The innocence of Father Brown
or he would be sleeping like a log by now. And, plainest of all, the
whisky bottle. You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the whisky bottle,
and then having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one half and
leaving the other. That is the very last thing a dipsomaniac would do.”
He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and said to the self-accused
murderer in tones of limpid penitence: “I’m awfully sorry, my dear sir,
but your tale is really rubbish.”
“Sir,” said Alice Armstrong in a low tone to the priest, “can I speak to
you alone for a moment?”
This request forced the communicative cleric out of the gangway, and
before he could speak in the next room, the girl was talking with
strange incisiveness.
“You are a clever man,” she said, “and you are trying to save Patrick,
I know. But it’s no use. The core of all this is black, and the more
things you find out the more there will be against the miserable man I
love.”
“Why?” asked Brown, looking at her steadily.
“Because,” she answered equally steadily, “I saw him commit the crime
myself.”
“Ah!” said the unmoved Brown, “and what did he do?”
“I was in this room next to them,” she explained; “both doors were
closed, but I suddenly heard a voice, such as I had never heard on
earth, roaring ‘Hell, hell, hell,’ again and again, and then the two
doors shook with the first explosion of the revolver. Thrice again the
thing banged before I got the two doors open and found the room full of
smoke; but the pistol was smoking in my poor, mad Patrick’s hand; and I
saw him fire the last murderous volley with my own eyes. Then he leapt
on my father, who was clinging in terror to the window-sill, and,
grappling, tried to strangle him with the rope, which he threw over his
head, but which slipped over his struggling shoulders to his feet. Then
it tightened round one leg and Patrick dragged him along like a maniac.
I snatched a knife from the mat, and, rushing between them, managed to
cut the rope before I fainted.”
“I see,” said Father Brown, with the same wooden civility. “Thank you.”
As the girl collapsed under her memories, the priest passed stiffly
into the next room, where he found Gilder and Merton alone with Patrick
Royce, who sat in a chair, handcuffed. There he said to the Inspector
submissively:
“Might I say a word to the prisoner in your presence; and might he take
off those funny cuffs for a minute?”
“He is a very powerful man,” said Merton in an undertone. “Why do you
want them taken off?”
“Why, I thought,” replied the priest humbly, “that perhaps I might have
the very great honour of shaking hands with him.”
Both detectives stared, and Father Brown added: “Won’t you tell them
about it, sir?”
The man on the chair shook his tousled head, and the priest turned
impatiently.
“Then I will,” he said. “Private lives are more important than public
reputations. I am going to save the living, and let the dead bury their
dead.”
He went to the fatal window, and blinked out of it as he went on
talking.
“I told you that in this case there were too many weapons and only one
death. I tell you now that they were not weapons, and were not used to
cause death. All those grisly tools, the noose, the bloody knife, the
exploding pistol, were instruments of a curious mercy. They were not
used to kill Sir Aaron, but to save him.”
“To save him!” repeated Gilder. “And from what?”
“From himself,” said Father Brown. “He was a suicidal maniac.”
“What?” cried Merton in an incredulous tone. “And the Religion of
Cheerfulness--”
“It is a cruel religion,” said the priest, looking out of the window.
“Why couldn’t they let him weep a little, like his fathers before him?
His plans stiffened, his views grew cold; behind that merry mask was
the empty mind of the atheist. At last, to keep up his hilarious public
level, he fell back on that dram-drinking he had abandoned long ago. But
there is this horror about alcoholism in a sincere teetotaler: that he
pictures and expects that psychological inferno from which he has warned
others. It leapt upon poor Armstrong prematurely, and by this morning
he was in such a case that he sat here and cried he was in hell, in so
crazy a voice that his daughter did not know it. He was mad for death,
and with the monkey tricks of the mad he had scattered round him death
in many shapes--a running noose and his friend’s revolver and a knife.
Royce entered accidentally and acted in a flash. He flung the knife
on the mat behind him, snatched up the revolver, and having no time to
unload it, emptied it shot after shot all over the floor. The suicide
saw a fourth shape of death, and made a dash for the window. The rescuer
did the only thing he could--ran after him with the rope and tried to
tie him hand and foot. Then it was that the unlucky girl ran in, and
misunderstanding the struggle, strove to slash her father free. At first
she only slashed poor Royce’s knuckles, from which has come all the
little blood in this affair. But, of course, you noticed that he left
blood, but no wound, on that servant’s face? Only before the poor woman
swooned, she did hack her father loose, so that he went crashing through
that window into eternity.”
There was a long stillness slowly broken by the metallic noises of
Gilder unlocking the handcuffs of Patrick Royce, to whom he said: “I
think I should have told the truth, sir. You and the young lady are
worth more than Armstrong’s obituary notices.”
“Confound Armstrong’s notices,” cried Royce roughly. “Don’t you see it
was because she mustn’t know?”
“Mustn’t know what?” asked Merton.
“Why, that she killed her father, you fool!” roared the other. “He’d
have been alive now but for her. It might craze her to know that.”
“No, I don’t think it would,” remarked Father Brown, as he picked up his
hat. “I rather think I should tell her. Even the most murderous blunders
don’t poison life like sins; anyhow, I think you may both be the happier
now. I’ve got to go back to the Deaf School.”
As he went out on to the gusty grass an acquaintance from Highgate
stopped him and said:
“The Coroner has arrived. The inquiry is just going to begin.”
“I’ve got to get back to the Deaf School,” said Father Brown. “I’m sorry
I can’t stop for the inquiry.”