The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (52 page)

“
The
crisis came,” Mrs Boulnois continued, “when I persuaded John to let me take down
some of his speculations and send them to a magazine. They began to attract
attention, especially in America, and one paper wanted to interview him. When
Champion (who was interviewed nearly every day) heard of this late little crumb
of success falling to his unconscious rival, the last link snapped that held
back his devilish hatred. Then he began to lay that insane siege to my own love
and honour which has been the talk of the shire. You will ask me why I allowed
such atrocious attentions. I answer that I could not have declined them except
by explaining to my husband, and there are some things the soul cannot do, as
the body cannot fly. Nobody could have explained to my husband. Nobody could do
it now. If you said to him in so many words, ‘Champion is stealing your wife,’
he would think the joke a little vulgar: that it could be anything but a joke —
that notion could find no crack in his great skull to get in by. Well, John was
to come and see us act this evening, but just as we were starting he said he
wouldn’t; he had got an interesting book and a cigar. I told this to Sir
Claude, and it was his death-blow. The monomaniac suddenly saw despair. He
stabbed himself, crying out like a devil that Boulnois was slaying him; he lies
there in the garden dead of his own jealousy to produce jealousy, and John is
sitting in the dining-room reading a book.”

There
was another silence, and then the little priest said: “There is only one weak point,
Mrs Boulnois, in all your very vivid account. Your husband is not sitting in
the dining-room reading a book. That American reporter told me he had been to
your house, and your butler told him Mr Boulnois had gone to Pendragon Park
after all.”

Her
bright eyes widened to an almost electric glare; and yet it seemed rather bewilderment
than confusion or fear. “Why, what can you mean?” she cried. “All the servants
were out of the house, seeing the theatricals. And we don’t keep a butler,
thank goodness!”

Father
Brown started and spun half round like an absurd teetotum. “What, what?” he cried
seeming galvanized into sudden life. “Look here — I say — can I make your husband
hear if I go to the house?”

“
Oh,
the servants will be back by now,” she said, wondering.

“
Right,
right!” rejoined the cleric energetically, and set off scuttling up the path towards
the Park gates. He turned once to say: “Better get hold of that Yankee, or
‘Crime of John Boulnois’ will be all over the Republic in large letters.”

“
You
don’t understand,” said Mrs Boulnois. “He wouldn’t mind. I don’t think he imagines
that America really is a place.”

When
Father Brown reached the house with the beehive and the drowsy dog, a small and
neat maid-servant showed him into the dining-room, where Boulnois sat reading by
a shaded lamp, exactly as his wife described him. A decanter of port and a wineglass
were at his elbow; and the instant the priest entered he noted the long ash
stand out unbroken on his cigar.

“
He
has been here for half an hour at least,” thought Father Brown. In fact, he had
the air of sitting where he had sat when his dinner was cleared away.

“
Don’t
get up, Mr Boulnois,” said the priest in his pleasant, prosaic way. “I shan’t interrupt
you a moment. I fear I break in on some of your scientific studies.”

“
No,”
said Boulnois; “I was reading ‘The Bloody Thumb.’” He said it with neither frown
nor smile, and his visitor was conscious of a certain deep and virile indifference
in the man which his wife had called greatness. He laid down a gory yellow
“shocker” without even feeling its incongruity enough to comment on it
humorously. John Boulnois was a big, slow-moving man with a massive head, partly
grey and partly bald, and blunt, burly features. He was in shabby and very
old-fashioned evening-dress, with a narrow triangular opening of shirt-front:
he had assumed it that evening in his original purpose of going to see his wife
act Juliet.

“
I
won’t keep you long from ‘The Bloody Thumb’ or any other catastrophic affairs,”
said Father Brown, smiling. “I only came to ask you about the crime you committed
this evening.”

Boulnois
looked at him steadily, but a red bar began to show across his broad brow; and he
seemed like one discovering embarrassment for the first time.

“
I
know it was a strange crime,” assented Brown in a low voice. “Stranger than murder
perhaps — to you. The little sins are sometimes harder to confess than the big
ones — but that’s why it’s so important to confess them. Your crime is committed
by every fashionable hostess six times a week: and yet you find it sticks to
your tongue like a nameless atrocity.”

“
It
makes one feel,” said the philosopher slowly, “such a damned fool.”

“
I
know,” assented the other, “but one often has to choose between feeling a damned
fool and being one.”

