The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (41 page)

The
girl looked at him, and then rose and put her gloves on. “Yes,” she said, “I’ll
be there”; and almost instantly left the place.

That
night the detective and the priest were still talking of the matter as they drew
near the Fulham house, a tenement strangely mean even for a temporary residence
of the Carstairs family.

“
Of
course the superficial, on reflection,” said Flambeau, “would think first of this
Australian brother who’s been in trouble before, who’s come back so suddenly
and who’s just the man to have shabby confederates. But I can’t see how he can
come into the thing by any process of thought, unless . . .”

“
Well?”
asked his companion patiently.

Flambeau
lowered his voice. “Unless the girl’s lover comes in, too, and he would be the blacker
villain. The Australian chap did know that Hawker wanted the coin. But I can’t
see how on earth he could know that Hawker had got it, unless Hawker signalled
to him or his representative across the shore.”

“
That
is true,” assented the priest, with respect.

“
Have
you noted another thing?” went on Flambeau eagerly. “this Hawker hears his love
insulted, but doesn’t strike till he’s got to the soft sand-hills, where he can
be victor in a mere sham-fight. If he’d struck amid rocks and sea, he might have
hurt his ally.”

“
That
is true again,” said Father Brown, nodding.

“
And
now, take it from the start. It lies between few people, but at least three. You
want one person for suicide; two people for murder; but at least three people
for blackmail”

“
Why?”
asked the priest softly.

“
Well,
obviously,” cried his friend, “there must be one to be exposed; one to threaten
exposure; and one at least whom exposure would horrify.”

After
a long ruminant pause, the priest said: “You miss a logical step. Three persons
are needed as ideas. Only two are needed as agents.”

“
What
can you mean?” asked the other.

“
Why
shouldn’t a blackmailer,” asked Brown, in a low voice, “threaten his victim with
himself? Suppose a wife became a rigid teetotaller in order to frighten her
husband into concealing his pub-frequenting, and then wrote him blackmailing
letters in another hand, threatening to tell his wife! Why shouldn’t it work?
Suppose a father forbade a son to gamble and then, following him in a good
disguise, threatened the boy with his own sham paternal strictness! Suppose —
but, here we are, my friend.”

“
My
God!” cried Flambeau; “you don’t mean —”

An
active figure ran down the steps of the house and showed under the golden lamplight
the unmistakable head that resembled the Roman coin. “Miss Carstairs,” said Hawker
without ceremony, “wouldn’t go in till you came.”

“
Well,”
observed Brown confidently, “don’t you think it’s the best thing she can do to stop
outside — with you to look after her? You see, I rather guess you have guessed
it all yourself.”

“
Yes,”
said the young man, in an undertone, “I guessed on the sands and now I know; that
was why I let him fall soft.”

Taking
a latchkey from the girl and the coin from Hawker, Flambeau let himself and his
friend into the empty house and passed into the outer parlour. It was empty of all
occupants but one. The man whom Father Brown had seen pass the tavern was standing
against the wall as if at bay; unchanged, save that he had taken off his black
coat and was wearing a brown dressing-gown.

“
We
have come,” said Father Brown politely, “to give back this coin to its owner.” And
he handed it to the man with the nose.

Flambeau’s
eyes rolled. “Is this man a coin-collector?” he asked.

“
This
man is Mr Arthur Carstairs,” said the priest positively, “and he is a coin-collector
of a somewhat singular kind.”

The
man changed colour so horribly that the crooked nose stood out on his face like
a separate and comic thing. He spoke, nevertheless, with a sort of despairing dignity.
“You shall see, then,” he said, “that I have not lost all the family qualities.”
And he turned suddenly and strode into an inner room, slamming the door.

“
Stop
him!” shouted Father Brown, bounding and half falling over a chair; and, after a
wrench or two, Flambeau had the door open. But it was too late. In dead silence
Flambeau strode across and telephoned for doctor and police.

An
empty medicine bottle lay on the floor. Across the table the body of the man in
the brown dressing-gown lay amid his burst and gaping brown-paper parcels; out of
which poured and rolled, not Roman, but very modern English coins.

The
priest held up the bronze head of Caesar. “This,” he said, “was all that was left
of the Carstairs Collection.”

