The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (109 page)

The
strange story of the incongruous strangers is still remembered along that strip
of the Sussex coast, where the large and quiet hotel called the Maypole and Garland
looks across its own gardens to the sea. Two quaintly assorted figures did,
indeed, enter that quiet hotel on that sunny afternoon; one being conspicuous
in the sunlight, and visible over the whole shore, by the fact of wearing a
lustrous green turban, surrounding a brown face and a black beard; the other
would have seemed to some even more wild and weird, by reason of his wearing a
soft black clergyman’s hat with a yellow moustache and yellow hair of leonine
length. He at least had often been seen preaching on the sands or conducting
Band of Hope services with a little wooden spade; only he had certainly never
been seen going into the bar of an hotel. The arrival of these quaint
companions was the climax of the story, but not the beginning of it; and, in
order to make a rather mysterious story as clear as possible, it is better to
begin at the beginning.

Half
an hour before those two conspicuous figures entered the hotel, and were noticed
by everybody, two other very inconspicuous figures had also entered it, and
been noticed by nobody. One was a large man, and handsome in a heavy style, but
he had a knack of taking up very little room, like a background; only an almost
morbidly suspicious examination of his boots would have told anybody that he
was an Inspector of Police in plain clothes; in very plain clothes. The other
was a drab and insignificant little man, also in plain clothes, only that they
happened to be clerical clothes; but nobody had ever seen him preaching on the
sands.

These
travellers also found themselves in a sort of large smoking-room with a bar, for
a reason which determined all the events of that tragic afternoon. The truth is
that the respectable hotel called the Maypole and Garland was being ‘done-up’.
Those who had liked it in the past were moved to say that it was being done
down; or possibly done in. This was the opinion of the local grumbler, Mr
Raggley, the eccentric old gentleman who drank cherry brandy in a corner and
cursed. Anyhow, it was being carefully stripped of all the stray indications
that it had once been an English inn; and being busily turned, yard by yard and
room by room, into something resembling the sham palace of a Levantine usurer
in an American film. It was, in short, being ‘decorated’; but the only part
where the decoration was complete, and where customers could yet be made
comfortable, was this large room leading out of the hall. It had once been
honourably known as a Bar Parlour and was now mysteriously known as a Saloon
Lounge, and was newly ‘decorated’, in the manner of an Asiatic Divan. For
Oriental ornament pervaded the new scheme; and where there had once been a gun
hung on hooks, and sporting prints and a stuffed fish in a glass case, there
were now festoons of Eastern drapery and trophies of scimitars, tulwards and
yataghans, as if in unconscious preparation for the coming of the gentleman with
the turban. The practical point was, however, that the few guests who did arrive
had to be shepherded into this lounge, now swept and garnished, because all the
more regular and refined parts of the hotel were still in a state of transition.
Perhaps that was also the reason why even those few guests were somewhat
neglected, the manager and others being occupied with explanations or exhortations
elsewhere. Anyhow, the first two travellers who arrived had to kick their heels
for some time unattended. The bar was at the moment entirely empty, and the
Inspector rang and rapped impatiently on the counter; but the little clergyman
had already dropped into a lounge seat and seemed in no hurry for anything.
Indeed his friend the policeman, turning his head, saw that the round face of
the little cleric had gone quite blank, as it had a way of doing sometimes; he
seemed to be staring through his moonlike spectacles at the newly decorated
wall.

‘
I
may as well offer you a penny for your thoughts,’ said Inspector Greenwood, turning
from the counter with a sigh, ‘as nobody seems to want my pennies for anything
else. This seems to be the only room in the house that isn’t full of ladders
and whitewash; and this is so empty that there isn’t even a potboy to give me a
pot of beer.’

‘
Oh
. . . my thoughts are not worth a penny, let alone a pot of beer,’ answered the
cleric, wiping his spectacles, ‘I don’t know why . . . but I was thinking how easy
it would be to commit a murder here.’

