Father Brown Omnibus

by G. K. Chesterton

  The pince-nez tilted on Henry’s inquiring nose fell off with a click; but he was otherwise motionless, as if rigid with surprise.

  ‘Which brings us back,’ went on Father Brown cheerfully, ‘to somebody’s taste for writing his private correspondence on trees, like Hiawatha and his picture-writing. Sand had all the time there was, before drowning himself. Why didn’t he leave a note for his wife like a sane man? Or, shall we say… Why didn’t the Other Man leave a note for the wife like a sane man? Because he would have had to forge the husband’s handwriting; always a tricky thing now that experts are so nosey about it. But nobody can be expected to imitate even his own handwriting, let alone somebody else’s when he carves capital letters in the bark of a tree. This is not a suicide, Mr Sand. If it’s anything at all, it’s a murder.’

  The bracken and bushes of the undergrowth snapped and crackled as the big young man rose out of them like a leviathan, and stood lowering, with his thick neck thrust forward.

  ‘I’m no good at hiding things,’ he said, ‘and I half-suspected something like this—expected it, you might say, for a long time. To tell the truth, I could hardly be civil to the fellow—to either of them, for that matter.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’ asked the priest, looking him gravely full in the face.

  ‘I mean,’ said Henry Sand, ‘that you have shown me the murder and I think I could show you the murderers.’

  Father Brown was silent and the other went on rather jerkily.

  ‘You said people sometimes wrote love-messages on trees. Well, as a fact, there are some of them on that tree; there are two sort of monograms twisted together up there under the leaves—I suppose you know that Lady Sand was the heiress of this place long before she married; and she knew that damned dandy of a secretary even in those days. I guess they used to meet here and write their vows upon the trysting-tree. They seem to have used the trysting-tree for another purpose later on. Sentiment, no doubt, or economy.’

  ‘They must be very horrible people,’ said Father Brown.

  ‘Haven’t there been any horrible people in history or the police-news?’ demanded Sand with some excitement. ‘Haven’t there been lovers who made love seem more horrible than hate? Don’t you know about Bothwell and all the bloody legends of such lovers?’

  ‘I know the legend of Bothwell,’ answered the priest. ‘I also know it to be quite legendary. But of course it’s true that husbands have been sometimes put away like that. By the way, where was he put away? I mean, where did they hide the body?’

  ‘I suppose they drowned him, or threw him in the water when he was dead,’ snorted the young man impatiently.

  Father Brown blinked thoughtfully and then said: ‘A river is a good place to hide an imaginary body. It’s a rotten bad place to hide a real one. I mean, it’s easy to say you’ve thrown it in, because it might be washed away to sea. But if you really did throw it in, it’s about a hundred to one it wouldn’t; the chances of it going ashore somewhere are enormous. I think they must have had a better scheme for hiding the body than that—or the body would have been found by now. And if there were any marks of violence—‘

  ‘Oh, bother hiding the body,’ said Henry, with some irritation; ‘haven’t we witness enough in the writing on their own devilish tree?’

  ‘The body is the chief witness in every murder,’ answered the other. ‘The hiding of the body, nine times out of ten, is the practical problem to be solved.’

  There was a silence; and Father Brown continued to turn over the red dressing-gown and spread it out on the shining grass of the sunny shore; he did not look up. But, for some time past he had been conscious that the whole landscape had been changed for him by the presence of a third party; standing as still as a statue in the garden.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘how do you explain that little guy with the glass eye, who brought your poor uncle a letter yesterday? It seemed to me he was entirely altered by reading it; that’s why I wasn’t surprised at the suicide, when I thought it was a suicide. That chap was a rather low-down private detective, or I’m much mistaken.’

  ‘Why,’ said Henry in a hesitating manner, ‘why, he might have been—husbands do sometimes put on detectives in domestic tragedies like this, don’t they? I suppose he’d got the proofs of their intrigue; and so they—‘

  ‘I shouldn’t talk too loud,’ said Father Brown, ‘because your detective is detecting us at this moment, from about a yard beyond those bushes.’

