“This dungeon passage looks like something out of a horror novel or Tolkien,” Jessica complained.
“Watch out for the little people,” agreed Sharpe.
“Gnomes have been known to inhabit underground passageways,” Tatham joined the fun.
Jessica felt strange here, out of time and place, the very walls so ancient they must have seen the Dark Ages. In fact the air here felt sodden with age, perhaps the odor of time itself. Whatever she might label it, it felt palpable and alive and smelling like the grave. The odor mutated as they stepped deeper and deeper into this damp abyss until the stench smelled like rancid meat put over a flame. The odor clawed at her, choking her.
She hated their having to be here like this, skulking about below London streets for the subterranean regions below St. Albans. She hated herself for the fact she had to be deceitful and lying to Father Luc Sante, that she had to have such dark suspicions of the man she so admired. She genuinely liked this old man of the cloth, who held the hope that all mankind might read their own dream-talk in order to find solace and happiness in a pitiless world. She had earlier delighted in Luc Sante's presence, respected him, admired this follower of Christ and Jung, and yet there appeared something amiss, something afoot, something evil that passed for good wandering Luc Sante's church corridors, peering out the cathedral windows, making friendly with the gargoyles that perched over St. Albans.
The Houghton twins still disturbed her, the fact they were from the same town as Luc Sante's first ministry disturbed her. As Luc Sante's own admission had revealed, he had once practiced his ministry and psychotherapy at Bury St. Edmunds, the place from which Katherine O' Donahue, the first victim, had hailed. Sharpe agreed with Jessica that the coincidence could not be ignored.
“I made further inquiries into Luc Sante's past,” Richard told her as they trekked onward through the dismal tunnel that appeared to be-and felt as if- it were on a slight incline, as the water level rose with each step, now spilling over the tops of their Wellingtons.
“So, what did your further inquiries tell you?”
“He has spent time at the parish of every victim on the list.”
She visibly blanched. “Then we must be pointed on the right track. That's a bit more than coincidental, I'd say, as much as I hate to admit.”
“And there's something more.”
“Yes?”
“Father Strand… He's the one who prompted my inquiries to begin with, and believe me, just try to get information on a clergyman in this town. In any case, Martin Strand was bom in Bury St. Edmunds, into the very parish where Luc Sante preached to Katherine O'Donahue. He was one of Luc Sante's choirboys.”
“Then Strand has known Luc Sante all these years, even as a boy.. How large a congregation might it have been at the time? Enough for Luc Sante to have forgotten Katherine O'Donahue?” Likely seven, perhaps eight hundred tops.”
“He may not have recognized the name after all these years,” she countered.
“And Strand? What excuse do you provide for him?”
She had none.
“Young Strand appears indoctrinated, I should hazard a guess.”
“Or rather, Strand believes himself gone beyond the master?” she challenged. “Might he have gone from choirboy to prophet of the Second Coming?”
Richard stopped to stare into her eyes, bringing his light up to her face, asking, “What do you mean?”
“I've seen the way the two interact. Strand condescends to the old man. He's anxious to take over at St. Albans. Suppose… Might we not suppose that Strand, and not Father Luc Sante, is masterminding the crucifixions? As a student of Luc Sante's logic, Strand, twisdng it, may well have taken the uldmate step in the ultimate search to… to …”
'To ultimately end all evil in the universe by working through a twisted faith?”
“You do see the possibility, then, don't you? The disciple, taking the words of his master, buckling them to his belief, his faith… twisted faith. And so enter the cult mentality. Hell, anyone might take Luc Sante's plan for a psychotherapy of evil to go seek it out and defuse it, but a minister of the Christian faith, believing it his mission, that certainly might put a spin on murder neither of us, Richard, have seen before.”
“One for the courts, anyway,” he mused. “Still, suppose the two of them, Strand and Luc Sante, are together in this? We know that it requires at least two men to hoist another onto a cross and nail him there.”
