The Apostolic Destruction by Bertil Falk	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

“Well, I never!” my hostess exclaimed.

“Poisoned!”

“Extraordinary!” her husband said. “You mean he was murdered.”

I nodded. “It was a murder or an accident or a suicide. I say it was murder.

“But how? According to the forensic pathologist the poison had probably been dissolved in some kind of fluid. It had either happened when Jens Andersen had eaten earlier that day together with his family at the hotel where they stayed or — which was more probable — the poison had been in the wine he received at Communion.

“There was no obvious reason to suspect that he had been poisoned at dinner with his family. To suspect that one of the bishops had poisoned him also seemed unlikely for the same reason that people always won’t believe that bishops and priests and other Christians commit other crimes than small ones.”

I paused and continued: “Now, incredibly as it may seem, the controversy about the Apostolic Succession had never made it to the headlines, and the suspicion that Jens Andersen had been poisoned was never splashed on the front pages of the tabloids.

“You may ask: how come? I don’t know, but remember that this happened long ago and the Danish tabloids had perhaps not as yet reached the level of sensationalism they have nowadays. The death of the bishop was of course there with obituaries and all that, but the police investigation went on without any journalistic intervention.

“Anyhow, little by little, the police turned their eyes on the bishops and discovered that Søren Sørgaard was vehemently against something called the Apostolic Succession. The police understood that it was something that had struck root with the deceased bishop and would have spread like cancer — as Søren Sørgaard once had put it — through the Danish church if Jens Andersen had been participating in the consecration of another bishop.

“Since the forensic pathologist had said that the poison had either been administered at the dinner or through the wine, Søren Sørgaard became the target of suspicions. He was discreetly questioned and he strongly denied that he had anything to do with the untimely — or was it timely? — death of Jens Andersen.

“The case against him was soon weakened by facts. To begin with, Jens Andersen was the only one who had been poisoned. The bishops who had sipped the wine before him had not been affected. Neither had Hans Larsen or Søren Sørgaard, who both drank the wine after him.

“Fortunately for Søren Sørgaard, the chalice had been left in the vestry without being washed. The forensic laboratory technicians found that there was no poison in the wine. The case was buried among other unsolved crimes and was not heard of for decades, until one day, two years ago. Then I visited a Danish friend. We had both been missionaries in Kenya. During my stay at his home in Denmark, my friend told me the story.”

I made a pause and said, with a blink at my hostess: “Where do you get this excellent coffee? Please, pour me another cup.”

Her husband poured it for me.

“However,” I continued, “when my uncorrupted ears heard the story, I immediately developed a theory as to how Jens Andersen was poisoned, who did it, as well as why he was poisoned, in that order. It turned out that the policeman who had been in charge of the investigation had moved to some other place long ago and that he probably was retired or even dead.

“The suspect Søren Sørgaard had been dead for a couple of years. Hans Larsen was still alive and very much kicking. It was proven by a stream of strange theological mishmash that he sent to journals and reviews with the regularity of a trigger-happy machine-gunner.

“He lived not far from my friend, and we decided on seeing him for a chat. We called on him. A lady, who turned out to be his housekeeper, showed us to his room. He sat at a desk leaned over the keyboard of his computer, an old man. What was left of his hair was grayish. His cheeks were sunken.”

* * *

“Sit down,” he said, adding, “What can I do for you?” His voice was that of a young man.

I told him bluntly that I was investigating the case of his poisoned colleague.

He looked at me without as much as batting an eyelid. My Danish friend cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I see,” said Hans Larsen.

“I guess you know everything about it,” I continued.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Pure deduction,” I replied.

‘Really?”

He looked puzzled and added: “That’s interesting.”

He paused. And then he said, “The perpetrator confessed to it in confession.”

That took me aback. Was my theory wrong?

“You thought I did it!” the old bishop continued. It was a statement, not a question.

I nodded.

“As I told you, the perpetrator has confessed, and he has been urged to give himself up. But after all, we are only human beings, and it’s not easy for us to admit that we have committed the worst crime of all, planning and killing a fellow human being.”

I knew that as a priest he could not reveal what had been communicated to him during confession. The case would remain unsolved. The truth would die with the perpetrator and his confessor. Hans Larsen would not tell us what had happened.

“Tell me why you thought it was me!” asked the old man.

