by G. K. Datlow
“Well, there it is. He denounces her day and night as a painted adventuress; a sort of barmaid with gilt hair. I tell him she’s not; you’ve met her yourself, and you know she’s not. But he won’t even meet her. He won’t even see her in the street or look at her out of a window. An actress would pollute his house and even his holy presence. If he is called a Puritan he says he’s proud to be a Puritan.”
“Your father,” said Father Brown, “is entitled to have his views respected, whatever they are; they are not views I understand very well myself. But I agree he is not entitled to lay down the law about a lady he has never seen and then refuse even to look at her, to see if he is right. That is illogical.”
“That’s his very stiffest point,” replied the youth. “Not even one momentary meeting. Of course, he thunders against my other theatrical tastes as well.”
Father Brown swiftly followed up the new opening, and learnt much that he wanted to know. The alleged poetry, which was such a blot on the young man’s character, was almost entirely dramatic poetry. He had written tragedies in verse which had been admired by good judges. He was no mere stage-struck fool; indeed he was no fool of any kind. He had some really original ideas about acting Shakespeare; it was easy to understand his having been dazzled and delighted by finding the brilliant lady at the Grange. And even the priest’s intellectual sympathy so far mellowed the rebel of Potter’s Pond that at their parting he actually smiled.
It was that smile which suddenly revealed to Father Brown that the young man was really miserable. So long as he frowned, it might well have been only sulks; but when he smiled it was somehow a more real revelation of sorrow.
Something continued to haunt the priest about that interview with the poet. An inner instinct certified that the sturdy young man was eaten from within, by some grief greater even than the conventional story of conventional parents being obstacles to the course of true love. It was all the more so, because there were not any obvious alternative causes. The boy was already rather a literary and dramatic success; his books might be said to be booming. Nor did he drink or dissipate his well-earned wealth. His notorious revels at the Blue Lion reduced themselves to one glass of light ale; and he seemed to be rather careful with his money. Father Brown thought of another possible complication in connection with Hurrel’s large resources and small expenditure; and his brow darkened.
The conversation of Miss Carstairs-Carew, on whom he called next, was certainly calculated to paint the parson’s son in the darkest colours. But as it was devoted to blasting him with all the special vices which Father Brown was quite certain the young man did not exhibit, he put it down to a common combination of Puritanism and gossip. The lady, though lofty, was quite gracious, however, and offered the visitor a small glass of port-wine and a slice of seed-cake, in the manner of everybody’s most ancient great-aunts, before he managed to escape from a sermon on the general decay of morals and manners.
His next port of call was very much of a contrast; for he disappeared down a dark and dirty alley, where Miss Carstairs-Carew would have refused to follow him even in thought; and then into a narrow tenement made noisier by a high and declamatory voice in an attic… From this he re-emerged, with a rather dazed expression, pursued on to the pavement by a very excited man with a blue chin and a black frock-coat faded to bottle-green, who was shouting argumentatively: “He did not disappear! Maltravers never disappeared! He appeared: he appeared dead and I’ve appeared alive. But where’s all the rest of the company? Where’s that man, that monster, who deliberately stole my lines, crabbed my best scenes and ruined my career? I was the finest Tubal that ever trod the boards. He acted Shylock—he didn’t need to act much for that! And so with the greatest opportunity of my whole career. I could show you press-cuttings on my renderings of Fortinbras—”
“I’m quite sure they were splendid and very well-deserved,” gasped the little priest. “I understood the company had left the village before Maltravers died. But it’s all right. It’s quite all right.” And he began to hurry down the street again.
“He was to act Polonius,” continued the unquenchable orator behind him. Father Brown suddenly stopped dead.
“Oh,” he said very slowly, “he was to act Polonius.”
“That villain Hankin!” shrieked the actor. “Follow his trail. Follow him to the ends of the earth! Of course he’d left the village; trust him for that. Follow him—find him; and may the curses—” But the priest was again hurrying away down the street.