'Two able-bodied men. Have you looked at Luc Sante, lately? He's failing, a weak old man, while Strand looks as if he'd just stepped off the pages of Billy Budd.”
“Do you rank him with Billy Budd?”
“No, yes, not really… in a curious way, perhaps, but no,” she finally decided. “But returning to my point, if Martin Strand has a cult following behind him, he won't lack for muscle.”
They came to a T-intersection. Tatham-who'd been earnestly listening to their conversation, which even when whispered, reverberated about the sepulcher here-stood deciding which was east and which was west toward St. Albans.
“This way,” he finally said. The torches-as the two British men called the flashlights-bounced off the water and the blackened walls as they now entered what was once the actual black mine shaft. Their lights wildly reflected giant shadows ahead of them, dappling reflections and a startlingly black sheen to the walls. The shadows at play ahead of them startled Jessica, until Tatham pointed out that the black images would prove their own. Jessica thought it like watching one's own astral projection.
The silence and the chill of this place seeped into the living bone, feeding every childhood phobia and every adult irrational fear.
“Afraid the coincidences building against Luc Sante in this case can no longer be rationalized away or ignored,” Richard commented as the floor beneath them began a sharper rise.
“Naturally,” she agreed, but added, “however, being a cleric and being a psychotherapist, Father and Luc Sante is likely to be surrounded by the walking wounded, remnants of man's inhumanity to man, such as the Houghton twins, and possibly Burton, O'Donahue, Coibby, and others like them. Simple people leading simple lives that, for one reason or another became complicated lives, too difficult to handle alone, without professional help.” She drummed her fingers along her cheek, thinking of a time when she, too, had found her life spinning out of control, when she needed the help of an outsider in the form of Dr. Donna LeMonte, now a lifelong friend and confidante. She wondered if it had been the same with Katherine O'Donahue, Burtie Burton, Coibby, Woodard, all the crucified victims.
“If so, if it were mere innocent happenstance, a weird kind of serendipity or synchronicity, why hide the fact he knew these people? O'Donahue, in particular, I mean.”
Jessica considered the logic of it, Sharpe's logic, so tight and secure and sure. “It stands to reason that troubled souls, the ill and infirm, the weak and helpless, all the societal “victims” of a harsh world, victims of alienation, child abuse, rape, incest might flock to a man like Luc Sante for confession, redemption, salvation. His book alone would draw them near, not to mention his sermons and his practice,” she said to Sharpe now as they arrived in a wide corridor where they could step from the canal water and follow alongside on a concrete levy. 'To date the only single piece of evidence tying the victims of the crucifixion killings together remains the meager message left on their tongues, but what if it means far more than Luc Sante or anyone else has suggested or suspected?”
“Not quite sure I follow you,” he replied, and for a moment, she thought she saw something sinister playing amid the flickering of the torch light and the light in Richard's eyes.
She shrugged it off, anxious for him to hear her fully, so on she explained, saying, “It would take monumental acceptance of a leader to hold out one's tongue to allow such a hot-iron branding.”
“Then you've determined the branding occurred before death?”
“Absolutely. Dr. Raehael left the fin
dings on my temporary voice mail.”
“You forget the victims were drugged.”
“No, I am not forgetting that. I'm saying that even in their dragged state, to stand and allow their tongues to be yanked outward and upward, likely by pinchers, then branded on the bottom side, that they-the victims-may have been willing agents in their own crucifixion deaths.”
“That's astounding. An astounding conclusion.”
“But altogether fitting with what we know about cults and the cult mentality, whole congregations checking out en masse-no pun intended. Add to what we've learned over the years about such cult thinking. Luc Sante makes the same point in his Twisted Faiths.”
“His book, you mean?”
