The Snares of Death (4 page)

It was a long, low building, typical in Norfolk flint. Over the years the churchyard had risen around its walls, giving it a sunken appearance. That probably meant that there would be problems with damp, he thought. The tower was at the west end, and its door, sturdy and weathered, had clearly not been opened for years. Bob Dexter approached the small north porch. Over its door was a small niche holding a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, its paintwork faded. The outside entrance of the open porch had once been fitted with bird doors of a good quality, but the netting had now entirely disappeared, leaving only the wooden frame. Dexter pulled the doors apart and entered the porch, regarding with disdain the mildewed stone holy-water stoup.

The porch was quite small; on his right he saw a large dark green noticeboard, so ancient and well riddled with drawing pins over the years that it appeared to have been infested with woodworm. On the top a neatly painted gold-leaf inscription read, ‘St Mary the Virgin, South Barsham. Diocese of Norwich', and below it the times of the Sunday Masses and Weekday Services (‘Saints' Days as announced; Confession by Appointment'). The usual notices were posted there: a list of fees for funerals, a notification of the revision of the church electoral roll, a flower-arranging rota. A fairly new-looking notice advised, ‘In the event of a pastoral emergency, please contact Father Mark Judd', followed by a telephone number. That must be the curate who'd been taking the services since the old Vicar died, he decided. At the bottom of the board was a little scroll, picked out in gold paint rather than gold leaf, with the words, ‘Mary pray, Jesu mercy,
Ora pro nobis
', and the names ‘Mabel and Fred'. Bob Dexter curled his lip and turned to the board on his left.

Above a large umbrella stand, its white enamel tray badly chipped, was another noticeboard, this one of bright blue. It boasted only one item: a poster, faded and covered in polythene, with a picture of Our Lady of Walsingham, and the inscription, ‘A lamp burns for this church at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham'. ‘Not for long, it doesn't,' Dexter said aloud, seizing the poster by the corner and ripping it down. He immediately felt better.

The door to the church opened easily with a push. Bob Dexter frowned at the carelessness, blind trust or just plain stupidity in this part of the world; although visiting churches to admire their architectural merits was not something that interested him, on the occasions that he had been to East Anglian churches he had invariably found them unlocked, and usually deserted. That would never happen in Richmond, in London, or indeed in any civilised part of the country. Dexter told himself, not for the first time, what a sacrifice he was making on the Lord's behalf in coming to this primitive backwater.

The body of the church was down four steps. The smell hit him first – that smell peculiar to ancient country churches, a mixture of damp stone (he'd been right about the damp – he could see plaster flaking from the walls!), mouldy prayer books, and stale incense. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noted the finger bowl in a niche to his right, encrusted with limescale and filled with holy water. He turned away from it to find himself confronting a large painting on wood, looking almost like a tavern sign, he thought. It was blackened with age, with varnish and with candle smoke, but he could see that it was the Virgin Mary, standing on a crescent moon, crowned with a halo of stars, rosary beads dangling from her outstretched hand. It was an offensively popish image – popish in style and tone, the repulsive subject matter entirely aside – and not even English, to his unpractised eye. This was going to be worse than even he had imagined; again he turned, facing east.

Dexter moved to the centre aisle and paused at the visitors' book which lay open on a scruffy table to his left, a blue biro attached to it with a bit of string. He flipped through it; it was an expensive leather-bound volume which had clearly been there for years. Its entries began some twenty years earlier and tailed off in number as the years progressed. There hadn't been a new entry in nearly a month, he noted. Not even the faithful on their pilgrimages to Walsingham stopped at this church. Beside the visitors' book were a few tracts, yellowed with age. A pile of shabby green English Hymnals added to the impression of neglect.

Dexter noticed that the table to the right of the centre aisle was quite a different matter. It was in fact a black oak chest, well polished and dust-free. It contained a few recent books, the latest issue of the parish magazine, some copies of the diocesan newsletter, and a highly polished brass vase, cheerful with early daffodils. How strange that the one table should be so neglected and the other so cared for. He must remember to ask someone about that.

