The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (36 page)

Father
Brown seemed quite unconscious of this cloud of witnesses, but followed Parkinson
with an idly attentive eye till he took himself and his absurd spear into the
farther room of Bruno. Then he abandoned himself to such abstract meditations
as always amused him — calculating the angles of the mirrors, the angles of
each refraction, the angle at which each must fit into the wall . . . when he
heard a strong but strangled cry.

He
sprang to his feet and stood rigidly listening. At the same instant Sir Wilson Seymour
burst back into the room, white as ivory. “Who’s that man in the passage?” he
cried. “Where’s that dagger of mine?”

Before
Father Brown could turn in his heavy boots Seymour was plunging about the room looking
for the weapon. And before he could possibly find that weapon or any other, a
brisk running of feet broke upon the pavement outside, and the square face of
Cutler was thrust into the same doorway. He was still grotesquely grasping a
bunch of lilies-of-the-valley. “What’s this?” he cried. “What’s that creature
down the passage? Is this some of your tricks?”

“
My
tricks!” hissed his pale rival, and made a stride towards him.

In
the instant of time in which all this happened Father Brown stepped out into the
top of the passage, looked down it, and at once walked briskly towards what he
saw.

At
this the other two men dropped their quarrel and darted after him, Cutler calling
out: “What are you doing? Who are you?”

“
My
name is Brown,” said the priest sadly, as he bent over something and straightened
himself again. “Miss Rome sent for me, and I came as quickly as I could. I have
come too late.”

The
three men looked down, and in one of them at least the life died in that late light
of afternoon. It ran along the passage like a path of gold, and in the midst of
it Aurora Rome lay lustrous in her robes of green and gold, with her dead face
turned upwards. Her dress was torn away as in a struggle, leaving the right
shoulder bare, but the wound from which the blood was welling was on the other
side. The brass dagger lay flat and gleaming a yard or so away.

There
was a blank stillness for a measurable time, so that they could hear far off a flower-girl’s
laugh outside Charing Cross, and someone whistling furiously for a taxicab in
one of the streets off the Strand. Then the Captain, with a movement so sudden
that it might have been passion or play-acting, took Sir Wilson Seymour by the
throat.

Seymour
looked at him steadily without either fight or fear. “You need not kill me,” he
said in a voice quite cold; “I shall do that on my own account.”

The
Captain’s hand hesitated and dropped; and the other added with the same icy candour:
“If I find I haven’t the nerve to do it with that dagger I can do it in a month
with drink.”

“
Drink
isn’t good enough for me,” replied Cutler, “but I’ll have blood for this before
I die. Not yours — but I think I know whose.”

And
before the others could appreciate his intention he snatched up the dagger, sprang
at the other door at the lower end of the passage, burst it open, bolt and all,
and confronted Bruno in his dressing-room. As he did so, old Parkinson tottered
in his wavering way out of the door and caught sight of the corpse lying in the
passage. He moved shakily towards it; looked at it weakly with a working face;
then moved shakily back into the dressing-room again, and sat down suddenly on
one of the richly cushioned chairs. Father Brown instantly ran across to him,
taking no notice of Cutler and the colossal actor, though the room already rang
with their blows and they began to struggle for the dagger. Seymour, who
retained some practical sense, was whistling for the police at the end of the
passage.

When
the police arrived it was to tear the two men from an almost ape-like grapple; and,
after a few formal inquiries, to arrest Isidore Bruno upon a charge of murder,
brought against him by his furious opponent. The idea that the great national hero
of the hour had arrested a wrongdoer with his own hand doubtless had its weight
with the police, who are not without elements of the journalist. They treated
Cutler with a certain solemn attention, and pointed out that he had got a
slight slash on the hand. Even as Cutler bore him back across tilted chair and
table, Bruno had twisted the dagger out of his grasp and disabled him just below
the wrist. The injury was really slight, but till he was removed from the room
the half-savage prisoner stared at the running blood with a steady smile.

“
Looks
a cannibal sort of chap, don’t he?” said the constable confidentially to Cutler.

Cutler
made no answer, but said sharply a moment after: “We must attend to the . . . the
death . . .” and his voice escaped from articulation.

“
The
two deaths,” came in the voice of the priest from the farther side of the room.
“This poor fellow was gone when I got across to him.” And he stood looking down
at old Parkinson, who sat in a black huddle on the gorgeous chair. He also had paid
his tribute, not without eloquence, to the woman who had died.

The
silence was first broken by Cutler, who seemed not untouched by a rough tenderness.
“I wish I was him,” he said huskily. “I remember he used to watch her wherever
she walked more than — anybody. She was his air, and he’s dried up. He’s just
dead.”

“
We
are all dead,” said Seymour in a strange voice, looking down the road.

They
took leave of Father Brown at the corner of the road, with some random apologies
for any rudeness they might have shown. Both their faces were tragic, but also
cryptic.

The
mind of the little priest was always a rabbit-warren of wild thoughts that jumped
too quickly for him to catch them. Like the white tail of a rabbit he had the
vanishing thought that he was certain of their grief, but not so certain of
their innocence.

“
We
had better all be going,” said Seymour heavily; “we have done all we can to help.”

“
Will
you understand my motives,” asked Father Brown quietly, “if I say you have done
all you can to hurt?”

They
both started as if guiltily, and Cutler said sharply: “To hurt whom?”

“
To
hurt yourselves,” answered the priest. “I would not add to your troubles if it weren’t
common justice to warn you. You’ve done nearly everything you could do to hang
yourselves, if this actor should be acquitted. They’ll be sure to subpoena me;
I shall be bound to say that after the cry was heard each of you rushed into
the room in a wild state and began quarrelling about a dagger. As far as my
words on oath can go, you might either of you have done it. You hurt yourselves
with that; and then Captain Cutler must have hurt himself with the dagger.”

