Gilbert Chesterton: The Scandal of Father Brown

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."