Father Gilbert Mysteries

"Father Gilbert Mysteries" is an original miniseries within Focus on the Family's Radio Theatre. The nine episodes produced from 2001-06 focus on Father Louis Gilbert (voiced by Adrian Plass), a former Scotland Yard detective who became an Anglican priest and the vicar of St. Mark's Church in the fictional Sussex village of Stonebridge. Paul McCusker, who lived in England for a time, was the creative genius behind the miniseries. The episodes are available in four volumes on CD and cassette, as well as in a ten-CD gift box.

Volume I

"A Soul In Torment"

Father Gilbert has a vision of a troubled young man who confesses, in a roundabout way, to having murdered someone. When Gilbert sees the picture of the young man in the local newspaper, it sets off a strange mystery. Gilbert discovers the young man, Terry Bowman, son of an eminent London physician, has cheated on his entrance exam to Oxford University in an attempt to keep his authoritarian father's love. He has also had a child with Sharon McGrath, a young woman from the lower class, whom his father disapproved of. The "murder" referenced in the dream was that Sharon was considering having an abortion. Gilbert agrees to have them married and counsel the Bowman family through dealing with this scandal.

"Where The Heart Is"

In his Sunday sermon, Father Gilbert preaches the story of how he searched for the long lost five hundred-year-old Esseltam Chalice, a silver goblet decked in gold and jewels used for the Eucharist. It had been lost since the London Blitz of 1940. An American collector named Lori Peters wants to find the chalice and buy it so that Gilbert can repair his church tower. Gilbert begins to doubt Miss Peters when an investigator from Customs & Excise, Sydney Greene, claims that she is an antique pirate. As it turns out, both of them are con artists. But the path they took leads them not to the chalice, but to a collection of photos, diaries, and 78 rpm gramophone records belonging to the orphaned son of the vicar who was killed at the time of the Blitz. The son, now an elderly man, is overjoyed to receive his parents' belongings. Peters and Greene are arrested, and Gilbert's best friend, retired lawyer Bill Drake, helps him find the chalice at the Stonebridge Bank. Ultimately, Gilbert decides not to sell the chalice, but to restore it to its proper use and wait for donations from the church members to repair the tower.

"Dead Air"

Father Gilbert is on a radio chat show in London discussing the case that drove him from Scotland Yard into the Anglican Church. Gilbert tried to rescue a runaway girl, Patricia Atkins who got mixed up in the sordid lifestyle of the Soho district. After this failure, Gilbert had to do some soul-searching and became a Christian. He spent some time in a monastery, and there he studied to be a priest.

The show's host begins taking calls from listeners. A mysterious caller, identifying himself as the Demon Legion, taunts Gilbert about his failure to solve the case and offers him a "second chance" to solve the case. This triggers a new mystery, also involving another runaway girl, revelation of corruption within Scotland Yard, the adulterous lifestyle of the new runaway's father, Richard Magnusson, a Member of Parliament. In the end, the runaway, Sandra Magnusson, is rescued, and the former Atkins case is solved. The kidnapper, Dr. Frank Pleussier (or Bouvaier, his alias), is indeed possessed by the demon Legion, with whom Gilbert has a dramatic confrontation at the end of the episode, and drives him away by the power of Jesus Christ, proving his true potential as both a priest and a hero.

Volume II

"Healing"

Father Gilbert is on assignment from his bishop to investigate a "healing ministry", the Advent Group, at St. Anselm's Church in Storwich. He is accompanied by his secretary, Mrs. Margaret Mayhew, who is resentful against all healing ministries, since her husband died of cancer after a false healing. The leader of the group claims to be indwelt by the angel Gabriel, and uses a girl named Allison, who has the gift of healing, to further his cause. But when Allison, who loves "Gabriel" (whose real name is Simon Perkins), leaves the group, he is without power to heal. His attempt to heal a reporter he intentionally poisoned is a failure, but Allison returns and heals him. Gabriel drinks his own poison and leaves himself brain-damaged. Gilbert concludes that legitimate healing was going on with Allison, and that "Gabriel" was a charlatan who was using her to make himself powerful.