The back pews were clearly reserved for the churchwardens; their staves stood at attention like billiard cues on either side of the aisle. Dexter marched down the centre aisle. Each of the simple stone columns appeared to have a statue – a graven image, Bob Dexter said to himself – affixed to it. On the right stood St Francis of Assisi, a bird perched on his outstretched finger, flanked by a little red sanctuary light burning on a ledge on one side, and a tiny fish-paste pot of crocuses on the other. The pews had been cleared around the pillar, forming a small children's corner, furnished with miniature chairs. Opposite St Francis, on the north side of the church, was a garishly painted St George; the tatty banner behind him read ‘St George for England', and several pennants and banners, the remnants of a long-ago Scout troop, leaned against the column.

Even Bob Dexter recognised St Francis and St George, however little he approved of them, but the next shrine he encountered, to the east of St Francis, baffled him totally. A red lamp burned in front of a statue of a priest – a Roman priest, by all appearances, in a biretta and a lace cotta. Closer inspection of the statue revealed the name ‘Curé of Ars' beneath, but that was scarcely more enlightening. Someone, at least, was very fond of this particular example of idolatry: a brass bowl of fresh flowers stood beside the red lamp.

Dexter moved quickly to the front of the nave. There was no nave altar, just the pulpit on the left and a lectern on the right. He turned to the left, past the organ – Dexter was not musical, but the organ looked a reasonable instrument – and had a look at the war memorial on the north wall. It was a large oak triptych with names on the side panels, and in the centre a very realistically carved crucifix with the inscription, ‘Pray for the souls of the faithful departed: May they all rest in peace.' This posed a dilemma; praying for the souls of the dead was an abhorrent practice, but he couldn't very well rip out the war memorial, could he? There were still people about who were sensitive about the war. A poppy wreath from last November hung on a nail at the crucifix's foot, and three older wreaths, progressively faded, leaned on the floor beneath. The British Legion standard hung on one side, and on the other was an oak-framed, faded print of a dying British Tommy in the trenches of the First World War, supported by his mate, while an enormous hovering angel waited with arms and wings outstretched to receive his soul.

Now Dexter circled around the perimeter of the church, down the north aisle, paying scant attention to the painted plaster Stations of the Cross which were affixed at regular intervals to the walls – those wouldn't be there much longer. He passed the north porch, and the obnoxious foreign painting, and at the back of the church found yet more atrocities. In the corner was a Shrine of the Legion of Mary, proudly proclaimed by a banner and decorated with ferns and spider plants. On the wall behind was one of those garishly painted white porcelain pictures – Italian, he thought it was – that always made him think of an Edwardian lavatory.

The font, with its attendant Paschal candle, was at the rear, in front of the entrance to the tower. Dexter pulled aside the felt curtain that masked the tower entrance and peered inside. The bell ropes were visible at ground level, with their striped salleys, and on the wall were the peal boards. Propped against the wall, dusty and neglected, were the seventeenth-century Ten Commandment boards. Dexter smiled. Soon, he told himself, they would be returned to their former prominence. This church could obviously do with a good dose of the Ten Commandments.

Beneath the window, on the south side of the tower, hung a very large dark painting; Dexter could just about make out a hunting scene, with a quivering saint in the foreground, being converted or something. Disgusting! Even worse was the plaster statue beneath it, Our Lady of Walsingham in full colour, with little lights burning around her, and literature about the Shrine. Dexter swept the leaflets from the table and stuffed them in his pocket. And on the side wall, also with a candle burning, was a painting of King Charles the Blessed Martyr. Dexter stalked up the south aisle and peered into the south porch. It had been converted into a chantry chapel, its outside door covered by a curtain on which hung a crucifix. Dexter stepped inside and glared at the stone seat which was being used as an altar of remembrance, the six candles, the book with the names of the dead, the flowers, the prominent notice for the Walsingham Guild of All Souls. ‘It's a bit small,' he said aloud, ‘but I think it would do nicely for a Sunday School. Or perhaps a book stall – for the Protestant Truth Society!'

