SIXTEEN
No man can concentrate his attentions upon evil, or even upon the idea of evil, and remain unaffected To be more against the Devil than to be for God is exceedingly dangerous. Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.
Martin Strand arrived with tea for Father Luc Sante and his guest, explaining that he had seen them arrive from an upper window where his group had just said their good-nights. Luc Sante, pleased with the warm, rich ginseng tea, laughingly replied in Jessica's direction, saying, “Ah, Martin, my first convert! And the bonus is, he knows my every whim.”
She shook her head. “I rather doubt that's true. 1 mean that he is your first convert!”
Again, the old man laughed. “Indeed, that would be eons ago. You catch me up.”
“Where was your first church, Father?” she asked.
“Small, out-of-the-way hamlet, really. Nothing to speak of. To the north and east of London.”
“Really?”
“Bury St. Edmunds, wasn't it, Father?” asked Martin.
“Quite… quite right.”
Jessica had heard the name of the town in connection with someone else, victim number one, the schoolteacher. A coincidence? Great Britain was, after all, an Island Kingdom. Martin Strand was pushing the plate of crumpets before her, pleading with her to try one.
“Really, I'm stuffed from dinner. Filet mignon is so filling,” she replied, taking only tea and sipping lighdy. For a moment, she caught the two men staring at her. Recalling what Sharpe had said of Strand's past, she blurted out, “I understand you worked hard to get to and through the seminary, Father Strand.”
“I was determined, decided on the clergy at an early age, yes.”
“Strand worked the roughest of jobs, on the docks, as a lengthsman. Mapmaker, too, weren't you, Martin?” The old man sounded proud of his young charge. “All with a single aim, a single determination. Not everyone can point to that, Martin.”
“My word, Father, you'll have me blushing.”
“Sorry, if I've made you uncomfortable,” Jessica found herself apologizing to Strand. “People in my line of work are snoops. It's what we do for a living, and after so many years of experience, we get so good at it, that we upset people,” she added, smiling.
“You're a bit off, however,” he corrected Jessica with a smile of his own. He seemed an Adonis, handsome, strong, filled with light and energy. “You see, I worked to accumulate enough to follow my ambition. I never intended any other career choice. All else amounted to a part-time thing.”
“You did wonderful work, however, Martin. I recall that letter you showed me from the RIBA people, the Royal Institute of British Architecture,” Luc Sante explained. “Housed not too very far from here, actually, over on Portland.”
“Right you are again,” Strand said to Luc Sante. “The old boys' club, and the old boys want to keep their maps and information up to date. It was an interesting job, for the most part. Got me round the city.”
“And past many a DIVERSION sign, I'm sure,” Jessica added. “Would you know of any old mine shafts running below the city, say any ancient ones?” She pressed a metaphorical button, awaiting his reaction, but his expression could not be read, nor his body language. He gave nothing away.
“Just how ancient?” Luc Sante wondered aloud.
“My territory was confined, for the most part, to the Maryle-bone area, and no, I found no shafts you'd categorize as ancient, I'm afraid.”
“How ancient?” again Luc Sante wished to know.
“Roman times ancient. Anything pre-dating Christ, say.”
“No, I don't believe so,” said Strand, laughing now. He then apologized with a compliment. “We seldom to never see anyone so smart or pleasant looking as you here. Dr. Coran, so you will forgive my staring back at you?”
Luc Sante instantly bolstered the apology, saying, “We deal in derelicts here mostly, aside from the regular congregation, made up of the usual good, simple, caring folk and the occasional politician!” He stopped to stomp a foot and to laugh. “If not physical derelicts, derelicts of the soul. Most of these have given in to some form of addiction or other. Hence Father Strand's near nightly groups. So, you must forgive our staring at a whole person such as yourself, Dr. Coran.”
She snickered at the characterization of herself as whole. Strand interrupted, “There is the matter we spoke of earlier. Father, that is still left hanging, sir.”
Jessica's antennae went instantly up and at the ready.
Luc Sante's face dropped in an enormous and sullen frown as he replied, “Later, Martin.”
“It is much later now, sir.”
Luc Sante smiled across at Jessica. “Church business,” he explained.
“Bills,” Strand clarified. He then said in as stem a voice as Jessica had heard in the building, “With all due respect, sir, perhaps, sir, if you weren't so busy with police matters-my pardons to you, Dr. Coran-your psychiatric practice, and book writing, then the bills would be paid on time.”
The old man grimaced at Strand and smiled at Jessica in one fluid motion of the mouth, eyes and forehead, and then he asked Jessica, “Are you aware how the British preface with that phrase 'with all due respect,' Dr. Coran?” He pushed on. “It means, when translated, 'I have lost all due respect for you!' “
“Now that's not fair. Father,” Strand immediately defended himself. “I am concerned we do not close our doors like so many others have had to do in recent times.” The bills will always be with us, Martin. But how long will we have Dr. Coran's company?”
“Yes, sir. If you say so, Father.” With that Strand left them alone.
“The boy worries too much,” Luc Sante said with a spry grin. “Now, to the case. The hellhound is afoot, Watson,” he teased in his best Sherlockian tone.
For the next half hour, he and Jessica reviewed every aspect of the case together, the old man giving her his perspective on the tongue branding, as well as the coal, the dark wood fibers, and the beetle scrappings found on the victims. He called the tongue branding a cult identity ceremony. “It likely marks her as a cult member. She may well have willingly volunteered to die for the cult.”
Jessica thoughtfully considered this possibility. “The idea has, of course, crossed my mind that all the victims may well have belonged to some bizarre cult with strange rituals, but your confirmation means a great deal. Still, I had not, until you spoke of it, considered the victims of these serial killings as willing participants in their own deaths… Yet it makes perfect sense, at least in theory. Still, I have trouble believing that a group of people could so easily be of one mind.”
“The group mind is powerful, Jessica,” he countered. “We know this! In fact, we humans are in possession of so much hard evidence about ourselves on this issue, but we fail to use it to improve our institutions and our lives.”
“Are you talking about how the underlying assumptions of our institutions, our groups, are never questioned?”
“More than that. Nothing is acted upon even when it is questioned and found wanting.”
“Knowing that groups control individuals, why can't we make the leap to a kind of scientific, objective stance that will allow us to
… to… what?”
'To admit it-that our lives are controlled by the group mind! Examine it in all of its dynamic, and organize our attitudes accordingly.”
“If we understand the animal, why can't we change him?” she asked, sipping more tea.
