The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (118 page)

‘
I
need not tell you more. You can almost imagine the rest, even as I sat there helpless,
trying to imagine it; or trying not to imagine it. It is enough to say that in
that awful silence, in which all sounds of footsteps had died away, there were
only two other noises besides the rumbling undertones of the sea. The first was
the loud noise of a shot and the second the duller noise of a splash.

‘
My
client had been murdered within a few yards of me, and I could make no sign. I will
not trouble you with what I felt about that. But even if I could recover from
the murder, I am still confronted with the mystery.’

‘
Yes,’
said Father Brown very gently, ‘which mystery?’

‘
The
mystery of how the murderer got away,’ answered the other. ‘The instant people were
admitted to the pier next morning, I was released from my prison and went racing
back to the entrance gates, to inquire who had left the pier since they were
opened. Without bothering you with details, I may explain that they were, by a
rather unusual arrangement, real full-size iron doors that would keep anybody
out (or in) until they were opened. The officials there had seen nobody in the
least resembling the assassin returning that way. And he was a rather unmistakable
person. Even if he had disguised himself somehow, he could hardly have
disguised his extraordinary height or got rid of the family nose. It is extraordinarily
unlikely that he tried to swim ashore, for the sea was very rough; and there
are certainly no traces of any landing. And, somehow, having seen the face of
that fiend even once, let alone about six times, something gives me an
overwhelming conviction that he did not simply drown himself in the hour of
triumph.’

‘
I
quite understand what you mean by that,’ replied Father Brown. ‘Besides, it would
be very inconsistent with the tone of his original threatening letter, in which
he promised himself all sorts of benefits after the crime . . . there’s another
point it might be well to verify. What about the structure of the pier underneath?
Piers are very often made with a whole network of iron supports, which a man
might climb through as a monkey climbs through a forest.’

‘
Yes,
I thought of that,’ replied the private investigator; ‘but unfortunately this pier
is oddly constructed in more ways than one. It’s quite unusually long, and there
are iron columns with all that tangle of iron girders; only they’re very far
apart and I can’t see any way a man could climb from one to the other.’

‘
I
only mentioned it,’ said Father Brown thoughtfully, ‘because that queer fish with
the long whiskers, the old man who preaches on the sand, often climbs up on to
the nearest girder. I believe he sits there fishing when the tide comes up. And
he’s a very queer fish to go fishing.’

‘
Why,
what do you mean?’

‘
Well,’
said Father Brown very slowly, twiddling with a button and gazing abstractedly out
to the great green waters glittering in the last evening light after the sunset.
‘Well ... I tried to talk to him in a friendly sort of way — friendly and not
too funny, if you understand, about his combining the ancient trades of fishing
and preaching; I think I made the obvious reference; the text that refers to
fishing for living souls. And he said quite queerly and harshly, as he jumped
back on to his iron perch, ‘Well, at least I fish for dead bodies.”’

‘
Good
God!’ exclaimed the detective, staring at him.

‘
Yes,’
said the priest. ‘It seemed to me an odd remark to make in a chatty way, to a stranger
playing with children on the sands.’

After
another staring silence his companion eventually ejaculated: ‘You don’t mean you
think he had anything to do with the death.’

‘
I
think,’ answered Father Brown, ‘that he might throw some light on it.’

‘
Well,
it’s beyond me now,’ said the detective. ‘It’s beyond me to believe that anybody
can throw any light on it. It’s like a welter of wild waters in the pitch dark;
the sort of waters that he ... that he fell into. It’s simply stark staring
unreason; a big man vanishing like a bubble; nobody could possibly ... Look
here!’ He stopped suddenly, staring at the priest, who had not moved, but was
still twiddling with the button and staring at the breakers. ‘What do you mean?
What are you looking like that for? You don’t mean to say that you . . . that
you can make any sense of it?’

‘
It
would be much better if it remained nonsense,’ said Father Brown in a low voice.
‘Well, if you ask me right out — yes, I think I can make some sense of it.’

