‘Absolutely.’

Williamson shifted in his chair.

‘Warraner was not the most able of students,’ he said. ‘In fact, his admission hung in the balance for some time, but he had influential supporters.’

‘From Prosperous?’

‘And elsewhere. It was clear that efforts were being made on his behalf. On the other hand, we were aware that space existed in courses for dedicated students, and …’

‘Yes?’

‘There was a certain amount of curiosity among faculty members, myself included, about Prosperous. As you’re no doubt aware, it is a town founded by a secretive religious sect, the history and ultimate fate of which remain nebulous to this day. By admitting Warraner, it seemed that we might be in a position to learn more about the town and its history.’

‘And how did that work out?’

‘We got what you might refer to as “the party line”. Warraner gave us a certain amount of information, and we were also permitted to study the church and its environs, but we really found out very little about Prosperous and the Family of Love that we didn’t already know. Furthermore, Warraner’s academic limitations were exposed at a very early stage. He struggled to scrape up credits and D-minus grades. Eventually, we were forced to let him go.

‘Pastor Warraner, as he subsequently began to style himself, was later readmitted to this college as a “special student”. Special students are people from the local community who, for whatever reason, desire to resume their education on a part-time basis. While they’re assessed on their academic record, non-academic achievements are also considered. They pay course fees, and no financial aid is available to them. Their work is graded, and they receive a college transcript, but they are non-degree candidates, and therefore cannot graduate. Pastor Warraner took ten such courses over a period of about five years, some more successfully and enthusiastically than others. He was surprisingly open to issues of Christianity and gender, less so to Asian religions, Islam, and Judaism. Overall, my impression was that Warraner desired the imprimatur of a college education. He wanted to say that he had been to college, and that was all. You say that he also claims to have a Masters from Bangor?’

I tried to remember Warraner’s precise words. ‘I believe he told me that he’d majored in religion at Bowdoin, and studied as a Master of Divinity at Bangor Theological Seminary.’

‘I suppose, if one were being generous-spirited enough, those statements might offer a certain latitude of interpretation, the latter more than the former. If you asked around, I bet you’d find that he approached Bangor at some point and was rebuffed, or tried to sit in unofficially on seminars. It would ft with that desire for affirmation and recognition.’

‘Any other impression that he may have left upon you?’

‘He was a fanatic.’

‘Doesn’t it come with the territory?’

‘Sometimes. Warraner, though, could rarely string together more than a couple of sentences without referring to “his” god.’

‘And what kind of god does he worship? I’ve met him, and I’ve seen his church, and I’m still not sure just what kind of pastor he is.’

‘Superficially, Warraner is a variety of austere Protestant. There’s a bit of the Baptist in him, a sprinkling of Methodism, but also a healthy dose of Pantheism. None of it is particularly deep, though. His religion, for want of a better explanation, is his church, the bricks and mortar of it. He worships a building, or what that building represents for him. You say that you’ve seen it?’

‘I got the grand tour.’

‘And what did you think?’

‘It’s a little light on crosses for my tastes.’

‘Catholic?’

‘Occasional.’

‘I was raised in the Church of England – Low, I should add – and even I found Warraner’s chapel positively austere.’

‘The carvings apart.’

‘Yes, they are interesting, aren’t they? Unusual here in the United States. Less so, perhaps, among the older churches of England and certain parts of Europe, although Warraner’s are quite distinctive. It’s a Familist church, of that there can be little doubt, but a Familist church of a particular type. This is not the element of the sect that fed into the Quakers or the Unitarians, infused with a spirit of peace and gentleness. It’s something harsher.’

‘And Warraner: is he still a Familist?’

Williamson finished his coffee. He seemed to be considering making another, then thought better of it. He put his cup down.

‘Yes, Mr Parker,’ he said. ‘I believe that not only is Warraner a Familist, but Prosperous remains a Familist community. To what end, I couldn’t say.’

‘And their god?’

‘Look again at those carvings inside the church, if you get the chance. My suspicion is that, somewhere along the line, the link between God – the Christian deity – and the rule of nature has become lost to Warraner and those who share his religious convictions. All that’s left is those carvings. For the people of Prosperous, they are the faces of their god.’

I stood to leave. As I did so, Williamson handed me the books from his desk.

‘I thought these might interest you,’ he said. ‘Just pop them in the post when you’re done with them.’

There he was again, ‘pop’-ing and putting things in the ‘post’. He caught me smiling.

‘Did I say something funny?’

‘I was just wondering how many dates you’d gotten in the United States because of that accent of yours.’

He grinned. ‘It did seem to make me very popular. I suspect I may even have married out of my league because of it.’

‘It’s the residual colonial admiration for the oppressor.’

‘Spoken like a history major.’

‘No, not me, but Warraner said something similar when I met him. He drew an analogy between detection and historical research.’

‘But aren’t all investigations historical?’ said Williamson. ‘The crime is committed in the past, and the investigation conducted in the present. It’s a form of excavation.’

‘Do you feel a paper coming on?’

‘You know, I might do, at that.’

I flicked through the first of the books. It was heavily illustrated with images and drawings.

‘Pictures, too,’ I said.

‘If you color any of them in, we may be forced to have a long talk.’

‘One last question?’ I said.

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Why are so many of these faces threatening or hostile?’

‘Fear,’ said Williamson. ‘Fear of the power of nature, fear of old gods. And perhaps, too, the early Church found in such depictions a literal representation of a metaphorical concept: the radix malorum, the “root of all evil”. Hell, if you choose to believe in it, is beneath our feet, not above our heads. You’d have to dig deep to find it, but it wasn’t difficult for Christians with ancient links to the land to conceive of the influence of the malefcent in terms of twisted roots and clinging ivy, of faces formed by something buried far beneath the earth trying to create a physical representation of itself from whatever materials were at hand. But the god depicted on the walls of the Prosperous chapel has no connection with Christianity. It’s older, and beyond conceptions of good and evil. It simply is.’

‘You sound almost as though you believe in it yourself.’

‘Perhaps I just sometimes find it easier to understand how someone could conceive and worship a god of tree and leaf, a god that formed as the land around it formed, than a bearded figure living on a cloud in the sky.’

‘Does that count as a crisis of faith?’

He grinned again. ‘No, only a natural consequence of the study of every shade of religious belief, and of trying to teach the importance of being tolerant in a world in which tolerance is associated with weakness or heresy.’

‘Let me guess: you and Michael Warraner didn’t exactly see eye to eye on that subject.’

‘No. He wasn’t hostile toward other forms of religious belief, merely uninterested.’