Authors: G.K. Chesterton
The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material]
The
Really*
Complete
"Father
Brown"
Mysteries
by
G. K.
Chesterton
*including rare extra
stories
Originally Published between 1910
and 1935.
Fourth Edition
© 2013, G. Fisher
Table of Contents
The Perishing of the Pendragons
The Strange Crime of John Boulnois
The Fairy Tale of Father Brown
The
Incredulity of Father Brown
The Resurrection of Father Brown
Introduction
Born
in London in 1874, Gilbert Keith Chesterton never completed college but distinguished
himself as one of the finest minds and most prolific writers of the 20
th
century. Author of some 100
books and contributor to twice that many more, Chesterton also wrote thousands
of essays, hundreds of poems, plays, novels, and some two hundred short
stories, including the 50+ included here.
Hercule
Poirot, Miss Marple, even the gruff Sam Spade all owe a great deal to G.K. Chesterton's
beloved amateur detective Father Brown. Through five books (and a few separate
publications) armchair sleuths have followed the frumpy little cleric through a
jubilee of stories, over half a hundred delicious mysteries perfectly suited to
lazy mornings, warm afternoons -- or dark and stormy nights.
Chesterton's
plots never fail to satisfy his readers, and in this collection of the entire original
Father Brown library – with several rare titles never included in previous collections
– you will find many hours of enjoyment.
Chesterton
never stooped to mere violence to advance his stories, making this collection as
suitable for younger mystery fans as it is for older fans. Though the language
is British and sometimes quaint, it is never offensive. Like his creator,
Father Brown combines practical wisdom with a sparkling sense of humor. If you
love a mystery, you owe it to yourself to spend some time with Father Brown.
Language
Note: Gilbert Keith Chesterton was raised in England during the late 19
th
Century and wrote the following works in the early 20
th
Century.
Though his stories are timeless, his spelling, grammar and idioms recall his
era.
The
Innocence of Father Brown
The
Blue Cross
Between
the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched
Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must
follow was by no means conspicuous — nor wished to be. There was nothing notable
about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes
and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey
jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His
lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked
Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the
seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that
the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a
police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects
in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the
most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to
London to make the greatest arrest of the century.
Flambeau
was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at
last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured
that he would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the
Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as
some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could
not be certain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.
It
is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world
in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there
was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his
worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser.
Almost every morning the daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences
of one extraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic
stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of
athletic humour; how he turned the juge d’instruction upside down and stood him
on his head, “to clear his mind”; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a
policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say that his fantastic physical
strength was generally employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes;
his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each
of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a story by itself. It was he
who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in London, with no dairies, no cows,
no carts, no milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served by the
simple operation of moving the little milk cans outside people’s doors to the
doors of his own customers. It was he who had kept up an unaccountable and
close correspondence with a young lady whose whole letter-bag was intercepted,
by the extraordinary trick of photographing his messages infinitesimally small
upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of
his experiments. It is said that he once repainted all the numbers in a street
in the dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is quite
certain that he invented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners in
quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it.
Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure, he
could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey. Hence
the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly aware that
his adventures would not end when he had found him.
But
how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin’s ideas were still in process
of settlement.
There
was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover,
and that was his singular height. If Valentin’s quick eye had caught a tall
apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have
arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could
be a disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe.
About the people on the boat he had already satisfied himself; and the people
picked up at Harwich or on the journey limited themselves with certainty to
six. There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly
short market gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow
lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest
going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin
gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of
those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he
had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which
he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless
sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless,
like moles disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France,
and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this
one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which
constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end
of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in
the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real
silver “with blue stones” in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint
blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the
Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels,
and came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even had the
good nature to warn him not to take care of the silver by telling everybody
about it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin kept his eye open for someone
else; he looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was
well up to six feet; for Flambeau was four inches above it.
He
alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously secure that he had
not missed the criminal so far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his
position and arrange for help in case of need; he then lit another cigarette and
went for a long stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets
and squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint,
quiet square, very typical of London, full of an accidental stillness. The
tall, flat houses round looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square
of shrubbery in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of
the four sides was much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of this
side was broken by one of London’s admirable accidents — a restaurant that
looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive object,
with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white.
It stood specially high above the street, and in the usual patchwork way of
London, a flight of steps from the street ran up to meet the front door almost
as a fire-escape might run up to a first-floor window. Valentin stood and
smoked in front of the yellow-white blinds and considered them long.
The
most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven
do come together into the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up
in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a
note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few
days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does
quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of
infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which
people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well
expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.