After
a silence he went on, with more than common gentleness: “It was a cruel will his
wicked father made, and you see he did resent it a little. He hated the Roman
money he had, and grew fonder of the real money denied him. He not only sold
the Collection bit by bit, but sank bit by bit to the basest ways of making
money — even to blackmailing his own family in a disguise. He blackmailed his
brother from Australia for his little forgotten crime (that is why he took the
cab to Wagga Wagga in Putney), he blackmailed his sister for the theft he alone
could have noticed. And that, by the way, is why she had that supernatural
guess when he was away on the sand-dunes. Mere figure and gait, however
distant, are more likely to remind us of somebody than a well-made-up face
quite close.”

There
was another silence. “Well,” growled the detective, “and so this great numismatist
and coin-collector was nothing but a vulgar miser.”

“
Is
there so great a difference?” asked Father Brown, in the same strange, indulgent
tone. “What is there wrong about a miser that is not often as wrong about a
collector? What is wrong, except . . . thou shalt not make to thyself any
graven image; thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them, for I . . . but
we must go and see how the poor young people are getting on.”

“
I
think,” said Flambeau, “that in spite of everything, they are probably getting on
very well.”

MR
EDWARD NUTT, the industrious editor of the Daily Reformer, sat at his desk, opening
letters and marking proofs to the merry tune of a typewriter, worked by a
vigorous young lady.

He
was a stoutish, fair man, in his shirt-sleeves; his movements were resolute,
his mouth firm and his tones final; but his round, rather babyish blue eyes had
a bewildered and even wistful look that rather contradicted all this. Nor
indeed was the expression altogether misleading. It might truly be said of him,
as for many journalists in authority, that his most familiar emotion was one of
continuous fear; fear of libel actions, fear of lost advertisements, fear of misprints,
fear of the sack.

His
life was a series of distracted compromises between the proprietor of the paper
(and of him), who was a senile soap-boiler with three ineradicable mistakes in his
mind, and the very able staff he had collected to run the paper; some of whom
were brilliant and experienced men and (what was even worse) sincere enthusiasts
for the political policy of the paper.

A
letter from one of these lay immediately before him, and rapid and resolute as he
was, he seemed almost to hesitate before opening it. He took up a strip of proof
instead, ran down it with a blue eye, and a blue pencil, altered the word “adultery”
to the word “impropriety,” and the word “Jew” to the word “Alien,” rang a bell
and sent it flying upstairs.

Then,
with a more thoughtful eye, he ripped open the letter from his more distinguished
contributor, which bore a postmark of Devonshire, and read as follows:

DEAR
NUTT, — As I see you’re working Spooks and Dooks at the same time, what about an
article on that rum business of the Eyres of Exmoor; or as the old women call
it down here, the Devil’s Ear of Eyre? The head of the family, you know, is the
Duke of Exmoor; he is one of the few really stiff old Tory aristocrats left, a
sound old crusted tyrant it is quite in our line to make trouble about. And I
think I’m on the track of a story that will make trouble.

Of
course I don’t believe in the old legend about James I; and as for you, you don’t
believe in anything, not even in journalism. The legend, you’ll probably remember,
was about the blackest business in English history — the poisoning of Overbury
by that witch’s cat Frances Howard, and the quite mysterious terror which
forced the King to pardon the murderers. There was a lot of alleged witchcraft
mixed up with it; and the story goes that a man-servant listening at the
keyhole heard the truth in a talk between the King and Carr; and the bodily ear
with which he heard grew large and monstrous as by magic, so awful was the secret.
And though he had to be loaded with lands and gold and made an ancestor of
dukes, the elf-shaped ear is still recurrent in the family. Well, you don’t believe
in black magic; and if you did, you couldn’t use it for copy. If a miracle
happened in your office, you’d have to hush it up, now so many bishops are
agnostics. But that is not the point The point is that there really is something
queer about Exmoor and his family; something quite natural, I dare say, but
quite abnormal. And the Ear is in it somehow, I fancy; either a symbol or a
delusion or disease or something. Another tradition says that Cavaliers just
after James I began to wear their hair long only to cover the ear of the first
Lord Exmoor. This also is no doubt fanciful.

