The Atwelle Confession

by Joel Gordonson

  “Inspector, are you there?” Don finally called out into the darkness.

  “Yes.” The inspector’s voice sounded like it came from the floor in the corner near the entrance to the stairs.

  “There’s a ventilation tunnel that exits off behind the sarcophagus,” Don said to him. “They’re probably trying to escape through that.”

  Inspector Russell’s flashlight clicked on. In the light, Don was crouched over the baby. The three of them were alone. Don stood up and looked down in relief as the infant began to cry angrily.

  With his phone at his ear, Inspector Russell reported that backup police were outside the church. “Let me take off those handcuffs,” he said to Don.

  “First, tell them the ventilation tunnel comes out inside the churchyard wall in the northeast corner,” Don told him. “They can quickly find the grate over the opening to the tunnel by going to the only grave in that part of the churchyard. There’s a large low slab of stone covering the entire grave. It has just the name ‘Peter’ carved on it.”

  A noise came from the floor by the stairs. The beam from the inspector’s flashlight swung quickly over to the shadows where the sound of a low moan came from Father Adams as gunshots rang out in the distance.

  EPILOGUE

  The Master’s Lodge. Maryhouse Hall, Cambridge England

  2017 “Mr. Whitby, if you would please sign these documents.”

  Master Hodges gestured for Don to sit at the master’s large oak desk in his study. Don felt quite important as he installed himself in the tall leather chair behind the desk, looked around at all the books covering the walls of the master’s study, and picked up the pen lying next to the small stack of legal documents.

  “Now if you’ll just sign here, here, and here,” the master’s long manicured index finger pointed to the bottom of three pages carefully laid out for Don’s attention.

  “Thank you,” the master said as Don finished. “And now you, Father Adams, if you would please sign just below Mr. Whitby’s signatures; plus I need your signature on this additional document as well.”

  Don rose from the chair and handed Father Adams the pen as they exchanged places.

  “Thank you, Father Adams,” the master said when the vicar laid down the pen after his final signature. Father Adams looked relieved.

  “Gentlemen,” said the master as he picked up the documents and meticulously placed them in a file that he then tucked under his arm, “these will be filed tomorrow with the court, which will issue an order officially transferring the funds from the Order of Black Vestments to the new trust for the restoration of the Parish Church of St. Clement in Atwelle.

  “You, Mr. Whitby, will then officially be one of the trustees of the restoration trust. I believe the trust will be well guided by your expertise,” concluded the master.

  Father Adams nodded in agreement.

  “Thank you,” replied Don. “But I have to ask, Master Hodges, how is it that you came to have responsibility for the trusts for the Order of Black Vestments and the monies from the DuBois and Lanham families?”

  “It is a longstanding part of my responsibilities and emoluments of office as Master of Maryhouse Hall,” the master responded. “When the trusts were founded in 1532, Father Regis, the priest at St. Clement’s, was quite serious about preventing those powerful families from ever perpetrating any similar evils or abuses of power. Father Regis was thinking in terms of centuries. After all, the church and the families had been around for hundreds of years when the trusts were created.

  “So who could be appointed to oversee the trusts to preserve their funds and see that their terms would be carried out for centuries? No bank or firm of solicitors could be counted on to last that long. Even the Royal house was not likely to last as needed. So Father Regis picked a person in a position with the ability to administer the trusts for such an extended period.”

  He smiled confidently at the two men.

  “The master of an ancient Cambridge college. Maryhouse Hall had already been in existence around two hundred years when the trusts were formed. Father Regis, who had studied at Maryhouse, provided for the master of Maryhouse Hall to oversee the trusts, which each master has done faithfully for almost half a millennium.”

  Father Adams shook his head in disbelief.

  “Ironically, I was visiting Maryhouse Hall regularly to meet with Master Hodges to plan for the transfer of funds in the trusts for the restoration of St. Clement’s, while Miss Wood was plotting at the same time in the very same college to get control of the money in the trust of the Order of Black Vestments.”

  “It’s still hard for me to believe that Margeaux would create such a plot, let alone do what she did to carry it out,” said Don. He shuffled through the emotional memories of first meeting this beautiful woman when she swung her binoculars at him, when they shared the excitement of discovering of the gargoyles, and when he and Sally dangerously raced down wet country roads, fearing for her safety.

  “She was a very bright, resourceful, and purposeful woman,” Master Hodges responded. “She clearly was capable of conceiving the plot to gain control of the trust funds. But I too am surprised that her greed was so ruthless as to persuade, with the promise of great fortune, that fellow Weatherby to commit murders and Miss Daunting to abduct a baby.”

  “I suspect,” offered Father Adams, “that she learned about the Atwelle confession trusts from her family history and her research into the trust documents in the vicar’s chest, as well as from discussions with Father Charleton. After that, she recruited Weatherby, who had been in seminary before going to prison, to succeed Father Charleton to gain control over the funds in the Order of Black Vestments. But then, hearing of Father Charleton’s plan to dissolve the trust, she quickly had to take Father Charleton out of the picture.

  “But instead of her handpicked ‘Father Lanham’ taking over the trust funds for the Order, I returned to carry on Father Charleton’s plan to transfer the Order’s funds to the restoration of the church. Then she was clever and ruthless enough to come up with the idea of repeating the murders of the Atwelle confession to have cause to object to the dissolution of the trust.”

