Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:25:27 +0000
From: Jo Vincent <joad130@hotmail.com>
Subject: Mystery and Mayhem at St Mark's:   30b

		      Mystery and Mayhem At St Mark's

				    by

				   Joel

               30.       Much Ado   [Part Two]

     [I was back in my study about quarter past twelve and realised I
hadn't collected my post from the Porter's Lodge.  I had just got out of
the staircase door when the Chaplain came hurrying up.

     "Mark, Mark!" he looked worried, "There's an awful noise coming from
the Chapel.  The organ's going full blast and the main door and the vestry
door are locked and my keys are at home."]

     "I've got mine," I said and we ran along the path to the vestry door.
As we got near I could hear the noise.  The organ was wailing.  That is, it
sounded as if a good number of stops had been drawn and something was
causing a large number of notes to sound at once and the bellows couldn't
quite supply enough wind.  I was puzzled.  Who would be there?

     As soon as we got through the vestry door and into the Chapel the
noise was tremendous.  Then I remembered who would be there.  I rushed to
the organ loft door.  Blast!  That was shut, too, and I had to fiddle with
my keys to get the right one.  I unlocked it and scrambled up the stairs.
What I saw confirmed my suspicions.  Lying fully across the pedal board was
a body.  I pressed the blower motor button and the noise subsided.
  I looked at the body and saw that it's head was encased in a plastic bag.
The bag was pulled tight round the neck with a drawstring and the body was
very still.  The back of the head was dark and looked caved in.  I looked
up at the music-rest on the organ.  I knew whose body it was and who the
perpetrator was as well.

     I went to the rail of the loft.  The Chaplain was standing below
staring at the choir stalls.  All down one side the most beautiful brass
and glass candle holder in front of each stall was bent and the glass
shattered on the floor.

     I pulled out my mobile.  I knew Dude would be on duty as Adam had said
that last night.  As I got up his number I shouted down to the Chaplain.
"Dr Henson!  Please phone for an ambulance!  There's a body up here.  I'm
certain he's dead and I know who did it and I guess I know where he is."

     I went carefully down the organ loft stairs then stopped and stared at
the damage to the choir stalls as Dude answered.  "I'm in the Chapel," I
said, "There's been another murder.  The Chaplain's calling an ambulance
and I know where the murderer is."

     Dude said "I'm coming!  I'm just by King's Parade. Stay on line!  I'm
listening."

     Somehow I was so calm and collected.  I don't suppose the horror of it
all had really dawned on me.

     I knew the body must be the Honourable Jeremy Foskett.  The music on
the organ had been that old copy of the eight Preludes and Fugues open at
the final two pages of the Fugue in e minor.  A rather exuberant Tosser had
drawn Full Organ for the last few bars and that was the last thing he'd
done.

     Behind the long pages of the book was the upright copy of George
Thalben-Ball's 'Elegy'.  Clearly at the top was the stamp of the previous
owner.  'H P Jones MPS FRCO'.

     The Chaplain had gone.  To the Porter's Lodge I assumed.  I walked
slowly and steadily to the vestry, avoiding the shards of broken glass.  I
knew which of the closed doors to try.  That to the tower.  I turned the
heavy handle but it was locked.  I had a key to the modern Yale lock and
hoped and prayed it wasn't locked with the big key I knew Charles had had.
I breathed a sigh of relief as the key turned and, pulling on the big
handle, I edged the door open.  I opened it fully fairly cautiously.  No
one behind it in the passageway, but I saw there was a bunch of keys like
mine on the fourth stair up.  I climbed up the winding stair very slowly
not knowing what might be waiting.  I kept talking quietly into my mobile
saying what I was doing hoping against hope that Dude was still listening
and would be here as quickly as possible.

     I passed the room below the bells, this was empty other than with the
ropes from the bells above hanging.  No one there.  I peered in at the next
level at the bells themselves.  Nobody there also.  The stairs went on
until I was at the upper room where the rhyme had been found and the
immobile clock mechanism was standing in the middle.  The door to the
walkway and the crumbling parapet was open.

     I kept as close to the wall of the room as possible, not knowing the
state of the floor, and looked out of the door very carefully.  There was
my quarry leaning over the balustrade, waving his arms and mouthing
something silently.

     "Drew!" I called softly, holding the mobile as close to my mouth as I
could, "It's dangerous up here.  Come down!"

