Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

It had started harmlessly enough with walks and gatherings in the woods beside the campus, the telling of stories and the breathing of certain herbs, the occasional naked mass and innocent orgy, but as all leaders discover sooner or later, he’d found it necessary to spike the emotional cocktail he offered his congregation with darker stuff, black masses, the ritual kissing of his buttocks, more shameful perversions — willingly committed but needing the legitimacy of ritual, the sacrifice of dogs and cats, and finally the sacrifice of one of their number who threatened to betray them.

Having escaped discovery once — the murder going unsolved and himself undiscovered — he tested his power to rule and take the lives of others again... and again... and again... choosing the time and place with great care, making certain that the murders took place far from the college where he taught, his sense of omnipotence growing, disdainful of every belief and faith except his belief and faith in his own masquerade, no longer needing or wanting any ceremony or excuse when the desire to kill took hold.

Through the years, he’d developed a devilish skill at identifying his half-willing victims at practically a single glance, knowing almost without fail that young man or woman, that thin-lipped housewife or balding clerk, whose midnight fantasies would urge them to strike up a conversation with him and go willingly into some dark copse of trees beside a river, or glade within a wood, which would become their grave.

He’d been asked to Oxford to give the Merlin Sylvester Lecture at Christ’s College, the seminar named for that magus who prophesied to Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king of the English.

Rather than accept the offer of accommodations at the college, which he feared might afford him little privacy but, instead, an endless round of meals with well-meaning graduate students and dons anxious that he should not lack for any gesture of hospitality, he’d arranged for a per diem with which he might secure his own rooms at the hotel or bed and breakfast of his choice.

A man of frugal habits, he’d chosen a modest establishment two miles from the city center along the Bodley Road, at the bottom of a quiet lane, where a clean bed and private toilet, a pleasant lounge with a television, and what proved to be a better than merely decent breakfast cost him a third as much as a plain room in a city hotel would have done.

It had the added advantage of giving him a morning and evening constitutional during each of the five days of his stay, and hours of unobserved privacy which no one would ever question or intrude upon.

Each day, going into town, he noted a small wooden church, set well back from the road, its entry apparently secured with a lattice gate of wood painted green, a piece of paper fixed to it which, he idly surmised, must be the announcement of Sunday worship. There was nothing distinguished about it. In a country where great antiquity was commonplace and in a city where significant architecture was everywhere to be seen, he felt no compulsion to explore its interior or surrounds, but found every reason to simply hurry by on his way to the paths along the canal and river, the bustling streets of the commercial city, or the quiet greenswards and broad playing fields of the colleges assembled.

Yet each time, after the first time, that he walked past the little church, morning or evening, he found himself wondering what exactly was written on the sign.

One evening, during a lull in the television programming, he asked the owner of the bed and breakfast if he ever attended the church along the Bodley Road and did he know its denomination. His host, a Mr. Fluelis, seemed to find it difficult to identify the building to which he referred, in the end calling upon his wife to refresh his memory, which she was unable to do, laughingly admitting that she had no interest in churches along the Bodley Road, scarcely ever walking there herself since they’d acquired their first automobile ten years before.

It was of no consequence. Things seen every day of one’s life often made no impression. It was like asking directions of someone in the neighborhood in which they lived; they could easily lead you to your destination on foot, but to describe the turns and street names was often beyond their ability.

The lecture was a great success, his delivery wry and funny, his material crisp and full of meat, his theme just challenging enough to warrant some debate over a glass in a local pub right after.

So it was well after dark when he was ready to go back to his rented bed.

He might have taken a taxi; it was an inexpensive journey. Or he might have taken a bus; there were more than enough going along the Bodley Road even at that hour. But there was a full moon, the bite in the air was invigorating, and he was warmed by the three glasses of port he’d drunk. The prospect of a long walk home appealed to him.