“For the simple reason that the poison could not have been administered through the wine. Then all the bishops would have been poisoned. The investigators thought that the poison could only have been in fluid, and they thereby overlooked the simple fact that the poison actually could have been in the Host.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I could have given Jens Andersen a poisoned wafer. I could have done it on purpose and I could have done it unknowingly. Someone could have put a poisoned piece of wafer among the wafers. But if I had done it on purpose, why would I have done it? I was very much for the spread of the Apostolic Succession within the church.”

What he said was true, and the thought crossed my mind that after all Jens Andersen had committed suicide.

“So tell me what my reason would have been!” the old man persisted.

“It was well known that you and Søren Sørgaard disliked each other. But nobody would suspect that your dislike for Søren Sørgaard was a reason for murdering Jens Andersen, who was the carrier of the Apostolic Succession you approved of.

“The suspicions were immediately thrown on Søren Sørgaard. And that could have been your reason, to put the blame on him. You could have been more interested in throwing suspicion on him than you wanted to keep the Apostolic Succession within the church.”

“Verily, a sophisticated motive,” the old man said and looked very thoughtful. “Indeed, indeed.”

“Sir, if the perpetrator is dead, isn’t it then possible for you to tell us who he or she was?”

His eyes were pale blue and I saw that they had that moisture that is very common in old people. They looked straight into my eyes.

“The perpetrator is still alive,” he said. “Very much so, I’m afraid.”

There was not much more we could do. We bid the old bishop goodbye and left the room. Our mission, if a mission it was, had failed. My theory was destroyed.

The housekeeper was to show us out, when I suddenly thought that I understood everything. For a moment I stood there perturbed. Then I turned to my Danish friend and said, “I forgot something in his room. I’ll soon be back.”

When I returned, the old man looked up at me, a little bit surprised. I sat down in front of him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I just want to tell you that I misunderstood you. You murdered him the way I said. The reason was the one I stated.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked. His hands trembled.

“I don’t know about the laws here in Denmark, I said. When it comes to murder, in Sweden the statute of limitations is 25 years. Whatever is the case here, I will nevertheless report it to the police. Even though you’re a very old man and will soon die.”

* * *

“Thus, being a priest, I felt that it was my duty to make an appeal to him and leave.”

My hosts had listened intently to my story.

“So it was he, but how did you figure it out?” my hostess asked.

“Can’t you guess?”

“You found out that he lied to you about the confession?”

“On the contrary,” I said. “I found out that he had told the truth to me about the confession.”

“I don’t get it,” she said and turned to her husband. “Do you?”

“Certainly not.”

I smiled at them and said: “What the bishop said was true, but it was ambiguous. When we left him, it suddenly struck me that it could be interpreted in two ways. And then all the pieces fell to their proper places.

“I had thought that he was the father confessor. He was not. He was the one who had confessed. So the last thing I did before I left was to repeat what his father confessor had said to him: ‘Give yourself up!’ When we left his home, I still thought it was as simple as that.”

“Was it?” asked my host.

“It wasn’t. Later that day I realized the truth. It should have been understood long ago, but the lack of knowledge had prevented the Danish police from understanding the significance of the poisoning of Jens Andersen.”

I paused and smiled.

“You see, Satanists have always been very fond of poisoning people. They always claim to be Christians. And who is permitted to perform a Black Mass? Only an ordained clergyman! At best he would be a pope. An ordinary priest would do, of course, and a bishop is not bad, either. As a matter of fact, without fallen priests, ministers, parsons, cardinals, popes, there would be no Satanism.”

I paused.

“Hans Larsen was ordained, but he was ordained without the Apostolic Succession. That’s why he was for it. He wanted the Succession introduced into the episcopal dignity in order to get it diverted into the Satanist organization.

“But his hatred of Søren Sørgaard was stronger, and this episcopal communion was perhaps his only chance to get rid of Søren Sørgaard. So he probably thought, ‘What the hell! I’ll personally never be part of the Succession.’ And seized the opportunity.”

“Hans Larsen was a devil worshipper?” my hostess whispered. “Diabolism exists even today? It’s hard to believe. But why did Larsen go to a father confessor?”

“I guess he did it in a moment of weakness, when his faith in Satan faltered. Worshipping Satan doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re happy and balanced. Devil-worship doesn’t exclude pangs of conscience. A Satanist can be tempted by good, so to speak.”

We sat in silence for a while. I drank the rest of my coffee. “You see,” I added, “he was most probably the one who performed the Black Mass on that uninhabited island.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Hans Larsen committed suicide that same night. Do you know how?”

They were both silent until my hostess hit the nail on the head.

“How about a poisoned communion wafer washed down with sacramental wine?”

Copyright © 2008 by Bertil Falk

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