The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (18 page)

Meanwhile
Father Brown had made his way into the house, and now went to break the news to
the wife of the dead man.

When
he came out again he looked a little pale and tragic, but what passed between them
in that interview was never known, even when all was known.

Flambeau,
who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to see his friend reappear
so soon at his elbow; but Brown took no notice, and merely drew the doctor
apart. “You have sent for the police, haven’t you?” he asked.

“
Yes,”
answered Harris. “They ought to be here in ten minutes.”

“
Will
you do me a favour?” said the priest quietly. “The truth is, I make a collection
of these curious stories, which often contain, as in the case of our Hindoo
friend, elements which can hardly be put into a police report. Now, I want you
to write out a report of this case for my private use. Yours is a clever
trade,” he said, looking the doctor gravely and steadily in the face. “I sometimes
think that you know some details of this matter which you have not thought fit
to mention. Mine is a confidential trade like yours, and I will treat anything
you write for me in strict confidence. But write the whole.”

The
doctor, who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a little on one side,
looked the priest in the face for an instant, and said: “All right,” and went into
the study, closing the door behind him.

“
Flambeau,”
said Father Brown, “there is a long seat there under the veranda, where we can smoke
out of the rain. You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to
you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.”

They
established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat; Father Brown, against his
common habit, accepted a good cigar and smoked it steadily in silence, while
the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof of the veranda.

“
My
friend,” he said at length, “this is a very queer case. A very queer case.”

“
I
should think it was,” said Flambeau, with something like a shudder.

“
You
call it queer, and I call it queer,” said the other, “and yet we mean quite opposite
things. The modern mind always mixes up two different ideas: mystery in the
sense of what is marvellous, and mystery in the sense of what is complicated.
That is half its difficulty about miracles. A miracle is startling; but it is
simple. It is simple because it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from
God (or the devil) instead of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now,
you mean that this business is marvellous because it is miraculous, because it
is witchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say that it was
not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what surrounding
influences strange sins come into the lives of men. But for the present my
point is this: If it was pure magic, as you think, then it is marvellous; but
it is not mysterious — that is, it is not complicated. The quality of a miracle
is mysterious, but its manner is simple. Now, the manner of this business has
been the reverse of simple.”

The
storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again, and there came
heavy movements as of faint thunder. Father Brown let fall the ash of his cigar
and went on:

“
There
has been in this incident,” he said, “a twisted, ugly, complex quality that
does not belong to the straight bolts either of heaven or hell. As one knows
the crooked track of a snail, I know the crooked track of a man.”

The
white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink, the sky shut up again, and
the priest went on:

“
Of
all these crooked things, the crookedest was the shape of that piece of paper. It
was crookeder than the dagger that killed him.”

“
You
mean the paper on which Quinton confessed his suicide,” said Flambeau.

“
I
mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’” answered Father
Brown. “The shape of that paper, my friend, was the wrong shape; the wrong shape,
if ever I have seen it in this wicked world.”

“
It
only had a corner snipped off,” said Flambeau, “and I understand that all Quinton’s
paper was cut that way.”

“
It
was a very odd way,” said the other, “and a very bad way, to my taste and fancy.
Look here, Flambeau, this Quinton — God receive his soul! — was perhaps a bit
of a cur in some ways, but he really was an artist, with the pencil as well as
the pen. His handwriting, though hard to read, was bold and beautiful. I can’t
prove what I say; I can’t prove anything. But I tell you with the full force of
conviction that he could never have cut that mean little piece off a sheet of
paper. If he had wanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in, or
binding up, or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with the
scissors. Do you remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong shape.
Like this. Don’t you remember?”

And
he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, making irregular squares
so rapidly that Flambeau really seemed to see them as fiery hieroglyphics upon the
darkness — hieroglyphics such as his friend had spoken of, which are undecipherable,
yet can have no good meaning.