"Secrets"

Father Gilbert is riding on a train home from a church council when he meets a man named Rob Brady. The train collides with another, and Brady dies from his injuries. His last words are "Warn him," and Gilbert discovers a business card belonging to his friend, Bill Drake. The next day, Drake is kidnapped, and the police arrest the kidnapper, Kathy Brady, Rob's twin sister (who goes by the alias "Jezzy Bell" - a play on the name Jezebel). The mystery is where Drake is, and what Kathy's motives were. To complicate matters, Drake has a heart condition and must take medication every eight hours; if he goes twelve hours without it, he will go into cardiac arrest. It turns out that Rob and Kathy are illegitimate children, fathered by a member of the British nobility. Drake arranged for Rob to stay with his mother and for Kathy to be adopted. Kathy thinks her mother, who died of cancer the year before, abandoned her at Drake's urging, and is taking out her anger on Drake. Gilbert reads her birthday letters from her mother, proving that she loved her and gave her up out of love for her. Kathy breaks down and reveals where she left Drake. The police arrive in time to save Drake and get him to a hospital, where he later expresses remorse to Gilbert for having made such a hasty arrangement without thinking of the consequences of his deed, but Gilbert says that Kathy's two families received money each year from an unspecified doner, and that the doner was Drake, because of his conscience.

Volume III

"The Play's The Thing"

It is the five hundredth anniversary of the Stonebridge Faire, and Father Gilbert and Mrs. Mayhew are on the planning committee. One of the events at the Faire is a performance by an actors' troupe, the Elsinore Players, performing a low-quality play entitled "Death By Desire". Among the actors in the troupe are Hugh Edwards, one of Mrs. Mayhew's friends from their university days, and George Gilbert, Louis' father. Louis is annoyed to see him because of his lax morals and because George was not much of a father to him as a boy.

Ever since the Faire began five hundred years ago, it has been plagued by a "curse" in which something bad always happens to someone, somewhere. This year, it seems, the curse hits espeically hard. The light rigging falls from the stage during a play rehearsal. A gun that wasn't supposed to be loaded fires when one of the actors accidentally squeezes the trigger too hard. Two actors are practicing swordplay, and one gets stabbed and suffers from cyanide poisoning. And a cauldron used in one of the show's scenes overheats and explodes.

Father Gilbert dives into this mystery full force because so many of the events involve his father. He sorts through a web of intrigue and suspicion. Along the way, George reveals that he is not really his father but his uncle. His real father was killed before he was born, and George married his mother to provide her a good living. In the end, it turns out that the show's playwright, Simon Gardner, was the one committing all these acts as an act of revenge against the troupe for teasing him about his bad writing style. Gardner became the show's playwright because his uncle, the infamous nightclub owner "Left-Hand" Lenny Durham forced the troupe to do so in order to receive funding from him.

At the end of the show, when the play has concluded and the Elsinore Players are leaving town, Father Gilbert keeps George behind so that they can go have a "heart-to-heart" with his mother.

"The Grey Lady"

This story is set in June 2003. Father Gilbert receives a visit from the chaplain of a British military base, Reverend Martin Connally, a man noted for his disbelief in the supernatural. A case has come up that Reverend Connally is not equipped to handle. A man is accused of murdering his wife, and he claims that the culprit is the ghost of a woman dressed in the style of the early 1910s, with a high collar dress. Connally and the base psychiatrist, Dr. Bellingham, are convinced that it was sleepwalking, but Gilbert wants to pursue the case. Things get even more complicated when another murder takes place, and, once again, the accused claims it was this ghost. Bellingham tries to convince Father Gilbert that the two men were under the influence of chemicals that they absorbed when they went through intensive training for deployment overseas, but Gilbert and the base commander, Captain Stephenson, are unimpressed. Furthermore, an elderly lady who lives near the base, Mrs. Drew, is convinced that a "Grey Lady" is responsible for the murder.

Gilbert, with some help from the Stonebridge newspaper, learns that in 1913, a woman named Jane Beckett brutally murdered a girl whom she thought was having an affair with her fiancee, when in fact she was making a wedding dress for her. In 1943 and 1973, two murders similar to the ones being investigated now took place, with men claiming that a ghostly woman from before World War I committing the crime.

