The secret of Father Brown

"Now, Mr. Mandeville," said Miss Talbot, tapping him on the arm with animated persistence, "you simply must let us see that rehearsal. We can't come to-night, and we don't want to. We want to see all the funny people in the wrong clothes." "Of course I can give you a box if you wish it," said Mandeville hastily. "Perhaps your ladyship would come this way." And he led them off down another corridor. "I wonder," said Jarvis in a meditative manner, "whether even Mandeville prefers _that_ sort of woman." "Well," asked his clerical companion, "have you any reason to suppose that Mandeville does prefer her?" Jarvis looked at him steadily for an instant before answering. "Mandeville is a mystery," he said gravely. "Oh, yes, I know that he looks about as commonplace a cad as ever walked down Piccadilly. But he really is a mystery for all that. There's something on his conscience. There's a shadow in his life. And I doubt whether it has anything more to do with a few fashionable flirtations than it has with his poor neglected wife. If it has, there's something more in them than meets the eye. As a matter of fact, I happen to know rather more about it than anyone else does, merely by accident. But even I can't make anything of what I know, except a mystery." He looked around him in the vestibule to see that they were alone and then added, lowering his voice: "I don't mind telling you, because I know you are a tower of silence where secrets are concerned. But I had a curious shock the other day; and it has been repeated several times since. You know that Mandeville always works in that little room at the end of the passage, just under the stage. Well, twice over I happened to pass by there when everyone thought he was alone; and what's more, when I myself happened to be able to account for all the women in the company, and all the women likely to have to do with him, being absent or at their usual posts." "All the women?" remarked Father Brown inquiringly. "There was a woman with him," said Jarvis almost in a whisper. "There is some woman who is always visiting him; somebody that none of us knows. I don't even know how she comes there, since it isn't down the passage to the door; but I think I once saw a veiled or cloaked figure passing out into the twilight at the back of the theatre, like a ghost. But she can't be a ghost. And I don't believe she's even an ordinary 'affair'. I don't think it's love-making. I think it's blackmail." "What makes you think that?" asked the other. "Because," said Jarvis, his face turning from grave to grim, "I once heard sounds like a quarrel; and then the strange woman said in a metallic, menacing voice, four words: 'I am your wife.'" "You think he's a bigamist," said Father Brown reflectively. "Well, bigamy and blackmail often go together, of course. But she may be bluffing as well as blackmailing. She may be mad. These theatrical people often have monomaniacs running after them. You may be right, but I shouldn't jump to conclusions.... And talking about theatrical people, isn't the rehearsal going to begin, and aren't you a theatrical person?" "I'm not on in this scene," said Jarvis with a smile. "They're only doing one act, you know, until your Italian friend comes to her senses." "Talking about my Italian friend," observed the priest, "I should rather like to know whether she has come to her senses." "We can go back and see, if you like," said Jarvis; and they descended again to the basement and the long passage, at one end of which was Mandeville's study and at the other the closed door of Signora Maroni. The door seemed to be still closed; and Mrs. Sands sat grimly outside it, as motionless as a wooden idol. Near the other end of the passage they caught a glimpse of some of the other actors in the scene mounting the stairs to the stage just above. Vernon and old Randall went ahead, running rapidly up the stairs; but Mrs. Mandeville went more slowly, in her quietly dignified fashion, and Norman Knight seemed to linger a little to speak to her. A few words fell on the ears of the unintentional eavesdroppers as they passed. "I tell you a woman visits him," Knight was saying violently. "Hush!" said the lady in her voice of silver that still had in it something of steel. "You must not talk like this. Remember, he is my husband." "I wish to God I could forget it," said Knight, and rushed up the stairs to the stage. The lady followed him, still pale and calm, to take up her own position there. "Somebody else knows it," said the priest quietly; "but I doubt whether it is any business of ours." "Yes," muttered Jarvis; "it seems as if everybody knows it and nobody knows anything about it." They proceeded along the passage to the other end, where the rigid attendant sat outside the Italian's door. "No; she ain't come out yet," said the woman in her sullen way; "and she ain't dead, for I heard her moving about now and then. I dunno what tricks she's up to." "Do you happen to know, ma'am," said Father Brown with abrupt politeness, "where Mr. Mandeville is just now?" "Yes," she replied promptly. "Saw him go into his little room at the end of the passage a minute or two ago; just before the prompter called and the curtain went up. Must be there still, for I ain't seen him come out." "There's no other door to his office, you mean," said Father Brown in an offhand way. "Well, I suppose the rehearsal's going in full swing now, for all the Signora's sulking." "Yrs," said Jarvis after a moment's silence; "I can just hear the voices on the stage from here. Old Randall has a splendid carrying voice." They both remained for an instant in a listening attitude, so that the booming voice of the actor on the stage could indeed be heard rolling faintly down the stairs and along the passage. Before they had spoken