‘
It’s
all very well for you, Father Brown,’ said the Inspector good-humouredly. ‘You’ve
had a lot more murders than your fair share; and we poor policemen sit starving
all our lives, even for a little one. But why should you say . . . Oh I see,
you’re looking at all those Turkish daggers on the wall. There are plenty of
things to commit a murder with, if that’s what you mean. But not more than
there are in any ordinary kitchen: carving knives or pokers or what not. That
isn’t where the snag of a murder comes in.’

Father
Brown seemed to recall his rambling thoughts in some bewilderment; and said that
he supposed so.

‘
Murder
is always easy,’ said Inspector Greenwood. ‘There can’t possibly be anything more
easy than murder. I could murder you at this minute — more easily than I can
get a drink in this damned bar. The only difficulty is committing a murder without
committing oneself as a murderer. It’s this shyness about owning up to a
murder; it’s this silly modesty of murderers about their own masterpieces, that
makes the trouble. They will stick to this extraordinary fixed idea of killing
people without being found out; and that’s what restrains them, even in a room
full of daggers. Otherwise every cutler’s shop would be piled with corpses. And
that, by the way, explains the one kind of murder that really can’t be
prevented. Which is why, of course, we poor bobbies are always blamed for not
preventing it. When a madman murders a King or a President, it can’t be prevented.
You can’t make a King live in a coal-cellar, or carry about a President in a
steel box. Anybody can murder him who does not mind being a murderer. That is
where the madman is like the martyr — sort of beyond this world. A real fanatic
can always kill anybody he likes.’

Before
the priest could reply, a joyous band of bagmen rolled into the room like a shoal
of porpoises; and the magnificent bellow of a big, beaming man, with an equally
big and beaming tie-pin, brought the eager and obsequious manager running like
a dog to the whistle, with a rapidity which the police in plain clothes had
failed to inspire.

‘
I’m
sure I’m very sorry, Mr Jukes,’ said the manager, who wore a rather agitated smile
and a wave or curl of very varnished hair across his forehead. ‘We’re rather
understaffed at present; and I had to attend to something in the hotel, Mr
Jukes.’

Mr
Jukes was magnanimous, but in a noisy way; and ordered drinks all round, conceding
one even to the almost cringing manager. Mr Jukes was a traveller for a very
famous and fashionable wine and spirits firm; and may have conceived himself as
lawfully the leader in such a place. Anyhow, he began a boisterous monologue,
rather tending to tell the manager how to manage his hotel; and the others
seemed to accept him as an authority. The policeman and the priest had retired
to a low bench and small table in the background, from which they watched
events, up to that rather remarkable moment when the policeman had very decisively
to intervene.

For
the next thing that happened, as already narrated, was the astonishing apparition
of a brown Asiatic in a green turban, accompanied by the (if possible) more
astonishing apparition of a Noncomformist minister; omens such as appear before
a doom. In this case there was no doubt about evidence for the portent. A
taciturn but observant boy cleaning the steps for the last hour (being a
leisurely worker), the dark, fat, bulky bar-attendant, even the diplomatic but
distracted manager, all bore witness to the miracle.

The
apparitions, as the sceptics say, were due to perfectly natural causes. The man
with the mane of yellow hair and the semi-clerical clothes was not only familiar
as a preacher on the sands, but as a propagandist throughout the modern world.
He was no less a person than the Rev. David Pryce-Jones, whose far-resounding slogan
was Prohibition and Purification for Our Land and the Britains Overseas. He as
an excellent public speaker and organizer; and an idea had occurred to him that
ought to have occurred to Prohibitionists long ago. It was the simple idea
that, if Prohibition is right, some honour is due to the Prophet who was
perhaps the first Prohibitionist. He had corresponded with the leaders of
Mahommedan religious thought, and had finally induced a distinguished Moslem
(one of whose names was Akbar and the rest an untranslatable ululation of Allah
with attributes) to come and lecture in England on the ancient Moslem veto on
wine. Neither of them certainly had been in a public-house bar before; but they
had come there by the process already described; driven from the genteel
tea-rooms, shepherded into the newly-decorated saloon. Probably all would have
been well, if the great Prohibitionist, in his innocence, had not advanced to
the counter and asked for a glass of milk.