The
reason I point it out to you is this: It seems to me that we make a mistake in attacking
aristocracy entirely for its champagne and diamonds. Most men rather admire the
nobs for having a good time, but I think we surrender too much when we admit
that aristocracy has made even the aristocrats happy. I suggest a series of
articles pointing out how dreary, how inhuman, how downright diabolist, is the
very smell and atmosphere of some of these great houses. There are plenty of
instances; but you couldn’t begin with a better one than the Ear of the Eyres.
By the end of the week I think I can get you the truth about it. — Yours ever,
FRANCIS FINN.

Mr
Nutt reflected a moment, staring at his left boot; then he called out in a strong,
loud and entirely lifeless voice, in which every syllable sounded alike: “Miss
Barlow, take down a letter to Mr Finn, please.”

DEAR
FINN, — I think it would do; copy should reach us second post Saturday. — Yours,
E. NUTT.

This
elaborate epistle he articulated as if it were all one word; and Miss Barlow rattled
it down as if it were all one word. Then he took up another strip of proof and
a blue pencil, and altered the word “supernatural” to the word “marvellous”,
and the expression “shoot down” to the expression “repress”.

In
such happy, healthful activities did Mr Nutt disport himself, until the ensuing
Saturday found him at the same desk, dictating to the same typist, and using the
same blue pencil on the first instalment of Mr Finn’s revelations. The opening
was a sound piece of slashing invective about the evil secrets of princes, and
despair in the high places of the earth. Though written violently, it was in
excellent English; but the editor, as usual, had given to somebody else the
task of breaking it up into sub-headings, which were of a spicier sort, as
“Peeress and Poisons”, and “The Eerie Ear”, “The Eyres in their Eyrie”, and so
on through a hundred happy changes. Then followed the legend of the Ear,
amplified from Finn’s first letter, and then the substance of his later
discoveries, as follows:

I
know it is the practice of journalists to put the end of the story at the beginning
and call it a headline. I know that journalism largely consists in saying “Lord
Jones Dead” to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive. Your present
correspondent thinks that this, like many other journalistic customs, is bad
journalism; and that the Daily Reformer has to set a better example in such
things. He proposes to tell his story as it occurred, step by step. He will use
the real names of the parties, who in most cases are ready to confirm his testimony.
As for the headlines, the sensational proclamations — they will come at the
end.

I
was walking along a public path that threads through a private Devonshire orchard
and seems to point towards Devonshire cider, when I came suddenly upon just
such a place as the path suggested. It was a long, low inn, consisting really
of a cottage and two barns; thatched all over with the thatch that looks like
brown and grey hair grown before history. But outside the door was a sign which
called it the Blue Dragon; and under the sign was one of those long rustic
tables that used to stand outside most of the free English inns, before teetotallers
and brewers between them destroyed freedom. And at this table sat three
gentlemen, who might have lived a hundred years ago.

Now
that I know them all better, there is no difficulty about disentangling the impressions;
but just then they looked like three very solid ghosts. The dominant figure,
both because he was bigger in all three dimensions, and because he sat
centrally in the length of the table, facing me, was a tall, fat man dressed
completely in black, with a rubicund, even apoplectic visage, but a rather bald
and rather bothered brow. Looking at him again, more strictly, I could not
exactly say what it was that gave me the sense of antiquity, except the antique
cut of his white clerical necktie and the barred wrinkles across his brow.

It
was even less easy to fix the impression in the case of the man at the right end
of the table, who, to say truth, was as commonplace a person as could be seen
anywhere, with a round, brown-haired head and a round snub nose, but also clad
in clerical black, of a stricter cut. It was only when I saw his broad curved
hat lying on the table beside him that I realized why I connected him with
anything ancient. He was a Roman Catholic priest.

Perhaps
the third man, at the other end of the table, had really more to do with it than
the rest, though he was both slighter in physical presence and more inconsiderate
in his dress. His lank limbs were clad, I might also say clutched, in very
tight grey sleeves and pantaloons; he had a long, sallow, aquiline face which
seemed somehow all the more saturnine because his lantern jaws were imprisoned
in his collar and neck-cloth more in the style of the old stock; and his hair
(which ought to have been dark brown) was of an odd dim, russet colour which,
in conjunction with his yellow face, looked rather purple than red. The
unobtrusive yet unusual colour was all the more notable because his hair was
almost unnaturally healthy and curling, and he wore it full. But, after all
analysis, I incline to think that what gave me my first old-fashioned impression
was simply a set of tall, old-fashioned wine-glasses, one or two lemons and two
churchwarden pipes. And also, perhaps, the old-world errand on which I had
come.

