The Scandal of Father Brown (father brown)

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  As it was, he jumped up with great promptitude, plunged into his clothes, seized his big knobby umbrella and bustled out into the street, where the bleak white morning was breaking like splintered ice about the huge black building facing him. He was surprised to find that the streets shone almost empty in the cold crystalline light; the very look of it told him it could hardly be so late as he had feared. Then suddenly the stillness was cloven by the arrowlike swiftness of a long grey car which halted before the big deserted flats. Lord Stanes unfolded himself from within and approached the door, carrying (rather languidly) two large suitcases. At the same moment the door opened, and somebody seemed to step back instead of stepping out into the street. Stanes called twice to the man within, before that person seemed to complete his original gesture by coming out on to the doorstep; then the two held a brief colloquy, ending in the nobleman carrying his suitcases upstairs, and the other coming out into full daylight and revealing the heavy shoulders and peering head of young Henry Sand.

  Father Brown made no more of this rather odd meeting, until two days later the young man drove up in his own car, and implored the priest to enter it. "Something awful has happened," he said, "and I'd rather talk to you than Stanes. You know Stanes arrived the other day with some mad idea of camping in one of the flats that's just finished. That's why I had to go there early and open the door to him. But all that will keep. I want you to come up to my uncle's place at once."

  "Is he ill?" inquired the priest quickly.

  "I think he's dead," answered the nephew.

  "What do you mean by saying you think he's dead?" asked Father Brown a little briskly. "Have you got a doctor?"

  "No," answered the other. "I haven't got a doctor or a patient either… It's no good calling in doctors to examine the body; because the body has run away. But I'm afraid I know where it has run to… the truth is — we kept it dark for two days; but he's disappeared."

  "Wouldn't it be better," said Father Brown mildly, "if you told me what has really happened from the beginning?"

  "I know," answered Henry Sand; "it's an infernal shame to talk flippantly like this about the poor old boy; but people get like that when they're rattled. I'm not much good at hiding things; the long and the short of it is — well, I won't tell you the long of it now. It's what some people would call rather a long shot; shooting suspicions at random and so on. But the short of it is that my unfortunate uncle has committed suicide."

  They were by this time skimming along in the car through the last fringes of the town and the first fringes of the forest and park beyond it; the lodge gates of Sir Hubert Sand's small estate were about a half mile farther on amid the thickening throng of the beeches. The estate consisted chiefly of a small park and a large ornamental garden, which descended in terraces of a certain classical pomp to the very edge of the chief river of the district. As soon as they arrived at the house, Henry took the priest somewhat hastily through the old Georgian rooms and out upon the other side; where they silently descended the slope, a rather steep slope embanked with flowers, from which they could see the pale river spread out before them almost as flat as in a bird's-eye view. They were just turning the corner of the path under an enormous classical urn crowned with a somewhat incongruous garland of geraniums, when Father Brown saw a movement in the bushes and thin trees just below him, that seemed as swift as a movement of startled birds.

  In the tangle of thin trees by the river two figures seemed to divide or scatter; one of them glided swiftly into the shadows and the other came forward to face them; bringing them to a halt and an abrupt and rather unaccountable silence. Then Henry Sand said in his heavy way: "I think you know Father Brown… Lady Sand."

  Father Brown did know her; but at that moment he might almost have said that he did not know her. The pallor and constriction of her face was like a mask of tragedy; she was much younger than her husband, but at that moment she looked somehow older than everything in that old house and garden. And the priest remembered, with a subconscious thrill, that she was indeed older in type and lineage and was the true possessor of the place. For her own family had owned it as impoverished aristocrats, before she had restored its fortunes by marrying a successful business man. As she stood there, she might have been a family picture, or even a family ghost. Her pale face was of that pointed yet oval type seen in some old pictures of Mary Queen of Scots; and its expression seemed almost to go beyond the natural unnaturalness of a situation, in which her husband had vanished under suspicion of suicide. Father Brown, with the same subconscious movement of the mind, wondered who it was with whom she had been talking among the trees.

  "I suppose you know all this dreadful news," she said, with a comfortless composure. "Poor Hubert must have broken down under all this revolutionary persecution, and been just maddened into taking his own life. I don't know whether you can do anything; or whether these horrible Bolsheviks can be made responsible for hounding him to death."

  "I am terribly distressed, Lady Sand," said Father Brown. "And still, I must own, a little bewildered. You speak of persecution; do you think that anybody could hound him to death merely by pinning up that paper on the wall?"

