The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (22 page)

After
a silence the short priest spoke without looking up, and there was a new note in
his dull voice. “Mr. Gibbs was hardly right,” he said, “in saying that there is
no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why so big a man should attempt so
big a blow with so little a hammer.”

“
Oh,
never mind that,” cried Gibbs, in a fever. “What are we to do with Simeon Barnes?”

“
Leave
him alone,” said the priest quietly. “He is coming here of himself. I know those
two men with him. They are very good fellows from Greenford, and they have come
over about the Presbyterian chapel.”

Even
as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church, and strode into
his own yard. Then he stood there quite still, and the hammer fell from his
hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrable propriety, immediately went
up to him.

“
I
won’t ask you, Mr. Barnes,” he said, “whether you know anything about what has happened
here. You are not bound to say. I hope you don’t know, and that you will be
able to prove it. But I must go through the form of arresting you in the King’s
name for the murder of Colonel Norman Bohun.”

“
You
are not bound to say anything,” said the cobbler in officious excitement. “They’ve
got to prove everything. They haven’t proved yet that it is Colonel Bohun, with
the head all smashed up like that.”

“
That
won’t wash,” said the doctor aside to the priest. “That’s out of the detective stories.
I was the colonel’s medical man, and I knew his body better than he did. He had
very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones. The second and third fingers were the
same length. Oh, that’s the colonel right enough.”

As
he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of the motionless
blacksmith followed them and rested there also.

“
Is
Colonel Bohun dead?” said the smith quite calmly. “Then he’s damned.”

“
Don’t
say anything! Oh, don’t say anything,” cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about
in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist
as the good Secularist.

The
blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of a fanatic.

“
It’s
well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world’s law favours you,”
he said; “but God guards His own in His pocket, as you shall see this day.”

Then
he pointed to the colonel and said: “When did this dog die in his sins?”

“
Moderate
your language,” said the doctor.

“
Moderate
the Bible’s language, and I’ll moderate mine. When did he die?”

“
I
saw him alive at six o’clock this morning,” stammered Wilfred Bohun.

“
God
is good,” said the smith. “Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightest objection to
being arrested. It is you who may object to arresting me. I don’t mind leaving the
court without a stain on my character. You do mind perhaps leaving the court with
a bad set-back in your career.”

The
solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with a lively eye; as
did everybody else, except the short, strange priest, who was still looking down
at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadful blow.

“
There
are two men standing outside this shop,” went on the blacksmith with ponderous lucidity,
“good tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know, who will swear that they saw me
from before midnight till daybreak and long after in the committee room of our
Revival Mission, which sits all night, we save souls so fast. In Greenford
itself twenty people could swear to me for all that time. If I were a heathen,
Mr. Inspector, I would let you walk on to your downfall. But as a Christian man
I feel bound to give you your chance, and ask you whether you will hear my
alibi now or in court.”

The
inspector seemed for the first time disturbed, and said, “Of course I should be
glad to clear you altogether now.”

The
smith walked out of his yard with the same long and easy stride, and returned to
his two friends from Greenford, who were indeed friends of nearly everyone present.
Each of them said a few words which no one ever thought of disbelieving. When
they had spoken, the innocence of Simeon stood up as solid as the great church
above them.

One
of those silences struck the group which are more strange and insufferable than
any speech. Madly, in order to make conversation, the curate said to the Catholic
priest:

“
You
seem very much interested in that hammer, Father Brown.”

“
Yes,
I am,” said Father Brown; “why is it such a small hammer?”

The
doctor swung round on him.

“
By
George, that’s true,” he cried; “who would use a little hammer with ten larger hammers
lying about?”

Then
he lowered his voice in the curate’s ear and said: “Only the kind of person that
can’t lift a large hammer. It is not a question of force or courage between the
sexes. It’s a question of lifting power in the shoulders. A bold woman could commit
ten murders with a light hammer and never turn a hair. She could not kill a
beetle with a heavy one.”

Wilfred
Bohun was staring at him with a sort of hypnotised horror, while Father Brown listened
with his head a little on one side, really interested and attentive. The doctor
went on with more hissing emphasis:

“
Why
do these idiots always assume that the only person who hates the wife’s lover is
the wife’s husband? Nine times out of ten the person who most hates the wife’s
lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence or treachery he had shown her —
look there!”

He
made a momentary gesture towards the red-haired woman on the bench. She had lifted
her head at last and the tears were drying on her splendid face. But the eyes
were fixed on the corpse with an electric glare that had in it something of
idiocy.

The
Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desire to know; but
Father Brown, dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown from the furnace, spoke
in his indifferent way.

“
You
are like so many doctors,” he said; “your mental science is really suggestive. It
is your physical science that is utterly impossible. I agree that the woman wants
to kill the co-respondent much more than the petitioner does. And I agree that
a woman will always pick up a small hammer instead of a big one. But the difficulty
is one of physical impossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man’s
skull out flat like that.” Then he added reflectively, after a pause: “These
people haven’t grasped the whole of it. The man was actually wearing an iron
helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at that woman. Look
at her arms.”