Being
a hardened reporter, and it being apparently a public inn, I did not need to summon
much of my impudence to sit down at the long table and order some cider. The
big man in black seemed very learned, especially about local antiquities; the
small man in black, though he talked much less, surprised me with a yet wider
culture. So we got on very well together; but the third man, the old gentleman
in the tight pantaloons, seemed rather distant and haughty, until I slid into
the subject of the Duke of Exmoor and his ancestry.

I
thought the subject seemed to embarrass the other two a little; but it broke the
spell of the third man’s silence most successfully. Speaking with restraint and
with the accent of a highly educated gentleman, and puffing at intervals at his
long churchwarden pipe, he proceeded to tell me some of the most horrible stories
I have ever heard in my life: how one of the Eyres in the former ages had
hanged his own father; and another had his wife scourged at the cart tail through
the village; and another had set fire to a church full of children, and so on.

Some
of the tales, indeed, are not fit for public print — such as the story of the Scarlet
Nuns, the abominable story of the Spotted Dog, or the thing that was done in
the quarry. And all this red roll of impieties came from his thin, genteel lips
rather primly than otherwise, as he sat sipping the wine out of his tall, thin
glass.

I
could see that the big man opposite me was trying, if anything, to stop him; but
he evidently held the old gentleman in considerable respect, and could not venture
to do so at all abruptly. And the little priest at the other end of the table,
though free from any such air of embarrassment, looked steadily at the table,
and seemed to listen to the recital with great pain — as well as he might.

“
You
don’t seem,” I said to the narrator, “to be very fond of the Exmoor pedigree.”

He
looked at me a moment, his lips still prim, but whitening and tightening; then he
deliberately broke his long pipe and glass on the table and stood up, the very
picture of a perfect gentleman with the framing temper of a fiend.

“
These
gentlemen,” he said, “will tell you whether I have cause to like it. The curse of
the Eyres of old has lain heavy on this country, and many have suffered from it.
They know there are none who have suffered from it as I have.” And with that he
crushed a piece of the fallen glass under his heel, and strode away among the
green twilight of the twinkling apple-trees.

“
That
is an extraordinary old gentleman,” I said to the other two; “do you happen to know
what the Exmoor family has done to him? Who is he?”

The
big man in black was staring at me with the wild air of a baffled bull; he did not
at first seem to take it in. Then he said at last, “Don’t you know who he is?”

I
reaffirmed my ignorance, and there was another silence; then the little priest said,
still looking at the table, “That is the Duke of Exmoor.”

Then,
before I could collect my scattered senses, he added equally quietly, but with an
air of regularizing things: “My friend here is Doctor Mull, the Duke’s librarian.
My name is Brown.”

“
But,”
I stammered, “if that is the Duke, why does he damn all the old dukes like that?”

“
He
seems really to believe,” answered the priest called Brown, “that they have left
a curse on him.” Then he added, with some irrelevance, “That’s why he wears a
wig.”

It
was a few moments before his meaning dawned on me. “You don’t mean that fable about
the fantastic ear?” I demanded. “I’ve heard of it, of course, but surely it
must be a superstitious yarn spun out of something much simpler. I’ve sometimes
thought it was a wild version of one of those mutilation stories. They used to
crop criminals’ ears in the sixteenth century.”

“
I
hardly think it was that,” answered the little man thoughtfully, “but it is not
outside ordinary science or natural law for a family to have some deformity frequently
reappearing — such as one ear bigger than the other.”

The
big librarian had buried his big bald brow in his big red hands, like a man trying
to think out his duty. “No,” he groaned. “You do the man a wrong after all.
Understand, I’ve no reason to defend him, or even keep faith with him. He has
been a tyrant to me as to everybody else. Don’t fancy because you see him sitting
here that he isn’t a great lord in the worst sense of the word. He would fetch
a man a mile to ring a bell a yard off — if it would summon another man three
miles to fetch a matchbox three yards off. He must have a footman to carry his
walking-stick; a body servant to hold up his opera-glasses —”