“
But,”
said Flambeau, as the priest put his cigar in his mouth again and leaned back, staring
at the roof, “suppose somebody else did use the scissors. Why should somebody
else, cutting pieces off his sermon paper, make Quinton commit suicide?”

Father
Brown was still leaning back and staring at the roof, but he took his cigar out
of his mouth and said: “Quinton never did commit suicide.”

Flambeau
stared at him. “Why, confound it all,” he cried, “then why did he confess to suicide?”

The
priest leant forward again, settled his elbows on his knees, looked at the ground,
and said, in a low, distinct voice: “He never did confess to suicide.”

Flambeau
laid his cigar down. “You mean,” he said, “that the writing was forged?”

“
No,”
said Father Brown. “Quinton wrote it all right.”

“
Well,
there you are,” said the aggravated Flambeau; “Quinton wrote, ‘I die by my own hand,’
with his own hand on a plain piece of paper.”

“
Of
the wrong shape,” said the priest calmly.

“
Oh,
the shape be damned!” cried Flambeau. “What has the shape to do with it?”

“
There
were twenty-three snipped papers,” resumed Brown unmoved, “and only twenty-two pieces
snipped off. Therefore one of the pieces had been destroyed, probably that from
the written paper. Does that suggest anything to you?”

A
light dawned on Flambeau’s face, and he said: “There was something else written
by Quinton, some other words. ‘They will tell you I die by my own hand,’ or ‘Do
not believe that — ’”

“
Hotter,
as the children say,” said his friend. “But the piece was hardly half an inch across;
there was no room for one word, let alone five. Can you think of anything
hardly bigger than a comma which the man with hell in his heart had to tear
away as a testimony against him?”

“
I
can think of nothing,” said Flambeau at last.

“
What
about quotation marks?” said the priest, and flung his cigar far into the darkness
like a shooting star.

All
words had left the other man’s mouth, and Father Brown said, like one going back
to fundamentals:

“
Leonard
Quinton was a romancer, and was writing an Oriental romance about wizardry and hypnotism.
He —”

At
this moment the door opened briskly behind them, and the doctor came out with his
hat on. He put a long envelope into the priest’s hands.

“
That’s
the document you wanted,” he said, “and I must be getting home. Good night.”

“
Good
night,” said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left
the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light
of this Brown opened the envelope and read the following words:

DEAR
FATHER BROWN, — Vicisti Galilee. Otherwise, damn your eyes, which are very penetrating
ones. Can it be possible that there is something in all that stuff of yours
after all?

I
am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in Nature and in all natural functions
and instincts, whether men called them moral or immoral. Long before I became a
doctor, when I was a schoolboy keeping mice and spiders, I believed that to be
a good animal is the best thing in the world. But just now I am shaken; I have
believed in Nature; but it seems as if Nature could betray a man. Can there be
anything in your bosh? I am really getting morbid.

I
loved Quinton’s wife. What was there wrong in that? Nature told me to, and it’s
love that makes the world go round. I also thought quite sincerely that she would
be happier with a clean animal like me than with that tormenting little lunatic.
What was there wrong in that? I was only facing facts, like a man of science.
She would have been happier.

According
to my own creed I was quite free to kill Quinton, which was the best thing for everybody,
even himself. But as a healthy animal I had no notion of killing myself. I resolved,
therefore, that I would never do it until I saw a chance that would leave me
scot free. I saw that chance this morning.

I
have been three times, all told, into Quinton’s study today. The first time I went
in he would talk about nothing but the weird tale, called “The Cure of a Saint,”
which he was writing, which was all about how some Indian hermit made an
English colonel kill himself by thinking about him. He showed me the last sheets,
and even read me the last paragraph, which was something like this:

“
The
conqueror of the Punjab, a mere yellow skeleton, but still gigantic, managed to
lift himself on his elbow and gasp in his nephew’s ear: ‘I die by my own hand, yet
I die murdered!’” It so happened by one chance out of a hundred, that those last
words were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left the room, and
went out into the garden intoxicated with a frightful opportunity.