Silence
held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily: “Well, I may be
wrong; there are objections to everything. But I stick to the main point. No man
but an idiot would pick up that little hammer if he could use a big hammer.”

With
that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to his head and seemed
to clutch his scanty yellow hair. After an instant they dropped, and he cried:
“That was the word I wanted; you have said the word.”

Then
he continued, mastering his discomposure: “The words you said were, ‘No man but
an idiot would pick up the small hammer.’”

“
Yes,”
said the doctor. “Well?”

“
Well,”
said the curate, “no man but an idiot did.” The rest stared at him with eyes arrested
and riveted, and he went on in a febrile and feminine agitation.

“
I
am a priest,” he cried unsteadily, “and a priest should be no shedder of blood.
I — I mean that he should bring no one to the gallows. And I thank God that I see
the criminal clearly now — because he is a criminal who cannot be brought to
the gallows.”

“
You
will not denounce him?” inquired the doctor.

“
He
would not be hanged if I did denounce him,” answered Wilfred with a wild but curiously
happy smile. “When I went into the church this morning I found a madman praying
there — that poor Joe, who has been wrong all his life. God knows what he
prayed; but with such strange folk it is not incredible to suppose that their
prayers are all upside down. Very likely a lunatic would pray before killing a
man. When I last saw poor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking
him.”

“
By
Jove!” cried the doctor, “this is talking at last. But how do you explain —”

The
Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of his own glimpse of the
truth. “Don’t you see; don’t you see,” he cried feverishly; “that is the only theory
that covers both the queer things, that answers both the riddles. The two
riddles are the little hammer and the big blow. The smith might have struck the
big blow, but would not have chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen
the little hammer, but she could not have struck the big blow. But the madman
might have done both. As for the little hammer — why, he was mad and might have
picked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor, that a
maniac in his paroxysm may have the strength of ten men?”

The
doctor drew a deep breath and then said, “By golly, I believe you’ve got it.”

Father
Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadily as to prove that his
large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite so insignificant as the rest of his face.
When silence had fallen he said with marked respect: “Mr. Bohun, yours is the
only theory yet propounded which holds water every way and is essentially unassailable.
I think, therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, that
it is not the true one.” And with that the old little man walked away and
stared again at the hammer.

“
That
fellow seems to know more than he ought to,” whispered the doctor peevishly to Wilfred.
“Those popish priests are deucedly sly.”

“
No,
no,” said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. “It was the lunatic. It was the lunatic.”

The
group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away from the more official group
containing the inspector and the man he had arrested. Now, however, that their
own party had broken up, they heard voices from the others. The priest looked
up quietly and then looked down again as he heard the blacksmith say in a loud
voice:

“
I
hope I’ve convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I’m a strong man, as you say, but I couldn’t
have flung my hammer bang here from Greenford. My hammer hasn’t got wings that
it should come flying half a mile over hedges and fields.”

The
inspector laughed amicably and said: “No, I think you can be considered out of it,
though it’s one of the rummiest coincidences I ever saw. I can only ask you to
give us all the assistance you can in finding a man as big and strong as yourself.
By George! you might be useful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself
have no guess at the man?”

“
I
may have a guess,” said the pale smith, “but it is not at a man.” Then, seeing the
scared eyes turn towards his wife on the bench, he put his huge hand on her shoulder
and said: “Nor a woman either.”

“
What
do you mean?” asked the inspector jocularly. “You don’t think cows use hammers,
do you?”

“
I
think no thing of flesh held that hammer,” said the blacksmith in a stifled voice;
“mortally speaking, I think the man died alone.”

Wilfred
made a sudden forward movement and peered at him with burning eyes.

“
Do
you mean to say, Barnes,” came the sharp voice of the cobbler, “that the hammer
jumped up of itself and knocked the man down?”

“
Oh,
you gentlemen may stare and snigger,” cried Simeon; “you clergymen who tell us on
Sunday in what a stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. I believe that One who
walks invisible in every house defended the honour of mine, and laid the defiler
dead before the door of it. I believe the force in that blow was just the force
there is in earthquakes, and no force less.”

Wilfred
said, with a voice utterly undescribable: “I told Norman myself to beware of the
thunderbolt.”

“
That
agent is outside my jurisdiction,” said the inspector with a slight smile.

“
You
are not outside His,” answered the smith; “see you to it,” and, turning his broad
back, he went into the house.

The
shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy and friendly way with
him. “Let us get out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun,” he said. “May I look
inside your church? I hear it’s one of the oldest in England. We take some interest,
you know,” he added with a comical grimace, “in old English churches.”

Wilfred
Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. But he nodded
rather eagerly, being only too ready to explain the Gothic splendours to
someone more likely to be sympathetic than the Presbyterian blacksmith or the
atheist cobbler.

“
By
all means,” he said; “let us go in at this side.” And he led the way into the high
side entrance at the top of the flight of steps. Father Brown was mounting the
first step to follow him when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to behold
the dark, thin figure of the doctor, his face darker yet with suspicion.