The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (4 page)

Aristide
Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests
began to arrive before him. These were, however, reassured by his confidential
servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his
moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall — a hall hung with
weapons. Valentin’s house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master.
It was an old house, with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the
Seine; but the oddity — and perhaps the police value — of its architecture was
this: that there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door,
which was guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate,
and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there was no exit
from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall, smooth,
unscalable wall with special spikes at the top; no bad garden, perhaps, for a
man to reflect in whom some hundred criminals had sworn to kill.

As
Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for
ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions
and such ugly things; and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him,
he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals,
he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French
— and largely over European — policial methods, his great influence had been
honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of
prisons. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the only
thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.

When
Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosette — an
elegant figure, his dark beard already streaked with grey. He went straight through
his house to his study, which opened on the grounds behind. The garden door of
it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place,
he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A
sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin
regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his.
Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous
problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly
recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to
arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make
certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the
other pillars of the little party; he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador
— a choleric old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon
of the Garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and
a face sensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a
pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the
Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with her her two
daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French
scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, and a forehead barred with
those parallel wrinkles which are the penalty of superciliousness, since they
come through constantly elevating the eyebrows. He saw Father Brown, of Cobhole,
in Essex, whom he had recently met in England. He saw — perhaps with more
interest than any of these — a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the
Galloways without receiving any very hearty acknowledgment, and who now
advanced alone to pay his respects to his host. This was Commandant O’Brien, of
the French Foreign Legion. He was a slim yet somewhat swaggering figure,
clean-shaven, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, and, as seemed natural in an officer
of that famous regiment of victorious failures and successful suicides, he had
an air at once dashing and melancholy. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and
in boyhood had known the Galloways — especially Margaret Graham. He had left
his country after some crash of debts, and now expressed his complete freedom
from British etiquette by swinging about in uniform, sabre and spurs. When he
bowed to the Ambassador’s family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady
Margaret looked away.

But
for whatever old causes such people might be interested in each other, their distinguished
host was not specially interested in them. No 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-weel 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 every one 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.”