We
walked round the house; and two more things happened in my favour. You suspected
an Indian, and you found a dagger which the Indian might most probably use.
Taking the opportunity to stuff it in my pocket I went back to Quinton’s study,
locked the door, and gave him his sleeping draught. He was against answering
Atkinson at all, but I urged him to call out and quiet the fellow, because I
wanted a clear proof that Quinton was alive when I left the room for the second
time. Quinton lay down in the conservatory, and I came through the study. I am
a quick man with my hands, and in a minute and a half I had done what I wanted
to do. I had emptied all the first part of Quinton’s romance into the
fireplace, where it burnt to ashes. Then I saw that the quotation marks
wouldn’t do, so I snipped them off, and to make it seem likelier, snipped the
whole quire to match. Then I came out with the knowledge that Quinton’s
confession of suicide lay on the front table, while Quinton lay alive but
asleep in the conservatory beyond.

The
last act was a desperate one; you can guess it: I pretended to have seen Quinton
dead and rushed to his room. I delayed you with the paper, and, being a quick
man with my hands, killed Quinton while you were looking at his confession of
suicide. He was half-asleep, being drugged, and I put his own hand on the knife
and drove it into his body. The knife was of so queer a shape that no one but
an operator could have calculated the angle that would reach his heart. I
wonder if you noticed this.

When
I had done it, the extraordinary thing happened. Nature deserted me. I felt ill.
I felt just as if I had done something wrong. I think my brain is breaking up;
I feel some sort of desperate pleasure in thinking I have told the thing to somebody;
that I shall not have to be alone with it if I marry and have children. What is
the matter with me? . . . Madness . . . or can one have remorse, just as if one
were in Byron’s poems! I cannot write any more.

James
Erskine Harris.

Father
Brown carefully folded up the letter, and put it in his breast pocket just as there
came a loud peal at the gate bell, and the wet waterproofs of several policemen
gleamed in the road outside.

When
Flambeau took his month’s holiday from his office in Westminster he took it in a
small sailing-boat, so small that it passed much of its time as a rowing-boat.
He took it, moreover, in little rivers in the Eastern counties, rivers so small
that the boat looked like a magic boat, sailing on land through meadows and
cornfields. The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only
for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special
philosophy considered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four
essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he
should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint;
and a priest, presumably in case he should die. With this light luggage he
crawled down the little Norfolk rivers, intending to reach the Broads at last,
but meanwhile delighting in the overhanging gardens and meadows, the mirrored
mansions or villages, lingering to fish in the pools and corners, and in some
sense hugging the shore.

Like
a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher,
he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so
seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but just so lightly that
its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when he had been a king of thieves
and the most famous figure in Paris, he had often received wild communications
of approval, denunciation, or even love; but one had, somehow, stuck in his
memory. It consisted simply of a visiting-card, in an envelope with an English
postmark. On the back of the card was written in French and in green ink: “If
you ever retire and become respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you,
for I have met all the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of
getting one detective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in French
history.” On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion, “Prince
Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk.”

He
had not troubled much about the prince then, beyond ascertaining that he had been
a brilliant and fashionable figure in southern Italy. In his youth, it was said,
he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; the escapade was scarcely
startling in his social world, but it had clung to men’s minds because of an
additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared
to have flung himself over a precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in
Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have been passed in
perpetual and restless travel. But when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had
left European celebrity and settled in England, it occurred to him that he
might pay a surprise visit to this eminent exile in the Norfolk Broads. Whether
he should find the place he had no idea; and, indeed, it was sufficiently small
and forgotten. But, as things fell out, he found it much sooner than he
expected.

They
had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grasses and short pollarded
trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to them early, and by a corresponding
accident they awoke before it was light. To speak more strictly, they awoke
before it was daylight; for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the
forest of high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue,
nocturnal but bright. Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood,
of the elfin and adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods.
Standing up thus against the large low moon, the daisies really seemed to be
giant daisies, the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded them
of the dado of a nursery wall-paper. The drop of the river-bed sufficed to sink
them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make them gaze upwards at
the grass. “By Jove!” said Flambeau, “it’s like being in fairyland.”

