The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (122 page)

‘
All
right,’ said Henry, a little sulkily perhaps, as if he would have preferred to wind
them up by himself. ‘I shall be up in number 188 after lunch; got to know how
far they’ve got up there.’

The
man with the glass eye, if it was a glass eye, stumped stiffly away; and the eye
of Father Brown (which was by no means a glass eye) followed him thoughtfully
as he threaded his way through the ladders and disappeared into the street.

It
was on the following morning that Father Brown had the unusual experience of over-sleeping
himself; or at least of starting from sleep with a subjective conviction that
he must be late. This was partly due to his remembering, as a man may remember
a dream, the fact of having been half-awakened at a more regular hour and
fallen asleep again; a common enough occurrence with most of us, but a very
uncommon occurrence with Father Brown. And he was afterwards oddly convinced,
with that mystic side of him which was normally turned away from the world,
that in that detached dark islet of dreamland, between the two wakings, there
lay like buried treasure the truth of this tale.

As
it was, he jumped up with great promptitude, plunged into his clothes, seized his
big knobby umbrella and bustled out into the street, where the bleak white morning
was breaking like splintered ice about the huge black building facing him. He
was surprised to find that the streets shone almost empty in the cold crystalline
light; the very look of it told him it could hardly be so late as he had
feared. Then suddenly the stillness was cloven by the arrowlike swiftness of a
long grey car which halted before the big deserted flats. Lord Stanes unfolded
himself from within and approached the door, carrying (rather languidly) two
large suitcases. At the same moment the door opened, and somebody seemed to
step back instead of stepping out into the street. Stanes called twice to the
man within, before that person seemed to complete his original gesture by
coming out on to the doorstep; then the two held a brief colloquy, ending in
the nobleman carrying his suitcases upstairs, and the other coming out into
full daylight and revealing the heavy shoulders and peering head of young Henry
Sand.

Father
Brown made no more of this rather odd meeting, until two days later the young man
drove up in his own car, and implored the priest to enter it. ‘Something awful
has happened,’ he said, ‘and I’d rather talk to you than Stanes. You know Stanes
arrived the other day with some mad idea of camping in one of the flats that’s
just finished. That’s why I had to go there early and open the door to him. But
all that will keep. I want you to come up to my uncle’s place at once.’

‘
Is
he ill?’ inquired the priest quickly.

‘
I
think he’s dead,’ answered the nephew.

‘
What
do you mean by saying you think he’s dead?’ asked Father Brown a little briskly.
‘Have you got a doctor?’

‘
No,’
answered the other. ‘I haven’t got a doctor or a patient either . . .It’s no good
calling in doctors to examine the body; because the body has run away. But I’m
afraid I know where it has run to ... the truth is — we kept it dark for two
days; but he’s disappeared.’

‘
Wouldn’t
it be better,’ said Father Brown mildly, ‘if you told me what has really happened
from the beginning?’

‘
I
know,’ answered Henry Sand; ‘it’s an infernal shame to talk flippantly like this
about the poor old boy; but people get like that when they’re rattled. I’m not
much good at hiding things; the long and the short of it is — well, I won’t tell
you the long of it now. It’s what some people would call rather a long shot;
shooting suspicions at random and so on. But the short of it is that my unfortunate
uncle has committed suicide.’

They
were by this time skimming along in the car through the last fringes of the town
and the first fringes of the forest and park beyond it; the lodge gates of Sir
Hubert Sand’s small estate were about a half mile farther on amid the thickening
throng of the beeches. The estate consisted chiefly of a small park and a large
ornamental garden, which descended in terraces of a certain classical pomp to
the very edge of the chief river of the district. As soon as they arrived at
the house, Henry took the priest somewhat hastily through the old Georgian
rooms and out upon the other side; where they silently descended the slope, a
rather steep slope embanked with flowers, from which they could see the pale
river spread out before them almost as flat as in a bird’s-eye view. They were
just turning the corner of the path under an enormous classical urn crowned
with a somewhat incongruous garland of geraniums, when Father Brown saw a
movement in the bushes and thin trees just below him, that seemed as swift as a
movement of startled birds.