     He heard me, looked at me and retreated further round the tower
keeping close to the parapet at the edge of the walkway.  He started to
shout and wave his arms.  He was holding up the thing which was looped over
his wrist.  "They have perished every one!  All those that blaspheme!  All
those who cause hurt to others!  All those who destroy the temples of the
body and of the Lord!  I have used my knowledge and my skill."  He unlooped
the object from his wrist and pounded the balustrade about half a dozen
times.  He was then staring upwards and waving his arms skywards and the
ranting started again.  He yelled out, "We the alchemists of old have
harnessed the might of Earth, Air, Fire and Water to conquer the ills of
this world and to destroy those who sin!"

     I called out, louder this time, "Drew, stop that, come down!  That
parapet isn't safe.  Don't lean on the balustrade!"  Alchemists?  Of
course, he was a modern alchemist, studying Chemistry.

     He looked at me and at the same time took another step back.  He was
really shouting now.  "I have been defiled and I have been the instrument
of God's punishment to those who have sinned.  They did not listen.  Those
who have sinned and do not listen will be destroyed!"

     "Drew," I said as quietly as possible, "Did you kill Brinley Potter?"

     He sneered.  He was quieter.  "He seduced your friends just as his
school-friends.....  No!  I will not speak of that!  He needed to sleep and
after he had boasted that he knew me and what they did I helped him sleep.
Water was his end.  That was clear, clean water to cleanse his sins. He was
asleep and knew nothing."  He raised his voice.  "I used on him what his
friends had used on me!"  He waved the object again.  It looked like a
shortened policeman's truncheon or cosh..

     "Come back here, Drew!" I shouted, too, as he leaned back against the
crenellated balustrade and looked as if he might topple backwards.

     Drew started shouting again and was hitting the balustrade again with
the cosh in time with his rants.  "They that defile the holy temples are
destroyed.  That other fool.  He destroyed his own body.  He pleaded with
me to supply him with more of those steroids he needed to build his stupid
muscles and his useless aspirations.  His body had already being despoiled.
He was impotent and a wreck.  I helped him complete that task!"

     "Is that your family's chemist's shop?"  I asked a bit more quietly.
"T P Jones was an organist, too.  Your organ books?"

     "My grandfather," was shot back with a shout of pride, then he was
silent for a moment.  "He died when I was harmed...."  He waved his arms
again and raised his voice.  "Those other fools will rot in Hell one day.
I cannot be the instrument of their deliverance from their evil ways.  The
drugs they abuse their bodies with will be their end! "

     "Keep him talking, Mark," a quiet hoarse voice came from my mobile
which I was holding out in front of me to catch what Drew was saying.  It
was Sergeant Woolpit.  "Keep your phone on.  We've got it patched into
Headquarters.  I'm down in the Chapel now.  I'll be up there in a moment.
See if you can talk him down."

     I thought I had better press on as instructed.  "How did you kill
Bryce?...."

     He was laughing now.  "That was too easy.  He wanted pills I gave them
to him.  I showed my skill but had to wait until he'd swallowed those I'd
put with the others and when he was staggering I helped him fall..."

     I flew a kite.  "But you didn't mean to kill Mr Finch-Hampton..."

     He was silent for a moment, then roused himself and swung the cosh.
"I wanted to warn the fool.  He thought I would help him cast God from the
College."  He was shouting even louder.  "The fires of Hell have him
now!...  The pattern was almost complete.  Water, Earth, Fire....."  He was
almost dancing in his frenzy, waving the cosh and bringing it down on the
coping of the balustrade with mighty blows.  "Then that other buffoon
boasted he knew who had defiled me once he knew who I was.  He jeered and
said he had supplied the cannabis they were smoking and the cocaine which
addled their wits.  Little did he know I had found that supply he'd left
with that other fool and had purified it.  Although I tried it out I
couldn't find a way with him.  But then Air was to be his end........"  His
voice rose to a crescendo as he jumped into the air and landed, even for
his small frame, very heavily.

     That triumphant dance came to a sudden end.  As I clutched at the
balustrade my side so the whole of the stonework where Drew was jumping up
and down collapsed away down the side of the tower into the roadway below.
I didn't see him drop.  I was grabbed by Dude who appeared at the doorway,
taking my arm and pulling me through as the whole of the tower seemed to
shudder.

     "Let's get down, Mark," he said, "Before the whole place collapses.
He's gone."

     We scrambled down the stairs to be met by the Chaplain and his wife
with Tris, an ashen-faced Jason and two police constables, one covered in
white masonry dust.  There was a hole in the roof of the Chapel and several
large pieces of stonework were lying on the floor.