“
I
can’t analyse myself well,” went on Boulnois; “but sitting in that chair with that
story I was as happy as a schoolboy on a half-holiday. It was security, eternity
— I can’t convey it . . . the cigars were within reach . . . the matches were
within reach . . . the Thumb had four more appearances to . . . it was not only
a peace, but a plenitude. Then that bell rang, and I thought for one long,
mortal minute that I couldn’t get out of that chair — literally, physically,
muscularly couldn’t. Then I did it like a man lifting the world, because I knew
all the servants were out. I opened the front door, and there was a little man
with his mouth open to speak and his notebook open to write in. I remembered
the Yankee interviewer I had forgotten. His hair was parted in the middle, and
I tell you that murder —”

“
I
understand,” said Father Brown. “I’ve seen him.”

“
I
didn’t commit murder,” continued the Catastrophist mildly, “but only perjury. I
said I had gone across to Pendragon Park and shut the door in his face. That is
my crime, Father Brown, and I don’t know what penance you would inflict for it.”

“
I
shan’t inflict any penance,” said the clerical gentleman, collecting his heavy hat
and umbrella with an air of some amusement; “quite the contrary. I came here
specially to let you off the little penance which would otherwise have followed
your little offence.”

“
And
what,” asked Boulnois, smiling, “is the little penance I have so luckily been let
off?”

“
Being
hanged,” said Father Brown.

THE
picturesque city and state of Heiligwaldenstein was one of those toy kingdoms of
which certain parts of the German Empire still consist. It had come under the
Prussian hegemony quite late in history — hardly fifty years before the fine
summer day when Flambeau and Father Brown found themselves sitting in its gardens
and drinking its beer. There had been not a little of war and wild justice
there within living memory, as soon will be shown. But in merely looking at it
one could not dismiss that impression of childishness which is the most
charming side of Germany — those little pantomime, paternal monarchies in which
a king seems as domestic as a cook. The German soldiers by the innumerable
sentry-boxes looked strangely like German toys, and the clean-cut battlements
of the castle, gilded by the sunshine, looked the more like the gilt
gingerbread. For it was brilliant weather. The sky was as Prussian a blue as
Potsdam itself could require, but it was yet more like that lavish and glowing
use of the colour which a child extracts from a shilling paint-box. Even the
grey-ribbed trees looked young, for the pointed buds on them were still pink,
and in a pattern against the strong blue looked like innumerable childish
figures.

Despite
his prosaic appearance and generally practical walk of life, Father Brown was not
without a certain streak of romance in his composition, though he generally kept
his daydreams to himself, as many children do. Amid the brisk, bright colours
of such a day, and in the heraldic framework of such a town, he did feel rather
as if he had entered a fairy tale. He took a childish pleasure, as a younger
brother might, in the formidable sword-stick which Flambeau always flung as he
walked, and which now stood upright beside his tall mug of Munich. Nay, in his
sleepy irresponsibility, he even found himself eyeing the knobbed and clumsy
head of his own shabby umbrella, with some faint memories of the ogre’s club in
a coloured toy-book. But he never composed anything in the form of fiction,
unless it be the tale that follows:

“
I
wonder,” he said, “whether one would have real adventures in a place like this,
if one put oneself in the way? It’s a splendid back-scene for them, but I always
have a kind of feeling that they would fight you with pasteboard sabres more
than real, horrible swords.”

“
You
are mistaken,” said his friend. “In this place they not only fight with swords,
but kill without swords. And there’s worse than that.”

“
Why,
what do you mean?” asked Father Brown.

“
Why,”
replied the other, “I should say this was the only place in Europe where a man was
ever shot without firearms.”

“
Do
you mean a bow and arrow?” asked Brown in some wonder.

“
I
mean a bullet in the brain,” replied Flambeau. “Don’t you know the story of the
late Prince of this place? It was one of the great police mysteries about twenty
years ago. You remember, of course, that this place was forcibly annexed at the
time of Bismarck’s very earliest schemes of consolidation — forcibly, that is,
but not at all easily. The empire (or what wanted to be one) sent Prince Otto
of Grossenmark to rule the place in the Imperial interests. We saw his portrait
in the gallery there — a handsome old gentleman if he’d had any hair or
eyebrows, and hadn’t been wrinkled all over like a vulture; but he had things
to harass him, as I’ll explain in a minute. He was a soldier of distinguished
skill and success, but he didn’t have altogether an easy job with this little
place. He was defeated in several battles by the celebrated Arnhold brothers —
the three guerrilla patriots to whom Swinburne wrote a poem, you remember:

Wolves
with the hair of the ermine,
Crows that are crowned and kings —
These things be many as vermin,
Yet Three shall abide these things.

