The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (125 page)

‘
What
puzzles me most,’ he said, nervously snapping his fingers, ‘is the actual state
of the body. And yet it has given me an idea already.’

Flambeau
had stepped up to the tree and was studying the sword-hilt through an eye-glass.
But for some odd reason, it was at that very instant that the priest in sheer
perversity spun round like a teetotum, turned his back on the corpse, and
looked peeringly in the very opposite direction. He was just in time to see the
red head of Mrs Flood at the remote end of the garden, turned towards a dark
young man, too dim with distance to be identified, who was at that moment mounting
a motor-bicycle; who vanished, leaving behind him only the dying din of that
vehicle. Then the woman turned and began to walk towards them across the
garden, just as Father Brown turned also and began a careful inspection of the
sword-hilt and the hanging corpse.

‘
I
understand you only found him about half an hour ago,’ said Flambeau. ‘Was there
anybody about here just before that? I mean anybody in his bedroom, or that
part of the house, or this part of the garden — say for an hour beforehand?’

‘
No,’
said the doctor with precision. ‘That is the very tragic accident. My sister-in-law
was in the pantry, which is a sort of out-house on the other side; this man
Dunn was in the kitchen garden, which is also in that direction; and I myself
was poking about among the books, in a room just behind the one you found me
in. There are two female servants, but one had gone to the post and the other
was in the attic.’

‘
And
were any of these people,’ asked Flambeau, very quietly, ‘I say any of these people,
at all on bad terms with the poor old gentleman?’

‘
He
was the object of almost universal affection,’ replied the doctor solemnly. ‘If
there were any misunderstandings, they were mild and of a sort common in modern
times. The old man was attached to the old religious habits; and perhaps his daughter
and son-in-law had rather wider views. All that can have had nothing to do with
a ghastly and fantastic assassination like this.’

‘
It
depends on how wide the modern views were,’ said Father Brown, ‘or how narrow.’

At
this moment they heard Mrs Flood hallooing across the garden as she came, and calling
her brother-in-law to her with a certain impatience. He hurried towards her and
was soon out of earshot; but as he went he waved his hand apologetically and
then pointed with a long finger to the ground.

‘
You
will find the footprints very intriguing,’ he said; with the same strange air, as
of a funereal showman.

The
two amateur detectives looked across at each other. ‘I find several other things
intriguing,’ said Flambeau.

‘
Oh,
yes,’ said the priest, staring rather foolishly at the grass.

‘
I
was wondering,’ said Flambeau, ‘why they should hang a man by the neck till he was
dead, and then take the trouble to stick him with a sword.’

‘
And
I was wondering,’ said Father Brown, ‘why they should kill a man with a sword thrust
through his heart, and then take the trouble to hang him by the neck.’

‘
Oh,
you are simply being contrary,’ protested his friend. ‘I can see at a glance that
they didn’t stab him alive. The body would have bled more and the wound wouldn’t
have closed like that.’

‘
And
I could see at a glance,’ said Father Brown, peering up very awkwardly, with his
short stature and short sight, ‘that they didn’t hang him alive. If you’ll look
at the knot in the noose, you will see it’s tied so clumsily that a twist of
rope holds it away from the neck, so that it couldn’t throttle a man at all. He
was dead before they put the rope on him; and he was dead before they put the
sword in him. And how was he really killed?’

‘
I
think,’ remarked the other, ‘that we’d better go back to the house and have a look
at his bedroom — and other things.’

‘
So
we will,’ said Father Brown. ‘But among other things perhaps we had better have
a look at these footprints. Better begin at the other end, I think, by his window.
Well, there are no footprints on the paved path, as there might be; but then
again there mightn’t be. Well, here is the lawn just under his bedroom window. And
here are his footprints plain enough.’

He
blinked ominously at the footprints; and then began carefully retracing his path
towards the tree, every now and then ducking in an undignified manner to look
at something on the ground. Eventually he returned to Flambeau and said in a
chatty manner:

‘
Well,
do you know the story that is written there very plainly? Though it’s not exactly
a plain story.’

