The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (116 page)

She
hardly knew what she answered; but she heard herself questioning rather wildly why
he seemed so changed and so happy.

‘
Because
I am happy,’ he answered. ‘I have heard the bad news.’

All
parties concerned, including some who seemed rather unconcerned, found themselves
assembled on the garden-path leading to Craven House, to hear the formality,
now truly formal, of the lawyer’s reading of the will; and the probable, and
more practical sequel of the lawyer’s advice upon the crisis. Besides the
grey-haired solicitor himself, armed with the testamentary document, there was
the Inspector armed with more direct authority touching the crime, and
Lieutenant Rook in undisguised attendance on the lady; some were rather mystified
on seeing the tall figure of the doctor, some smiled a little on seeing the
dumpy figure of the priest. Mr Harker, that Flying Mercury, had shot down to
the lodge-gates to meet them, led them back on to the lawn, and then dashed
ahead of them again to prepare their reception. He said he would be back in a
jiffy; and anyone observing his piston-rod of energy could well believe it;
but, for the moment, they were left rather stranded on the lawn outside the house.

‘
Reminds
me of somebody making runs at cricket,’ said the Lieutenant.

‘
That
young man,’ said the lawyer, ‘is rather annoyed that the law cannot move quite so
quickly as he does. Fortunately Miss Craven understands our professional difficulties
and delays. She has kindly assured me that she still has confidence in my
slowness.’

‘
I
wish,’ said the doctor, suddenly, ‘that I had as much confidence in his quickness.’

‘
Why,
what do you mean?’ asked Rook, knitting his brows; ‘do you mean that Harker is too
quick?’

‘
Too
quick and too slow,’ said Dr Straker, in his rather cryptic fashion. ‘I know one
occasion at least when he was not so very quick. Why was he hanging about half
the night by the pond and the Green Man, before the Inspector came down and
found the body? Why did he meet the Inspector? Why should he expect to meet the
Inspector outside the Green Man?’

‘
I
don’t understand you,’ said Rook. ‘Do you mean that Harker wasn’t telling the truth?’

Dr
Straker was silent. The grizzled lawyer laughed with grim good humour. ‘I have nothing
more serious to say against the young man,’ he said, ‘than that he made a
prompt and praiseworthy attempt to teach me my own business.’

‘
For
that matter, he made an attempt to teach me mine,’ said the Inspector, who had just
joined the group in front. ‘But that doesn’t matter. If Dr Straker means anything
by his hints, they do matter. I must ask you to speak plainly, doctor. It may
be my duty to question him at once.’

‘
Well,
here he comes,’ said Rook, as the alert figure of the secretary appeared once more
in the doorway.

At
this point Father Brown, who had remained silent and inconspicuous at the tail of
the procession, astonished everybody very much; perhaps especially those who knew
him. He not only walked rapidly to the front, but turned facing the whole group
with an arresting and almost threatening expression, like a sergeant bringing
soldiers to the halt.

‘
Stop!’
he said almost sternly. ‘I apologize to everybody; but it’s absolutely necessary
that I should see Mr Harker first. I’ve got to tell him something I know; and I
don’t think anybody else knows; something he’s got to hear. It may save a very
tragic misunderstanding with somebody later on.’

‘
What
on earth do you mean?’ asked old Dyke the lawyer.

‘
I
mean the bad news,’ said Father Brown.

‘
Here,
I say,’ began the Inspector indignantly; and then suddenly caught the priest’s eye
and remembered strange things he had seen in other days. ‘Well, if it were anyone
in the world but you I should say of all the infernal cheek — ’

But
Father Brown was already out of hearing, and a moment afterwards was plunged in
talk with Harker in the porch. They walked to and fro together for a few paces and
then disappeared into the dark interior. It was about twelve minutes afterwards
that Father Brown came out alone.

To
their surprise he showed no dispostion to re-enter the house, now that the whole
company were at last about to enter it. He threw himself down on the rather
rickety seat in the leafy arbour, and as the procession disappeared through the
doorway, lit a pipe and proceeded to stare vacantly at the long ragged leaves
about his head and to listen to the birds. There was no man who had a more
hearty and enduring appetite for doing nothing.