  “She definitely made certain that I knew there were murders that unquestionably perpetuated the purpose of the Order,” added the master. “Her accomplice, posing as ‘Father Lanham,’ would have had ample legal grounds to prevent the transfer of the Order’s funds.”

  “But for Margeaux to commit those horrible crimes . . .” said Don, still struggling to accept it all. “Did you have any suspicion of her, Father Adams?”

  “After I received Father Charleton’s letter filled with fearful warnings, I knew the motive for evil, but had no idea who was carrying out the crimes. So I was suspicious of everybody,” answered the vicar. “Including you, Don, I’m afraid.

  “I thought Miss Daunting was the least likely. She seemed harmless. I didn’t suspect that Margeaux had brought her into the plan to hide the baby after he was abducted.

  “I tested Margeaux by trying to scare her off her project at the church. I was generally unfriendly and even did silly things like banging on the door of the church behind her to frighten her. If she stuck around, then she was still a suspect, I figured. When she stayed with the project even after the murders, I remained suspicious of her, even though it seemed unlikely that she was involved.

  “Your involvement, Don, was unclear. You really didn’t know Father Charleton or have any connection with the trust funds that I could see. But you were friendly with everybody, making you a potential accomplice with anyone. Because there was nothing concrete to associate you with Father Charleton’s concerns, I simply asked the police to check you out closely.

  “Then, sadly, there was Father Lanham—I mean Weatherby. I had no inclination initially to suspect him of wrongdoing because he was a man of the cloth who seemed a sincere young man, and I simply didn’t think anything of the name ‘Lanham’ since all the evils of the Lanham fam
ily occurred centuries ago. In that, I failed my obligations to the Order of Black Vestments.

  “So I did nothing for quite a while until I started to check out his history and credentials in the middle of all of the horrible murders. When the results came back the afternoon of All Hallows’ Eve, I found out that our Father Lanham was as phony as a three pound note.

  “Then I knew anything involving him was seriously amiss. So when I happened to come out of my office and saw him heading for you at the top of the ladder, I knew I had to do something.”

  “Thank God you did,” said Don.

  “It’s remarkable, Mr. Whitby,” commented the Master, “how you put everything together for the Inspector in those dangerous circumstances in the crypt.”

  Don shrugged. “After reading the Atwelle confession document and Father Charleton’s letter, it just came to me all at once that there had to be someone behind this who knew everything about the situation. I thought it was Father Lanham. But when Miss Daunting revealed that she was an accomplice, it occurred to me that there were more people involved. And then, I recalled the notes on the door of Margeaux’s office here in college.”

  “What were those?” asked Master Hodges.

  “When Gerald, the college porter, and I were frantically looking for Margeaux after she disappeared, we went to her office. On the door were notes from a student who missed a meeting with Margeaux. Her one note said that she had the answers to Margeaux’s ‘final questions on the mechanics of Tudor trusts and wills.’ The phrase just stuck in my head. Then when I read Father Charleton’s letter that mentioned dissolving the trusts, I thought it was an odd coincidence that I’d just seen the note about Margeaux’s questions about the same thing.

  “That eventually put it all together in my mind. Margeaux knew about the huge amount of money in the trust and the plan to blend the trusts together, which would ruin their access to the trust money. She also knew about the existence of the gargoyles, and she had research done on the mechanics of Tudor trusts. She was the one who would know that the trust could not be dissolved if the Order of Black Vestments was still required to prevent the same murders being committed in this church. I didn’t want to believe it. But the plan was all there, and it was all hers.”

  The three men were silent for a moment, reflecting on the remarkable situation.

  “What will happen to them?” Don finally asked.

  “They will go to prison for a very long time, probably the rest of their lives,” answered the Master. “Once in custody, Weatherby gave a full confession in a blink of an eye.”

  “He finally blinked,” Don said softly to himself with a satisfied smile.

  Wearing a mournful look, Father Adams stared at the floor. “A great price was paid in terms of human life and tragedy.” Then his face brightened a bit as he looked up. “But at least the funds for the church’s restoration are in place once again five centuries later because of the Atwelle confession. Our congregation is reenergized and many newcomers are visiting now to see our famous gargoyles.”

  “Yes, Father, but even with the funding secure, I have to tell you that I don’t have the same enthusiasm for the project after all the losses we have suffered,” Don said.

  Father Adams looked directly at Don. “My friend, I urge you to take to this project the words of Paul in his epistle to the Romans:

  But we glory in tribulations also:

  Knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

  And patience, experience;

  And experience, hope.”

  “Hope? From all that’s happened?” Don asked. “The greed? The murders?” There was still sadness in his voice.

  “Hope,” repeated Father Adams as his fingertips rose to touch the stiff black collar circling his neck. “Seculum seculi, Amen.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Daniel Knighton/Pixel Perfect Images

  JOEL GORDONSON, in addition to being a fiction author, is an international lawyer with degrees received in the United States and from Cambridge University. His first novel, That Boy from Nazareth, received critical acclaim. Midwest Book Review called this historical fiction adventure story set in biblical times “Profound, vivid, and highly recommended.”

  For more information, visit www.joelgordonson.com