  They looked up, and sure enough the goblin with the glass eye was fixing them with that disagreeable optic, looking all the more grotesque for standing among the white and waxen blooms of the classical garden.

  Henry Sand scrambled to his feet again with a rapidity that seemed breathless for one of his bulk, and asked the man very angrily and abruptly what he was doing, at the same time telling him to clear out at once.

  ‘Lord Stanes,’ said the goblin of the garden, ‘would be much obliged if Father Brown would come up to the house and speak to him.’

  Henry Sand turned away furiously; but the priest put down his fury to the dislike that was known to exist between him and the nobleman in question. As they mounted the slope, Father Brown paused a moment as if tracing patterns on the smooth tree-trunk, glanced upwards once at the darker and more hidden hieroglyph said to be a record of romance; and then stared at the wider and more sprawling letters of the confession, or supposed confession of suicide.

  ‘Do those letters remind you of anything?’ he asked. And when his sulky companion shook his head, he added: ‘They remind me of the writing on that placard that threatened him with the vengeance of the strikers.’

  ‘This is the hardest riddle and the queerest tale I have ever tackled,’ said Father Brown, a month later, as he sat opposite Lord Stanes in the recently furnished apartment of No. 188, the end flat which was the last to be finished before the interregnum of the industrial dispute and the transfer of work from the Trade Union. It was comfortably furnished; and Lord Stanes was presiding over grog and cigars, when the priest made his confession with a grimace. Lord Stanes had become rather surprisingly friendly, in a cool and casual way.

  ‘I know that is saying a good deal, with your record,’ said Stanes, ‘but certainly the detectives, including our seductive friend with the glass eye, don’t seem at all able to see the solution.’

  Father Brown laid down his cigar and said carefully: ‘It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the other, ‘perhaps I can’t see the problem either.’

  ‘The problem is unlike all other problems, for this reason,’ said Father Brown. ‘It seems as if the criminal deliberately did two different things, either of which might have been successful; but which, when done together, could only defeat each other. I am assuming, what I firmly believe, that the same murderer pinned up the proclamation threatening a sort of Bolshevik murder, and also wrote on the tree confessing to an ordinary suicide. Now you may say it is after all possible that the proclamation was a proletarian proclamation; that some extremist workmen wanted to kill their employer, and killed him. Even if that were true, it would still stick at the mystery of why they left, or why anybody left, a contrary trail of private self-destruction. But it certainly isn’t true. None of these workmen, however, bitter, would have done a thing like that. I know them pretty well; I know their leaders quite well. To suppose that people like Tom Bruce or Hogan would assassinate somebody they could go for in the newspapers, and damage in all sorts of different ways, is the sort of psychology that sensible people call lunacy. No; there was somebody, who was not an indignant workman, who first played the part of an indignant workman, and then played the part of a suicidal employer. But, in the name of wonder, why? If he thought he could pass it off smoothly as a suicide, why did he first spoil it all by publishing a threat of murder? You might say it was an afterthought to fix up the suicide story, as less prov
ocative than the murder story. But it wasn’t less provocative after the murder story. He must have known he had already turned our thoughts towards murder, when it should have been his whole object to keep our thoughts away from it. If it was an after-thought, it was the after-thought of a very thoughtless person. And I have a notion that this assassin is a very thoughtful person. Can you make anything of it?’

  ‘No; but I see what you mean,’ said Stanes, ‘by saying that I didn’t even see the problem. It isn’t merely who killed Sand; it’s why anybody should accuse somebody else of killing Sand and then accuse Sand of killing himself.’