again or resumed their normal poise, their ears were filled with another sound. It was a dull but heavy crash and it came from behind the closed door of Mundon Mandeville's private room. Father Brown went racing along the passage like an arrow from the bow and was struggling with the door handle before Jarvis had wakened with a start and begun to follow him. "The door is locked," said the priest, turning a face that was a little pale. "And I am all in favour of breaking down _this_ door." "Do you mean," asked Jarvis with a rather ghastly look, "that the unknown visitor has got in here again? Do you think it's ... anything serious?" After a moment he added: "I may be able to push back the bolt; I know the fastening on these doors." He knelt down and pulled out a pocket knife with a long steel implement, manipulated it for a moment, and the door swung open on the manager's study. Almost the first thing they noticed was that there was no other door and even no window, but a great electric lamp stood on the table. But it was not quite the first thing that they noticed; for even before that they had seen that Mandeville was lying flat on his face in the middle of the room and the blood was crawling out from under his fallen face like a pattern of scarlet snakes that glittered evilly in that unnatural subterranean light. They did not know how long they had been staring at each other when Jarvis said, like one letting loose something that he had held back with his breath: "If the stranger got in somehow, she has gone somehow." "Perhaps we think too much about the stranger," said Father Brown. "There are so many strange things in this strange theatre that you rather tend to forget some of them." "Why, which things do you mean?" asked his friend quickly. "There are many," said the priest. "There is the other locked door, for instance." "But the other door _is_ locked," cried Jarvis staring. "But you forgot it all the same," said Father Brown. A few moments afterwards he said thoughtfully: "That Mrs. Sands is a grumpy and gloomy sort of card." "Do you mean," asked the other in a lowered voice, "that she's lying and the Italian did come out?" "No," said the priest calmly; "I think I meant it more or less as a detached study of character." "You can't mean," cried the actor, "that Mrs. Sands did it herself?" "I didn't mean a study of _her_ character," said Father Brown. While they had been exchanging these abrupt reflections, Father Brown had knelt down by the body and ascertained that it was beyond any hope or question a dead body. Lying beside it, though not immediately visible from the doorway, was a dagger of the theatrical sort; lying as if it had fallen from the wound or from the hand of the assassin. According to Jarvis, who recognized the instrument, there was not very much to be learned from it, unless the experts could find some finger-prints. It was a property dagger; that is, it was nobody's property; it had been kicking about the theatre for a long time, and anybody might have picked it up. Then the priest rose and looked gravely round the room. "We must send for the police," he said; "and for a doctor, though the doctor comes too late.... looking at this room, by the way, I don't see how our Italian friend could manage it." "The Italian!" cried his friend; "I should think not. I should have thought she had an alibi, if anybody had. Two separate rooms, both locked, at opposite ends of a long passage, with a fixed witness watching it." "No," said Father Brown. "Not quite. The difficulty is how she could have got in this end. I think she might have got out the other end." "And why?" asked the other. "I told you," said Father Brown, "that it sounded as if she was breaking glass; mirrors or windows. Stupidly enough I forgot something I knew quite well; that she is pretty superstitious. She wouldn't be likely to break a mirror; so I suspect she broke a window. It's true that all this is under the ground floor; but it might be a skylight or a window opening on an area. But there don't seem to be any skylights or areas here." And he stared at the ceiling very intently for a considerable time. Suddenly he came back to conscious life again with a start. "We must go upstairs and telephone and tell everybody, It is pretty painful.... My God, can you hear those actors still shouting and ranting upstairs? The play is still going on. I suppose that's what they mean by tragic irony." When it was fated that the theatre should be turned into a house of mourning, an opportunity was given to the actors to show many of the real virtues of their type and trade. They did, as the phrase goes, behave like gentlemen; and not only like first walking gentlemen. They had not all of them liked or trusted Mandeville, but they knew exactly the right things to say about him; they showed not only sympathy but delicacy in their attitude to his widow. She had become, in a new and very different sense, a tragedy queen, her lightest word was law and while she moved about slowly and sadly, they ran her many errands. "She was always a strong character," said old Randall rather huskily; "and had the best brains of any of us. Of course poor Mandeville was never on her level in education and so on; but she always did her duty splendidly. It was quite pathetic the way she would sometimes say she wished she had more intellectual life; but Mandeville--well, _nil nisi bonum_, as they say." And the old gentleman went away wagging his head sadly. "_Nil nisi bonum_ indeed," said Jarvis grimly. "I don't think Randall at any rate has heard of the story of the strange lady visitor. By the way, don't you think it probably _was_ the strange woman?" "It depends," said the priest, "whom you mean by the strange woman." "Oh! I don't mean the Italian woman," said Jarvis hastily. "Though, as a