     The next few hours were a whirl.  The Chaplain's wife took me with
Tris and one of the Constables over to their house where I just sat and
then the emotions flowed.  I felt I had been so calm and collected in
finding the body and then confronting Drew with the four murders, but now I
shivered and shook.  All those suspicions of mine before.
  They all pointed to Drew but something held me back from voicing them.
If I had, would I have saved any of the victims?  Or him?  Our group had
come so near as well and I was certain the police had their suspicions too.
But why?  Why had it all been allowed to proceed almost inexorably to the
bitter end?

     It was now so obvious that Drew was the victim of that dreadful
assault we had heard about.  Brinley must have been at the school at the
time and now we knew definitely that Tosser was the pusher.  Those
overdoses were caused by Drew trying out a way of getting at Tosser
somehow, but then Air was the final link in his deranged thinking.  It was
lack of Air which must have killed Tosser, helped by the cosh.  That damage
to Brinley's skull and the witness's report of the raised arm, too.  The
cosh.  Drew had said it had been used on him in the attack.  I shuddered as
I knew where.

     I didn't want anything but to know Tris was by my side.  The
Chaplain's wife was a tower of strength, too.  She knew I would want no
fuss.  Strong coffee, rather than tea, and quiet.  The Constable sat and
looked pensive.  At last he couldn't contain himself.

     "Excuse me asking, Mr Foster," he said, looking very puzzled.  "There
was you and Sarge up the tower but I could have sworn there was someone
else just behind you and held onto you when the parapet collapsed."

     "But it didn't collapse my side," I said.

     "Yes, sir, it did, and we had to get out of the way mighty quick as
two great lumps came down into the quad and one sort of exploded by me."
His uniform, though brushed still had plenty of white dust on it.  "There's
that hole in the Chapel roof, too, from the bits round the corner."  He
paused.  "So we missed seeing who it was."

     "But the Sergeant pulled me in.."

     "....No he didn't," came Sergeant Woolpit's voice.  He had just come
into the room behind where I was sitting.  "Someone was there and handed
you to me.  And that won't be going into any report, alright, Constable!"

     Tris gripped my hand.  I knew, and he knew, that a firm, but gentle,
hand had been there when needed.

     There was complete silence in the room.  Our hands were clasped and we
both said our silent thanks to Piers.  The dark clouds had been lifted as
forecast.  I was no longer shaking and shuddering.  What had happened had
happened and my involvement was over and done with.  Yes, there would be
statements to be made and the whole business would be reopened and
discussed but as far as I was concerned, as soon as things were settled,
then a clear line could be drawn.

     I was asked if I wanted to go home for a few days.  No.  I wanted to
stay.  My College life must go on.  I expect people thought I might be
bottling things up.  They would have been quite wrong.  I suppose my only
regret was not acting on first impulses but I concluded that life is just
not as simple as the detective stories make out.

     I was only required to sign a statement which included the interchange
between Drew and myself recorded by the Police Control Centre.  We heard
that Boz's father had been the psychiatrist who first interviewed Drew
after the assault, but then Drew had been sent off to another part of the
country to complete his schooling.  True, his grandfather had died a few
months after the incident, but that was of old age.

     What was horrifying were the details of the assault.  It transpired
that Drew had been fishing happily by himself in a small lake in a glade of
surrounding trees.
  Five pupils from the Public School had been in another glade further on,
smoking cannabis and all had snorted cocaine as well. They had found him as
they wandered around in their drugged-up, stoned state.  It was easy for
the five, bigger and older than him, to overpower him.  They had then
stripped him completely and made him suck each of them off to begin with.
Two had gone off back to the school and the other three had then tied him
down over a fallen tree and two had raped him and the third, too far gone
and impotent, had stuck the cosh up his rectum as his contribution.

     Somehow Drew had freed himself and got himself home in a very
distressed state.  The local doctor had examined him and found what had
happened and then Drew had flipped.  He was taken to the hospital where Dr
Johnson had been called in.  He said he could not get anywhere as he had
almost immediately retreated into almost a catatonic state and then began
to show symptoms of more than one personality.  Against his advice Drew had
been sent off almost secretly to stay with other relatives and Dr Johnson
lost touch with him.  Drew was just fourteen when all this happened.

     Although the police had been called in there were no clues, except for
the cosh which somehow Drew had got hold off after the investigation.  He
had seen nothing having been blindfolded and gagged with his own underpants
and socks.  No one at the school knew anything.  'It couldn't be any of our
pupils!'  At least that was the story.
  By the time Drew left the hospital it was summer vacation time and all
the pupils were scattered

     The relatives he was sent to were very religious and this very bright,
very musical boy, found refuge from his torments in what they thought was a
marvellous conversion to their beliefs.  A refuge which did nothing for the
underlying results of the traumatic happenings he had experienced.  On the
surface, it was concluded, he could cope by his exhortations and rantings
and by his obsession to be a good Chemistry student and an excellent
organist just like his grandfather.  Underneath, when the raw nerves were
touched, his unresolved hatreds and desire for revenge were unleashed.  A
second vengeful personality was freed from any restraint.