He
was, apparently, in a cloud of smoke and a dream of abstraction, when the front
doors were once more flung open and two or three figures came out helter-skelter,
running towards him, the daughter of the house and her young admirer Mr Rook
being easily winners in the race. Their faces were alight with astonishment;
and the face of Inspector Burns, who advanced more heavily behind them, like an
elephant shaking the garden, was inflamed with some indignation as well.

‘
What
can all this mean?’ cried Olive, as she came panting to a halt. ‘He’s gone!’

‘
Bolted!’
said the Lieutenant explosively. ‘Harker’s just managed to pack a suitcase and bolted!
Gone clean out of the back door and over the garden-wall to God knows where.
What did you say to him?’

‘
Don’t
be silly!’ said Olive, with a more worried expression. ‘Of course you told him you’d
found him out, and now he’s gone. I never could have believed he was wicked
like that!’

‘
Well!’
gasped the Inspector, bursting into their midst. ‘What have you done now? What have
you let me down like this for?’

‘
Well,’
repeated Father Brown, ‘what have I done?’

‘
You
have let a murderer escape,’ cried Burns, with a decision that was like a thunderclap
in the quiet garden; ‘you have helped a murderer to escape. Like a fool I let
you warn him; and now he is miles away.’

‘
I
have helped a few murderers in my time, it is true,’ said Father Brown; then he
added, in careful distinction, ‘not, you will understand, helped them to commit
the murder.’

‘
But
you knew all the time,’ insisted Olive. ‘You guessed from the first that it must
be he. That’s what you meant about being upset by the business of finding the
body. That’s what the doctor meant by saying my father might be disliked by a
subordinate.’

‘
That’s
what I complain of,’ said the official indignantly. ‘You knew even then that he
was the — ’

‘
You
knew even then,’ insisted Olive, ‘that the murderer was — ’

Father
Brown nodded gravely. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I knew even then that the murderer was old
Dyke.’

‘
Was
who?’ repeated the Inspector and stopped amid, a dead silence; punctuated only by
the occasional pipe of birds.

‘
I
mean Mr Dyke, the solicitor,’ explained Father Brown, like one explaining something
elementary to an infant class. ‘That gentleman with grey hair who’s supposed to
be going to read the will.’

They
all stood like statues staring at him, as he carefully filled his pipe again and
struck a match. At last Burns rallied his vocal powers to break the strangling
silence with an effort resembling violence.

‘
But,
in the name of heaven, why?’

‘
Ah,
why?’ said the priest and rose thoughtfully, puffing at his pipe. ‘As to why he
did it ... Well, I suppose the time has come to tell you, or those of you who don’t
know, the fact that is the key of all this business. It’s a great calamity; and
it’s a great crime; but it’s not the murder of Admiral Craven.’

He
looked Olive full in the face and said very seriously: ‘I tell you the bad news
bluntly and in few words; because I think you are brave enough, and perhaps happy
enough, to take it well. You have the chance, and I think the power, to be
something like a great woman. You are not a great heiress.’

Amid
the silence that followed it was he who resumed his explanation.

‘
Most
of your father’s money, I am sorry to say, has gone. It went by the financial dexterity
of the grey-haired gentleman named Dyke, who is (I grieve to say) a swindler. Admiral
Craven was murdered to silence him about the way in which he was swindled. The
fact that he was ruined and you were disinherited is the single simple clue,
not only to the murder, but to all the other mysteries in this business.’ He
took a puff or two and then continued.

‘
I
told Mr Rook you were disinherited and he rushed back to help you. Mr Rook is a
rather remarkable person.’

‘
Oh,
chuck it,’ said Mr Rook with a hostile air.

‘
Mr
Rook is a monster,’ said Father Brown with scientific calm. ‘He is an anachronism,
an atavism, a brute survival of the Stone Age. If there was one barbarous
superstition we all supposed to be utterly extinct and dead in these days, it
was that notion about honour and independence. But then I get mixed up with so
many dead superstitions. Mr Rook is an extinct animal. He is a plesiosaurus. He
did not want to live on his wife or have a wife who could call him a
fortune-hunter. Therefore he sulked in a grotesque manner and only came to life
again when I brought him the good news that you were ruined. He wanted to work
for his wife and not be kept by her. Disgusting, isn’t it? Let us turn to the
brighter topic of Mr Harker.