“Yes. It has been assumed the victims were either drugged or tied to the cross upon which they were crucified to have their tongues branded, but suppose, like the bug-eyed sisters I saw at Luc Sante's cathedral, that every cult member willingly stepped forward to be branded at some time or other long before they were crucified, and if so, then they, too, had become sheep, followers to a cause, and this meant only one thing, that they were not victims so much of murder as they were of religious zealotry and sleight-of-hand. And-”
“And what if the magician were none other than Father Jerrard Luc Sante who masked his evil with his own philosophy of what evil in this life actually looks, speaks, smells, and feels like.” Jessica took up his thinking, adding, “Suppose all the victims were anxious to follow in the footsteps of Christ by way of the Father, Luc Sante? Or possibly Father Strand? What if all were anxious to be the next 'Chosen One,' to be crucified in the shadow of the millennia, to take on the role of the new Messiah?”
“Sounds both preposterous and right for our century, wouldn't you agree, Tatham?” asked Sharpe, who wondered what a more impartial outsider to the case might make of such talk.
Tatham gasped but picked up the pace of the discussion at once, mumbling, “Your theory, Dr. Coran, when presented to your superiors could put the two of you in the fun house with my aunt Dee-Dee.”
“Does sound far-fetched, even preposterous,” agreed Jessica, “but it's exactly that kind of thinking which allows the behavior of a Jeffrey Dahmer type to coexist alongside normal people who don't murder and eat one another.”
Richard nodded, saying, “Agreed. It's that counterproductive editing of our intuition that makes victims of us all. Think of it! Each victim was quite religiously… mad? Would you say, over the edge, insane with an obsession, to be the Chosen One. At least obsessively driven in his or her faith?”
“Burton converted… Maybe so he could show his devotion to the cult.”
“A cult catering to the aged and the highly religious who'd given up on the usual, organized religion for something more promising?” she suggested. “I'd have called your theory too mad in itself, too outer fringe to actually be worth pursuing, but with what's gone on here of late,” Jessica replied as they trudged on, “it rather rings plausible.”
“Given the state of cults in the free world today, anything's possible,” Richard agreed.
“Not sure anyone else would believe it, however.”
“I'm afraid it's too much for me,” added Tatham, “and it would appear we've come to the end of our journey. Look ahead.”
Their combined lights illuminated a dead end, an impenetrable brick wall, lichen growing on it here in the blackness of this world. Scurrying rats made pitter-patter noises like the sound of miniature hooves over cobblestone.
“There's no way beyond it?” asked Richard.
“ 'Fraid not from the look of it…” Tatham and Richard sought a crevice, a roundabout, but the area had been sealed many long years before.
“What about the canal? Where did it go?”
“Veered off in another direction somewhere behind us.”
“Perhaps if we followed it.”
“I don't think it would help, as it goes off away from the church. You wanted near St. Albans from what I gather, right?”
“Yes, yes indeed.” Richard's disappointment resounded in the cavern where they stood.
“I see no way out but the way we came,” Jessica said, even as she searched the walls here for a doorway, a set of stone steps leading up or down, any sign at all that they were not completely dead-ended. “We've managed to investigate our way into a blind comer.”
“What about the other corridor at the T-section,” suggested Richard, stubbornly hanging on.
“I tell you, it would take you nowhere near St. Albans,” Tatham assured them.
“Why the deuce doesn't this wall show up on the specs?” shouted Richard, his voice bouncing off the slick walls.
“We're not dealing with specs. We're looking at it twice removed, from my replicas and maps made from the ancient maps, and then from your photo enlargements. We're lucky to have found our desUnadon at all.”
“Some destination,” grumbled Richard. She knew that to Sharpe, the wall represented far more than a wall below London's streets. To him it must mean an impenetrable barrier leading to an inglorious end to his entire career.
“Come on, Richard,” she coaxed. “Let's get out of this vile place.”
He finally nodded, indicating the way. “Yes, let's find the world. Why I ever let you talk me into mucking about here, I don't know.”
“Richard, it was your idea.”
“My idea, indeed!”
“You brought RIBA into it, remember?”
