Soon afterwards, as if cued in by the archbishop, a series of spectacular crimes took place around the world. In the Middle West of the United States a number of bank robberies were carried out which rivalled those of the 1930s. In London there was an armed assault on the crown jewels in the Tower. A host of minor larcenies followed. Not all these crimes were committed for reasons of gain. In Paris the Mona Lisa was slashed by a maniac running amok in the Louvre, while in Cologne the high altar of the Cathedral was desecrated by vandals apparently protesting against the very existence of the deity.

The attitude of the United Faith Assembly to these crimes was unexpected. It greeted them with patient tolerance, as if relieved to see these familiar examples of human frailty. After the arrest of a noted wife-poisoner in Alsace a local priest pronounced that the man’s guilt was in fact a testimony to his innocence, a sign of his capacity for eventual redemption.

This tortuous paradox was to receive a great deal of publicity. A number of less scrupulous politicians began to foment similar notions. One Congressional candidate, in a badly hit area of California where military aircraft had been manufactured, suggested that the notion of an all-pervading deity was an affront to the free choice and diversity of human activity. The sense of a closed world reduced man’s powers of initiative and self-reliance, the qualities on which the freeenterprise democracies had built their greatness.

This statement was soon followed by the speech of a distinguished metaphysician attending a congress in Zurich. He referred to the plurality of the universe, to its infinite phenomenology. To embrace all possibilities the deity would have to contain the possibility of its own non-being. In other words, it belonged to that class of open-ended structures whose form, extent and identity were impossible to define. The term ‘deity’ was, in any useful sense, meaningless.

The scientists at Jodrell Bank and Arecibo who had first identified the Almighty were asked to reconsider their original findings. The televised hearings in Washington, at which the tired-eyed astro-physicists were harassed and cross-examined by teams of lawyers and divines, recalled a latter-day Inquisition. At Jodrell Bank and Arecibo troops were called in to protect the telescopes from crowds of over-hasty converts.

The fierce debates which followed were watched with great attention by the public. By now, in early December, the Christmas season was getting under way, but without any of its usual enthusiasm. For one thing, few stores and shops had anything for sale. In addition, there was little money to spare. The rationing of some basic commodities had been introduced. In many ways life was becoming intolerable. Hotels and restaurants were without service. Cars were forever breaking down.

Everywhere, as the debate continued, people turned to the United Faith Assembly. Mysteriously, however, almost all churches were closed, mosques and synagogues, shrines and temples remained sealed to the unsettled crowds. Members of congregations were now selected as strictly as those of the most exclusive clubs, and applicants were admitted only if they agreed to accept the church’s guidance on all spiritual matters, its absolute authority in all religious affairs. A rumour began that an announcement of worldwide importance would shortly be made, but that this time it would be given only to the faithful.

The mounting atmosphere of unease and uncertainty was distracted for a few days by the news of several natural disasters. A landslip in northern Peru immolated a thousand villagers. In Yugoslavia an earthquake shattered a provincial capital. Icebergs sank a supertanker in the Atlantic. The question asked tentatively by a New York newspaper, DOES GOD EXIST? Faith Assembly casts doubt on Deity was relegated to a back page.

Three weeks before Christmas, war broke out between Israel and Egypt. The Chinese invaded Nepal, reclaiming territory which they had only recently ceded while under the spell of what they termed a ‘neo-colonialist’ machination. A week later revolution in Italy, backed by the church and military, ousted the previous liberal regime. Industrial output began to revive in the United States and Europe. Russian missile-firing submarines were detected on manoeuvres in the North Atlantic. On Christmas Eve the world’s seismographs recorded a gigantic explosion in the area of the Gobi Desert, and Peking Radio announced the successful testing of a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb. Christmas decorations had at last appeared in the streets, the familiar figures of Santa Claus and his reindeer hung over a thousand department-stores. Carol festivals were held before open congregations in a hundred cathedrals.

In all this festivity few people heeded the publication of what was described by a spokesman of the United Faith Assembly as one of the most far-reaching and revolutionary religious statements ever made, the Christmas encyclical entitled God is Dead…

Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown

A¹ discharged² Broadmoor³ patient⁴ compiles⁵ ‘Notes⁶ Towards⁷ a⁸ Mental⁹ Breakdown’¹⁰, recalling¹¹ his¹² wjfe’s¹³ murder¹⁴, his¹⁵ trial¹⁶ and¹⁷ exoneration¹⁸.

The use of the indefinite article encapsulates all the ambiguities that surround the undiscovered document, Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown, of which this 18-word synopsis is the only surviving fragment. Deceptively candid and straightforward, the synopsis is clearly an important clue in our understanding of the events that led to the tragic death of Judith Loughlin in her hotel bedroom at Gatwick Airport. There is no doubt that the role of the still unidentified author was a central one. The self-effacing ‘A’ must be regarded not merely as an overt attempt at evasion but, on the unconscious level, as an early intimation of the author’s desire to proclaim his guilt.

There is no evidence that the patient was discharged. Recent inspection of the in-patients’ records at Springfield Hospital (cf. footnote 3) indicates that Dr Robert Loughlin has been in continuous detention in the Unit of Criminal Psychopathy since his committal at Kingston Crown Court on 18 May 1975. Only one visitor has called, a former colleague at the London Clinic, the neurologist Dr James Douglas, honorary secretary of the Royal College of Physicians Flying Club. It is possible that he may have given Dr Loughlin, with his obsessional interest in manpowered flight, the illusion that he had flown from the hospital on Douglas’s back. Alternatively, ‘discharged’ may be a screen memory of the revolver shot that wounded the Gatwick security guard.

Unconfirmed. Dr Loughlin had at no time in his ten-year career been either a patient or a member of the staff at Broadmoor Hospital. The reference to Broadmoor must therefore be taken as an indirect admission of the author’s criminal motives or a confused plea of diminished responsibility on the grounds of temporary madness. Yet nothing suggests that Dr Loughlin considered himself either guilty of his wife’s death or at any time insane. From the remaining documents — tape-recordings made in Suite B17 of the Inn on the Park Hotel (part of the floor occupied by the millionaire aviation pioneer Howard Hughes and his entourage during a visit to London) and cine-films taken of the runways at an abandoned USAAF base near Mildenhall — it is clear that Dr Loughlin believed he was taking part in a ritual of profound spiritual significance that would release his wife forever from the tragedy of her inoperable cancer. Indeed, the inspiration for this strange psychodrama may have come from the former Broadmoor laboratory technician and amateur dramatics coach, Leonora Carrington, whom Loughlin met at Elstree Flying Club, and with whom he had a brief but significant affair.