  Father Brown’s face was knotted and the cigar was clenched in his teeth; the end of it plowed and darkened rhythmically like the signal of some burning pulse of the brain. Then he spoke as if to himself:

  ‘We’ve got to follow very closely and very clearly. It’s like separating threads of thought from each other; something like this. Because the murder charge really rather spoilt the suicide charge, he wouldn’t normally have made the murder charge. But he did make it; so he had some other reason for making it. It was so strong a reason that perhaps it reconciled him even to weakening his other line of defence; that it was a suicide. In other words, the murder charge wasn’t really a murder charge. I mean he wasn’t using it as a murder charge; he wasn’t doing it so as to shift to somebody else the guilt of murder; he was doing it for some other extraordinary reason of his own. His plan had to contain a proclamation that Sand would be murdered; whether it threw suspicion on other people or not. Somehow or other the mere proclamation itself was necessary. But why?’

  He smoked and smouldered away with the same volcanic concentration for five minutes before he spoke again. ‘What could a murderous proclamation do, besides suggesting that the strikers were the murderers? What did it do? One thing is obvious; it inevitably did the opposite of what it said. It told Sand not to lock out his men; and it was perhaps the only thing in the world that would really have made him do it. You’ve got to think of the sort of man and the sort of reputation. When a man has been called a Strong Man in our silly sensational newspapers, when he is fondly regarded as a Sportsman by all the most distinguished asses in England, he simply can’t back down because he is threatened with a pistol. It would be like walking about at Ascot with a white feather stuck in his absurd white hat. It would break that inner idol or ideal of oneself, which every man not a downright dastard does really prefer to life. And Sand wasn’t a dastard; he was courageous; he was also impulsive. It acted instantly like a charm: his nephew, who had been more or less mixed up with the workmen, cried out instantly that the threat must be absolutely and instantly defied.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Stanes, ‘I noticed that.’ They looked at each other for an instant, and then Stanes added carelessly: ‘So you think the thing the criminal wanted was…’

  ‘The Lock-out!’ cried the priest energetically. ‘The Strike or whatever you call it; the cessation of work, anyhow. He wanted the work to stop at once; perhaps the blacklegs to come in at once; certainly the Trade Unionists to go out at once. That is what he really wanted; God knows why. And he brought that off, I think, really without bothering much about its other implication of the existence of Bolshevist assassins. But then… then I think something went wrong. I’m only guessing and groping very slowly here; but the only explanation I can think of is that something began to draw attention to the real seat of the trouble; to the reason, whatever it was, of his wanting to bring the building to a halt. And then belatedly, desperately, and rather inconsistently, he tried to lay the other trail that led to the river, simply and solely because it led away from the flats.’

  He looked up through his moonlike spectacles, absorbing all the quality of the background and furniture; the restrained luxury of a quiet man of the world; and contrasting it with the two suitcases with which its occupant had arrived so recently in a newly-finished and unfurnished flat. Then he said rather abruptly: ‘In short, the murderer was frightened of something or somebody in the flats. By the way, why did you come to live in the flats?… Also by the way, young Henry told me you made an early appointment with him when you moved in. Is that true?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Stanes. ‘I got the key from his uncle the night before. I’ve no notion why Henry came here that morning.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Father Brown, ‘then I think I have some notion of why he came… I thought you startled him by coming in just when he was coming out.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Stanes, looking across with a glitter in his grey-green eyes, ‘you do rather think that I also am a mystery.’

  ‘I think you are two mysteries,’ said Father Brown. ‘The first is why you originally retired from Sand’s business. The second is why you have since come back to live in Sand’s buildings.’

  Stanes smoked reflectively, knocked out his ash, and rang a bell on the table before him. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I will summon two more to the council. Jackson, the little detective you know of, will answer the bell; and I’ve asked Henry Sand to come in a little later.’

  Father Brown rose from his seat, walked across the room and looked down frowning into the fire-place.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ continued Stanes, ‘I don’t mind answering both your questions. I left the Sand business because I was sure there was some hanky-panky in it and somebody was pinching all the money. I came back to it, and took this flat, because I wanted to watch for the real truth about old Sand’s death—on the spot.’