Father
Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. His movement was so abrupt
that his friend asked him, with a mild stare, what was the matter.

“
The
people who wrote the mediaeval ballads,” answered the priest, “knew more about fairies
than you do. It isn’t only nice things that happen in fairyland.”

“
Oh,
bosh!” said Flambeau. “Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon.
I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot
before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood.”

“
All
right,” said Father Brown. “I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland.
I only said it was always dangerous.”

They
pushed slowly up the brightening river; the glowing violet of the sky and the pale
gold of the moon grew fainter and fainter, and faded into that vast colourless
cosmos that precedes the colours of the dawn. When the first faint stripes of
red and gold and grey split the horizon from end to end they were broken by the
black bulk of a town or village which sat on the river just ahead of them. It
was already an easy twilight, in which all things were visible, when they came
under the hanging roofs and bridges of this riverside hamlet. The houses, with
their long, low, stooping roofs, seemed to come down to drink at the river,
like huge grey and red cattle. The broadening and whitening dawn had already
turned to working daylight before they saw any living creature on the wharves
and bridges of that silent town. Eventually they saw a very placid and prosperous
man in his shirt sleeves, with a face as round as the recently sunken moon, and
rays of red whisker around the low arc of it, who was leaning on a post above
the sluggish tide. By an impulse not to be analysed, Flambeau rose to his full
height in the swaying boat and shouted at the man to ask if he knew Reed Island
or Reed House. The prosperous man’s smile grew slightly more expansive, and he
simply pointed up the river towards the next bend of it. Flambeau went ahead
without further speech.

The
boat took many such grassy corners and followed many such reedy and silent reaches
of river; but before the search had become monotonous they had swung round a
specially sharp angle and come into the silence of a sort of pool or lake, the
sight of which instinctively arrested them. For in the middle of this wider
piece of water, fringed on every side with rushes, lay a long, low islet, along
which ran a long, low house or bungalow built of bamboo or some kind of tough
tropic cane. The upstanding rods of bamboo which made the walls were pale yellow,
the sloping rods that made the roof were of darker red or brown, otherwise the
long house was a thing of repetition and monotony. The early morning breeze
rustled the reeds round the island and sang in the strange ribbed house as in a
giant pan-pipe.

“
By
George!” cried Flambeau; “here is the place, after all! Here is Reed Island, if
ever there was one. Here is Reed House, if it is anywhere. I believe that fat man
with whiskers was a fairy.”

“
Perhaps,”
remarked Father Brown impartially. “If he was, he was a bad fairy.”

But
even as he spoke the impetuous Flambeau had run his boat ashore in the rattling
reeds, and they stood in the long, quaint islet beside the odd and silent
house.

The
house stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the only landing-stage;
the main entrance was on the other side, and looked down the long island garden.
The visitors approached it, therefore, by a small path running round nearly
three sides of the house, close under the low eaves. Through three different
windows on three different sides they looked in on the same long, well-lit
room, panelled in light wood, with a large number of looking-glasses, and laid
out as for an elegant lunch. The front door, when they came round to it at
last, was flanked by two turquoise-blue flower pots. It was opened by a butler
of the drearier type — long, lean, grey and listless — who murmured that Prince
Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being
kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl
of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed
retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the
strangers should remain. “His Highness may be here any minute,” he said, “and
would be distressed to have just missed any gentleman he had invited. We have
orders always to keep a little cold lunch for him and his friends, and I am
sure he would wish it to be offered.”

Moved
with curiosity to this minor adventure, Flambeau assented gracefully, and followed
the old man, who ushered him ceremoniously into the long, lightly panelled
room. There was nothing very notable about it, except the rather unusual
alternation of many long, low windows with many long, low oblongs of looking-glass,
which gave a singular air of lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It
was somehow like lunching out of doors. One or two pictures of a quiet kind
hung in the corners, one a large grey photograph of a very young man in
uniform, another a red chalk sketch of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeau
whether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortly in the
negative; it was the prince’s younger brother, Captain Stephen Saradine, he
said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenly and lose all taste
for conversation.