In
the tangle of thin trees by the river two figures seemed to divide or scatter; one
of them glided swiftly into the shadows and the other came forward to face them;
bringing them to a halt and an abrupt and rather unaccountable silence. Then
Henry Sand said in his heavy way: ‘I think you know Father Brown . . . Lady
Sand.’

Father
Brown did know her; but at that moment he might almost have said that he did not
know her. The pallor and constriction of her face was like a mask of tragedy;
she was much younger than her husband, but at that moment she looked somehow
older than everything in that old house and garden. And the priest remembered,
with a subconscious thrill, that she was indeed older in type and lineage and
was the true possessor of the place. For her own family had owned it as
impoverished aristocrats, before she had restored its fortunes by marrying a
successful business man. As she stood there, she might have been a family
picture, or even a family ghost. Her pale face was of that pointed yet oval
type seen in some old pictures of Mary Queen of Scots; and its expression seemed
almost to go beyond the natural unnaturalness of a situation, in which her
husband had vanished under suspicion of suicide. Father Brown, with the same
subconscious movement of the mind, wondered who it was with whom she had been
talking among the trees.

‘
I
suppose you know all this dreadful news,’ she said, with a comfortless composure.
‘Poor Hubert must have broken down under all this revolutionary persecution,
and been just maddened into taking his own life. I don’t know whether you can
do anything; or whether these horrible Bolsheviks can be made responsible for
hounding him to death.’

‘
I
am terribly distressed, Lady Sand,’ said Father Brown. ‘And still, I must own, a
little bewildered. You speak of persecution; do you think that anybody could hound
him to death merely by pinning up that paper on the wall?’

‘
I
fancy,’ answered the lady, with a darkening brow, ‘that there were other persecutions
besides the paper.’

‘
It
shows what mistakes one may make,’ said the priest sadly. ‘I never should have thought
he would be so illogical as to die in order to avoid death.’

‘
I
know,’ she answered, gazing at him gravely. ‘I should never have believed it, if
it hadn’t been written with his own hand.’

‘
What?’
cried Father Brown, with a little jump like a rabbit that has been shot at.

‘
Yes,’
said Lady Sand calmly. ‘He left a confession of suicide; so I fear there is no doubt
about it.’ And she passed on up the slope alone, with all the inviolable isolation
of the family ghost.

The
spectacles of Father Brown were turned in mute inquiry to the eyeglasses of Mr Henry
Sand. And the latter gentleman, after an instant’s hesitation, spoke again in
his rather blind and plunging fashion: ‘Yes, you see, it seems pretty clear now
what he did. He was always a great swimmer and used to come down in his
dressing-gown every morning for a dip in the river. Well, he came down as usual,
and left his dressing-gown on the bank; it’s lying there still. But he also
left a message saying he was going for his last swim and then death, or something
like that.’

‘
Where
did he leave the message?’ asked Father Brown.

‘
He
scrawled it on that tree there, overhanging the water, I suppose the last thing
he took hold of; just below where the dressing-gown’s lying. Come and see for yourself.’

Father
Brown ran down the last short slope to the shore and peered under the hanging tree,
whose plumes were almost dipping in the stream. Sure enough, he saw on the smooth
bark the words scratched conspicuously and unmistakably: ‘One more swim and
then drowning. Good-bye. Hubert Sand.’ Father Brown’s gaze travelled slowly up
the bank till it rested on a gorgeous rag of raiment, all red and yellow with
gilded tassels. It was the dressing-gown and the priest picked it up and began
to turn it over. Almost as he did so he was conscious that a figure had flashed
across his field of vision; a tall dark figure that slipped from one clump of
trees to another, as if following the trail of the vanishing lady. He had
little doubt that it was the companion from whom she had lately parted. He had
still less doubt that it was the dead man’s secretary, Mr Rupert Rae.

