The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (66 page)

‘
I’m
most awfully sorry,’ he said with sincere distress. ‘I beg your pardon for being
so rude; pray forgive me.’

Fiennes
looked at him curiously. ‘I sometimes think you are more of a mystery than any of
the mysteries,’ he said. ‘But anyhow, if you don’t believe in the mystery of the
dog, at least you can’t get over the mystery of the man. You can’t deny that at
the very moment when the beast came back from the sea and bellowed, his master’s
soul was driven out of his body by the blow of some unseen power that no mortal
man can trace or even imagine. And as for the lawyer — I don’t go only by the
dog — there are other curious details, too. He struck me as a smooth, smiling,
equivocal sort of person; and one of his tricks seemed like a sort of hint. You
know the doctor and the police were on the spot very quickly; Valentine was
brought back when walking away from the house, and he telephoned instantly.
That, with the secluded house, small numbers, and enclosed space, made it
pretty possible to search everybody who could have been near; and everybody was
thoroughly searched — for a weapon. The whole house, garden, and shore were combed
for a weapon. The disappearance of the dagger is almost as crazy as the disappearance
of the man.’

‘
The
disappearance of the dagger,’ said Father Brown, nodding. He seemed to have become
suddenly attentive.

‘
Well,’
continued Fiennes, ‘I told you that man Traill had a trick of fidgeting with his
tie and tie-pin — especially his tie-pin. His pin, like himself, was at once
showy and old-fashioned. It had one of those stones with concentric coloured
rings that look like an eye; and his own concentration on it got on my nerves,
as if he had been a Cyclops with one eye in the middle of his body. But the pin
was not only large but long; and it occurred to me that his anxiety about its
adjustment was because it was even longer than it looked; as long as a stiletto
in fact.’

Father
Brown nodded thoughtfully. ‘Was any other instrument ever suggested?’ he asked.

‘
There
was another suggestion,’ answered Fiennes, ‘from one of the young Druces — the cousins,
I mean. Neither Herbert nor Harry Druce would have struck one at first as
likely to be of assistance in scientific detection; but while Herbert was really
the traditional type of heavy Dragoon, caring for nothing but horses and being
an ornament to the Horse Guards, his younger brother Harry had been in the
Indian Police and knew something about such things. Indeed, in his own way he
was quite clever; and I rather fancy he had been too clever; I mean he had left
the police through breaking some red-tape regulations and taking some sort of
risk and responsibility of his own. Anyhow, he was in some sense a detective out
of work, and threw himself into this business with more than the ardour of an
amateur. And it was with him that I had an argument about the weapon — an argument
that led — to something new. It began by his countering my description of the
dog barking at Traill; and he said that a dog at his worst didn’t bark, but
growled.’

‘
He
was quite right there,’ observed the priest.

‘
This
young fellow went on to say that, if it came to that, he’d heard Nox growling at
other people before then; and among others at Floyd, the secretary. I retorted
that his own argument answered itself; for the crime couldn’t be brought home
to two or three people, and least of all to Floyd, who was as innocent as a
harum-scarum schoolboy, and had been seen by everybody all the time perched
above the garden hedge with his fan of red hair as conspicuous as a scarlet
cockatoo.

‘
I
know there’s difficulties anyhow,’ said my colleague, ‘but I wish you’d come with
me down the garden a minute. I want to show you something I don’t think any one
else has seen.’ This was on the very day of the discovery, and the garden was
just as it had been. The step-ladder was still standing by the hedge, and just
under the hedge my guide stopped and disentangled something from the deep
grass. It was the sheers used for clipping the hedge, and on the point of one
of them was a smear of blood.

There
was a short silence, and then Father Brown said suddenly; ‘What was the lawyer there
for?’

‘
He
told us the Colonel sent for him to alter his will,’ answered Fiennes. ‘And, by
the way, there was another thing about the business of the will that I ought to
mention. You see, the will wasn’t actually signed in the summer-house that afternoon.’

‘
I
suppose not,’ said Father Brown; ‘there would have to be two witnesses.’

‘
The
lawyer actually came down the day before and it was signed then; but he was sent
for again next day because the old man had a doubt about one of the witnesses
and had to be reassured.’

‘
Who
were the witnesses?’ asked Father Brown.

‘
That’s
just the point,’ replied his informant eagerly, ‘the witnesses were Floyd, the secretary,
and this Dr Valentine, the foreign sort of surgeon or whatever he is; and the
two had a quarrel. Now I’m bound to say that the secretary is something of a
busybody. He’s one of those hot and headlong people whose warmth of temperament
has unfortunately turned mostly to pugnacity and bristling suspicion; to
distrusting people instead of to trusting them. That sort of red-haired red-hot
fellow is always either universally credulous or universally incredulous; and
sometimes both. He was not only a Jack-of-all-trades, but he knew better than
all tradesmen. He not only knew everything, but he warned everybody against
everybody. All that must be taken into account in his suspicions about
Valentine; but in that particular case there seems to have been something
behind it. He said the name of Valentine was not really Valentine. He said he
had seen him elsewhere known by the name of De Villon. He said it would
invalidate the will; of course he was kind enough to explain to the lawyer what
the law was on that point. They were both in a frightful wax.’

Father
Brown laughed. ‘People often are when they are to witness a will,’ he said; ‘for
one thing, it means that they can’t have any legacy under it. But what did Dr
Valentine say? No doubt the universal secretary knew more about the doctor’s name
than the doctor did. But even the doctor might have some information about his
own name.’

Fiennes
paused a moment before he replied. ‘Dr Valentine took it in a curious way. Dr Valentine
is a curious man. His appearance is rather striking but very foreign. He is
young but wears a beard cut square; and his face is very pale, dreadfully pale
— and dreadfully serious. His eyes have a sort of ache in them, as if he ought
to wear glasses, or had given himself a headache with thinking; but he is quite
handsome and always very formally dressed, with a top hat and a dark coat and a
little red rosette. His manner is rather cold and haughty, and he has a way of
staring at you which is very disconcerting. When thus charged with having
changed his name, he merely stared like a sphinx and then said with a little
laugh that he supposed Americans had no names to change. At that I think the
Colonel also got into a fuss and said all sorts of angry things to the doctor;
all the more angry because of the doctor’s pretensions to a future place in his
family. But I shouldn’t have thought much of that but for a few words that I
happened to hear later, early in the afternoon of the tragedy. I don’t want to
make a lot of them, for they weren’t the sort of words on which one would like,
in the ordinary way, to play the eavesdropper. As I was passing out towards the
front gate with my two companions and the dog, I heard voices which told me
that Dr Valentine and Miss Druce had withdrawn for a moment in the shadow of
the house, in an angle behind a row of flowering plants, and were talking to
each other in passionate whisperings — sometimes almost like hissings; for it
was something of a lovers’ quarrel as well as a lovers’ tryst. Nobody repeats
the sort of things they said for the most part; but in an unfortunate business
like this I’m bound to say that there was repeated more than once a phrase
about killing somebody. In fact, the girl seemed to be begging him not to kill
somebody, or saying that no provocation could justify killing anybody; which
seems an unusual sort of talk to address to a gentleman who has dropped in to
tea.’

‘
Do
you know,’ asked the priest, ‘whether Dr Valentine seemed to be very angry after
the scene with the secretary and the Colonel — I mean about witnessing the
will?’

‘
By
all accounts,’ replied the other, ‘he wasn’t half so angry as the secretary was.
It was the secretary who went away raging after witnessing the will.’

‘
And
now,’ said Father Brown, ‘what about the will itself?’

‘
The
Colonel was a very wealthy man, and his will was important. Traill wouldn’t tell
us the alteration at that stage, but I have since heard only this morning in
fact — that most of the money was transferred from the son to the daughter. I
told you that Druce was wild with my friend Donald over his dissipated hours.’

‘
The
question of motive has been rather over-shadowed by the question of method,’ observed
Father Brown thoughtfully. ‘At that moment, apparently, Miss Druce was the
immediate gainer by the death.’

‘
Good
God! What a cold-blooded way of talking,’ cried Fiennes, staring at him. ‘You don’t
really mean to hint that she — ’

‘
Is
she going to marry that Dr Valentine?’ asked the other.

‘
Some
people are against it,’ answered his friend. ‘But he is liked and respected in the
place and is a skilled and devoted surgeon.’

‘
So
devoted a surgeon,’ said Father Brown, ‘that he had surgical instruments with him
when he went to call on the young lady at teatime. For he must have used a lancet
or something, and he never seems to have gone home.’

Fiennes
sprang to his feet and looked at him in a heat of inquiry. ’You suggest he might
have used the very same lancet — ’

Father
Brown shook his head. ‘All these suggestions are fancies just now,’ he said. ‘The
problem is not who did it or what did it, but how it was done. We might find
many men and even many tools — pins and shears and lancets. But how did a man
get into the room? How did even a pin get into it?’

He
was staring reflectively at the ceiling as he spoke, but as he said the last words
his eye cocked in an alert fashion as if he had suddenly seen a curious fly on
the ceiling.

‘
Well,
what would you do about it?’ asked the young man. ‘You have a lot of experience;
what would you advise now?’

‘
I’m
afraid I’m not much use,’ said Father Brown with a sigh. ‘I can’t suggest very much
without having ever been near the place or the people. For the moment you can
only go on with local inquiries. I gather that your friend from the Indian Police
is more or less in charge of your inquiry down there. I should run down and see
how he is getting on. See what he’s been doing in the way of amateur detection.
There may be news already.’

As
his guests, the biped and the quadruped, disappeared, Father Brown took up his pen
and went back to his interrupted occupation of planning a course of lectures on
the Encyclical Rerum Novarum. The subject was a large one and he had to recast
it more than once, so that he was somewhat similarly employed some two days
later when the big black dog again came bounding into the room and sprawled all
over him with enthusiasm and excitement. The master who followed the dog shared
the excitement if not the enthusiasm. He had been excited in a less pleasant
fashion, for his blue eyes seemed to start from his head and his eager face was
even a little pale.

‘
You
told me,’ he said abruptly and without preface, ‘to find out what Harry Druce was
doing. Do you know what he’s done?’ The priest did not reply, and the young man
went on in jerky tones: I’ll tell you what he’s done. He’s killed himself.’

Father
Brown’s lips moved only faintly, and there was nothing practical about what he was
saying — nothing that has anything to do with this story or this world.

‘
You
give me the creeps sometimes,’ said Fiennes. ‘Did you — did you expect this?’

‘
I
thought it possible,’ said Father Brown; ‘that was why I asked you to go and see
what he was doing. I hoped you might not be too late.’

‘
It
was I who found him,’ said Fiennes rather huskily. ‘It was the ugliest and most
uncanny thing I ever knew. I went down that old garden again, and I knew there was
something new and unnatural about it besides the murder. The flowers still tossed
about in blue masses on each side of the black entrance into the old grey
summer-house; but to me the blue flowers looked like blue devils dancing before
some dark cavern of the underworld. I looked all round, everything seemed to be
in its ordinary place. But the queer notion grew on me that there was something
wrong with the very shape of the sky. And then I saw what it was. The Rock of
Fortune always rose in the background beyond the garden hedge and against the
sea. The Rock of Fortune was gone.’

Father
Brown had lifted his head and was listening intently.

‘
It
was as if a mountain had walked away out of a landscape or a moon fallen from the
sky; though I knew, of course, that a touch at any time would have tipped the
thing over. Something possessed me and I rushed down that garden path like the
wind and went crashing through that hedge as if it were a spider’s web. It was
a thin hedge really, though its undisturbed trimness had made it serve all the
purposes of a wall. On the shore I found the loose rock fallen from its pedestal;
and poor Harry Druce lay like a wreck underneath it. One arm was thrown round
it in a sort of embrace as if he had pulled it down on himself; and on the
broad brown sands beside it, in large crazy lettering, he had scrawled the
words: ‘The Rock of Fortune falls on the Fool’.’ —