The Mersey Monastery Murders

Prologue

PrologueSt. Basil's Monastery, 1912 - 1992

Brother Charles, the Abbot of the abbey church of St. Basil, sat in his office, little more than a broom cupboard in size, finalising the abbey's accounts for the previous month. Once a grand series of buildings, the original abbey had been virtually destroyed in the 16th century during King Henry VIII's reign, under the edict that led to the dissolution of the monasteries. This was part of his revenge against the Roman Catholic Church for the Pope's refusal to allow him to divorce his queen, Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to provide him with a male heir. The Act of Supremacy, passed in 1534 (woe betide any English noble who voted against Henry's wishes), would lead to the Reformation and the creation of the Anglican Church, with Henry as its head.

Once a grand collection of buildings, the Benedictine monastery at one time comprised the church, a dormitory, cloister, refectory, a superb library, and even a school where the monks would provide a basic education to some of the local children, boys only of course. Girls were not considered to be in need of formal education during the Middle Ages. Any such education they did receive would be undertaken at home, and might have included instruction in reading, sewing, and for the lucky daughters of the wealthy, the ability to write. Following the dissolution, all that remained of the original buildings was the shell of the church and a few ruined walls.

It wasn't until the 19th century that the church was renovated, a new dormitory was built and a new though small community of Benedictine monks once again took up residence at St. Basil. Standing in open ground, a few miles from the modern city of Liverpool, the 'new' monastery was very different to the original, which existed when the population of Liverpool stood at only a few hundred, and the borough, (it didn't become a city until 1880), comprised mostly agricultural workers.

Now, in the early years of the 20th century, the partially rebuilt St. Basil once again provided a school for the local children and the monks whose needs were few, led a self-sufficient life funded mostly by the sale of the produce, vegetables and fruit, grown in their gardens.

The church, open to all, was generally well-attended and the monks of St. Basil had become a familiar sight around the modern suburb of the city known as Grassendale, which was gradually growing into an affluent community where the well-off members of the local population were keen to build their mansions and grand villas.

Brother Charles' eyes were growing tired. He finally decided that working on the accounts would be a task best suited to being completed in daylight, and not bent over his desk working by candlelight. At the age of seventy-five, his eyes weren't quite as good as they once were. He rose from his straight-backed, hard wood chair and stretched. The clock on the wall that faced him informed the Abbot that it was almost nine p.m. Time to put the papers and the books away and retire for the night; he took a minute to arrange the ledgers and receipts, etc., ready to continue in the morning.

Daily life began early for Charles and the small community of twelve monks who lived, worked, and shared their lives with him in their small religious community. Their day began at five a.m. each day, which explained why all the other brothers in the community were already asleep in their cells. Satisfied all was as it should be, Charles stepped towards the doorway and suddenly felt a crushing pain in his chest, accompanied by further pains, which seemed to begin in his neck and extended down his left arm.

Charles cried out, but there was no one to hear him, no one except his God, who swiftly reached out to claim the soul of his devoted follower. As Brother Charles breathed his last, and the darkness rushed out to envelop his final seconds on earth, he had no knowledge of the fact that—as he fell to the floor—his flailing arm had knocked over the candle that burned upon his desk.

The gentle flame of the candle managed to ignite the carefully placed pile of receipts on the desk. Within no more than sixty seconds, the flames had spread, consuming everything they touched, which eventually included the body of the faithful servant of God. Unfortunately, the dormitory, which was at the rear of the church, where the rest of the monastic community slept, was too far away for anyone to hear or see the conflagration—until the flames, fanned by the wind, reached in through the opened burning roof. Quickly, they spread to the adjoining buildings. Soon, they engulfed every building within close proximity.

By the time one of the brothers woke to the awful sound of the church roof collapsing in on itself, all that remained standing apart from the dormitory was the small school building. The local fire brigade, such as it was, made up mostly from volunteers from the neighbouring area, and was small and inefficient. They had no up-to-date firefighting equipment and could do more than pour water upon the ashen remains of the monastery buildings, in hopes of preventing a stray spark spreading flames to any remaining buildings.

Soon after the fire, St. Basil once again lay wrecked and disused, and would stay in its distressed state for almost a century before life returned to the abandoned monastery. In 1992, a new religious community rose, like a phoenix from the ashes as the Priory of St. Emma was established, complete with a restored rebuilt church that looked even more gothic in appearance than its predecessor, along with a small mixed-gender community of monks and nuns, unusual but not unknown among the Benedictines.

With hard work, led wonderfully by its new Prior, Father Gerontius, the priory soon flourished; the tragedies of the past that appeared to have haunted the site of St. Basil, became nothing more than distant memories. The millennium came and went, and the small community grew and quickly became fully integrated into the community of Grassendale, an enclave of wealth in the suburbs of modern Liverpool. The good works of the monks and nuns that made up the growing religious community endeared them to the local populace and to the outside world. The Priory of St. Emma, which by tradition the locals still referred to as the Monastery, gave off an aura of a community at peace with itself and with the world. All of this, therefore, made the events that would transpire in 2006, even more difficult to believe.