The Sussex Devils by Marc Heal

Author:Marc Heal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, Biography
ISBN: 9781783521692
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-10-19T14:29:03+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Higher Authorities

Morrell and Herbecq reported back to the Bishop. The three churchmen met in the palace at Chichester.

The first thing that had struck the investigators was the unquestioning belief by the group of donors that Derry’s story was true. The strength of their certainty drew on three main sources. First – Derry’s own accounts, his detailed knowledge of the occult, and, in a strange way, the testimony of the spirits themselves that possessed him. Second – the Satanic artefacts, the physical evidence of the cabal. Finally of course – the instruction of God himself, delivered in answer to their prayers for guidance.

Lloyd Morrell had not reached the higher echelons of the Anglican church without a great deal of quiet cunning. Morrell had had the opportunity to speak to Derry at length. At first he had been truculent, but the old Bishop made a sympathetic listener. Start from the beginning, he urged. Why not talk about his early life? Derry had launched once more into his story. Now some of the facts were fleshed out.

“Knight claims that his grandmother, Ethel, was a high priestess of Satan,” Morrell told Eric Kemp. “Having inducted him into Satanism at birth, Ethel continued his education in the dark arts.” Ethel was apparently a lesbian. “Whilst Knight was a boy she took various female lovers. She claimed that she could seduce through the power of the Devil. Ethel was highly skilled in the use of black magic. Indeed it was she who had insisted on fitting Knight with the platinum receivers in his cranium.”

The Bishop asked whether they had seen any evidence of these devices.

Herbecq said he had been shown a mark on Knight’s forehead but had seen no definite proof at all.

“In his childhood, Ethel had introduced him to two mysterious men who had taught him all he knew about black magic. One of these men was a prominent Catholic. In fact Knight implied that the Catholic Church was full of Satanic practice.”

“And what did you say to that?”

Morrell continued, “I was naturally curious about this reference to Rome. It was at this point that Knight mentioned that this prominent Catholic who had been initiated into Satanism, supposedly sometime in the 1950s, was a defrocked Cardinal. He was quite specific on that point – a defrocked Roman Catholic Cardinal.”

Bishop Kemp absorbed the meaning of these words. It didn’t take long. Now, he realised, that was certainly untrue. As a cleric with a particular affinity to the Catholic Church, he knew that the dismissal of a senior Catholic clergyman from his office was an extraordinarily rare affair. In fact, he could think of no case of Episcopal dismissal since 1790, when the Bishop of Autun (aka Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand), had been excommunicated for calling for the confiscation of church property to fund the French Revolution.

“You’re certain that was what he said?”

Morrell nodded.

“It’s nonsense. We all know that no English Cardinals were defrocked in the 1950s. Not even any ordinary priests. Any Cardinal’s dismissal would have made major headlines around the world.

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