Or
something of that kind. Indeed, it is by no means certain that the occupation would
ever have been successful had not one of the three brothers, Paul, despicably,
but very decisively declined to abide these things any longer, and, by
surrendering all the secrets of the insurrection, ensured its overthrow and his
own ultimate promotion to the post of chamberlain to Prince Otto. After this,
Ludwig, the one genuine hero among Mr Swinburne’s heroes, was killed, sword in
hand, in the capture of the city; and the third, Heinrich, who, though not a
traitor, had always been tame and even timid compared with his active brothers,
retired into something like a hermitage, became converted to a Christian
quietism which was almost Quakerish, and never mixed with men except to give
nearly all he had to the poor. They tell me that not long ago he could still be
seen about the neighbourhood occasionally, a man in a black cloak, nearly
blind, with very wild, white hair, but a face of astonishing softness.”

“
I
know,” said Father Brown. “I saw him once.”

His
friend looked at him in some surprise. “I didn’t know you’d been here before,” he
said. “Perhaps you know as much about it as I do. Anyhow, that’s the story of
the Arnholds, and he was the last survivor of them. Yes, and of all the men who
played parts in that drama.”

“
You
mean that the Prince, too, died long before?”

“
Died,”
repeated Flambeau, “and that’s about as much as we can say. You must understand
that towards the end of his life he began to have those tricks of the nerves not
uncommon with tyrants. He multiplied the ordinary daily and nightly guard round
his castle till there seemed to be more sentry-boxes than houses in the town,
and doubtful characters were shot without mercy. He lived almost entirely in a
little room that was in the very centre of the enormous labyrinth of all the
other rooms, and even in this he erected another sort of central cabin or cupboard,
lined with steel, like a safe or a battleship. Some say that under the floor of
this again was a secret hole in the earth, no more than large enough to hold
him, so that, in his anxiety to avoid the grave, he was willing to go into a
place pretty much like it. But he went further yet. The populace had been
supposed to be disarmed ever since the suppression of the revolt, but Otto now
insisted, as governments very seldom insist, on an absolute and literal
disarmament. It was carried out, with extraordinary thoroughness and severity, by
very well-organized officials over a small and familiar area, and, so far as human
strength and science can be absolutely certain of anything, Prince Otto was
absolutely certain that nobody could introduce so much as a toy pistol into Heiligwaldenstein.”

“
Human
science can never be quite certain of things like that,” said Father Brown, still
looking at the red budding of the branches over his head, “if only because of
the difficulty about definition and connotation. What is a weapon? People have
been murdered with the mildest domestic comforts; certainly with tea-kettles,
probably with tea-cosies. On the other hand, if you showed an Ancient Briton a
revolver, I doubt if he would know it was a weapon — until it was fired into
him, of course. Perhaps somebody introduced a firearm so new that it didn’t
even look like a firearm. Perhaps it looked like a thimble or something. Was
the bullet at all peculiar?”

“
Not
that I ever heard of,” answered Flambeau; “but my information is fragmentary, and
only comes from my old friend Grimm. He was a very able detective in the German
service, and he tried to arrest me; I arrested him instead, and we had many
interesting chats. He was in charge here of the inquiry about Prince Otto, but
I forgot to ask him anything about the bullet. According to Grimm, what happened
was this.” He paused a moment to drain the greater part of his dark lager at a
draught, and then resumed:

“
On
the evening in question, it seems, the Prince was expected to appear in one of the
outer rooms, because he had to receive certain visitors whom he really wished
to meet. They were geological experts sent to investigate the old question of
the alleged supply of gold from the rocks round here, upon which (as it was
said) the small city-state had so long maintained its credit and been able to
negotiate with its neighbours even under the ceaseless bombardment of bigger
armies. Hitherto it had never been found by the most exacting inquiry which
could —”

“
Which
could be quite certain of discovering a toy pistol,” said Father Brown with a smile.
“But what about the brother who ratted? Hadn’t he anything to tell the Prince?”