The
commercial travellers, though a kindly race, emitted involuntary noises of pain;
a murmur of suppressed jests was heard, as ‘Shun the bowl,’ or ‘Better bring
out the cow’. But the magnificent Mr Jukes, feeling it due to his wealth and
tie-pin to produce more refined humour, fanned himself as one about to faint,
and said pathetically: ‘They know they can knock me down with a feather. They
know a breath will blow me away. They know my doctor says I’m not to have these
shocks. And they come and drink cold milk in cold blood, before my very eyes.’

The
Rev. David Pryce-Jones, accustomed to deal with hecklers at public meetings, was
so unwise as to venture on remonstrance and recrimination, in this very different
and much more popular atmosphere. The Oriental total abstainer abstained from
speech as well as spirits; and certainly gained in dignity by doing so. In
fact, so far as he was concerned, the Moslem culture certainly scored a silent
victory; he was obviously so much more of a gentleman than the commercial
gentlemen, that a faint irritation began to arise against his aristocratic
aloofness; and when Mr Pryce-Jones began to refer in argument to something of
the kind, the tension became very acute indeed.

‘
I
ask you, friends,’ said Mr Pryce-Jones, with expansive platform gestures, ‘why does
our friend here set an example to us Christians in truly Christian self-control
and brotherhood? Why does he stand here as a model of true Christianity, of
real refinement, of genuine gentlemanly behaviour, amid all the quarrels and
riots of such places as these? Because, whatever the doctrinal differences
between us, at least in his soil the evil plant, the accursed hop or vine, has
never — ’

At
this crucial moment of the controversy it was that John Raggley, the stormy petrel
of a hundred storms of controversy, red-faced, white-haired, his antiquated
top-hat on the back of his head, his stick swinging like a club, entered the
house like an invading army.

John
Raggley was generally regarded as a crank. He was the sort of man who writes letters
to the newspaper, which generally do not appear in the newspaper; but which do
appear afterwards as pamphlets, printed (or misprinted) at his own expense; and
circulated to a hundred waste-paper baskets. He had quarrelled alike with the
Tory squires and the Radical County Councils; he hated Jews; and he distrusted
nearly everything that is sold in shops, or even in hotels. But there was a
backing of facts behind his fads; he knew the county in every corner and
curious detail; and he was a sharp observer. Even the manager, a Mr Wills, had
a shadowy respect for Mr Raggley, having a nose for the sort of lunacy allowed
in the gentry; not indeed the prostrate reverence which he had for the jovial
magnificence of Mr Jukes, who was really good for trade, but a least a
disposition to avoid quarrelling with the old grumbler, partly perhaps out of
fear of the old grumbler’s tongue.

‘
And
you will have your usual, Sir,’ said Mr Wills, leaning and leering across the counter.

‘
It’s
the only decent stuff you’ve still got,’ snorted Mr Raggley, slapping down his queer
and antiquated hat. ‘Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in
England is cherry brandy. Cherry brandy does taste of cherries. Can you find me
any beer that tastes of hops, or any cider that tastes of apples, or any wine
that has the remotest indication of being made out of grapes? There’s an
infernal swindle going on now in every inn in the country, that would have raised
a revolution in any other country. I’ve found out a thing or two about it, I
can tell you. You wait till I can get it printed, and people will sit up. If I
could stop our people being poisoned with all this bad drink — ’

Here
again the Rev. David Pryce-Jones showed a certain failure in tact; though it was
a virtue he almost worshipped. He was so unwise as to attempt to establish an
alliance with Mr Raggley, by a fine confusion between the idea of bad drink and
the idea that drink is bad. Once more he endeavoured to drag his stiff and stately
Eastern friend into the argument, as a refined foreigner superior to our rough
English ways. He was even so foolish as to talk of a broad theological outlook;
and ultimately to mention the name of Mahomet, which was echoed in a sort of
explosion.