The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (51 page)

Over
the black pine-wood came flying and flashing in the moon a naked sword — such a
slender and sparkling rapier as may have fought many an unjust duel in that ancient
park. It fell on the pathway far in front of him and lay there glistening like
a large needle. He ran like a hare and bent to look at it. Seen at close
quarters it had rather a showy look: the big red jewels in the hilt and guard
were a little dubious. But there were other red drops upon the blade which were
not dubious.

He
looked round wildly in the direction from which the dazzling missile had come, and
saw that at this point the sable facade of fir and pine was interrupted by a
smaller road at right angles; which, when he turned it, brought him in full view
of the long, lighted house, with a lake and fountains in front of it. Nevertheless,
he did not look at this, having something more interesting to look at.

Above
him, at the angle of the steep green bank of the terraced garden, was one of those
small picturesque surprises common in the old landscape gardening; a kind of
small round hill or dome of grass, like a giant mole-hill, ringed and crowned
with three concentric fences of roses, and having a sundial in the highest
point in the centre. Kidd could see the finger of the dial stand up dark
against the sky like the dorsal fin of a shark and the vain moonlight clinging
to that idle clock. But he saw something else clinging to it also, for one wild
moment — the figure of a man.

Though
he saw it there only for a moment, though it was outlandish and incredible in costume,
being clad from neck to heel in tight crimson, with glints of gold, yet he knew
in one flash of moonlight who it was. That white face flung up to heaven,
clean-shaven and so unnaturally young, like Byron with a Roman nose, those
black curls already grizzled — he had seen the thousand public portraits of Sir
Claude Champion. The wild red figure reeled an instant against the sundial; the
next it had rolled down the steep bank and lay at the American’s feet, faintly
moving one arm. A gaudy, unnatural gold ornament on the arm suddenly reminded
Kidd of Romeo and Juliet; of course the tight crimson suit was part of the
play. But there was a long red stain down the bank from which the man had
rolled — that was no part of the play. He had been run through the body.

Mr
Calhoun Kidd shouted and shouted again. Once more he seemed to hear phantasmal footsteps,
and started to find another figure already near him. He knew the figure, and
yet it terrified him. The dissipated youth who had called himself Dalroy had a
horribly quiet way with him; if Boulnois failed to keep appointments that had
been made, Dalroy had a sinister air of keeping appointments that hadn’t. The
moonlight discoloured everything, against Dalroy’s red hair his wan face looked
not so much white as pale green.

All
this morbid impressionism must be Kidd’s excuse for having cried out, brutally and
beyond all reason: “Did you do this, you devil?”

James
Dalroy smiled his unpleasing smile; but before he could speak, the fallen figure
made another movement of the arm, waving vaguely towards the place where the
sword fell; then came a moan, and then it managed to speak.

“
Boulnois
. . . Boulnois, I say . . . Boulnois did it . . . jealous of me . . . he was jealous,
he was, he was . . .”

Kidd
bent his head down to hear more, and just managed to catch the words:

“
Boulnois
. . . with my own sword . . . he threw it . . .”

Again
the failing hand waved towards the sword, and then fell rigid with a thud. In Kidd
rose from its depth all that acrid humour that is the strange salt of the seriousness
of his race.

“
See
here,” he said sharply and with command, “you must fetch a doctor. This man’s dead.”

“
And
a priest, too, I suppose,” said Dalroy in an undecipherable manner. “All these Champions
are papists.”

The
American knelt down by the body, felt the heart, propped up the head and used some
last efforts at restoration; but before the other journalist reappeared, followed
by a doctor and a priest, he was already prepared to assert they were too late.

“
Were
you too late also?” asked the doctor, a solid prosperous-looking man, with conventional
moustache and whiskers, but a lively eye, which darted over Kidd dubiously.

“
In
one sense,” drawled the representative of the Sun. “I was too late to save the man,
but I guess I was in time to hear something of importance. I heard the dead man
denounce his assassin.”

“
And
who was the assassin?” asked the doctor, drawing his eyebrows together.

“
Boulnois,”
said Calhoun Kidd, and whistled softly.

The
doctor stared at him gloomily with a reddening brow — but he did not contradict.
Then the priest, a shorter figure in the background, said mildly: “I understood
that Mr Boulnois was not coming to Pendragon Park this evening.”

“
There
again,” said the Yankee grimly, “I may be in a position to give the old country
a fact or two. Yes, sir, John Boulnois was going to stay in all this evening; he
fixed up a real good appointment there with me. But John Boulnois changed his
mind; John Boulnois left his home abruptly and all alone, and came over to this
darned Park an hour or so ago. His butler told me so. I think we hold what the
all-wise police call a clue — have you sent for them?”

“
Yes,”
said the doctor, “but we haven’t alarmed anyone else yet.”

“
Does
Mrs Boulnois know?” asked James Dalroy, and again Kidd was conscious of an irrational
desire to hit him on his curling mouth.

“
I
have not told her,” said the doctor gruffly — “but here come the police.”

The
little priest had stepped out into the main avenue, and now returned with the fallen
sword, which looked ludicrously large and theatrical when attached to his dumpy
figure, at once clerical and commonplace. “Just before the police come,” he
said apologetically, “has anyone got a light?”

The
Yankee journalist took an electric torch from his pocket, and the priest held it
close to the middle part of the blade, which he examined with blinking care. Then,
without glancing at the point or pommel, he handed the long weapon to the doctor.

“
I
fear I’m no use here,” he said, with a brief sigh. “I’ll say good night to you,
gentlemen.” And he walked away up the dark avenue towards the house, his hands clasped
behind him and his big head bent in cogitation.