  "I fancy," answered the lady, with a darkening brow, "that there were other persecutions besides the paper."

  "It shows what mistakes one may make," said the priest sadly. "I never should have thought he would be so illogical as to die in order to avoid death."

  "I know," she answered, gazing at him gravely. "I should never have believed it, if it hadn't been written with his own hand."

  "What?" cried Father Brown, with a little jump like a rabbit that has been shot at.

  "Yes," said Lady Sand calmly. "He left a confession of suicide; so I fear there is no doubt about it." And she passed on up the slope alone, with all the inviolable isolation of the family ghost.

  The spectacles of Father Brown were turned in mute inquiry to the eyeglasses of Mr. Henry Sand. And the latter gentleman, after an instant's hesitation, spoke again in his rather blind and plunging fashion: "Yes, you see, it seems pretty clear now what he did. He was always a great swimmer and used to come down in his dressing-gown every morning for a dip in the river. Well, he came down as usual, and left his dressing-gown on the bank; it's lying there still. But he also left a message saying he was going for his last swim and then death, or something like that."

  "Where did he leave the message?" asked Father Brown.

  "He scrawled it on that tree there, overhanging the water, I suppose the last thing he took hold of; just below where the dressing-gown's lying. Come and see for yourself."

  Father Brown ran down the last short slope to the shore and peered under the hanging tree, whose plumes were almost dipping in the stream. Sure enough, he saw on the smooth bark the words scratched conspicuously and unmistakably: "One more swim and then drowning. Good-bye. Hubert Sand." Father Brown's gaze travelled slowly up the bank till it rested on a gorgeous rag of raiment, all red and yellow with gilded tassels. It was the dressing-gown and the priest picked it up and began to turn it over. Almost as he did so he was conscious that a figure had flashed across his field of vision; a tall dark figure that slipped from one clump of trees to another, as if following the trail of the vanishing lady. He had little doubt that it was the companion from whom she had lately parted. He had still less doubt that it was the dead man's secretary, Mr Rupert Rae.

  "Of course, it might be a final afterthought to leave the message," said Father Brown, without looking up, his eye riveted on the red and gold garment. "We've all heard of love-messages written on trees; and I suppose there might be death-messages written on trees too."

  "Well, he wouldn't have anything in the pockets of his dressing-gown, I suppose," said young Sand. "And a man might naturally scratch his message on a tree if he had no pens, ink or paper."

  "Sounds like French exercises," said the priest dismally. "But I wasn't thinking of that." Then, after a silence, he said in a rather altered voice:
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br />   "To tell the truth, I was thinking whether a man might not naturally scratch his message on a tree, even if he had stacks of pens, and quarts of ink, and reams of paper."

  Henry was looking at him with a rather startled air, his eyeglasses crooked on his pug-nose. "And what do you mean by that?" he asked sharply.

  "Well," said Father Brown slowly, "I don't exactly mean that postmen will carry letters in the form of logs, or that you will ever drop a line to a friend by putting a postage stamp on a pinetree. It would have to be a particular sort of position — in fact, it would have to be a particular sort of person, who really preferred this sort of arboreal correspondence. But, given the position and the person, I repeat what I said. He would still write on a tree, as the song says, if all the world were paper and all the sea were ink; if that river flowed with everlasting ink or all these woods were a forest of quills and fountain-pens."

  It was evident that Sand felt something creepy about the priest's fanciful imagery; whether because he found it incomprehensible or because he was beginning to comprehend.

  "You see," said Father Brown, turning the dressing-gown over slowly as he spoke, "a man isn't expected to write his very best handwriting when he chips it on a tree. And if the man were not the man, if I make myself clear — Hullo!"

  He was looking down at the red dressing-gown, and it seemed for the moment as if some of the red had come off on his finger; but both the faces turned towards it were already a shade paler.

  "Blood!" said Father Brown; and for the instant there was a deadly stillness save for the melodious noises of the river.

  Henry Sand cleared his throat and nose with noises that were by no means melodious. Then he said rather hoarsely: "Whose blood?"

  "Oh, mine," said Father Brown; but he did not smile.

  A moment after he said: "There was a pin in this thing and I pricked myself. But I don't think you quite appreciate the point . . . the point of the pin. I do'; and he sucked his finger like a child.

  "You see," he said after another silence, "the gown was folded up and pinned together; nobody could have unfolded it — at least without scratching himself. In plain words, Hubert Sand never wore this dressing-gown. Any more than Hubert Sand ever wrote on that tree. Or drowned himself in that river."

  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 provocative 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?"