Gilbert Chesterton: The Scandal of Father Brown

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:

"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."