The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (73 page)

Lady
Diana Wales seemed to be more impressed than might have been expected. ‘It really
gives one rather a shiver,’ she said, ‘to think that we are going to be the
first, except the vicar.’

The
pioneer with the big moustaches and the broken English did not descend after all
by his favourite ladder, which indeed had only been used by some of the workmen
conducting the excavation; for the clergyman led them round to a larger and
more convenient entrance about a hundred yards away, out of which he himself had
just emerged from his investigations underground. Here the descent was by a fairly
gradual slope with no difficulties save the increasing darkness; for they soon
found themselves moving in single file down a tunnel as black as pitch, and it
was some little time before they saw a glimmer of light ahead of them. Once
during that silent march there was a sound like a catch in somebody’s breath,
it was impossible to say whose; and once there was an oath like a dull
explosion, and it was in an unknown tongue.

They
came out in a circular chamber like a basilica in a ring of round arches; for that
chapel had been built before the first pointed arch of the Gothic had pierced
our civilization like a spear. A glimmer of greenish light between some of the
pillars marked the place of the other opening into the world above, and gave a
vague sense of being under the sea, which was intensified by one or two other
incidental and perhaps fanciful resemblances. For the dog-tooth pattern of the
Norman was faintly traceable round all the arches, giving them, above the
cavernous darkness, something of the look of the mouths of monstrous sharks.
And in the centre the dark bulk of the tomb itself, with its lifted lid of
stone, might almost have been the jaws of some such leviathan.

Whether
out of the sense of fitness or from the lack of more modern appliances, the clerical
antiquary had arranged for the illumination of the chapel only by four tall
candles in big wooden candlesticks standing on the floor. Of these only one was
alight when they entered, casting a faint glimmer over the mighty architectural
forms. When they had all assembled, the clergyman proceeded to light the three
others, and the appearance and contents of the great sarcophagus came more
clearly into view.

All
eyes went first to the face of the dead, preserved across all those ages in the
lines of life by some secret Eastern process, it was said, inherited from heathen
antiquity and unknown to the simple graveyards of our own island. The Professor
could hardly repress an exclamation of wonder; for, though the face was as pale
as a mask of wax, it looked otherwise like a sleeping man, who had but that
moment closed his eyes. The face was of the ascetic, perhaps even the fanatical
type, with a high framework of bones; the figure was clad in a golden cope and
gorgeous vestments, and high up on the breast, at the base of the throat,
glittered the famous gold cross upon a short gold chain, or rather necklace.
The stone coffin had been opened by lifting the lid of it at the head and
propping it aloft upon two strong wooden shafts or poles, hitched above under
the edge of the upper slab and wedged below into the corners of the coffin
behind the head of the corpse. Less could therefore be seen of the feet or the
lower part of the figure, but the candle-light shone full on the face; and in
contrast with its tones of dead ivory the cross of gold seemed to stir and
sparkle like a fire.

Professor
Smaill’s big forehead had carried a big furrow of reflection, or possibly of
worry, ever since the clergyman had told the story of the curse. But feminine intuition,
not untouched by feminine hysteria, understood the meaning of his brooding
immobility better than did the men around him. In the silence of that candle-lit
cavern Lady Diana cried out suddenly: ‘Don’t touch it, I tell you!’

But
the man had already made one of his swift leonine movements, leaning forward over
the body. The next instant they all darted, some forward and some backward, but
all with a dreadful ducking motion as if the sky were falling.

As
the Professor laid a finger on the gold cross, the wooden props, that bent very
slightly in supporting the lifted lid of stone, seemed to jump and straighten themselves
with a jerk. The lip of the stone slab slipped from its wooden perch; and in
all their souls and stomachs came a sickening sense of down-rushing ruin, as if
they had all been flung off a precipice. Smaill had withdrawn his head swiftly,
but not in time; and he lay senseless beside the coffin, in a red puddle of
blood from scalp or skull. And the old stone coffin was once more closed as it
had been for centuries; save that one or two sticks or splinters stuck in the
crevice, horribly suggestive of bones crunched by an ogre. The leviathan had
snapped its jaws of stone.