After
lunch had tailed off with exquisite coffee and liqueurs, the guests were introduced
to the garden, the library, and the housekeeper — a dark, handsome lady, of no
little majesty, and rather like a plutonic Madonna. It appeared that she and
the butler were the only survivors of the prince’s original foreign menage the
other servants now in the house being new and collected in Norfolk by the
housekeeper. This latter lady went by the name of Mrs. Anthony, but she spoke
with a slight Italian accent, and Flambeau did not doubt that Anthony was a
Norfolk version of some more Latin name. Mr. Paul, the butler, also had a
faintly foreign air, but he was in tongue and training English, as are many of
the most polished men-servants of the cosmopolitan nobility.

Pretty
and unique as it was, the place had about it a curious luminous sadness. Hours passed
in it like days. The long, well-windowed rooms were full of daylight, but it
seemed a dead daylight. And through all other incidental noises, the sound of
talk, the clink of glasses, or the passing feet of servants, they could hear on
all sides of the house the melancholy noise of the river.

“
We
have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place,” said Father Brown, looking
out of the window at the grey-green sedges and the silver flood. “Never mind;
one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

Father
Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic little man, and in those
few but endless hours he unconsciously sank deeper into the secrets of Reed
House than his professional friend. He had that knack of friendly silence which
is so essential to gossip; and saying scarcely a word, he probably obtained
from his new acquaintances all that in any case they would have told. The
butler indeed was naturally uncommunicative. He betrayed a sullen and almost
animal affection for his master; who, he said, had been very badly treated. The
chief offender seemed to be his highness’s brother, whose name alone would lengthen
the old man’s lantern jaws and pucker his parrot nose into a sneer. Captain
Stephen was a ne’er-do-weel, apparently, and had drained his benevolent brother
of hundreds and thousands; forced him to fly from fashionable life and live
quietly in this retreat. That was all Paul, the butler, would say, and Paul was
obviously a partisan.

The
Italian housekeeper was somewhat more communicative, being, as Brown fancied,
somewhat less content. Her tone about her master was faintly acid; though not
without a certain awe. Flambeau and his friend were standing in the room of the
looking-glasses examining the red sketch of the two boys, when the housekeeper swept
in swiftly on some domestic errand. It was a peculiarity of this glittering,
glass-panelled place that anyone entering was reflected in four or five mirrors
at once; and Father Brown, without turning round, stopped in the middle of a
sentence of family criticism. But Flambeau, who had his face close up to the
picture, was already saying in a loud voice, “The brothers Saradine, I suppose.
They both look innocent enough. It would be hard to say which is the good
brother and which the bad.” Then, realising the lady’s presence, he turned the
conversation with some triviality, and strolled out into the garden. But Father
Brown still gazed steadily at the red crayon sketch; and Mrs. Anthony still
gazed steadily at Father Brown.

She
had large and tragic brown eyes, and her olive face glowed darkly with a curious
and painful wonder — as of one doubtful of a stranger’s identity or purpose.
Whether the little priest’s coat and creed touched some southern memories of
confession, or whether she fancied he knew more than he did, she said to him in
a low voice as to a fellow plotter, “He is right enough in one way, your friend.
He says it would be hard to pick out the good and bad brothers. Oh, it would be
hard, it would be mighty hard, to pick out the good one.”

“
I
don’t understand you,” said Father Brown, and began to move away.

The
woman took a step nearer to him, with thunderous brows and a sort of savage stoop,
like a bull lowering his horns.

“
There
isn’t a good one,” she hissed. “There was badness enough in the captain taking all
that money, but I don’t think there was much goodness in the prince giving it.
The captain’s not the only one with something against him.”