The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (24 page)

He
could not remember for certain whether he had liked her or disliked her; there was
so much both to like and dislike. But she had been a person to him, and the unbearable
pathos of details and habit stabbed him with all the small daggers of
bereavement. He remembered her pretty face and priggish speeches with a sudden
secret vividness which is all the bitterness of death. In an instant like a
bolt from the blue, like a thunderbolt from nowhere, that beautiful and defiant
body had been dashed down the open well of the lift to death at the bottom. Was
it suicide? With so insolent an optimist it seemed impossible. Was it murder?
But who was there in those hardly inhabited flats to murder anybody? In a rush
of raucous words, which he meant to be strong and suddenly found weak, he asked
where was that fellow Kalon. A voice, habitually heavy, quiet and full, assured
him that Kalon for the last fifteen minutes had been away up on his balcony
worshipping his god. When Flambeau heard the voice, and felt the hand of Father
Brown, he turned his swarthy face and said abruptly:

“
Then,
if he has been up there all the time, who can have done it?”

“
Perhaps,”
said the other, “we might go upstairs and find out. We have half an hour before
the police will move.”

Leaving
the body of the slain heiress in charge of the surgeons, Flambeau dashed up the
stairs to the typewriting office, found it utterly empty, and then dashed up to
his own. Having entered that, he abruptly returned with a new and white face to
his friend.

“
Her
sister,” he said, with an unpleasant seriousness, “her sister seems to have gone
out for a walk.”

Father
Brown nodded. “Or, she may have gone up to the office of that sun man,” he said.
“If I were you I should just verify that, and then let us all talk it over in
your office. No,” he added suddenly, as if remembering something, “shall I ever
get over that stupidity of mine? Of course, in their office downstairs.”

Flambeau
stared; but he followed the little father downstairs to the empty flat of the Staceys,
where that impenetrable pastor took a large red-leather chair in the very
entrance, from which he could see the stairs and landings, and waited. He did
not wait very long. In about four minutes three figures descended the stairs,
alike only in their solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the
dead woman — evidently she had been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo;
the second was the priest of Apollo himself, his litany finished, sweeping down
the empty stairs in utter magnificence — something in his white robes, beard
and parted hair had the look of Dore’s Christ leaving the Pretorium; the third
was Flambeau, black browed and somewhat bewildered.

Miss
Joan Stacey, dark, with a drawn face and hair prematurely touched with grey, walked
straight to her own desk and set out her papers with a practical flap. The mere
action rallied everyone else to sanity. If Miss Joan Stacey was a criminal, she
was a cool one. Father Brown regarded her for some time with an odd little
smile, and then, without taking his eyes off her, addressed himself to somebody
else.

“
Prophet,”
he said, presumably addressing Kalon, “I wish you would tell me a lot about your
religion.”

“
I
shall be proud to do it,” said Kalon, inclining his still crowned head, “but I am
not sure that I understand.”

“
Why,
it’s like this,” said Father Brown, in his frankly doubtful way: “We are taught
that if a man has really bad first principles, that must be partly his fault. But,
for all that, we can make some difference between a man who insults his quite
clear conscience and a man with a conscience more or less clouded with sophistries.
Now, do you really think that murder is wrong at all?”

“
Is
this an accusation?” asked Kalon very quietly.

“
No,”
answered Brown, equally gently, “it is the speech for the defence.”

In
the long and startled stillness of the room the prophet of Apollo slowly rose; and
really it was like the rising of the sun. He filled that room with his light
and life in such a manner that a man felt he could as easily have filled Salisbury
Plain. His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with classic draperies; his
epic gesture seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the little
black figure of the modern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a
round, black blot upon some splendour of Hellas.

“
We
meet at last, Caiaphas,” said the prophet. “Your church and mine are the only realities
on this earth. I adore the sun, and you the darkening of the sun; you are the
priest of the dying and I of the living God. Your present work of suspicion and
slander is worthy of your coat and creed. All your church is but a black police;
you are only spies and detectives seeking to tear from men confessions of
guilt, whether by treachery or torture. You would convict men of crime, I would
convict them of innocence. You would convince them of sin, I would convince
them of virtue.

“
Reader
of the books of evil, one more word before I blow away your baseless nightmares
forever. Not even faintly could you understand how little I care whether you can
convict me or no. The things you call disgrace and horrible hanging are to me
no more than an ogre in a child’s toy-book to a man once grown up. You said you
were offering the speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of
this life that I will offer you the speech for the prosecution. There is but
one thing that can be said against me in this matter, and I will say it myself.
The woman that is dead was my love and my bride; not after such manner as your
tin chapels call lawful, but by a law purer and sterner than you will ever
understand. She and I walked another world from yours, and trod palaces of
crystal while you were plodding through tunnels and corridors of brick. Well, I
know that policemen, theological and otherwise, always fancy that where there
has been love there must soon be hatred; so there you have the first point made
for the prosecution. But the second point is stronger; I do not grudge it you.
Not only is it true that Pauline loved me, but it is also true that this very
morning, before she died, she wrote at that table a will leaving me and my new
church half a million. Come, where are the handcuffs? Do you suppose I care
what foolish things you do with me? Penal servitude will only be like waiting
for her at a wayside station. The gallows will only be going to her in a
headlong car.”

