Gilbert Chesterton: The Scandal of Father Brown

"Oh, I knew the primary suspicion would rest on the manager," said Father Brown. "That was why I didn't suspect him. You see, I rather fancied somebody else must have known that the primary suspicion would rest on the manager; or the servants of the hotel. That is why I said it would be easy to kill anybody in the hotel… But you'd better go and have it out with him, I suppose."

The Inspector went; but came back again after a surprisingly short interview, and found his clerical friend turning over some papers that seemed to be a sort of dossier of the stormy career of John Raggley.

"This is a rum go," said the Inspector. "I thought I should spend hours cross-examining that slippery little toad there, for we haven't legally got a thing against him. And instead of that, he went to pieces all at once, and I really think he's told me all he knows in sheer funk."

"I know," said Father Brown. "That's the way he went to pieces when he found Raggley's corpse apparently poisoned in his hotel. That's why he lost his head enough to do such a clumsy thing as decorate the corpse with a Turkish knife, to put the blame on the nigger, as he would say. There never is anything the matter with him but funk; he's the very last man that ever would really stick a knife into a live person. I bet he had to nerve himself to stick it into a dead one. But he's the very first person to be frightened of being charged with what he didn't do; and to make a fool of himself, as he did."

"I suppose I must see the barman too," observed Greenwood .

"I suppose so," answered the other. "I don't believe myself it was any of the hotel people — well, because it was made to look as if it must be the hotel people… But look here, have you seen any of this stuff they've got together about Raggley? He had a jolly interesting life; I wonder whether anyone will write his biography."

"I took a note of everything likely to affect an affair like this," answered the official. "He was a widower; but he did once have a row with a man about his wife; a Scotch land-agent then in these parts; and Raggley seems to have been pretty violent. They say he hated Scotchmen; perhaps that's the reason… Oh, I know what you are smiling grimly about. A Scotchman… Perhaps an Edinburgh man."

"Perhaps," said Father Brown. "It's quite likely, though, that he did dislike Scotchmen, apart from private reasons. It's an odd thing, but all that tribe of Tory Radicals, or whatever you call them, who resisted the Whig mercantile movement, all of them did dislike Scotchmen. Cobbett did; Dr Johnson did; Swift described their accent in one of his deadliest passages; even Shakespeare has been accused of the prejudice. But the prejudices of great men generally have something to do with principles. And there was a reason, I fancy. The Scot came from a poor agricultural land, that became a rich industrial land. He was able and active; he thought he was bringing industrial civilization from the north; he simply didn't know that there had been for centuries a rural civilization in the south. His own grandfather's land was highly rural but not civilized… Well, well, I suppose we can only wait for more news."

"I hardly think you'll get the latest news out of Shakespeare and Dr Johnson," grinned the police officer. "What Shakespeare thought of Scotchmen isn't exactly evidence."

Father Brown cocked an eyebrow, as if a new thought had surprised him. "Why, now I come to think of it," he said, "there might be better evidence, even out of Shakespeare. He doesn't often mention Scotchmen. But he was rather fond of making fun of Welshmen."

The Inspector was searching his friend's face; for he fancied he recognized an alertness behind its demure expression. "By Jove," he said. "Nobody thought of turning the suspicions that way, anyhow."

"Well," said Father Brown, with broad-minded calm, "you started by talking about fanatics; and how a fanatic could do anything. Well, I suppose we had the honour of entertaining in this bar-parlour yesterday, about the biggest and loudest and most fat-headed fanatic in the modern world. If being a pig-headed idiot with one idea is the way to murder, I put in a claim for my reverend brother Pryce-Jones, the Prohibitionist, in preference to all the fakirs in Asia, and it's perfectly true, as I told you, that his horrible glass of milk was standing side by side on the counter with the mysterious glass of whisky."

"Which you think was mixed up with the murder," said Greenwood , staring. "Look here, I don't know whether you're really serious or not."

Even as he was looking steadily in his friend's face, finding something still inscrutable in its expression, the telephone rang stridently behind the bar. Lifting the flap in the counter Inspector Greenwood passed rapidly inside, unhooked the receiver, listened for an instant, and then uttered a shout; not addressed to his interlocutor, but to the universe in general. Then he listened still more attentively and said explosively at intervals, "Yes, yes… Come round at once; bring him round if possible… Good piece of work… Congratulate you."

Then Inspector Greenwood came back into the outer lounge, like a man who has renewed his youth, sat down squarely on his seat, with his hands planted on his knees, stared at his friend, and said:

"Father Brown, I don't know how you do it. You seem to have known he was a murderer before anybody else knew he was a man. He was nobody; he was nothing; he was a slight confusion in the evidence; nobody in the hotel saw him; the boy on the steps could hardly swear to him; he was just a fine shade of doubt founded on an extra dirty glass. But we've got him, and he's the man we want."

Father Brown had risen with the sense of the crisis, mechanically clutching the papers destined to be so valuable to the biographer of Mr Raggley; and stood staring at his friend. Perhaps this gesture jerked his friend's mind to fresh confirmations.

"Yes, we've got The Quick One. And very quick he was, like quicksilver, in making his get-away; we only just stopped him — off on a fishing trip to Orkney, he said. But he's the man, all right; he's the Scotch land-agent who made love to Raggley's wife; he's the man who drank Scotch whisky in this bar and then took a train to Edinburgh . And nobody would have known it but for you."

"Well, what I meant," began Father Brown, in a rather dazed tone; and at that instant there was a rattle and rumble of heavy vehicles outside the hotel; and two or three other and subordinate policemen blocked the bar with their presence. One of them, invited by his superior to sit down, did so in an expansive manner, like one at once happy and fatigued; and he also regarded Father Brown with admiring eyes.

"Got the murderer. Sir, oh yes," he said: "I know he's a murderer, "cause he bally nearly murdered me. I've captured some tough characters before now; but never one like this — hit me in the stomach like the kick of a horse and nearly got away from five men. Oh, you've got a real killer this time. Inspector."

"Where is he?" asked Father Brown, staring.

"Outside in the van, in handcuffs," replied the policeman, "and, if you're wise, you'll leave him there — for the present."

Father Brown sank into a chair in a sort of soft collapse; and the papers he had been nervously clutching were shed around him, shooting and sliding about the floor like sheets of breaking snow. Not only his face, but his whole body, conveyed the impression of a punctured balloon.

"Oh… Oh," he repeated, as if any further oath would be inadequate. "Oh…I've done it again."

"If you mean you've caught the criminal again," began Greenwood . But his friend stopped him with a feeble explosion, like that of expiring soda-water.

"I mean," said Father Brown, "that it's always happening; and really, I don't know why. I always try to say what I mean. But everybody else means such a lot by what I say."