Lady
Diana was looking at the wreck with eyes that had an electric glare as of lunacy;
her red hair looked scarlet against the pallor of her face in the greenish
twilight. Smyth was looking at her, still with something dog-like in the turn
of his head; but it was the expression of a dog who looks at a master whose
catastrophe he can only partly understand. Tarrant and the foreigner had stiffened
in their usual sullen attitudes, but their faces had turned the colour of clay.
The Vicar seemed to have fainted. Father Brown was kneeling beside the fallen
figure, trying to test its condition.

Rather
to the general surprise, the Byronic lounger, Paul Tarrant, came forward to help
him.

‘
He’d
better be carried up into the air,’ he said. ‘I suppose there’s just a chance for
him.’

‘
He
isn’t dead,’ said Father Brown in a low voice, ‘but I think it’s pretty bad; you
aren’t a doctor by any chance?’

‘
No;
but I’ve had to pick up a good many things in my time,’ said the other. ‘But never
mind about me just now. My real profession would probably surprise you.’

‘
I
don’t think so,’ replied Father Brown, with a slight smile. ‘I thought of it about
halfway through the voyage. You are a detective shadowing somebody. Well, the
cross is safe from thieves now, anyhow.’

While
they were speaking Tarrant had lifted the frail figure of the fallen man with easy
strength and dexterity, and was carefully carrying him towards the exit. He
answered over his shoulder:

‘
Yes,
the cross is safe enough.’

‘
You
mean that nobody else is,’ replied Brown. ‘Are you thinking of the curse, too?’

Father
Brown went about for the next hour or two under a burden of frowning perplexity
that was something beyond the shock of the tragic accident. He assisted in carrying
the victim to the little inn opposite the church, interviewed the doctor, who
reported the injury as serious and threatening, though not certainly fatal, and
carried the news to the little group of travellers who had gathered round the
table in the inn parlour. But wherever he went the cloud of mystification
rested on him and seemed to grow darker the more deeply he pondered. For the
central mystery was growing more and more mysterious, actually in proportion as
many of the minor mysteries began to clear themselves up in his mind. Exactly
in proportion as the meaning of individual figures in that motley group began
to explain itself, the thing that had happened grew more and more difficult to
explain. Leonard Smyth had come merely because Lady Diana had come; and Lady
Diana had come merely because she chose. They were engaged in one of those
floating Society flirtations that are all the more silly for being
semi-intellectual. But the lady’s romanticism had a superstitious side to it;
and she was pretty well prostrated by the terrible end of her adventure. Paul
Tarrant was a private detective, possibly watching the flirtation, for some
wife or husband; possibly shadowing the foreign lecturer with the moustaches,
who had much the air of an undesirable alien. But if he or anybody else had
intended to steal the relic, the intention had been finally frustrated. And to
all mortal appearance, what had frustrated it was either an incredible
coincidence or the intervention of the ancient curse.

As
he stood in unusual perplexity in the middle of the village street, between the
inn and the church, he felt a mild shock of surprise at seeing a recently familiar
but rather unexpected figure advancing up the street. Mr Boon, the journalist,
looking very haggard in the sunshine, which showed up his shabby raiment like
that of a scarecrow, had his dark and deep-set eyes (rather close together on
either side of the long drooping nose) fixed on the priest. The latter looked
twice before he realized that the heavy dark moustache hid something like a
grin or at least a grim smile.

‘
I
thought you were going away,’ said Father Brown a little sharply. ‘I thought you
left by that train two hours ago.’

‘
Well,
you see I didn’t,’ said Boon.

‘
Why
have you come back?’ asked the priest almost sternly.