The
rest of the group made increased haste towards the lodge-gates, where an inspector
and two constables could already be seen in consultation with the lodge-keeper.
But the little priest only walked slower and slower in the dim cloister of
pine, and at last stopped dead, on the steps of the house. It was his silent
way of acknowledging an equally silent approach; for there came towards him a
presence that might have satisfied even Calhoun Kidd’s demands for a lovely and
aristocratic ghost. It was a young woman in silvery satins of a Renascence
design; she had golden hair in two long shining ropes, and a face so startingly
pale between them that she might have been chryselephantine — made, that is,
like some old Greek statues, out of ivory and gold. But her eyes were very
bright, and her voice, though low, was confident.

“
Father
Brown?” she said.

“
Mrs
Boulnois?” he replied gravely. Then he looked at her and immediately said: “I see
you know about Sir Claude.”

“
How
do you know I know?” she asked steadily.

He
did not answer the question, but asked another: “Have you seen your husband?”

“
My
husband is at home,” she said. “He has nothing to do with this.”

Again
he did not answer; and the woman drew nearer to him, with a curiously intense expression
on her face.

“
Shall
I tell you something more?” she said, with a rather fearful smile. “I don’t think
he did it, and you don’t either.” Father Brown returned her gaze with a long,
grave stare, and then nodded, yet more gravely.

“
Father
Brown,” said the lady, “I am going to tell you all I know, but I want you to do
me a favour first. Will you tell me why you haven’t jumped to the conclusion of
poor John’s guilt, as all the rest have done? Don’t mind what you say: I — I know
about the gossip and the appearances that are against me.”

Father
Brown looked honestly embarrassed, and passed his hand across his forehead. “Two
very little things,” he said. “At least, one’s very trivial and the other very
vague. But such as they are, they don’t fit in with Mr Boulnois being the murderer.”

He
turned his blank, round face up to the stars and continued absentmindedly: “To take
the vague idea first. I attach a good deal of importance to vague ideas. All
those things that ‘aren’t evidence’ are what convince me. I think a moral impossibility
the biggest of all impossibilities. I know your husband only slightly, but I
think this crime of his, as generally conceived, something very like a moral
impossibility. Please do not think I mean that Boulnois could not be so wicked.
Anybody can be wicked — as wicked as he chooses. We can direct our moral wills;
but we can’t generally change our instinctive tastes and ways of doing things.
Boulnois might commit a murder, but not this murder. He would not snatch
Romeo’s sword from its romantic scabbard; or slay his foe on the sundial as on
a kind of altar; or leave his body among the roses, or fling the sword away
among the pines. If Boulnois killed anyone he’d do it quietly and heavily, as
he’d do any other doubtful thing — take a tenth glass of port, or read a loose
Greek poet. No, the romantic setting is not like Boulnois. It’s more like Champion.”

“
Ah!”
she said, and looked at him with eyes like diamonds.

“
And
the trivial thing was this,” said Brown. “There were finger-prints on that sword;
finger-prints can be detected quite a time after they are made if they’re on
some polished surface like glass or steel. These were on a polished surface.
They were half-way down the blade of the sword. Whose prints they were I have
no earthly clue; but why should anybody hold a sword half-way down? It was a
long sword, but length is an advantage in lunging at an enemy. At least, at
most enemies. At all enemies except one.”

“
Except
one,” she repeated.

“
There
is only one enemy,” said Father Brown, “whom it is easier to kill with a dagger
than a sword.”

“
I
know,” said the woman. “Oneself.”

There
was a long silence, and then the priest said quietly but abruptly: “Am I right,
then? Did Sir Claude kill himself?”

“
Yes”
she said, with a face like marble. “I saw him do it.”

“
He
died,” said Father Brown, “for love of you?”

An
extraordinary expression flashed across her face, very different from pity, modesty,
remorse, or anything her companion had expected: her voice became suddenly
strong and full. “I don’t believe,” she said, “he ever cared about me a rap. He
hated my husband.”

“
Why?”
asked the other, and turned his round face from the sky to the lady.

“
He
hated my husband because . . . it is so strange I hardly know how to say it . .
. because . . .”

“
Yes?”
said Brown patiently.

“
Because
my husband wouldn’t hate him.”

Father
Brown only nodded, and seemed still to be listening; he differed from most detectives
in fact and fiction in a small point — he never pretended not to understand
when he understood perfectly well.

Mrs
Boulnois drew near once more with the same contained glow of certainty. “My husband,”
she said, “is a great man. Sir Claude Champion was not a great man: he was a
celebrated and successful man. My husband has never been celebrated or successful;
and it is the solemn truth that he has never dreamed of being so. He no more
expects to be famous for thinking than for smoking cigars. On all that side he
has a sort of splendid stupidity. He has never grown up. He still liked
Champion exactly as he liked him at school; he admired him as he would admire a
conjuring trick done at the dinner-table. But he couldn’t be got to conceive
the notion of envying Champion. And Champion wanted to be envied. He went mad
and killed himself for that.”

“
Yes,”
said Father Brown; “I think I begin to understand.”

“
Oh,
don’t you see?” she cried; “the whole picture is made for that — the place is planned
for it. Champion put John in a little house at his very door, like a dependant
— to make him feel a failure. He never felt it. He thinks no more about such
things than — than an absent-minded lion. Champion would burst in on John’s
shabbiest hours or homeliest meals with some dazzling present or announcement
or expedition that made it like the visit of Haroun Alraschid, and John would
accept or refuse amiably with one eye off, so to speak, like one lazy schoolboy
agreeing or disagreeing with another. After five years of it John had not
turned a hair; and Sir Claude Champion was a monomaniac.”

“
And
Haman began to tell them,” said Father Brown, “of all the things wherein the king
had honoured him; and he said: ‘All these things profit me nothing while I see
Mordecai the Jew sitting in the gate.’”