Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie [80]
The church was unusually full. I cannot believe that it was the prospect of Hawes preaching which had attracted so many. Hawes’s sermons are dull and dogmatic. And if the news had got round that I was preaching instead, that would not have attracted them either. For my sermons are dull and scholarly. Neither, I am afraid, can I attribute it to devotion.
Everybody had come, I concluded, to see who else was there, and possibly exchange a little gossip in the church porch afterwards.
Haydock was in church, which is unusual, and also Lawrence Redding. And to my surprise, beside Lawrence I saw the white strained face of Hawes. Anne Protheroe was there, but she usually attends Evensong on Sundays, though I had hardly thought she would today. I was far more surprised to see Lettice. Church-going was compulsory on Sunday morning – Colonel Protheroe was adamant on that point, but I had never seen Lettice at evening service before.
Gladys Cram was there, looking rather blatantly young and healthy against a background of wizened spinsters, and I fancied that a dim figure at the end of the church who had slipped in late, was Mrs Lestrange.
I need hardly say that Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Hartnell, Miss Wetherby, and Miss Marple were there in full force. All the village people were there, with hardly a single exception. I don’t know when we have had such a crowded congregation.
Crowds are queer things. There was a magnetic atmosphere that night, and the first person to feel its influence was myself.
As a rule, I prepare my sermons beforehand. I am careful and conscientious over them, but no one is better aware than myself of their deficiencies.
Tonight I was of necessity preaching extempore, and as I looked down on the sea of upturned faces, a sudden madness entered my brain. I ceased to be in any sense a Minister of God. I became an actor. I had an audience before me and I wanted to move that audience – and more, I felt the power to move it.
I am not proud of what I did that night. I am an utter disbeliever in the emotional Revivalist spirit. Yet that night I acted the part of a raving, ranting evangelist.
I gave out my text slowly.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I repeated it twice, and I heard my own voice, a resonant, ringing voice unlike the voice of the everyday Leonard Clement.
I saw Griselda from her front pew look up in surprise and Dennis follow her example.
I held my breath for a moment or two, and then I let myself rip.
The congregation in that church were in a state of pent-up emotion, ripe to be played upon. I played upon them. I exhorted sinners to repentance. I lashed myself into a kind of emotional frenzy. Again and again I threw out a denouncing hand and reiterated the phrase.
‘I am speaking to you…’
And each time, from different parts of the church, a kind of sighing gasp went up.
Mass emotion is a strange and terrible thing.
I finished up with those beautiful and poignant words – perhaps the most poignant words in the whole Bible:
‘This night thy soul shall be required of thee…’
It was a strange, brief possession. When I got back to the Vicarage I was my usual faded, indeterminate self. I found Griselda rather pale. She slipped her arm through mine.
‘Len,’ she said, ‘you were rather terrible tonight. I – I didn’t like it. I’ve never heard you preach like that before.’
‘I don’t suppose you ever will again,’ I said, sinking down wearily on the sofa. I was tired.
‘What made you do it?’
‘A sudden madness came over me.’
‘Oh! It – it wasn’t something special?’
‘What do you mean – something special?’
‘I wondered – that was all. You’re very unexpected, Len. I never feel I really know you.’
We sat down to cold supper, Mary being out.
‘There’s a note for you in the hall,’ said Griselda. ‘Get it, will you, Dennis?’
Dennis, who had been very silent, obeyed.
I took it and groaned. Across the top left-hand corner was written:By hand – Urgent.
‘This,’ I said, ‘must be from Miss Marple.