There
was a long silence, and then the inquiry agent said with a rather singular abruptness:
‘Oh, here comes the old man’s secretary from the hotel. I must be off. I think
I’ll go and talk to that mad fisherman of yours.’

‘
Post
hoc propter hoc?’ asked the priest with a smile.

‘
Well,’
said the other, with jerky candour, ‘the secretary don’t like me and I don’t think
I like him. He’s been poking around with a lot of questions that didn’t seem to
me to get us any further, except towards a quarrel. Perhaps he’s jealous
because the old man called in somebody else, and wasn’t content with his
elegant secretary’s advice. See you later.’

And
he turned away, ploughing through the sand to the place where the eccentric preacher
had already mounted his marine nest; and looked in the green gloaming rather
like some huge polyp or stinging jelly-fish trailing his poisonous filaments in
the phosphorescent sea.

Meanwhile
the priest was serenely watching the serene approach of the secretary; conspicuous
even from afar, in that popular crowd, by the clerical neatness and sobriety of
his top-hat and tail-coat. Without feeling disposed to take part in any feuds
between the secretary and the inquiry agent, Father Brown had a faint feeling
of irrational sympathy with the prejudices of the latter. Mr Anthony Taylor,
the secretary, was an extremely presentable young man, in countenance, as well
as costume; and the countenance was firm and intellectual as well as merely
good-looking. He was pale, with dark hair coming down on the sides of his head,
as if pointing towards possible whiskers; he kept his lips compressed more
tightly than most people. The only thing that Father Brown’s fancy could tell
itself in justification sounded queerer than it really looked. He had a notion
that the man talked with his nostrils. Anyhow, the strong compression of his
mouth brought out something abnormally sensitive and flexible in these movements
at the sides of his nose, so that he seemed to be communicating and conducting
life by snuffling and smelling, with his head up, as does a dog. It somehow
fitted in with the other features that, when he did speak, it was with a sudden
rattling rapidity like a gatling-gun, which sounded almost ugly from so smooth
and polished a figure.

For
once he opened the conversation, by saying: ‘No bodies washed ashore, I imagine.’

‘
None
have been announced, certainly,’ said Father Brown.

‘
No
gigantic body of the murderer with the woollen scarf,’ said Mr Taylor.

‘
No,’
said Father Brown.

Mr
Taylor’s mouth did not move any more for the moment; but his nostrils spoke for
him with such quick and quivering scorn, that they might almost have been called
talkative.

When
he did speak again, after some polite commonplaces from the priest, it was to say
curtly: ‘Here comes the Inspector; I suppose they’ve been scouring England for
the scarf.’

Inspector
Grinstead, a brown-faced man with a grey pointed beard, addressed Father Brown rather
more respectfully than the secretary had done.

‘
I
thought you would like to know, sir,’ he said, ‘that there is absolutely no trace
of the man described as having escaped from the pier.’

‘
Or
rather not described as having escaped from the pier,’ said Taylor. ‘The pier officials,
the only people who could have described him, have never seen anybody to
describe.’

‘
Well,’
said the Inspector, ‘we’ve telephoned all the stations and watched all the
roads, and it will be almost impossible for him to escape from England. It
really seems to me as if he couldn’t have got out that way. He doesn’t seem to
be anywhere.’

‘
He
never was anywhere,’ said the secretary, with an abrupt grating voice, that sounded
like a gun going off on that lonely shore.

The
Inspector looked blank; but a light dawned gradually on the face of the priest,
who said at last with almost ostentatious unconcern:

‘
Do
you mean that the man was a myth? Or possibly a lie?’

‘
Ah,’
said the secretary, inhaling through his haughty nostrils, ‘you’ve thought of that
at last.’

‘
I
thought of that at first,’ said Father Brown. ‘It’s the first thing anybody would
think of, isn’t it, hearing an unsupported story from a stranger about a strange
murderer on a lonely pier. In plain words, you mean that little Muggleton never
heard anybody murdering the millionaire. Possibly you mean that little
Muggleton murdered him himself.’