He headed towards the chapel at the end of the south aisle, and in his concentration nearly tripped over the chair against the wall just outside. He stopped and looked furiously at the purple velvet curtain, and the little kneeler in front of the chair; he picked up the plastic-covered card on the chair's seat and scrutinised the offensive words: ‘A Form of Confession'. His eye picked out the words, ‘to Blessed Mary, ever-virgin, and to all the Saints', and after an unsuccessful attempt to tear the card in two, it joined the leaflets in his pocket.

Dexter paused outside the chapel. Its wooden screen looked medieval, or at any rate quite old, with evidence of years of woodworm, but behind the screen hung a tomato-ketchup-red velvet curtain, thus giving the impression of a closed-off room. That must have cost a bit of money! he thought. The small sign fixed to one side of the entrance read, ‘This is where Christ's sacramental presence is to be found. Please enter reverently', and just inside the door an oak plaque requested, ‘Pray for the soul of Albert Carter, whose generous gift re-furnished this chapel.'

Certainly a great deal of money had been spent on the chapel in recent years. It was fitted with gold carpet, and there were a dozen or so new oak chairs with red vinyl seats. A new altar had been constructed, on a plinth: it was oak, and very modern, without a frontal. Instead it had just a fair linen cloth, albeit festooned with drippy crocheted lace, and on it was a single squat candle and a spider plant. But there were plenty of candles elsewhere in the chapel: in front of the wall safe that held the reserved sacrament, and in the wrought-iron stands in front of the pictures on the south wall. There was another Virgin, and some other saint as well. And in a very high niche, up above the modern, insipidly coloured stained-glass window, was yet another statue of Our Lady. It would take a tall ladder to get that one down, thought Bob Dexter.

Only the chancel remained for his inspection. Dexter left the chapel and passed through the chancel gates, past the choir's benches and up to the High Altar. It was an old-fashioned English altar, hung behind with royal blue velvet curtains and surmounted by a huge central crucifix and numerous – he didn't bother to count them – tall candlesticks. They looked as though they should be worth something, as did the sanctuary lamp, which appeared to be silver. The place was truly abominable, but Dexter was beginning to see the financial possibilities. There were probably people who would be willing to pay good money for all this popish nonsense – even the statues and the pictures. If he could sell it all off, there might even be enough money to build a proper Sunday School extension.

He suddenly had the feeling that someone was watching him, and he turned slowly. On his left was a very large painted plaster statue of the Virgin, regarding him balefully with her glass eyes. In her right hand she held a sceptre and a rosary, while with her left she supported a simpering child. The hand-lettered notice beneath her requested ‘Mother of God, pray for us', and she was surrounded by an assortment of candlesticks, none of them lit, and a large bowl of slightly drooping flowers. Bob Dexter laughed aloud.

At that moment he became aware that he was indeed not alone in the church. There was a clattering noise coming from the area of the north porch. Vandals, come to steal his candlesticks before he could flog them off ? Although the church was not locked, and theoretically everyone was as free as he to enter, already he felt proprietorial about the place. ‘Who's there?' he called out in his best preaching voice.

A quavery, frightened voice answered his challenge. ‘Gwen,' it said. ‘Gwen Vernon.'

Bob Dexter strode down through the chancel gates and confronted the figure who struggled up the centre aisle, laden with a sheaf of flowers.

‘I'm sorry if I frightened you,' he said in a more normal tone of voice. ‘I just wasn't expecting anyone.' He paused, then added portentously, ‘I'm Bob Dexter. Soon to be the shepherd of this flock.'

‘Oh!' squeaked the woman who faced him, nearly dropping the flowers in her shock.

Dexter smiled his trademarked smile. ‘My dear lady, let me help you with those. Where were you taking them?'

‘In . . . in there.' She indicated the chancel as he scooped the flowers out of her arms. Recovering herself, she added timidly, ‘My friend . . . that is, Miss Barnes, and I, we always do the flowers for Our Lady. And this morning Alice, that is, Miss Barnes, noticed that they were getting a bit, well, past their best. I hadn't noticed myself, but Alice, Miss Barnes, says I'm like that. So as soon as we'd finished our lunch she said, “Gwen, you must go over to the church and take some fresh flowers for Our Lady.” And here I am.'