‘
I
told Mr Harker you were disinherited and he rushed away in a sort of panic. Do not
be too hard on Mr Harker. He really had better as well as worse enthusiasms;
but he had them all mixed up. There is no harm in having ambitions; but he had
ambitions and called them ideals. The old sense of honour taught men to suspect
success; to say, “This is a benefit; it may be a bribe.” The new
nine-times-accursed nonsense about Making Good teaches men to identify being
good with making money. That was all that was the matter with him; in every
other way he was a thoroughly good fellow, and there are thousands like him.
Gazing at the stars and rising in the world were all Uplift. Marrying a good
wife and marrying a rich wife were all Making Good. But he was not a cynical
scoundrel; or he would simply have come back and jilted or cut you as the case
might be. He could not face you; while you were there, half of his broken ideal
was left.

‘
I
did not tell the Admiral; but somebody did. Word came to him somehow, during the
last grand parade on board, that his friend the family lawyer had betrayed him.
He was in such a towering passion that he did what he could never have done in
his sense; came straight on shore in his cocked hat and gold lace to catch the
criminal; he wired to the police station, and that was why the Inspector was
wandering round the Green Man. Lieutenant Rook followed him on shore because he
suspected some family trouble and had half a hope he might help and put himself
right. Hence his hesitating behaviour. As for his drawing his sword when he
dropped behind and thought he was alone, well that’s a matter of imagination.
He was a romantic person who had dreamed of swords and run away to sea; and
found himself in a service where he wasn’t even allowed to wear a sword except
about once in three years. He thought he was quite alone on the sands where he
played as a boy. If you don’t understand what he did, I can only say, like
Stevenson, “you will never be a pirate.” Also you will never be a poet; and you
have never been a boy.’

‘
I
never have,’ answered Olive gravely, ‘and yet I think I understand.’

‘
Almost
every man,’ continued the priest musing, ‘will play with anything shaped like a
sword or dagger, even if it is a paper knife. That is why I thought it so odd when
the lawyer didn’t.’

‘
What
do you mean?’ asked Burns, ‘didn’t what?’

‘
Why,
didn’t you notice,’ answered Brown, ‘at that first meeting in the office, the lawyer
played with a pen and not with a paper-knife; though he had a beautiful bright
steel paper-knife in the pattern of a stiletto? The pens were dusty and splashed
with ink; but the knife had just been cleaned. But he did not play with it.
There are limits to the irony of assassins.’

After
a silence the Inspector said, like one waking from a dream: ‘Look here ... I don’t
know whether I’m on my head or my heels; I don’t know whether you think you’ve
got to the end; but I haven’t got to the beginning. Where do you get all this
lawyer stuff from? What started you out on that trail?’

Father
Brown laughed curtly and without mirth.

‘
The
murderer made a slip at the start,’ he said, ‘and I can’t think why nobody else
noticed it. When you brought the first news of the death to the solicitor’s office,
nobody was supposed to know anything there, except that the Admiral was expected
home. When you said he was drowned, I asked when it happened and Mr Dyke asked
where the corpse was found.’

He
paused a moment to knock out his pipe and resumed reflectively: ‘Now when you are
simply told of a seaman, returning from the sea, that he had drowned, it is natural
to assume that he had been drowned at sea. At any rate, to allow that he may
have been drowned at sea. If he had been washed overboard, or gone down with
his ship, or had his body “committed to the deep”, there would be no reason to
expect his body to be found at all. The moment that man asked where it was
found, I was sure he knew where it was found. Because he had put it there.
Nobody but the murderer need have thought of anything so unlikely as a seaman
being drowned in a landlocked pool a few hundred yards from the sea. That is
why I suddenly felt sick and turned green, I dare say; as green as the Green
Man. I never can get used to finding myself suddenly sitting beside a murderer.
So I had to turn it off by talking in parables; but the parable meant something,
after all. I said that the body was covered with green scum, but it might just
as well have been seaweed.’