The Vicar’s Wife : A Gothic Fable

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth leaves us all blind and toothless.” Annon.1

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Several hours after Vesper, which unsurprisingly no one but the Vicar attended, the village awoke to the unscheduled ringing of the church bell. Not since a few stray bombs had fallen in the vicinity during the war had the church bell rung so violently, or with so little rhythm. House by house the residents of Thorsdenby awoke and rushed to the doors of St. Swithen’s church, only to find them locked. The bell had ceased its erratic peeling by the time the church warden had fetched the key and openned the doors.3

While general villagers waited and gossiped outside, the Vestry Committee members and the church warden ventured within. Seeing no one in the sanctuary, and receiving no answer to their calls, they entered the bell tower. There they found the Reverend Thoroughgood Throckmorton slowly gyrating at the end of the bell rope, his face purple and contorted, his vacant eyes bulging, and the stench in the small room announcing his fecal evacuation in death.4

He had clearly hung himself. No one was surprised. They left the body as it was and adjurned to the vestry meeting room to have a smoke. The constabulary were called, along with the mortician. It took them half an hour to arrive from the market town of Upper Sibley, nine miles away at the end of the vale. As there was a suicide note on the vestry table; and the committee members informed the police that the Reverend’s wife had indeed left him [true enough as far as it went], it was quickly and properly marked down as death at his own hand.5

The police circulated a missing person’s report about his wife. The thankfully brief funeral was held, and the villagers went back to their insular existence. And that it seems was that, as there was no Miss Marple resident in the village, or a foreign-born detective to apply ‘the little grey cells’ to the death.6

Which leaves us to view it from a distance, for death is never what it seems. And in this instance the local foxes, rock badgers, and wandering dogs would best be consulted, for things were seriously askew in the village of Thorsdenby.7

For the death of the Reverend Thoroughgood Throckmorton, Vicar of St. Swithen’s Church of England parish, and the disappearance of his wife Millicent, was in this wise……8

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Thorsdenby, or to give it its proper name, as found on the best maps, "Thorsden by Cairn’s Water" [the need for the contraction must seem obvious to all]….. Thorsdenby was on a route to no place, up a side dale from Upper Sidley. Located astride a narrow brook officially called Cairn’s Water, but known locally as ‘The Drain’, [which is what it had become upon exiting the village] Thorsdenby had one claim to fame; its cairn. Graced soley by a prehistoric cairn of rocks, of unknown purpose, and erected by who knows whom, at no one knows quite when, the village was an inbred and insular island, a law unto itself.10

In origin the village dated from a Viking settlement, though no one knows why they settled there. It was, so the anthropologists tell us, originally known as “Thor’s den by the cairn”. 'Thor' of course being the Norse god of war, and pointing to the Viking roots of the village. The ‘den’ having been the rock shelter of some annonymous hermit monk that predated Viking settlement. The rocks of the stone shelter were long ago used to line The Drain as it passed through the village. Its existence was imortalised in the name of the local pub, that model of the innkeeper’s craft, The Hermitage. As required by British custom, the beer there was warm and insipid, and the steak & kidney pies surfeit with toxins. 11

As has been said, Thorsdenby was an inbred and insular hamlet. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the life of the parish congregation. The parishoners had a reputation for eating their priests alive [figuratively, not literally, of course]. It came to be that very few priests would take up an appointment to St. Swithens parish; and those that did rarely lasted a year. So, more often than not, the parishoners were left to their own devices. They held their own prayer meetings, albeit irregularly; and held the requisite number of church jumble sales necessary to keep the church building in a state of benign disrepair. 12

Operated under the guidance of a self-perpetuating Vestry Committee and a church wardenship governed it seems by the Salic Laws, they occassionaly allowed the area bishop to send in a visitng priest to hold a divine service. The actively devout could always go to Upper Sibley to attend a divine service, if they wished. All in all, this state of affairs, over the centuries, had allowed the parish to develop a theology and practice of a religion somewhat far removed from that established by the 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer! One in which an eye for an eye was a central motif.13

Now we must here introduce one Millicent Anne Throckmorton, nee Cushing, who had married the hapless Reverend Thoroughgood Throckmorton upon his ordination. Millicent, henceforth known as Millie, had an unenvieable reputation from childhood, and to which there was ample contemporary witness. 14

As a child of three or so Millie developed a penchant for running down the street ‘au naturale’; an exceptable episode in a young child, perhaps once or twice. But in the case of Millie it became an established pattern whenever she could evade her parents’ control. Millie was the youngest of three children, having an older sister and the older boy as siblings. Her sister, like her mother, was a frump, vague and inattentive. The boy, brilliant and domineering like his father [Chief Constable of the county], was rather unstable; and eventually burned his brains out with lysergic acid. Into this domestic dynamic was dropped our budding Lady Godiva, who seeking attention found shocking behaviour a very useful tool.15

Indeed, so ingrained did her streaking become, that as she entered her pre-pubescence the schoolboys would take turns hiding in the bushes after school to see if that was the afternoon upon which she would make one of her frequent forays. Unfortunately, for these young voyeurs, her streaking stopped when she entered adolescence. But, disasterously, it was soon replaced by a risky promiscuity [STD's being the scourge they are].16

I’m certain that a psychiatrist would have been able to assess and correclty label all of this behaviour. And even, perhaps, apply some useful [or otherwise] treatment. As it was, the mother was oblivious and the father in denial. The brother, if I may speak of incest, was simply perverted and predatory, which only compounded the young Godiva’s proclivities. 17