Two much more prosaic and perhaps more practical interviews followed this melodramatic scene. First the priest went into the bank, where he was closeted for ten minutes with the manager; and then paid a very proper call on the aged and amiable clergyman. Here again all seemed very much as described, unaltered and seemingly unalterable; a touch or two of devotion from more austere traditions, in the narrow crucifix on the wall, the big Bible on the bookstand and the old gentleman’s opening lament over the increasing disregard of Sunday; but all with a flavour of gentility that was not without its little refinements and faded luxuries.
The clergyman also gave his guest a glass of port; but accompanied by an ancient British biscuit instead of seedcake. The priest had again the weird feeling that everything was almost too perfect, and that he was living a century before his time. Only on one point the amiable old parson refused to melt into any further amiability; he meekly but firmly maintained that his conscience would not allow him to meet a stage player. However, Father Brown put down his glass of port with expressions of appreciation and thanks; and went off to meet his friend the doctor by appointment at the corner of the street; whence they were to go together to the offices of Mr Carver, the solicitor.
“I suppose you’ve gone the dreary round,” began the doctor, “and found it a very dull village.”
Father Brown’s reply was sharp and almost shrill. “Don’t call your village dull. I assure you it’s a very extraordinary village indeed.”
“I’ve been dealing with the only extraordinary thing that ever happened here, I should think,” observed Dr Mulborough. “And even that happened to somebody from outside. I may tell you they managed the exhumation quietly last night; and I did the autopsy this morning. In plain words we’ve been digging up a corpse that’s simply stuffed with poison.”
“A corpse stuffed with poison,” repeated Father Brown rather absently. “Believe me, your village contains something much more extraordinary than that.”
There was abrupt silence, followed by the equally abrupt pulling of the antiquated bell-pull in the porch of the solicitor’s house; and they were soon brought into the presence of that legal gentleman, who presented them in turn to a white-haired, yellow-faced gentleman with a scar, who appeared to be the Admiral.
By this time the atmosphere of the village had sunk almost into the subconsciousness of the little priest; but he was conscious that the lawyer was indeed the sort of lawyer to be the adviser of people like Miss Carstairs-Carew. But though he was an archaic old bird, he seemed something more than a fossil. Perhaps it was the uniformity of the background; but the priest had again the curious feeling that he himself was transplanted back into the early nineteenth century, rather than that the solicitor had survived into the early twentieth. His collar and cravat contrived to look almost like a stock as he settled his long chin into them; but they were clean as well as clean-cut; and there was even something about him of a very dry old dandy. In short, he was what is called well preserved, even if partly by being petrified.
The lawyer and the Admiral, and even the doctor, showed some surprise on finding that Father Brown was rather disposed to defend the parson’s son against the local lamentations on behalf of the parson.
“I thought our young friend rather attractive, myself,” he said. “He’s a good talker and I should guess a good poet; and Mrs Maltravers, who is serious about that at least, says he’s quite a good actor.”
“Indeed,” said the lawyer. “Potter’
s Pond, outside Mrs Maltravers, is rather more inclined to ask if he is a good son.”
“He is a good son,” said Father Brown. “That’s the extraordinary thing.”
“Damn it all,” said the Admiral. “Do you mean he’s really fond of his father?”
The priest hesitated. Then he said, “I’m not quite so sure about that. That’s the other extraordinary thing.”
“What the devil do you mean?” demanded the sailor with nautical profanity.
“I mean,” said Father Brown, “that the son still speaks of his father in a hard unforgiving way; but he seems after all to have done more than his duty by him. I had a talk with the bank manager, and as we were inquiring in confidence into a serious crime, under authority from the police, he told me the facts. The old clergyman has retired from parish work; indeed, this was never actually his parish. Such of the populace, which is pretty pagan, as goes to church at all, goes to Dutton-Abbot, not a mile away. The old man has no private means, but his son is earning good money; and the old man is well looked after. He gave me some port of absolutely first-class vintage; I saw rows of dusty old bottles of it; and I left him sitting down to a little lunch quite recherche in an old-fashioned style. It must be done on the young man’s money.”