‘
Well,’
said the secretary, ‘Muggleton looks a dingy down-and-out sort of cove to me. There’s
no story but his about what happened on the pier, and his story consists of a
giant who vanished; quite a fairy-tale. It isn’t a very creditable tale, even
as he tells it. By his own account, he bungled his case and let his patron be
killed a few yards away. He’s a pretty rotten fool and failure, on his own
confession.’

‘
Yes,’
said Father Brown. ‘I’m rather fond of people who are fools and failures on their
own confession.’

‘
I
don’t know what you mean,’ snapped the other.

‘
Perhaps,’
said Father Brown, wistfully, ‘it’s because so many people are fools and failures
without any confession.’

Then,
after a pause, he went on: ‘But even if he is a fool and a failure, that doesn’t
prove he is a liar and a murderer. And you’ve forgotten that there is one piece
of external evidence that does really support history. I mean the letter from
the millionaire, telling the whole tale of his cousin and his vendetta. Unless
you can prove that the document itself is actually a forgery, you have to admit
there was some probability of Bruce being pursued by somebody who had a real
motive. Or rather, I should say, the one actually admitted and recorded
motive.’

‘
I’m
not quite sure that I understand you,’ said the Inspector, ‘about the motive.’

‘
My
dear fellow,’ said Father Brown, for the first time stung by impatience into familiarity,
‘everybody’s got a motive in a way. Considering the way that Bruce made his
money, considering the way that most millionaires make their money, almost
anybody in the world might have done such a perfectly natural thing as throw
him into the sea. In many, one might almost fancy, it would be almost automatic.
To almost all it must have occurred at some time or other. Mr Taylor might have
done it.’

‘
What’s
that?’ snapped Mr Taylor, and his nostrils swelled visibly.

‘
I
might have done it,’ went on Father Brown, ‘nisi me constringeret ecclesiae auctoritas.
Anybody, but for the one true morality, might be tempted to accept so obvious,
so simple a social solution. I might have done it; you might have done it; the
Mayor or the muffin-man might have done it. The only person on this earth I can
think of, who probably would not have done it, is the private inquiry agent whom
Bruce had just engaged at five pounds a week, and who hadn’t yet had any of his
money.’

The
secretary was silent for a moment; then he snorted and said: ‘If that’s the offer
in the letter, we’d certainly better see whether it’s a forgery. For really, we
don’t know that the whole tale isn’t as false as a forgery. The fellow admits
himself that the disappearance of his hunch-backed giant is utterly incredible
and inexplicable.’

‘
Yes,’
said Father Brown; ‘that’s what I like about Muggleton. He admits things.’

‘
All
the same,’ insisted Taylor, his nostrils vibrant with excitement. ‘All the
same, the long and the short of it is that he can’t prove that his tall man in
the scarf ever existed or does exist; and every single fact found by the police
and the witnesses proves that he does not exist. No, Father Brown. There is
only one way in which you can justify this little scallywag you seem to be so
fond of. And that is by producing his Imaginary Man. And that is exactly what
you can’t do.’

‘
By
the way,’ said the priest, absent-mindedly, ‘I suppose you come from the hotel where
Bruce has rooms, Mr Taylor?’

Taylor
looked a little taken aback, and seemed almost to stammer. ‘Well, he always did
have those rooms; and they’re practically his. I haven’t actually seen him there
this time.’

‘
I
suppose you motored down with him,’ observed Brown; ‘or did you both come by train?’

‘
I
came by train and brought the luggage,’ said the secretary impatiently. ‘Something
kept him, I suppose. I haven’t actually seen him since he left Yorkshire on his
own a week or two ago.’

‘
So
it seems,’ said the priest very softly, ‘that if Muggleton wasn’t the last to see
Bruce by the wild sea-waves, you were the last to see him, on the equally wild
Yorkshire moors.’