Gilbert returns to the base and shares his information with Captain Stephenson, who has learned that Dr. Belligham tried to make his own biological weapons and buried the evidence in a graveyard where the two suspected murderers, Reverend Connally, and Mrs. Drew were working some time ago. Gilbert and Mrs. Drew go to Reverend Connally's house, where Connally has come under the influence of the Grey Lady and is about to kill his wife. Gilbert has a confrontation with Jane Beckett's ghost and drives her away by the power of Jesus Christ. Connally comes to his senses and drops the knife, apologizing profusely to his wife. At the end of the episode, Gilbert and Mrs. Drew talk about their experience and come to this conclusion: Even though it looks like the men were influenced by the chemicals, there was indeed supernatural activity going on.

Volume IV

"The Silver Cord"

Father Gilbert is on the phone with his mother, Claire, discussing when he will next come to see her. Suddenly, Claire stops in mid-sentence and begins groaning in pain. The line goes dead.

At the hospital, Father Gilbert learns from the doctors and Father Ross (his mother's priest) that Claire has had a stroke due to a tumor in her brain, and a near-death experience. He is also upset with his Aunt Sylvia for not telling him about his mother's health problems. When George Gilbert, whom Louis now grudgingly calls "Uncle George", arrives, the two of them get into another argument about how poor of a father and husband George was to Louis and Claire. At the end of this argument, George tells Louis how spiritually in tune Claire was and how she passed that down to him.

Claire awakens from her coma to give messages about "helping him" and a fellow named "Edgar Graham". Edgar Graham was a childhood friend of both Claire and George. By chance, it seems, he too is in the hospital, dying of rhenal failure for no apparent reason. His granddaughter, Vicki Crosswell, visits him every day and acts hateful toward everyone around her, especially Fathers Gilbert and Ross.

Gilbert decides to pursue this mystery. He and Father Ross go to Edgar's neighborhood, where they meet one of his friends. He tells them about Edgar, and how after his wife died Vicki came and took over his life, dictating who could visit him and refusing to let him go to church. He also mentions Vicki's deep involvement with the New Age Movement. Gilbert realizes that Vicki is killing Edgar, and this is confirmed when Uncle George catches her tampering with his I.V. unit.

As it turns out, Claire was receiving visions from God of Edgar begging her to help him. Father Gilbert returns in time to be at her bedside when she passes away and is received into the glory of heaven. Later, Gilbert meets Edgar Graham, now recovering from being poisoned. He thanks him for saving his life and extends condolences over the loss of his mother.

"In Memoriam"

Father Gilbert is grieving the loss of his mother. While at the funeral, he runs into his ex-girlfriend, Katherine Donovan (now Katherine Perry). They chat about Claire Gilbert and about their former relationship. They agree to meet for lunch later in the week.

Later that afternoon, Gilbert, Uncle George, and Aunt Sylvia are going through Claire's belongings, intending to sell her house. Father Gilbert stumbles upon a photograph of a girl who looks very much like his mother. Aunt Sylvia tries to dissaude him from finding out who she is, telling him not to make a mystery out of it or chase the past. This only serves to fuel his curiosity.

Later, Uncle George sends him more photos of the girl in the mail, and Gilbert learns that her name is Claire - his mother's name. Uncle George then tells him what Aunt Sylvia told him - she too is dead. Gilbert is crushed.

Nonetheless, he decides to find out who she is. She traces her back to a boarding school for girls and learns that her last name is Perry - same surname as Katherine. So when they meet for lunch and he asks her about it, she tells him the truth: Claire Perry is Father Gilbert's daughter from an illicit sexual affair between them when they were dating, before Gilbert left to train to become a policeman. She never told him because she did not want it to interfere with his dream of being a detective; besides, she married a godly man who helped raise young Claire. Claire Perry is actually still alive; Aunt Sylvia only told him she was dead to stop him from searching and finding out the truth.

Gilbert is devastated by this latest news and angered that his family has kept so many secrets from him: a father who was not really his father, a mother who was more ill than he was allowed to know, and a daughter he did not know he had. He receives counsel from Father Ross and decides to take a sabbatical. The episode (and with it, the miniseries) ends with Katherine Perry reading a letter from Father Gilbert indicating that he has gone back to the monastery where he studied to become a priest; there he will learn to come to terms with these secrets and deal with his anger toward his relatives.