‘
I
wouldn’t be content to call it plain,’ said Flambeau. ‘I should call it quite ugly
— ’

‘
Well,’
said Father Brown, ‘the story that is stamped quite plainly on the earth, with exact
moulds of the old man’s slippers, is this. The aged paralytic leapt from the
window and ran down the beds parallel to the path, quite eager for all the fun
of being strangled and stabbed; so eager that he hopped on one leg out of sheer
lightheartedness; and even occasionally turned cartwheels — ’

‘
Stop!’
cried Flambeau, angrily. ‘What the hell is all this hellish pantomime?’

Father
Brown merely raised his eyebrows and gestured mildly towards the hieroglyphs in
the dust. ‘About half the way there’s only the mark of one slipper; and in some
places the mark of a hand planted all by itself.’

‘
Couldn’t
he have limped and then fallen?’ asked Flambeau.

Father
Brown shook his head. ‘At least he’d have tried to use his hands and feet, or knees
and elbows, in getting up. There are no other marks there of any kind. Of course
the flagged path is quite near, and there are no marks on that; though there
might be on the soil between the cracks; it’s a crazy pavement.’

‘
By
God, it’s a crazy pavement; and a crazy garden; and a crazy story!’ And Flambeau
looked gloomily across the gloomy and storm-stricken garden, across which the
crooked patchwork paths did indeed give a queer aptness to the quaint old
English adjective.

‘
And
now,’ said Father Brown, ‘let us go up and look at his room.’ They went in by a
door not far from the bedroom window; and the priest paused a moment to look at
an ordinary garden broomstick, for sweeping up leaves, that was leaning against
the wall. ‘Do you see that?’

‘
It’s
a broomstick,’ said Flambeau, with solid irony.

‘
It’s
a blunder,’ said Father Brown; ‘the first blunder that I’ve seen in this curious
plot.’

They
mounted the stairs and entered the old man’s bedroom; and a glance at it made fairly
clear the main facts, both about the foundation and disunion of the family.
Father Brown had felt from the first that he was in what was, or had been, a
Catholic household; but was, at least partly, inhabited by lapsed or very loose
Catholics. The pictures and images in the grandfather’s room made it clear that
what positive piety remained had been practically confined to him; and that his
kindred had, for some reason or other, gone Pagan. But he agreed that this was
a hopelessly inadequate explanation even of an ordinary murder; let alone such
a very extraordinary murder as this. ‘Hang it all,’ he muttered, ‘the murder is
really the least extra-ordinary part of it.’ And even as he used the chance
phrase, a slow light began to dawn upon his face.

Flambeau
had seated himself on a chair by the little table which stood beside the dead man’s
bed. He was frowning thoughtfully at three or four white pills or pellets that
lay in a small tray beside a bottle of water.

‘
The
murderer or murderess,’ said Flambeau, ‘had some incomprehensible reason or other
for wanting us to think the dead man was strangled or stabbed or both. He was
not strangled or stabbed or anything of the kind. Why did they want to suggest
it? The most logical explanation is that he died in some particular way which
would, in itself, suggest a connection with some particular person. Suppose,
for instance, he was poisoned. And suppose somebody is involved who would
naturally look more like a poisoner than anybody else.’

‘
After
all,’ said Father Brown softly, ‘our friend in the blue spectacles is a doctor.’

‘
I’m
going to examine these pills pretty carefully,’ went on Flambeau. ‘I don’t want
to lose them, though. They look as if they were soluble in water.’

‘
It
may take you some time to do anything scientific with them,’ said the priest, ‘and
the police doctor may be here before that. So I should certainly advise you not
to lose them. That is, if you are going to wait for the police doctor.’

‘
I
am going to stay here till I have solved this problem,’ said Flambeau.

‘
Then
you will stay here for ever,’ said Father Brown, looking calmly out of the window.
‘I don’t think I shall stay in this room, anyhow.’