  Father Brown faced round as the detective entered the room; he stood staring at the hearthrug and repeated: ‘On the spot.’

  ‘Mr Jackson will tell you,’ said Stanes, ‘that Sir Hubert commissioned him to find out who was the thief robbing the firm; and he brought a note of his discoveries the day before old Hubert disappeared.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Father Brown, ‘and I know now where he disappeared to. I know where the body is.’

  ‘Do you mean -?’ began his host hastily.

  ‘It is here,’ said Father Brown, and stamped on the hearthrug. ‘Here, under the elegant Persian rug in this cosy and comfortable room.’

  ‘Where in the world did you find that?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ said Father Brown, ‘that I found it in my sleep.’

  He closed his eyes as if trying to picture a dream, and went on dreamily:

  ‘This is a murder story turning on the problem of How to Hide the Body; and I found it in my sleep. I was always woken up every morning by hammering from this building. On that morning I half-woke up, went to sleep again and woke once more, expecting to find it late; but it wasn’t. Why? Because there had been hammering that morning, though all the usual work had stopped; short, hurried hammering in the small hours before dawn. Automatically a man sleeping stirs at such a familiar sound. But he goes to sleep again, because the usual sound is not at the usual hour. Now why did a certain secret criminal want all the work to cease suddenly; and only new workers come in? Because, if the old workers had come in next day, they would have found a new piece of work done in the night. The old workers would have known where they left off; and they would have found the whole flooring of this room already nailed down. Nailed down by a man who knew how to do it; haying mixed a good deal with the workmen and learned their ways.’

  As he spoke, the door was pushed open and a head poked in with a thrusting motion; a small head at the end of a thick neck and a face that blinked at them through glasses.

  ‘Henry Sand said,’ observed Father Brown, staring at the ceiling, ‘that he was no good at hiding things. But I think he did himself an injustice.’

  Henry Sand turned and moved swiftly away down the corridor.

  ‘He not only hid his thefts from the firm quite successfully for years,’ went on the priest with an air of abstraction, ‘but when his uncle discovered them, he hid his uncle’s corpse in an entirely new and original manner.’

  At the same instant Stanes again rang a bell, with
a long strident steady ringing; and the little man with the glass eye was propelled or shot along the corridor after the fugitive, with something of the rotatory motion of a mechanical figure in a zoetrope. At the same moment, Father Brown looked out of the window, leaning over a small balcony, and saw five or six men start from behind bushes and railings in the street below and spread out equally mechanically like a fan or net; opening out after the fugitive who had shot like a bullet out of the front door. Father Brown saw only the pattern of the story; which had never strayed from that room; where Henry had strangled Hubert and hid his body under impenetrable flooring, stopping the whole work on the building to do it. A pin-prick had started his own suspicions; but only to tell him he had been led down the long loop of a lie. The point of the pin was that it was pointless.

  He fancied he understood Stanes at last, and he liked to collect queer people who were difficult to understand. He realized that this tired gentleman, whom he had once accused of having green blood, had indeed a sort of cold green flame of conscientiousness or conventional honour, that had made him first shift out of a shady business, and then feel ashamed of having shifted it on to others; and come back as a bored laborious detective; pitching his camp on the very spot where the corpse had been buried; so that the murderer, finding him sniffing so near the corpse, had wildly staged the alternative drama of the dressing-gown and the drowned man. All that was plain enough, but, before he withdrew his head from the night air and the stars. Father Brown threw one glance upwards at the vast black bulk of the cyclopean building heaved far up into the night, and remembered Egypt and Babylon, and all that is at once eternal and ephemeral in the work of man.

  ‘I was right in what I said first of all,’ he said. ‘It reminds one of Coppee’s poem about the Pharaoh and the Pyramid. This house is supposed to be a hundred houses; and yet the whole mountain of building is only one man’s tomb.’

  8. The Insoluble Problem