with the people of this country. It seemed innocent enough, though much of the action is set around a back-street public house. A girl who owned a newsagent’s shop married her boyfriend, much to the disgust of nearly everyone around them, so far as I could gather. Later on we watched a documentary programme about the conflict between Russia and Germany in the 1939-45 war. The Descent into Hell, someone called it, and it was indeed grim stuff. A warning of the evil that lurks in all human beings.”

  He’s giving me the documentation of their evening, thought Rushton, though I haven’t asked him for it. The two of them have rehearsed this. I wonder what they are trying to hide. He said, “Are you saying that you were at home from early in the evening?”

  “Yes. From six o’clock onwards.” This was Sarah Rennie, at her husband’s side, with her hand on his forearm.

  “And you didn’t go out again that night?”

  “No.” This formidable creature was suddenly almost skittish. “If you must know, Inspector, we went to bed early that night. We enjoyed each other’s bodies. Sex may be a weakness, but within the bond of marriage it is an innocent one. The Lord gave us our bodies, and the Lord is happy that we should enjoy each other. Arthur and I were in bed before ten that night.” She entwined her arm in her husband’s, looked up into his face for a moment as he smiled down at her, and then gazed steadily back at Rushton. Her dark eyes glittered with pleasure in the pale oval of her face at the thought of her husband’s body.

  DI Rushton found her smile the most disturbing of all the strange things he had seen that evening.