He
spoke with the brain-shaking authority of an orator, and Flambeau and Joan Stacey
stared at him in amazed admiration. Father Brown’s face seemed to express
nothing but extreme distress; he looked at the ground with one wrinkle of pain
across his forehead. The prophet of the sun leaned easily against the mantelpiece
and resumed:

“
In
a few words I have put before you the whole case against me — the only possible
case against me. In fewer words still I will blow it to pieces, so that not a trace
of it remains. As to whether I have committed this crime, the truth is in one
sentence: I could not have committed this crime. Pauline Stacey fell from this
floor to the ground at five minutes past twelve. A hundred people will go into
the witness-box and say that I was standing out upon the balcony of my own rooms
above from just before the stroke of noon to a quarter-past — the usual period
of my public prayers. My clerk (a respectable youth from Clapham, with no sort
of connection with me) will swear that he sat in my outer office all the morning,
and that no communication passed through. He will swear that I arrived a full
ten minutes before the hour, fifteen minutes before any whisper of the
accident, and that I did not leave the office or the balcony all that time. No
one ever had so complete an alibi; I could subpoena half Westminster. I think
you had better put the handcuffs away again. The case is at an end.

“
But
last of all, that no breath of this idiotic suspicion remain in the air, I will
tell you all you want to know. I believe I do know how my unhappy friend came by
her death. You can, if you choose, blame me for it, or my faith and philosophy
at least; but you certainly cannot lock me up. It is well known to all students
of the higher truths that certain adepts and illuminati have in history attained
the power of levitation — that is, of being self-sustained upon the empty air.
It is but a part of that general conquest of matter which is the main element
in our occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitious temper. I
think, to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries
than she was; and she has often said to me, as we went down in the lift
together, that if one’s will were strong enough, one could float down as
harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that in some ecstasy of noble
thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, or faith, must have failed her at
the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge.
There is the whole story, gentlemen, very sad and, as you think, very presumptuous
and wicked, but certainly not criminal or in any way connected with me. In the
short-hand of the police-courts, you had better call it suicide. I shall always
call it heroic failure for the advance of science and the slow scaling of heaven.”

It
was the first time Flambeau had ever seen Father Brown vanquished. He still sat
looking at the ground, with a painful and corrugated brow, as if in shame. It was
impossible to avoid the feeling which the prophet’s winged words had fanned,
that here was a sullen, professional suspecter of men overwhelmed by a prouder
and purer spirit of natural liberty and health. At last he said, blinking as if
in bodily distress: “Well, if that is so, sir, you need do no more than take
the testamentary paper you spoke of and go. I wonder where the poor lady left
it.”

“
It
will be over there on her desk by the door, I think,” said Kalon, with that massive
innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him wholly. “She told me specially
she would write it this morning, and I actually saw her writing as I went up in
the lift to my own room.”

“
Was
her door open then?” asked the priest, with his eye on the corner of the matting.

“
Yes,”
said Kalon calmly.

“
Ah!
it has been open ever since,” said the other, and resumed his silent study of the
mat.

“
There
is a paper over here,” said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhat singular voice. She
had passed over to her sister’s desk by the doorway, and was holding a sheet of
blue foolscap in her hand. There was a sour smile on her face that seemed unfit
for such a scene or occasion, and Flambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.

Kalon
the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had carried
him through. But Flambeau took it out of the lady’s hand, and read it with the
utmost amazement. It did, indeed, begin in the formal manner of a will, but after
the words “I give and bequeath all of which I die possessed” the writing abruptly
stopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name of any
legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this truncated testament to his clerical
friend, who glanced at it and silently gave it to the priest of the sun.

An
instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies, had crossed
the room in two great strides, and was towering over Joan Stacey, his blue eyes
standing from his head.

“
What
monkey tricks have you been playing here?” he cried. “That’s not all Pauline wrote.”

They
were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankee shrillness in
it; all his grandeur and good English had fallen from him like a cloak.

“
That
is the only thing on her desk,” said Joan, and confronted him steadily with the
same smile of evil favour.

Of
a sudden the man broke out into blasphemies and cataracts of incredulous words.
There was something shocking about the dropping of his mask; it was like a man’s
real face falling off.

“
See
here!” he cried in broad American, when he was breathless with cursing, “I may be
an adventurer, but I guess you’re a murderess. Yes, gentlemen, here’s your death
explained, and without any levitation. The poor girl is writing a will in my
favour; her cursed sister comes in, struggles for the pen, drags her to the well,
and throws her down before she can finish it. Sakes! I reckon we want the handcuffs
after all.”

“
As
you have truly remarked,” replied Joan, with ugly calm, “your clerk is a very respectable
young man, who knows the nature of an oath; and he will swear in any court that
I was up in your office arranging some typewriting work for five minutes before
and five minutes after my sister fell. Mr. Flambeau will tell you that he found
me there.”

There
was a silence.

“
Why,
then,” cried Flambeau, “Pauline was alone when she fell, and it was suicide!”

“
She
was alone when she fell,” said Father Brown, “but it was not suicide.”

“
Then
how did she die?” asked Flambeau impatiently.

“
She
was murdered.”

“
But
she was alone,” objected the detective.

“
She
was murdered when she was all alone,” answered the priest.

All
the rest stared at him, but he remained sitting in the same old dejected attitude,
with a wrinkle in his round forehead and an appearance of impersonal shame and
sorrow; his voice was colourless and sad.