But all that seemed to change when she met young Thoroughgood Throckmorton. Perhaps it was her act of penance to atone for her misdeeds; though later evidence seems to speak against that view. Perhaps she just did it for a lark, or to slap her family figuratively across their collective face. At any rate, she married, and the couple moved several counties north and east to take up the newly minted reverend’s first parish; in the dreary, inbred and hyper-sectarian village of Thorsdenby.18

Suffice it to say that it was not a happy time of it for the pseudo-humble, and exceedingly otherworldy Thoroughgood. He was, by nature, studious and ‘so heavenly minded that he was no earthly good’, as the saying goes. At least that is how his wife found him. But she soon found other pursuits to occupy her time and energies. The pursuit of local men, that is.19

And that was her undoing.20

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Thorsdenby was soon rocked by a death. 22

It was, in fact, the Vicar who discovered the body. 23

The good reverend had called upon a young gentleman farmer of the district in the course of his pastoral rounds. Finding the front door ajar, and no one answering his call, he, somewhat uncharacteristically, had the presence of mind to suspect something amiss. Entering the house he searched high and low until he found the farmer, dead in his bed.24

Dead and naked in his bed. 25

Dead and naked, and very clearly having been interrupted by Death in intimate circumstances. For though there was no one else in the room, and he evidently having been dead some days, there was evidence aplenty; as some women’s undergarments were strewn about the room and the bedcovers were in disarray. Although this was all beyond his ken, the reverend was able to muster enough wits to call the police. 26

While waiting their arrival he came upon a clue that set his mind racing. It was a human finger. Or rather, a prosthetic one. It lay upon the farmer’s nightstand, and clearly told the identity of the murderess. The prosthesis belonged to Thoroughgood's wife.27

It seems that one day, at age about 7 or 8, the inquisative Millie had been sneaking a peek in the boxes and drawers of her brother’s room. He caught her rifling his things; and slamming a drawer closed before she could fully remove her hand, had severed the little finger of her left hand.28

This was in the days before micro-surgey, and the re-attachment of limbs. Not wishing his youngest daughter, upon whom he doted, to suffer indignities about a mangled hand, her father had a prosthetist construct a digit that could be attached to her hand by means of a pin imbedded in the remnant bone. The prosthesis was replaced and enlarged as she grew. In adulthood she had two such devices, a straight one for wearing around the house, and a slightly bent one for public wear. With her other fingers bent, the public generally never noticed the small prosthesis.29

It was however, her habit to remove it before bed…. or being bedded. It was this that gave her away.30

Our Thoroughgood, now wracked with misgivings and confusion, withheld this vital evidence from the attending constable. Nor did he confront his wife, who now wore her one remaining prosthesis both in and out of home.31

Now it must be mentioned that Thoroughgood, though studious, was not a very good theologian; and had been easily and quickly won over to the somewhat bizarre beliefs of his inbred congregation. He had become as narrowminded, merciless and judgemental as they. So, his reaction to the evidence was fully in keeping with that bizarre mindset.32

While the police, bereft as they were of a Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, were trying to identify the murderer in that era before forensic genetics, Thoroughgood was handing his wife over to the congregation for punishment. 33

On Sunday morning it was a tribunal that assembled. The unsuspecting, though hardly innocent Millie took her usual seat in the front pew. As the congregants were normally standoffish and hostile to her she did not notice anything amiss this Sunday. Not until, part way through the liturgy, her husband ordered two men to drag his wife before the congregation. Brandishing the prosthesis he accused his wife of adultery and murder, and asked the congregation to pass judgement on her. The shocked and selfrighteous people did so. 34

"Guilty! She must be stoned forthwith!"35

Thorsdenby boasted a disused quarry on its outskirts. To this pit they dragged the hapless Millie. Many spauls and good sized rocks lay about. With these the crowd armed themselves. Throwing Millie into a shallow pit partially filled with brackish water, the mob prepared to stone the culprit.36

Ignorant of, or simply ignoring, Jesus’ dictum of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”; ‘Thief’ cast the first stone [Thoroughgood tended to pilfer the poor box regularly]. Then parishoners ‘Jealousy’ and ‘Gossip’ threw theirs. Followed by ‘Sloth’, ‘Gluttony’, ‘False Witness’; and ending with 'Paedophile', 'Adulterer' and 'Blasphemer'. Wounded and dying Millie was buried under a second and then a third avalanche of stones, and left to rot. 37

Self-satisfied and feeling justified, the mob returned to the church and continued their service; safe in the knowledge that they had let a sinner fall into the hands of their angry god. That it wasn’t the God of the Christian faith would never have occurred to them.38

Outwardly, the Reverend Throckmorton continued on as before, fulfilling his duties as the chaplain of his heretical and inbred parish. Inwardly he was quickly coming unhinged. In the end, not knowing the meaning or substance of forgiveness and mercy, he prepared to take his own life. Having denied God theologically, he now knew only dispair. And in dispair denied God the opportunity to bring relief.39

He wrote this note: “I cannot continue without her. I am sorry”; signed it and left it on the vestry table. Then he climbed the stairs, knotted the bell rope, slipped it around his neck, and jumped into space. Not being a hangman’s knot, it took some time for him to die.40

The perverse congregation continued to continue as before, and never spoke of it again.41

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The local foxes, rock badgers, and wandering dogs remember Millie’s resting places. As, of course, does God.43

The End44