“
Hurt
myself!” exclaimed the Captain, with contempt. “A silly little scratch.”

“
Which
drew blood,” replied the priest, nodding. “We know there’s blood on the brass now.
And so we shall never know whether there was blood on it before.”

There
was a silence; and then Seymour said, with an emphasis quite alien to his daily
accent: “But I saw a man in the passage.”

“
I
know you did,” answered the cleric Brown with a face of wood, “so did Captain Cutler.
That’s what seems so improbable.”

Before
either could make sufficient sense of it even to answer, Father Brown had politely
excused himself and gone stumping up the road with his stumpy old umbrella.

As
modern newspapers are conducted, the most honest and most important news is the
police news. If it be true that in the twentieth century more space is given to
murder than to politics, it is for the excellent reason that murder is a more serious
subject. But even this would hardly explain the enormous omnipresence and
widely distributed detail of “The Bruno Case,” or “The Passage Mystery,” in the
Press of London and the provinces. So vast was the excitement that for some weeks
the Press really told the truth; and the reports of examination and cross-examination,
if interminable, even if intolerable are at least reliable. The true reason, of
course, was the coincidence of persons. The victim was a popular actress; the
accused was a popular actor; and the accused had been caught red-handed, as it
were, by the most popular soldier of the patriotic season. In those
extraordinary circumstances the Press was paralysed into probity and accuracy;
and the rest of this somewhat singular business can practically be recorded
from reports of Bruno’s trial.

The
trial was presided over by Mr Justice Monkhouse, one of those who are jeered at
as humorous judges, but who are generally much more serious than the serious judges,
for their levity comes from a living impatience of professional solemnity;
while the serious judge is really filled with frivolity, because he is filled
with vanity. All the chief actors being of a worldly importance, the barristers
were well balanced; the prosecutor for the Crown was Sir Walter Cowdray, a
heavy, but weighty advocate of the sort that knows how to seem English and
trustworthy, and how to be rhetorical with reluctance. The prisoner was
defended by Mr Patrick Butler, K.C., who was mistaken for a mere flaneur by those
who misunderstood the Irish character — and those who had not been examined by
him. The medical evidence involved no contradictions, the doctor, whom Seymour
had summoned on the spot, agreeing with the eminent surgeon who had later
examined the body. Aurora Rome had been stabbed with some sharp instrument such
as a knife or dagger; some instrument, at least, of which the blade was short.
The wound was just over the heart, and she had died instantly. When the doctor
first saw her she could hardly have been dead for twenty minutes. Therefore
when Father Brown found her she could hardly have been dead for three.

Some
official detective evidence followed, chiefly concerned with the presence or absence
of any proof of a struggle; the only suggestion of this was the tearing of the
dress at the shoulder, and this did not seem to fit in particularly well with
the direction and finality of the blow. When these details had been supplied,
though not explained, the first of the important witnesses was called.

Sir
Wilson Seymour gave evidence as he did everything else that he did at all — not
only well, but perfectly. Though himself much more of a public man than the judge,
he conveyed exactly the fine shade of self-effacement before the King’s justice;
and though everyone looked at him as they would at the Prime Minister or the
Archbishop of Canterbury, they could have said nothing of his part in it but
that it was that of a private gentleman, with an accent on the noun. He was also
refreshingly lucid, as he was on the committees. He had been calling on Miss
Rome at the theatre; he had met Captain Cutler there; they had been joined for
a short time by the accused, who had then returned to his own dressing-room;
they had then been joined by a Roman Catholic priest, who asked for the
deceased lady and said his name was Brown. Miss Rome had then gone just outside
the theatre to the entrance of the passage, in order to point out to Captain
Cutler a flower-shop at which he was to buy her some more flowers; and the
witness had remained in the room, exchanging a few words with the priest. He
had then distinctly heard the deceased, having sent the Captain on his errand,
turn round laughing and run down the passage towards its other end, where was
the prisoner’s dressing-room. In idle curiosity as to the rapid movement of his
friends, he had strolled out to the head of the passage himself and looked down
it towards the prisoner’s door. Did he see anything in the passage? Yes; he saw
something in the passage.

Sir
Walter Cowdray allowed an impressive interval, during which the witness looked down,
and for all his usual composure seemed to have more than his usual pallor. Then
the barrister said in a lower voice, which seemed at once sympathetic and
creepy: “Did you see it distinctly?”

Sir
Wilson Seymour, however moved, had his excellent brains in full working-order. “Very
distinctly as regards its outline, but quite indistinctly, indeed not at all,
as regards the details inside the outline. The passage is of such length that
anyone in the middle of it appears quite black against the light at the other
end.” The witness lowered his steady eyes once more and added: “I had noticed
the fact before, when Captain Cutler first entered it.” There was another
silence, and the judge leaned forward and made a note.

“
Well,”
said Sir Walter patiently, “what was the outline like? Was it, for instance, like
the figure of the murdered woman?”

“
Not
in the least,” answered Seymour quietly.

“
What
did it look like to you?”

“
It
looked to me,” replied the witness, “like a tall man.”

Everyone
in court kept his eyes riveted on his pen, or his umbrella-handle, or his book,
or his boots or whatever he happened to be looking at. They seemed to be holding
their eyes away from the prisoner by main force; but they felt his figure in
the dock, and they felt it as gigantic. Tall as Bruno was to the eye, he seemed
to swell taller and taller when all eyes had been torn away from him.

Cowdray
was resuming his seat with his solemn face, smoothing his black silk robes, and
white silk whiskers. Sir Wilson was leaving the witness-box, after a few final particulars
to which there were many other witnesses, when the counsel for the defence
sprang up and stopped him.