“Quite a model son,” said Carver with a slight sneer.
Father Brown nodded, frowning, as if revolving a riddle of his own; and then said: “A model son. But rather a mechanical model.”
At this moment a clerk brought in an unstamped letter for the lawyer; a letter which the lawyer tore impatiently across after a single glance. As it fell apart, the priest saw a spidery, crazy crowded sort of handwriting and the signature of “Phoenix Fitzgerald”; and made a guess which the other curtly confirmed.
“It’s that melodramatic actor that’s always pestering us,” he said. “He’s got some fixed feud with some dead and gone fellow mummer of his, which can’t have anything to do with the case. We all refuse to see him, except the doctor, who did see him; and the doctor says he’s mad.”
“Yes,” said Father Brown, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “I should say he’s mad. But of course there can’t be any doubt that he’s right.”
“Right?” cried Carver sharply. “Right about what?”
“About this being connected with the old theatrical company,” said Father Brown. “Do you know the first thing that stumped me about this story? It was that notion that Maltravers was killed by villagers because he insulted their village. It’s extraordinary what coroners can get jurymen to believe; and journalists, of course, are quite incredibly credulous. They can’t know much about English rustics. I’m an English rustic myself; at least I was grown, with other turnips, in Essex. Can you imagine an English agricultural labourer idealizing and personifying his village, like the citizen of an old Greek city state; drawing the sword for its sacred banner, like a man in the tiny medieval republic of an Italian town? Can you hear a jolly old gaffer saying, ‘Blood alone can wipe out one spot on the escutcheon of Potter’s Pond’? By St George and the Dragon, I only wish they would! But, as a matter of fact, I have a more practical argument for the other notion.”
He paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts, and then went on: “They misunderstood the meaning of those few last words poor Maltravers was heard to say. He wasn’t telling the villagers that the village was only a hamlet. He was talking to an actor; they were going to put on a performance in which Fitzgerald was to be Fortinbras, the unknown Hankin to be Polonius, and Maltravers, no doubt, the Prince of Denmark. Perhaps somebody else wanted the part or had views on the part; and Maltravers said angrily, ‘You’d be a miserable little Hamlet’; that’s all.”
Dr Mulborough was staring; he seemed to be digesting the suggestion slowly but without difficulty. At last he said, before the others could speak: “And what do you suggest that we should do now?”
Father Brown arose rather abruptly; but he spoke civilly enough. “If these gentlemen will excuse us for a moment, I propose that you and I, doctor, should go round at once to the Horners. I know the parson and his son will both be there just now. And what I want to do, doctor, is this. Nobody in the village knows yet, I think, about your autopsy and its result. I want you simply to tell both the clergyman and his son, while they are there together, the exact fact of the case; that Maltravers died by poison and not by a blow.”
Dr Mulborough had reason to reconsider his incredulity when told that it was an extraordinary village. The scene which ensued, when he actually carried out the priest’s programme, was certainly of the sort in which a man, as the saying is, can hardly believe his eyes.
The Rev. Samuel Horner was standing in his black cassock, which threw up the silver of his venerable head; his hand rested at the moment on the lectern at which he often stood to study the Scripture, now possibly by accident only; but it gave him a greater look of authority. And opposite to him his mutinous son was sitting asprawl in a chair, smoking a cheap cigarette with an exceptionally heavy scowl; a lively picture of youthful impiety.
The old man courteously waved Father Brown to a seat, which he took and sat there silent, staring blandly at the ceiling. But something made Mulborough feel that he could deliver his important news more impressively standing up.
“I feel,” he said, “that you ought to be informed, as in some sense the spiritual father of this community, that one terrible tragedy in its record has taken on a new significance; possibly even more terrible. You will recall the sad business of the death of Maltravers; who was adjudged to have been killed with the blow of a stick, probably wielded by some rustic enemy.”
The clergyman made a gesture with a wavering hand. “God forbid,” he said, “that I should say anything that might seem to palliate murderous violence in any case. But when an actor brings his wickedness into this innocent village, he is challenging the judgement of God.”