“
He
always asseverated that he did not know,” replied Flambeau; “that this was the one
secret his brothers had not told him. It is only right to say that it received
some support from fragmentary words — spoken by the great Ludwig in the hour of
death, when he looked at Heinrich but pointed at Paul, and said, ‘You have not
told him . . .’ and was soon afterwards incapable of speech. Anyhow, the
deputation of distinguished geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin
were there in the most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there are no men
who like wearing their decorations so much as the men of science — as anybody
knows who has ever been to a soiree of the Royal Society. It was a brilliant
gathering, but very late, and gradually the Chamberlain — you saw his portrait,
too: a man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a meaningless sort of smile
underneath — the Chamberlain, I say, discovered there was everything there
except the Prince himself. He searched all the outer salons; then, remembering
the man’s mad fits of fear, hurried to the inmost chamber. That also was empty,
but the steel turret or cabin erected in the middle of it took some time to
open. When it did open it was empty, too. He went and looked into the hole in
the ground, which seemed deeper and somehow all the more like a grave — that is
his account, of course. And even as he did so he heard a burst of cries and
tumult in the long rooms and corridors without.

“
First
it was a distant din and thrill of something unthinkable on the horizon of the crowd,
even beyond the castle. Next it was a wordless clamour startlingly close, and
loud enough to be distinct if each word had not killed the other. Next came
words of a terrible clearness, coming nearer, and next one man, rushing into
the room and telling the news as briefly as such news is told.

“
Otto,
Prince of Heiligwaldenstein and Grossenmark, was lying in the dews of the darkening
twilight in the woods beyond the castle, with his arms flung out and his face
flung up to the moon. The blood still pulsed from his shattered temple and jaw,
but it was the only part of him that moved like a living thing. He was clad in
his full white and yellow uniform, as to receive his guests within, except that
the sash or scarf had been unbound and lay rather crumpled by his side. Before
he could be lifted he was dead. But, dead or alive, he was a riddle — he who
had always hidden in the inmost chamber out there in the wet woods, unarmed and
alone.”

“
Who
found his body?” asked Father Brown.

“
Some
girl attached to the Court named Hedwig von something or other,” replied his friend,
“who had been out in the wood picking wild flowers.”

“
Had
she picked any?” asked the priest, staring rather vacantly at the veil of the branches
above him.

“
Yes,”
replied Flambeau. “I particularly remember that the Chamberlain, or old Grimm or
somebody, said how horrible it was, when they came up at her call, to see a girl
holding spring flowers and bending over that — that bloody collapse. However,
the main point is that before help arrived he was dead, and the news, of
course, had to be carried back to the castle. The consternation it created was
something beyond even that natural in a Court at the fall of a potentate. The
foreign visitors, especially the mining experts, were in the wildest doubt and
excitement, as well as many important Prussian officials, and it soon began to
be clear that the scheme for finding the treasure bulked much bigger in the business
than people had supposed. Experts and officials had been promised great prizes
or international advantages, and some even said that the Prince’s secret
apartments and strong military protection were due less to fear of the populace
than to the pursuit of some private investigation of —”

“
Had
the flowers got long stalks?” asked Father Brown.

Flambeau
stared at him. “What an odd person you are!” he said. “That’s exactly what old Grimm
said. He said the ugliest part of it, he thought — uglier than the blood and
bullet — was that the flowers were quite short, plucked close under the head.”

“
Of
course,” said the priest, “when a grown up girl is really picking flowers, she picks
them with plenty of stalk. If she just pulled their heads off, as a child does,
it looks as if —” And he hesitated.

“
Well?”
inquired the other.

“
Well,
it looks rather as if she had snatched them nervously, to make an excuse for being
there after — well, after she was there.”

“
I
know what you’re driving at,” said Flambeau rather gloomily. “But that and every
other suspicion breaks down on the one point — the want of a weapon. He could
have been killed, as you say, with lots of other things — even with his own
military sash; but we have to explain not how he was killed, but how he was shot.
And the fact is we can’t. They had the girl most ruthlessly searched; for, to
tell the truth, she was a little suspect, though the niece and ward of the
wicked old Chamberlain, Paul Arnhold. But she was very romantic, and was suspected
of sympathy with the old revolutionary enthusiasm in her family. All the same,
however romantic you are, you can’t imagine a big bullet into a man’s jaw or
brain without using a gun or pistol. And there was no pistol, though there were
two pistol shots. I leave it to you, my friend.”