He frowned in Tatham's direction, Tatham saying just the worst thing in response. “Sorry, old man, things didn't work out as expected.”
“Just lead us back to light, Dr. Tatham,” Richard groused. Silence and regret marked their arduous journey back.
Their Wellington boots, dripping and smelling of the stagnant water from the out-of-use canal, Jessica and Sharpe drove Tatham back to the RIBA where they had enlisted his help, bidding him good-night and thanks. He waved them off and they drove back toward Victoria Gardens Embankment and the York.
“I desperately need a shower,” Jessica said.
“Feeling a bit dirty from ratting around in the sewers?”
“You know it.”
“Yes, I feel the same way.”
“Your place is on the way. Stop over, pick up an overnight bag, and come stay the night with me,” she suggested.
“Are you sure?”
“I'm sure I don't want to be alone tonight.”
“I don't relish the thought, either. If you're quite sure.”
“Quite, yes. And when's the last time you showered with a woman?” she asked.
He smiled and reached out to her, squeezing her hand warmly in his. “You've made me care about things of that sort again, Jessica, small things like touch and warmth. It's rather true what Luc Sante says about the child within us all, clamoring to surface, to be given attention. Somehow, with you, when we're intimate, I feed that child all and more than he ever bargained for.”
She reached across, and tugging at her seat belt, she kissed his cheek. “You've made London a beautiful place to be, despite all the shadowland horror we're chasing.”
He smiled. “You've made life a great deal more bearable for certain, dear Jessica.”
Again, they spent a warm, affectionate evening together, indulging in fantasies, one providing whatever the other wished, and then the other reciprocating. Jessica had always felt that making love in the shower, under the warm spray, to be the perfect place to begin a night of unbridled passion.
The following day, Jessica awoke to find Richard gone, a note announcing that he had been unable to sleep, and so he had gone into the office to get an early start on much neglected paperwork.
Jessica prepared for her day, showering and dressing with much thought given to what she guessed Richard would like. She had learned that his favorite color on her to be blue, and that he liked to see her hair held back by a band across the front. “It's much softer than wearing your hair up always,” he'd said. She dressed for Ri
chard this day. She had decided that whatever came, whatever evolved from their intimacies, she would accept. She'd become so intensely focused on James Parry when she had fallen in love with him that, in a sense, she had become a prisoner, a shackled person, shackled by her own emotions and fears and passions. She found she had as much, if not more feeling for Richard, and yet, this love felt intensely novel, startlingly and wholly unconventional, despite Richard's “conventional” veneer; in fact, this love felt freeing, liberating in every sense of the word, delivering her from… she must wonder from what?
Actually, she told herself, Richard Sharpe delivered Jessica Coran from Jessica Coran. He made her feel completely free; his love was not measured in give-and-takes, compromises or restraining demands. His love knew no constraints and placed no constraints on her. She could never be the object of his love, for he did not treat her as an object. Rather, he treated her as his equal, and he asked for no des, no commitments, and expected none to be hoisted upon him. In a word, Richard Sharpe turned out to be the most continental man she'd ever known.
Onoe dressed as she felt Richard would like, Jessica hurried out to Scodand Yard, hoping that today she and Sharpe would find a solution to the Crucifier mystery.
Just as she stepped from the door, however, the phone rang. Richard, she thought, and not wishing to miss his call, she returned to find an excited J. T., filled with good news about the outcome of the Tattoo Man's case.
She had to slow J. T. down, thinking he might hyperventilate on the other end as the story of Maxwell Sanocre unfolded. Jessica encouraged him to take it slow and to tell her everything.
J. T. told how he had located the dead man's family, and how it appeared from all evidence that members of his own family had first plotted and then killed the man.
“As it turns out, the dead man's own children arranged for both the dogs to tear him to shreds and for the rabies infection, to insure his death. The daughter in particular really hated the old man, and she had damned good reason to.”
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