“Perhaps,” said the doctor gravely. “But anyhow it was not so that the judgement fell. I have just been commissioned to conduct a post-mortem on the body; and I can assure you, first, that the blow on the head could not conceivably have caused the death; and, second, that the body was full of poison, which undoubtedly caused death.”
Young Hurrel Horner sent his cigarette flying and was on his feet with the lightness and swiftness of a cat. His leap landed him within a yard of the reading-desk.
“Are you certain of this?” he gasped. “Are you absolutely certain that that blow could not cause death?”
“Absolutely certain,” said the doctor.
“Well,” said Hurrel, “I almost wish this one could.”
In a flash, before anyone could move a finger, he had struck the parson a stunning crack on the mouth, dashing him backwards like a disjointed black doll against the door.
“What are you doing?” cried Mulborough, shaken from head to foot with the shock and mere sound of the blow. “Father Brown, what is this madman doing?”
But Father Brown had not stirred; he was still staring serenely at the ceiling.
“I was waiting for him to do that,” said the priest placidly. “I rather wonder he hasn’t done it before.”
“Good God,” cried the doctor. “I know we thought he was wronged in some ways; but to strike his father; to strike a clergyman and a non-combatant—”
“He has not struck his father; and he has not struck a clergyman,” said Father Brown. “He has struck a blackmailing blackguard of an actor dressed up as a clergyman, who has lived on him like a leech for years. Now he knows he is free of the blackmail, he lets fly; and I can’t say I blame him much. More especially as I have very strong suspicions that the blackmailer is a poisoner as well. I think, Mulborough, you had better ring up the police.”
They passed out of the room uninterrupted by the two others, the one dazed and staggered, the other still blind and snorting and panting with passions of relief and rage. But as they passed, Father Brown once turned his face to the young man; and the young man was one of the v
ery few human beings who have seen that face implacable.
“He was right there,” said Father Brown. “When an actor brings his wickedness into this innocent village, he challenges the judgement of God.”
“Well,” said Father Brown, as he and the doctor again settled themselves in a railway carriage standing in the station of Potter’s Pond. “As you say, it’s a strange story; but I don’t think it’s any longer a mystery story. Anyhow, the story seems to me to have been roughly this. Maltravers came here, with part of his touring company; some of them went straight to Dutton-Abbot, where they were all presenting some melodrama about the early nineteenth century; he himself happened to be hanging about in his stage dress, the very distinctive dress of a dandy of that time. Another character was an old-fashioned parson, whose dark dress was less distinctive and might pass as being merely old-fashioned. This part was taken by a man who mostly acted old men; had acted Shylock and was afterwards going to act Polonius.
“A third figure in the drama was our dramatic poet, who was also a dramatic performer, and quarrelled with Maltravers about how to present Hamlet, but more about personal things, too. I think it likely that he was in love with Mrs Maltravers even then; I don’t believe there was anything wrong with them; and I hope it may now be all right with them. But he may very well have resented Maltravers in his conjugal capacity; for Maltravers was a bully and likely to raise rows. In some such row they fought with sticks, and the poet hit Maltravers very hard on the head, and, in the light of the inquest, had every reason to suppose he had killed him.
“A third person was present or privy to the incident, the man acting the old parson; and he proceeded to blackmail the alleged murderer, forcing from him the cost of his upkeep in some luxury as a retired clergyman. It was the obvious masquerade for such a man in such a place, simply to go on wearing his stage clothes as a retired clergyman. But he had his own reason for being a very retired clergyman. For the true story of Maltravers’ death was that he rolled into a deep undergrowth of bracken, gradually recovered, tried to walk towards a house, and was eventually overcome, not by the blow, but by the fact that the benevolent clergyman had given him poison an hour before, probably in a glass of port. I was beginning to think so, when I drank a glass of the parson’s port. It made me a little nervous. The police are working on that theory now; but whether they will be able to prove that part of the story, I don’t know. They will have to find the exact motive; but it’s obvious that this bunch of actors was buzzing with quarrels and Maltravers was very much hated.”