‘
This
is not the sort of little rural paradise for a journalist to leave in a hurry,’
replied the other. ‘Things happen too fast here to make it worth while to go back
to a dull place like London. Besides, they can’t keep me out of the affair — I
mean this second affair. It was I that found the body, or at any rate the clothes.
Quite suspicious conduct on my part, wasn’t it? Perhaps you think I wanted to
dress up in his clothes. Shouldn’t I make a lovely parson?’

And
the lean and long-nosed mountebank suddenly made an extravagant gesture in the middle
of the market-place, stretching out his arms and spreading out his dark-gloved
hands in a sort of burlesque benediction and saying: ‘Oh, my dear brethren and
sisters, for I would embrace you all....’

‘
What
on earth are you talking about?’ cried Father Brown, and rapped the stones slightly
with his stumpy umbrella, for he was a little less patient than usual.

‘
Oh,
you’ll find out all about it if you ask that picnic party of yours at the inn,’
replied Boon scornfully. ‘That man Tarrant seems to suspect me merely because I
found the clothes; though he only came up a minute too late to find them himself.
But there are all sorts of mysteries in this business. The little man with the
big moustaches may have more in him than meets the eye. For that matter I don’t
see why you shouldn’t have killed the poor fellow yourself.’

Father
Brown did not seem in the least annoyed at the suggestion, but he seemed exceedingly
bothered and bewildered by the remark. ‘Do you mean,’ he asked with simplicity,
‘that it was I who tried to kill Professor Smaill?’

‘
Not
at all,’ said the other, waving his hand with the air of one making a handsome concession.
‘Plenty of dead people for you to choose among. Not limited to Professor
Smaill. Why, didn’t you know somebody else had turned up, a good deal deader
than Professor Smaill? And I don’t see why you shouldn’t have done him in, in a
quiet way. Religious differences, you know... lamentable disunion of Christendom.
... I suppose you’ve always wanted to get the English parishes back.’

‘
I’m
going back to the inn,’ said the priest quietly; ‘you say the people there know
what you mean, and perhaps they may be able to say it.’

In
truth, just afterwards his private perplexities suffered a momentary dispersal at
the news of a new calamity. The moment he entered the little parlour where the
rest of the company were collected, something in their pale faces told him they
were shaken by something yet more recent than the accident at the tomb. Even as
he entered, Leonard Smyth was saying: ‘Where is all this going to end?’

‘
It
will never end, I tell you,’ repeated Lady Diana, gazing into vacancy with glassy
eyes; ‘it will never end till we all end. One after another the curse will take
us; perhaps slowly, as the poor vicar said; but it will take us all as it has
taken him.’

‘
What
in the world has happened now?’ asked Father Brown.

There
was a silence, and then Tarrant said in a voice that sounded a little hollow: ‘Mr
Walters, the Vicar, has committed suicide. I suppose it was the shock unhinged
him. But I fear there can be no doubt about it. We’ve just found his black hat
and clothes on a rock jutting out from the shore. He seems to have jumped into
the sea. I thought he looked as if it had knocked him half-witted, and perhaps
we ought to have looked after him; but there was so much to look after.’

‘
You
could have done nothing,’ said the lady. ‘Don’t you see the thing is dealing doom
in a sort of dreadful order? The Professor touched the cross, and he went first;
the Vicar had opened the tomb, and he went second; we only entered the chapel,
and we — ’

‘
Hold
on,’ said Father Brown, in a sharp voice he very seldom used; ‘this has got to stop.’

He
still wore a heavy though unconscious frown, but in his eyes was no longer the cloud
of mystification, but a light of almost terrible understanding. ‘What a fool I
am!’ he muttered. ‘I ought to have seen it long ago. The tale of the curse
ought to have told me.’

‘
Do
you mean to say,’ demanded Tarrant, ‘that we can really be killed now by something
that happened in the thirteenth century?’

Father
Brown shook his head and answered with quiet emphasis: ‘I won’t discuss whether
we can be killed by something that happened in the thirteenth century; but I’m jolly
certain that we can’t be killed by something that never happened in the thirteenth
century, something that never happened at all.’