‘
Do
you mean that I shan’t solve the problem?’ asked his friend. ‘Why shouldn’t I
solve the problem?’

‘
Because
it isn’t soluble in water. No, nor in blood,’ said the priest; and he went down
the dark stairs into the darkening garden. There he saw again what he had already
seen from the window.

The
heat and weight and obscurity of the thunderous sky seemed to be pressing yet more
closely on the landscape; the clouds had conquered the sun which, above, in a
narrowing clearance, stood up paler than the moon. There was a thrill of thunder
in the air, but now no more stirring of wind or breeze; and even the colours of
the garden seemed only like richer shades of darkness. But one colour still
glowed with a certain dusky vividness; and that was the red hair of the woman
of that house, who was standing with a sort of rigidity, staring, with her
hands thrust up into her hair. That scene of eclipse, with something deeper in
his own doubts about its significance, brought to the surface the memory of
haunting and mystical lines; and he found himself murmuring: ‘A secret spot, as
savage and enchanted as e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted by woman wailing
for her demon lover.’ His muttering became more agitated. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of
God, pray for us sinners . . . that’s what it is; that’s terribly like what it
is; woman wailing for her demon lover.’

He
was hesitant and almost shaky as he approached the woman; but he spoke with his
common composure. He was gazing at her very steadily, as he told her earnestly that
she must not be morbid because of the mere accidental accessories of the tragedy,
with all their mad ugliness. ‘The pictures in your grandfather’s room were
truer to him than that ugly picture that we saw,’ he said gravely. ‘Something
tells me he was a good man; and it does not matter what his murderers did with
his body.’

‘
Oh,
I am sick of his holy pictures and statues!’ she said, turning her head away. ‘Why
don’t they defend themselves, if they are what you say they are? But rioters
can knock off the Blessed Virgin’s head and nothing happens to them. Oh, what’s
the good? You can’t blame us, you daren’t blame us, if we’ve found out that Man
is stronger than God.’

‘
Surely,’
said Father Brown very gently, ‘it is not generous to make even God’s patience with
us a point against Him.’

‘
God
may be patient and Man impatient,’ she answered, ‘and suppose we like the impatience
better. You call it sacrilege; but you can’t stop it.’

Father
Brown gave a curious little jump. ‘Sacrilege!’ he said; and suddenly turned back
to the doorway with a new brisk air of decision. At the same moment Flambeau
appeared in the doorway, pale with excitement, with a screw of paper in his
hands. Father Brown had already opened his mouth to speak, but his impetuous
friend spoke before him.

‘
I’m
on the track at last!’ cried Flambeau. ‘These pills look the same, but they’re really
different. And do you know that, at the very moment I spotted them, that one-eyed
brute of a gardener thrust his white face into the room; and he was carrying a
horse-pistol. I knocked it out of his hand and threw him down the stairs, but I
begin to understand everything. If I stay here another hour or two, I shall
finish my job.’

‘
Then
you will not finish it,’ said the priest, with a ring in his voice very rare in
him indeed. ‘We shall not stay here another hour. We shall not stay here another
minute. We must leave this place at once!’

‘
What!’
cried the astounded Flambeau. ‘Just when we are getting near the truth! Why, you
can tell that we’re getting near the truth because they are afraid of us.’

Father
Brown looked at him with a stony and inscrutable face, and said: ‘They are not afraid
of us when we are here. They will only be afraid of us when we are not here.’

They
had both become conscious that the rather fidgety figure of Dr Flood was hovering
in the lurid haze; now it precipitated itself forward with the wildest gestures.

‘
Stop!
Listen!’ cried the agitated doctor. ‘I have discovered the truth!’

‘
Then
you can explain it to your own police,’ said Father Brown, briefly. ‘They ought
to be coming soon. But we must be going.’

The
doctor seemed thrown into a whirlpool of emotions, eventually rising to the surface
again with a despairing cry. He spread out his arms like a cross, barring their
way.