The innocence of Father Brown
one of them at least was in his eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin
was expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose
friendship he had secured during some of his great detective tours and
triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, that
multi-millionaire whose colossal and even crushing endowments of small
religions have occasioned so much easy sport and easier solemnity for
the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr.
Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he was
ready to pour money into any intellectual vessel, so long as it was
an untried vessel. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American
Shakespeare--a hobby more patient than angling. He admired Walt Whitman,
but thought that Luke P. Tanner, of Paris, Pa., was more “progressive”
than Whitman any day. He liked anything that he thought “progressive.”
He thought Valentin “progressive,” thereby doing him a grave injustice.
The solid appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive
as a dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of us
can claim, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a huge
fellow, as fat as he was tall, clad in complete evening black, without
so much relief as a watch-chain or a ring. His hair was white and well
brushed back like a German’s; his face was red, fierce and cherubic,
with one dark tuft under the lower lip that threw up that otherwise
infantile visage with an effect theatrical and even Mephistophelean. Not
long, however, did that salon merely stare at the celebrated American;
his lateness had already become a domestic problem, and he was sent with
all speed into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.
Except on one point the Galloways were genial and casual enough. So long
as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O’Brien, her
father was quite satisfied; and she had not done so, she had decorously
gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and
almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the
cigars, three of the younger men--Simon the doctor, Brown the priest,
and the detrimental O’Brien, the exile in a foreign uniform--all melted
away to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then the
English diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. He was stung
every sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O’Brien might be
signalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. He
was left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believed
in all religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed in
none. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to
him. After a time this “progressive” logomachy had reached a crisis of
tedium; Lord Galloway got up also and sought the drawing-room. He lost
his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard
the high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice
of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with
a curse, were probably arguing about “science and religion.” But the
instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing--he saw what
was not there. He saw that Commandant O’Brien was absent, and that Lady
Margaret was absent too.
Rising impatiently from the drawing-room, as he had from the
dining-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His notion of
protecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian n’er-do-well had become
something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back
of the house, where was Valentin’s study, he was surprised to meet his
daughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face, which was a second
enigma. If she had been with O’Brien, where was O’Brien! If she had
not been with O’Brien, where had she been? With a sort of senile and
passionate suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the
mansion, and eventually found a servants’ entrance that opened on to the
garden. The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away all
the storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden.
A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study
door; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked him out as
Commandant O’Brien.
He vanished through the French windows into the house, leaving Lord
Galloway in an indescribable temper, at once virulent and vague. The
blue-and-silver garden, like a scene in a theatre, seemed to taunt him
with all that tyrannic tenderness against which his worldly authority
was at war. The length and grace of the Irishman’s stride enraged him as
if he were a rival instead of a father; the moonlight maddened him.
He was trapped as if by magic into a garden of troubadours, a Watteau
fairyland; and, willing to shake off such amorous imbecilities by
speech, he stepped briskly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over
some tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation
and then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and the
tall poplars looked at an unusual sight--an elderly English diplomatist
running hard and crying or bellowing as he ran.
His hoarse shouts brought a pale face to the study door, the beaming
glasses and worried brow of Dr. Simon, who heard the nobleman’s first
clear words. Lord Galloway was crying: “A corpse in the grass--a
blood-stained corpse.” O’Brien at last had gone utterly out of his mind.
“We must tell Valentin at once,” said the doctor, when the other had
brokenly described all that he had dared to examine. “It is fortunate
that he is here;” and even as he spoke the great detective entered the
study, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical
transformation; he had come with the common concern of a host and a
gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was
told the gory fact, he turned with all his gravity instantly bright and
businesslike; for this, however abrupt and awful, was his business.
“Strange, gentlemen,” he said as they hurried out into the garden, “that
I should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now one comes and
settles in my own back-yard. But where is the place?” They crossed the
lawn less easily, as a slight mist had begun to rise from the river; but
under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found the body sunken
in deep grass--the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man. He lay
face downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were clad
in black cloth, and that his big head was bald, except for a wisp or
two of brown hair that clung to his skull like wet seaweed. A scarlet
serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.
“At least,” said Simon, with a deep and singular intonation, “he is none
of our party.”
“Examine him, doctor,” cried Valentin rather sharply. “He may not be
dead.”
The doctor bent down. “He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead
enough,” he answered. “Just help me to lift him up.”
They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts as
to his being really dead were settled at once and frightfully. The head
fell away. It had been entirely sundered from the body; whoever had
cut his throat had managed to sever the neck as well. Even Valentin
was slightly shocked. “He must have been as strong as a gorilla,” he
muttered.
Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical abortions, Dr.
Simon lifted the head. It was slightly slashed about the neck and jaw,
but the face was substantially unhurt. It was a ponderous, yellow face,
at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids--a face
of a wicked Roman emperor, with, perhaps, a distant touch of a Chinese
emperor. All present seemed to look at it with the coldest eye of
ignorance. Nothing else could be noted about the man except that, as
they had lifted his body, they had seen underneath it the white gleam of
a shirt-front defaced with a red gleam of blood. As Dr. Simon said,
the man had never been of their party. But he might very well have been
trying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.
Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closest
professional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards round
the body, in which he was assisted less skillfully by the doctor, and
quite vaguely by the English lord. Nothing rewarded their grovellings
except a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, which
Valentin lifted for an instant’s examination and then tossed away.
“Twigs,” he said gravely; “twigs, and a total stranger with his head cut
off; that is all there is on this lawn.”
There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Galloway
called out sharply:
“Who’s that! Who’s that over there by the garden wall!”
A small figure with a foolishly large head drew waveringly near them in
the moonlit haze; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out to
be the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing-room.
“I say,” he said meekly, “there are no gates to this garden, do you
know.”
Valentin’s black brows had come together somewhat crossly, as they did
on principle at the sight of the cassock. But he was far too just a man
to deny the relevance of the remark. “You are right,” he said. “Before
we find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he
came to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. If it can be done without
prejudice to my position and duty, we shall all agree that certain
distinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies,
gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down as
a crime, then it must be followed up as a crime. But till then I can use
my own discretion. I am the head of the police; I am so public that I
can afford to be private. Please Heaven, I will clear everyone of my own
guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen, upon
your honour, you will none of you leave the house till tomorrow at noon;
there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to find my
man, Ivan, in the front hall; he is a confidential man. Tell him to
leave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway,
you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened,
and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remain
with the body.”
When this spirit of the captain spoke in Valentin he was obeyed like a
bugle. Dr. Simon went through to the armoury and routed out Ivan, the
public detective’s private detective. Galloway went to the drawing-room
and told the terrible news tactfully enough, so that by the time the
company assembled there the ladies were already startled and already
soothed. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at the
head and foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic
statues of their two philosophies of death.
Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, came out
of the house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn to
Valentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively
with the glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almost
unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master’s permission to examine
the remains.
“Yes; look, if you like, Ivan,” said Valentin, “but don’t be long. We
must go in and thrash this out in the house.”
Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.
“Why,” he gasped, “it’s--no, it isn’t; it can’t be. Do you know this
man, sir?”
“No,” said Valentin indifferently; “we had better go inside.”
Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and then
all made their way to the drawing-room.