‘
Of
course, it might be a final afterthought to leave the message,’ said Father Brown,
without looking up, his eye riveted on the red and gold garment. ‘We’ve all
heard of love-messages written on trees; and I suppose there might be death-messages
written on trees too.’

‘
Well,
he wouldn’t have anything in the pockets of his dressing-gown, I suppose,’ said
young Sand. ‘And a man might naturally scratch his message on a tree if he had no
pens, ink or paper.’

‘
Sounds
like French exercises,’ said the priest dismally. ‘But I wasn’t thinking of that.’
Then, after a silence, he said in a rather altered voice:

‘
To
tell the truth, I was thinking whether a man might not naturally scratch his message
on a tree, even if he had stacks of pens, and quarts of ink, and reams of
paper.’

Henry
was looking at him with a rather startled air, his eyeglasses crooked on his pug-nose.
‘And what do you mean by that?’ he asked sharply.

‘
Well,’
said Father Brown slowly, ‘I don’t exactly mean that postmen will carry letters
in the form of logs, or that you will ever drop a line to a friend by putting a
postage stamp on a pinetree. It would have to be a particular sort of position —
in fact, it would have to be a particular sort of person, who really preferred
this sort of arboreal correspondence. But, given the position and the person, I
repeat what I said. He would still write on a tree, as the song says, if all
the world were paper and all the sea were ink; if that river flowed with everlasting
ink or all these woods were a forest of quills and fountain-pens.’

It
was evident that Sand felt something creepy about the priest’s fanciful imagery;
whether because he found it incomprehensible or because he was beginning to
comprehend.

‘
You
see,’ said Father Brown, turning the dressing-gown over slowly as he spoke, ‘a man
isn’t expected to write his very best handwriting when he chips it on a tree.
And if the man were not the man, if I make myself clear — Hullo!’

He
was looking down at the red dressing-gown, and it seemed for the moment as if some
of the red had come off on his finger; but both the faces turned towards it
were already a shade paler.

‘
Blood!’
said Father Brown; and for the instant there was a deadly stillness save for the
melodious noises of the river.

Henry
Sand cleared his throat and nose with noises that were by no means melodious.
Then he said rather hoarsely: ‘Whose blood?’

‘
Oh,
mine,’ said Father Brown; but he did not smile.

A
moment after he said: ‘There was a pin in this thing and I pricked myself. But I
don’t think you quite appreciate the point . . . the point of the pin. I do’; and
he sucked his finger like a child.

‘
You
see,’ he said after another silence, ‘the gown was folded up and pinned together;
nobody could have unfolded it — at least without scratching himself. In plain
words, Hubert Sand never wore this dressing-gown. Any more than Hubert Sand
ever wrote on that tree. Or drowned himself in that river.’

The
pince-nez tilted on Henry’s inquiring nose fell off with a click; but he was otherwise
motionless, as if rigid with surprise.

‘
Which
brings us back,’ went on Father Brown cheerfully, ‘to somebody’s taste for writing
his private correspondence on trees, like Hiawatha and his picture-writing.
Sand had all the time there was, before drowning himself. Why didn’t he leave a
note for his wife like a sane man? Or, shall we say . . . Why didn’t the Other
Man leave a note for the wife like a sane man? Because he would have had to
forge the husband’s handwriting; always a tricky thing now that experts are so
nosey about it. But nobody can be expected to imitate even his own handwriting,
let alone somebody else’s when he carves capital letters in the bark of a tree.
This is not a suicide, Mr Sand. If it’s anything at all, it’s a murder.’

The
bracken and bushes of the undergrowth snapped and crackled as the big young man
rose out of them like a leviathan, and stood lowering, with his thick neck thrust
forward.

‘
I’m
no good at hiding things,’ he said, ‘and I half-suspected something like this —
expected it, you might say, for a long time. To tell the truth, I could hardly be
civil to the fellow — to either of them, for that matter.’