Page 18 - The Devil's Arsonist

Chapter 6

The Vicar Who Knew

St. Mary’s Church, Burwell, Cambridgeshire

“Their visage is blacker than a coal: they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to
their bones: it is withered, it is become like a dry stick."

Extract of a Sermon to the Memory of the Seventy-Eight Souls of the Burwell Fire of 1727
Given by the Rev. Alexander Edmundson, Vicar of Burwell, 1725-1732

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Thursday Evening 1 December 1994, Woodham Ferrers, Essex
On my return home this eve, I did not as was my recent custom visit the Bell Inn and seek
counsel from one wiser than I; and who was possessed of a thirst that would send me to the
clink as a habitual debtor. Much was on my mind regarding all that I had learned. My head
was addled as if full of wool, for I could make little sense or arrive at any solid conclusion.
Question on question came in my waking and in what little sleep that came. No answers did
follow this assault to my person.

What agent, spirit or demon had driven Ruby to visit Burwell? Was the barn once situated,
along that footpath she trod and thus caused her terrifying vision? Was she truly Elisabeth
Shepheard of whom she spoke? Who killed Elisabeth and all the others within the barn? Did
she mean her newlywed husband, James Brinley, when she had cried ‘he murdered me’? The
very man her Great Grandmother thought evil. Why did she think Richard Whitaker was