07-02-2021, 02:08 AM
1
The old Sexton
Forty years ago, the Church of All Saints would have been left unlocked during the day for all to seek shelter or solace, or to commune with whomever they thought would listen. But not now. Unless the vicar or one of the other church officials were present, or had been contacted for the keys, the place was locked up tight.Since a theft of church silver in the fifties it had been locked at night, but now it was locked by day as well.
The vicar therefore was surprised to find a body, face down in the aisle just in front of the alter, with no signs of forced entry.
The doors were old, oak timbers and iron studded planks. The door furniture was as old as the doors, locally forged wrought iron, with the blacksmith’s mark still showing where it had been stamped into each piece.
A quick glance had confirmed that none of the windows were broken.
“Is this how you found him?” asked the DCI?
“Yes,” replied the vicar. “I knew he was dead as soon as I got close. No need to check for a pulse.”
“How so?” The senior investigating officer was curious. He was sure the clergyman was used to death, but violent death? That was unusual.
“I was an Army Chaplain before I came here four years age. Twelve years in, and I got to see many different ways our fellow man can bring an end to another soul’s life.”
Pointing at the dead man sprawled on the floor, he continued, “Back of the head stoved in by something hard and possibly heavy. I saw grey matter and knew my job was just beginning as far as he was concerned.”
Pointing at a series of holes in the church walls at the rear, the policeman asked, Could someone have used them as hand-holds to gain access?
“That's unlikely. That’s where the beams for the minstrel’s gallery used to be. When the church was first built there were no organs in existence. Musicians performed there and when it was time to sing, the congregation would turn and face the music. That’s where the saying comes from.”
Leading the inspector outside, the vicar pointed out the wall surrounding the church that nobody would have any problem climbing over. As a result, it was never deemed worthwhile locking the gate to the side or the main lytchgates.
The vicar explained that hundreds of years ago a funeral would have been performed under the roof between the gates, not in the church or at the graveside. The coffin would be brought in, the ceremony performed, then the mourners would leave at which point the outer gates would be closed, the inner gates opened, and the deceased taken away to be buried.
This was because the lytchgates were considered to be the gateway from this world into the next. The living went one way and the dead went the other.
Hours later the DCI was in the incident room demanding updates. The man had been identified as a local cat burglar whose likely entry had been the belfry, having climbed the tower to gain access through a trap door before descending the narrow stone staircase to the floor of the church below.
An iron ball had been found near the front. Smaller than a cricket ball, weighing about a kilogramme it was a perfect fit for the wound in the back of the dead man’s head that had been crushed like an eggshell.
The forensic report said that the forced used was four to five times greater than it was physically possible for a human to produce, meaning that a projectile weapon must have been used. Despite an extensive search in and around the church, nothing had been found, nor a motive.
The old alter-ware had long ago been replaced by cheap silverplate or mass-produced pewter, but it looked shiny and worth a bob or two from the back of the church.
The assumption was that the thief had been caught trying to steal the holy communion valuables, not realising they were only worth a pittance, and had been killed for their troubles.
The problem was that every one of the church elders from verger to bishop had a cast iron alibi, backed up by CCTV evidence.
The other problem was that the doors had all been locked.
Congregation numbers had been dropping for decades to the point that services were performed in three churches within the parish on rotation, once every three weeks. Other than weddings, funerals, or bell-ringing practice, the church wasn’t used in between.
The post mortem had shown the victim had been killed around midnight to two am, ruling out anyone who had a key to the church, and the police were completely baffled.
Pain like fire shot through the knees of the old Sexton as he descended the outside steps to the half-crypt.
The space under the South Transept had originally run the full length of the church, but cracks had been found in the floor during the mid seventeen hundreds.
Local stonemasons had hit bedrock at less than a yard in depth, then built a dividing wall in the crypt to support the main church floor and prevent further subsidence.
As the wall was built, the masons found it easiest to leave a gap so they could pass from one side to the other, before installing a lintel and doorway as the height increased. Ramming slate and hydraulic lime mortar between the top of the wall and the underside of the church floor eventually stopped all settlement, but left a doorway that was no longer needed after the work was finished.
Fifty years later the gap was sealed by carpenters who built panels and shelving to hide access from one side to the other, but had fitted discrete hinges and catches should the church ever need to pass from without to within or the opposite.
Over the years and decades, this passageway was lost from memory, except for one particular church warden. This secret was passed down until the only person who knew about it now was the old Sexton who had reached the low Norman arch on the graveyard side of the church below ground level.
He needed neither lights nor directions to find his way. He had been doing this for seventy-three years, ever since he had been told the secret as a twelve-year old choirboy by his father.
Nine hundred years earlier when the church had been built, the average height of a man was 5 ft 2 inches, so the Sexton had to stoop as he stepped through into one side of the crypt.
Three steps forward, turn left, five paces forward, then he reached for the candle-holder in the coffin recess at chest height. When he pulled it, there was a faint click, then he swung the rack complete with three coffins aside to reveal the old doorway.
With another click, he released the wood panel on the other side before pushing it away until he had enough room to step through into the bowels of the church.
Eight more paces brought him to the spiral staircase archway that led in stages all the way to the bell tower roof. It took longer and longer each time he climbed to ground level inside the church, but he had no choice.
Five years ago, the position of sexton had been abolished as being unnecessary, but he had sworn an oath. He loved his god, and he loved this church, and he would protect it and the blessed, although now worthless, items on the alter table.
Paid or not, he continued to travel this route as he had done since he was a child. With no successor, he knew that soon no one would do this job, but he had vowed to do it until his dying breath.
His rheumy eyes slid around the church, but saw no one.
Moving to the font, he removed the cover and pulled the plug. Most people thought the water just went out into the drains or a soakaway outsider, but not the Sexton. He knew that it was piped to one of the stone pillars where it filled a tall thin metal cylinder attached to a network of rods. Once the vessel was full, the rest just overflowed.
Replacing the plug, he refilled the font using a bucket and water from a tap inside the vestry. He had released consecrated water, but it didn’t bother him. Once full, the water in the font would be blessed to become holy water before it was used again.
Either side of the main West entrance there were two jutting walls with tall stone angels. He pulled the left one, and it swivelled aside, hearing a slight breath of released air, or was it a vacuum? He was never sure.
Reaching up he went to check the iron ball was in place in its holder, but there was no iron ball to be found.
It had been there yesterday, or was it last week. Now he thought about it he couldn’t remember.
He was perturbed. He had checked the system every night at midnight for decades to ensure it was armed, ready for the water filled counterweight to drop, spinning the cogs and flywheel that would release the arm and fire the metal ball at any intruder foolhardy enough to step on the release mechanism under the third stone flag from the alter.
Unlocking and opening either the South or West door would slide a series of hidden metal bars and rods through the walls and columns such that the device could not fire when the church was open for worship.
Whatever or whoever had triggered the lethal iron ball to fire had no business being there. The Sexton could only assume that both the ancient booby trap and himself had done its job. This gave him some comfort. He just wished he knew when it had happened, and to whom or to what.
The cylinder had dropped, the trap had been sprung, yet there was no sign of the iron ball anywhere to be seen.
He didn’t know what to do other than laboriously wind the counterweight back to its set position and swing the stone angel back before retracing his route to the outside world, carefully closing the wooden subterranean panels beneath the church floor, revealing no evidence of his passage as a result.
Tomorrow he would have to find a replacement iron ball, but the lord only knew where he would find one that would enable him to guard the precious holy alter-ware he had sworn to protect a lifetime ago.
The murder of a cat burglar in a small village church remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
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