‘Yes, of course he was – not that I know anything more than that about him. I’ll look him up as well. Have you any other ideas?’
‘I wondered whether the word Cathari, found on Mrs Castle’s body, might be worth looking up.’
‘It’s a stranger to me, but I’ll get on its trail.’
She came back at tea-time on the following day, having set off at half-past nine in the morning.
‘I’m a mine of information,’ she announced, ‘but how it’s going to solve our problems I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘Did you have any lunch?’
‘Yes, ate like a horse at the Dolphin and then returned to my studies. I got on swingingly with 325 and 1155, and Cathari turned out to be fool-proof. It means that lot we usually hear of as the Albigensians. 380 gave me a lot of trouble, but I tracked it down at last, and it ties up in a way.’
‘Excellent. Let us have some tea, and then, when you are refreshed, I must hear the full results of your researches.’
These did not take long to describe.
‘Arius doesn’t quite fit,’ said Laura, ‘but the others do. He was a Christian priest in Alexandria and was condemned as a heretic by the Synod of Antioch in A.D. 325 because he believed Christ was not the equal of God, but was more or less an adopted Son and was capable of change and subject to pain, and so was not immortal. Arius was also considered equally unsound on the Third Person of the Trinity and seems to have made himself a pain in the neck to the authorities and, in the end, got himself excommunicated. All the dates are a bit sketchy, I thought, but 325 is as good as any other.’
‘Why do you say he does not quite fit?’
‘You’ll see what I mean when I tell you about the others. In his case it’s the nationality which doesn’t make sense.’
‘What about the Cathari or Albigensians?’
‘Not really open to the same objection – at least, not as seriously. They flourished especially in Provence, which ties up, vaguely, with Mrs Castle and the teaching of French. Saint Bernard didn’t like them, and the Dominicans and Franciscans were also anti-Cathari. The movement more or less collapsed in the thirteenth century, but lingered on, here and there, for another couple of hundred years.’
‘And the specific date of 1207?’
‘That was the beginning of the Crusade against the Cathari. Some put it at 1208, but it’s near enough.’
‘And Arnold of Brescia?’
‘Well, he seems to have had a very rough passage. Pope Innocent the Second condemned him in 1139 and he was banished from Italy – ties in with Lucia, as we noted – and went to France. He seems to have known Abelard, as I said. After the Council of Sens had chewed the fat with both of them, Abelard gave in, but Arnold fled. In 1148 the Pope excommunicated him, and in 1155, the date on Lucia’s body, he was hanged in Rome, his body was burned – ties up with the burnt doll – a very unpleasant feature, as I thought at the time – and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber.’
‘You say you had difficulty with the 380 date?’
‘I certainly did, but I tracked it down at last. Actually, 384 would have been nearer the mark. Anyway, I realised by this time that our murderer must have a bee in his bonnet about heresies in the early and the mediaeval church, so that gave me a pointer and brought me at last to a chap named Priscillian. He was a Spaniard – Maria Machrado, you know – and in 380 he was condemned by the Council of Saragossa, but was later elected bishop of Avila. However, he struck unlucky, and in 384 he was tried for sorcery and immorality and condemned to death. He was, as a matter of fact, the first person to be executed for heresy.’
‘I see what you mean about Arianism. You have no German heretics among your gleanings. This confirms me in a belief I have held for some time. The only death for which the murderer could have had a motive was the death of Karen Schumann. The others are either wanton killings or are intended to throw the police off the track.’
‘You must admit that all this heresy stuff points to the scholarly Edward.’
‘It could also point to Mrs Schumann, who, even more readily than Edward James, has the run of her late husband’s theological library.’
‘On the other hand, now that we’ve got as far as this, it looks so obviously like one or other of them that it must be somebody else.’
‘Now that we’ve got as far as this, yes. But the murderer probably had no idea that we should interest ourselves by looking into these dates, so he or she took a calculated risk. I do not imagine that, left to themselves, Superintendent Phillips or Detective-Inspector Maisry would have troubled themselves about ancient and exploded heresies.’
‘I still can’t see how it helps us, anyway, to have found out all this.’
‘I do not agree. We can use this knowledge, but must proceed with caution. Say nothing to anybody about it at present. It is not direct evidence of guilt, but it can be a formidable weapon if we can use it wisely. If I drop the right hints in the right direction, I may at least be able to prevent another death. The supply of heresies has not given out on you, I trust?’
‘I don’t know. I only looked up those in which we had an interest. I’ll go back tomorrow and dig into a book on the history of the early church, if you like.’
Before she could do this, however, the fifth body had been found. It was lying face-downwards in one of the New Forest ponds, and the cause of death was the same as before. The