     Of course, once Drew's locker at the Chemistry Laboratories and his
other room at the Christian Hostel were searched all was revealed.  A very
old poison bottle contained a small amount of the substance which had
helped to kill Bryce.  There were numerous more diabetic syringes.  It
hadn't been known that Drew was diabetic.  Perhaps even brought on by the
shock of the attack.  He had cleverly injected the vitamin pills with the
poison.  His size six trainers were also at the Hostel - no one at College
knew he went running swathed in those sweats but someone at the Hostel had
seen him, but thought nothing of it.  Many students there went running, so?

     There were a couple of the canisters of vitamin pills there, too.  It
was thought he had taken these and the sleeping pills when he had helped
out at the family pharmacy during a Christmas break.  It was suggested he
might even had thought of overdosing himself with the Luminol if his mania
got worse, but would he have known if his second personality was taking
over?.  His lab bench showed evidence of cocaine and he had purified the
cut cocaine into a very refined version which even to seasoned users would
have had quite adverse effects.  There were some notes culled from the
Internet on fire-setting and a small notebook listing names and the sins he
imagined were committed.

     Luckily the newspapers didn't get the whole sorry story.  Someone in
the publishing world must have had close links with the Foskett family as
there was a bare mention of his death in one paper.  The tabloids weren't
interested.  As far as they were concerned it seemed that a student had
been climbing up the unsafe tower and had fallen to his death.  The police
had drawn a line under all the happenings so there would be no publicity.
Subsequently there were a couple of paragraphs about the four deaths but
there were no awful details.  I was not mentioned.  The Chaplain held a
short service to pray for the souls of all the victims, including Drew.  He
also went to see Drew's parents and said they were devastated, but Drew had
left their care well before he was fifteen and they had seen little of him
since.  I conquered any other terror I might have felt by going the next
day after the fall and, although workmen were already there clearing the
broken masonry and the ruined candle holders, with others on the roof
pulling tarpaulins over the hole, I played for over two hours dispelling
any feelings I might have had about that body.  Our organ did need some
attention.  There was dust everywhere and the bellows had been overstrained
but that was soon put right.  Charles arranged, with or without the
Bursar's knowledge we didn't know, for the organ builders to come and
repair things immediately.

     Dude came to see us the night after the incident.  He said I hadn't
realised the whole walkway and parapet was crumbling and falling away.
"When I took your hand," he said, "there was nothing under your feet!"
Tris and I told him who we thought the other person was who held me.  In
fact, just before Easter the four of us, including Adam, went over to
Ulvescott Manor for the weekend.  Tris and I slept in Piers' room and Dude
and Adam were in the Horsebox.  Early on Saturday morning both Tris and I
were still asleep when Adam and Dude came through and got into bed with us.
Very gently they woke us, then, Tris with Adam, I with Dude, made quiet but
fervent love.  Dude whispered that he felt so safe and secure and caressed
me and I hugged and nuzzled him and together we brought each other to
tremendous orgasms.  We heard the others reaching their own orgasmic
release then four bodies twined and intertwined sharing our love and
respect for each other.  As I held the other three I said aloud a grateful
thankyou to Piers.

     The whole weekend was a quiet and peaceful respite for each of us but
especially for me.  Our reason for being there was known but not discussed.
I know Tris was especially calmed by the trip as he was worried how I would
cope but I knew I was OK now.  I think I also knew that both of us would be
successful in our exams at the beginning of next term.

     It was also on that trip that Dude and Adam told us about the offer
that had been made.  Commander Mackenzie was being promoted to be an
Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard.  He needed the equivalent of an
aide-de-camp.  Dude had been recommended and had applied to return to the
Metropolitan Police and having already passed the requisite exams would be
transferred with the rank of Inspector.  We felt so pleased for him, but
also sad as he and Adam would be parted.  But both said, as they had
before, that although they were extremely fond of each other it wouldn't
have been a permanent commitment for either of them.  They would remain
good friends.  Dude said the weekend had been perfect.  He knew now who had
been on the crumbling tower with me and he was convinced he was also doing
the right thing.  "There are more things in Heaven and Earth...." he
quoted, and we knew that that Old Bill was right!!


To be Continued: