The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (84 page)

For
an instant there was the stillness of a house struck by a thunderbolt and full of
corpses. Then the voice of Father Brown sounded in that enormous silence strangely
small like the squeak of a mouse.

‘
Did
you kill him deliberately?’ he asked.

‘
How
can one answer such a question?’ answered the man in the chair, moodily gnawing
his finger. ‘I was mad, I suppose. He was intolerable and insolent, I know. I was
on his land and I believe he struck me; anyhow, we came to a grapple and he went
over the cliff. When I was well away from the scene it burst upon me that I had
done a crime that cut me off from men; the brand of Cain throbbed on my brow
and my very brain; I realized for the first time that I had indeed killed a
man. I knew I should have to confess it sooner or later.’ He sat suddenly erect
in his chair. ‘But I will say nothing against anybody else. It is no use asking
me about plots or accomplices — I will say nothing.’

‘
In
the light of the other murders,’ said Nares, ‘it is difficult to believe that the
quarrel was quite so unpremeditated. Surely somebody sent you there?’

‘
I
will say nothing against anybody I worked with,’ said Home proudly. ‘I am a murderer,
but I will not be a traitor.’

Nares
stepped between the man and the door and called out in an official fashion to someone
outside.

‘
We
will all go to the place, anyhow,’ he said in a low voice to the secretary; ’but
this man must go in custody.’

The
company generally felt that to go spook-hunting on a seacliff was a very silly anti-climax
after the confession of the murderer. But Nares, though the most sceptical and
scornful of all, thought it his duty to leave no stone unturned; as one might
say, no gravestone unturned. For, after all, that crumbling cliff was the only
gravestone over the watery grave of poor Gideon Wise. Nares locked the door,
being the last out of the house, and followed the rest across the moor to the
cliff, when he was astonished to see young Potter, the secretary, coming back
quickly towards them, his face in the moonlight looking white as a moon.

‘
By
God, sir,’ he said, speaking for the first time that night, ‘there really is something
there. It — it’s just like him.’

‘
Why,
you’re raving,’ gasped the detective. ‘Everybody’s raving.’

‘
Do
you think I don’t know him when I see him?’ cried the secretary with singular bitterness.
‘I have reason to.’

‘
Perhaps,’
said the detective sharply, ‘you are one of those who had reason to hate him, as
Halket said.’

‘
Perhaps,’
said the secretary; ‘anyhow, I know him, and I tell you I can see him standing there
stark and staring under this hellish moon.’

And
he pointed towards the crack in the cliffs, where they could already see something
that might have been a moonbeam or a streak of foam, but which was already
beginning to look a little more solid. They had crept a hundred yards nearer,
and it was still motionless; but it looked like a statue in silver.

Nares
himself looked a little pale and seemed to stand debating what to do. Potter was
frankly as much frightened as Home himself; and even Byrne, who was a hardened
reporter, was rather reluctant to go any nearer if he could help it. He could
not help considering it a little quaint, therefore, that the only man who did
not seem to be frightened of a ghost was the man who had said openly that he
might be. For Father Brown was advancing as steadily, at his stumping pace, as
if he were going to consult a notice-board.

‘
It
don’t seem to bother you much,’ said Byrne to the priest; ‘and yet I thought you
were the only one who believed in spooks.’

‘
If
it comes to that,’ replied Father Brown, ‘I thought you were one who didn’t believe
in them. But believing in ghosts is one thing, and believing in a ghost is
quite another.’

Byrne
looked rather ashamed of himself, and glanced almost covertly at the crumbling headlands
in the cold moonlight which were the haunts of the vision or delusion. ‘I
didn’t believe in it till I saw it,’ he said.

‘
And
I did believe in it till I saw it,’ said Father Brown. The journalist stared after
him as he went stumping across the great waste ground that rose towards the
cloven headland like the sloping side of a hill cut in two. Under the discolouring
moon the grass looked like long grey hair all combed one way by the wind, and
seeming to point towards the place where the breaking cliff showed pale gleams
of chalk in the grey-green turf, and where stood the pale figure or shining
shade that none could yet understand. As yet that pale figure dominated a desolate
landscape that was empty except for the black square back and business-like
figure of the priest advancing alone towards it. Then the prisoner Home broke
suddenly from his captors with a piercing cry and ran ahead of the priest,
falling on his knees before the spectre.

‘
I
have confessed,’ they heard him crying. ‘Why have you come to tell them I killed
you?’

‘
I
have come to tell them you did not,’ said the ghost, and stretched forth a hand
to him. Then the kneeling man sprang up with quite a new kind of scream; and they
knew it was the hand of flesh.

It
was the most remarkable escape from death in recent records, said the experienced
detective and the no less experienced journalist. Yet, in a sense, it had been
very simple after all. Flakes and shards of the cliff were continually falling
away, and some had caught in the gigantic crevice, so as to form what was
really a ledge or pocket in what was supposed to be a sheer drop through
darkness to the sea. The old man, who was a very tough and wiry old man, had
fallen on this lower shoulder of rock and had passed a pretty terrible twenty-four
hours in trying to climb back by crags that constantly collapsed under him, but
at length formed by their very ruins a sort of stairway of escape. This might
be the explanation of Home’s optical illusion about a white wave that appeared
and disappeared, and finally came to stay. But anyhow there was Gideon Wise,
solid in bone and sinew, with his white hair and white dusty country clothes
and harsh country features, which were, however, a great deal less harsh than
usual. Perhaps it is good for millionaires to spend twenty-four hours on a
ledge of rock within a foot of eternity. Anyhow, he not only disclaimed all
malice against the criminal, but gave an account of the matter which
considerably modified the crime. He declared that Home had not thrown him over
at all; that the continually breaking ground had given way under him, and that
Home had even made some movement as of attempted rescue.

‘
On
that providential bit of rock down there,’ he said solemnly, ‘I promised the Lord
to forgive my enemies; and the Lord would think it mighty mean if I didn’t forgive
a little accident like that.’

Home
had to depart under police supervision, of course, but the detective did not disguise
from himself that the prisoner’s detention would probably be short, and his
punishment, if any, trifling. It is not every murderer who can put the murdered
man in the witness-box to give him a testimonial.

‘
It’s
a strange case,’ said Byrne, as the detective and the others hastened along the
cliff path towards the town.

‘
It
is,’ said Father Brown. ‘It’s no business of ours; but I wish you’d stop with me
and talk it over.’

There
was a silence and then Byrne complied by saying suddenly: ‘I suppose you were thinking
of Home already, when you said somebody wasn’t telling all he knew.’

‘
When
I said that,’ replied his friend, ‘I was thinking of the exceedingly silent Mr Potter,
the secretary of the no longer late or (shall we say) lamented Mr Gideon Wise.’

‘
Well,
the only time Potter ever spoke to me I thought he was a lunatic,’ said Byrne, staring,
‘but I never thought of his being a criminal. He said something about it all
having to do with an icebox.’

‘
Yes,
I thought he knew something about it,’ said Father Brown reflectively. ‘I never
said he had anything to do with it ... I suppose old Wise really is strong enough
to have climbed out of that chasm.’

‘
What
do you mean?’ asked the astonished reporter. ‘Why, of course he got out of that
chasm; for there he is.’

The
priest did not answer the question but asked abruptly: ‘What do you think of Home?’

‘
Well,
one can’t call him a criminal exactly,’ answered Byrne. ‘He never was at all like
any criminal I ever knew, and I’ve had some experience; and, of course, Nares
has had much more. I don’t think we ever quite believed him a criminal.’

‘
And
I never believed in him in another capacity,’ said the priest quietly. ‘You may
know more about criminals. But there’s one class of people I probably do know more
about than you do, or even Nares for that matter. I’ve known quite a lot of
them, and I know their little ways.’

‘
Another
class of people,’ repeated Byrne, mystified. ‘Why, what class do you know about?’

‘
Penitents,’
said Father Brown.

‘
I
don’t quite understand,’ objected Byrne. ‘Do you mean you don’t believe in his crime?’

‘
I
don’t believe in his confession,’ said Father Brown. ‘I’ve heard a good many confessions,
and there was never a genuine one like that. It was romantic; it was all out of
books. Look how he talked about having the brand of Cain. That’s out of books.
It’s not what anyone would feel who had in his own person done a thing hitherto
horrible to him. Suppose you were an honest clerk or shop-boy shocked to feel
that for the first time you’d stolen money. Would you immediately reflect that
your action was the same as that of Barabbas? Suppose you’d killed a child in
some ghastly anger. Would you go back through history, till you could identify
your action with that of an Idumean potentate named Herod? Believe me, our own
crimes are far too hideously private and prosaic to make our first thoughts
turn towards historical parallels, however apt. And why did he go out of his
way to say he would not give his colleagues away? Even in saying so, he was
giving them away. Nobody had asked him so far to give away anything or anybody.
No; I don’t think he was genuine, and I wouldn’t give him absolution. A nice
state of things, if people started getting absolved for what they hadn’t done.’
And Father Brown, his head turned away, looked steadily out to sea.

‘
But
I don’t understand what you’re driving at,’ cried Byrne. ‘What’s the good of buzzing
round him with suspicions when he’s pardoned? He’s out of it anyhow. He’s quite
safe.’

Father
Brown spun round like a teetotum and caught his friend by the coat with unexpected
and inexplicable excitement.

‘
That’s
it,’ he cried emphatically.’ Freeze on to that! He’s quite safe. He’s out of it.
That’s why he’s the key of the whole puzzle.’

‘
Oh,
help,’ said Byrne feebly.

‘
I
mean,’ persisted the little priest, ‘he’s in it because he’s out of it. That’s the
whole explanation.’

‘
And
a very lucid explanation too,’ said the journalist with feeling.

They
stood looking out to sea for a time in silence, and then Father Brown said cheerfully:
‘And so we come back to the ice-box. Where you have all gone wrong from the
first in this business is where a good many of the papers and the public men do
go wrong. It’s because you assumed that there is nothing whatever in the modern
world to fight about except Bolshevism. This story has nothing whatever to do
with Bolshevism; except perhaps as a blind.’

‘
I
don’t see how that can be,’ remonstrated Byrne. ‘Here you have the three millionaires
in that one business murdered — ’

‘
No!’
said the priest in a sharp ringing voice. ‘You do not. That is just the point. You
do not have three millionaires murdered. You have two millionaires murdered;
and you have the third millionaire very much alive and kicking and quite ready
to kick. And you have that third millionaire freed for ever from the threat
that was thrown at his head before your very face, in playfully polite terms,
and in that conversation you described as taking place in the hotel. Gallup and
Stein threatened the more old-fashioned and independent old huckster that if he
would not come into their combine they would freeze him out. Hence the ice-box,
of course.’

After
a pause he went on. ‘There is undoubtedly a Bolshevist movement in the modern world,
and it must undoubtedly be resisted, though I do not believe very much in your
way of resisting it. But what nobody notices is that there is another movement
equally modern and equally moving: the great movement towards monopoly or the
turning of all trades into trusts. That also is a revolution. That also produces
what all revolutions produce. Men will kill for that and against that, as they
do for and against Bolshevism. It has its ultimatums and its invasions and its
executions. These trust magnates have their courts like kings; they have their
bodyguard and bravos; they have their spies in the enemy camp. Home was one of
old Gideon’s spies in one of the enemy camps; but he was used here against
another enemy: the rivals who were ruining him for standing out.’

‘
I
still don’t quite see how he was used,’ said Byrne, ‘or what was the good of it.’