Father Brown's Last Case
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Crime/Mystery
Swearwords: None.
Description: With apologies to the wraith of G K Chesterton.
_____________________________________________________________________
Father Brown was grumpy. He was sitting in his usual place at the kitchen table but the world had shifted leaving his surroundings oddly unwelcoming. For a start he was no longer ‘Father’: the Bishop had called yesterday to say the Cardinal had been pleased to bestow the honorific ‘Canon’.
It seemed too large a title for him. He had always been small in stature and it felt as if his new title would hold him back as he dragged it along. He appreciated the honour, of course, but he doubted that he was worthy of it.
It was largely thanks to his old adversary Flambeau that the Cardinal had noticed him. A little more than a year before, a pretty young French girl had called at the presbytery to talk to him. She introduced herself as the only daughter of the master criminal and she gave Father Brown a ticket for the left luggage area of the Gare du Nord in Paris.
She had tears in her eyes when she described her father’s death from an apoplexy but the gay laugh with which she finished the tale reminded the priest of the way Flambeau would react to his plans being thwarted.
“C’est la vie, mon Pere.”
“Do you think he would mind if I said masses for his soul?”
This time her laugh was warm and genuine.
“I think you are the only man alive who would dare to pray for him without risking a thunderbolt! He had the greatest respect for you, Father. When I was little he would tell me that you could have been an even greater criminal than he was.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. He could never have been a priest, although he would have made a good archbishop.”
As she left, the girl handed over an envelope addressed to Father Brown in Flambeau’s copperplate script. It contained a very brief letter.
‘Farewell, old friend – I always thought of you as a friend even when you had just stopped me from completing what you persisted in calling a crime. The chest I have left in the station is my final revenge on you. It contains many items I have taken from churches all over Europe. You can keep them and be rich or you can return them and suffer the glare of publicity. Adieu, mon ami.’
The next day Father Brown gave the left luggage receipt to the Bishop who could take the credit for the recovery of the church treasures and now he had been promoted to Canon. He did not show the letter to anyone.
The new title was not the only present the Bishop brought. A new priest would arrive within a day or two to allow the Canon to retire; a place had been found for him in a pleasant retreat on the south coast. Father Brown had no wish to retire. His private view was that a home for retired priests would be a foretaste of Purgatory!
On Saturday he would wed the granddaughter of one of the first couples he had married when he arrived in the parish and he had christened a great grandson of another parishioner only last month. His enforced retirement was not the reason he was grumpy, although he had prayed before the altar for two hours last night for an obedient and accepting heart.
The reason for his displeasure was in the headline of the newspaper lying on the kitchen table in front of him. It was a first edition of the local paper and it had been thrust through the presbytery door sometime after midnight when the presses rolled.
There had been a sensational murder in the neighbourhood and the paper announced that an arrest had been made and a confession obtained by the local police. Father Brown had inside information on the police investigation since the chief crime reporter was one of his parishioners who shared everything he knew or suspected with the priest. Despite this, the Father had utterly failed to identify the killer.
It seemed that the Bishop was right to put him out to graze along the beaches of the south coast retreat. He was clearly too old to solve crimes any more, so perhaps his faculties were already so far decayed that he had become a liability to his flock. No wonder he was grumpy!
He sighed and pulled the paper towards him to read again the things he had missed that the police had spotted, when the paper was covered by a laundry basket dumped on the table by his old housekeeper. This was no more than a skirmish in a long-running war.
Father Brown liked sitting at the kitchen table; the room is bright and warm while his study is cold and the light is poor because of a massive tree growing right outside the window. The housekeeper wants the tree removed or at least severely pruned but the priest wants it to live out its life unmolested. The truth is that Father Brown hopes that by sitting in the kitchen he will encourage visitors to gossip, which he loves, and extra cups of tea, his only vice.
The war is in a particularly active phase since the visit of the Bishop. The housekeeper has used all her wiles since he left to discover the purpose of the visit. Father Brown has not made any concessions at all, not even mentioning his new title, although he is aware that the news would give him respite from further questions. She would be out the door without checking whether her hat was on straight to spread such a wonderful piece of news to believers and un-believers indiscriminately.
“Where is he hiding them?” she mumbled audibly.
This is a familiar gambit between the priest and his housekeeper when her wily questions have failed to lead to a full confession. She intrudes her presence while ostentatiously avoiding the subject that she most wants to know about. At this point Father Brown often capitulates since he is fond of the woman and he will admit under duress that his own abiding sin is nosiness.
Today he chose to ignore her frantic search, even although it involved moving his newspaper and searching underneath his chair. The truth is that Flambeau’s death has hit him very hard and his chief remaining pleasure lies in baiting his long-suffering housekeeper. There were only half a dozen duels between the master thief and the priest but they were the crowning moments in the life of both men.
Without Flambeau to challenge him at the highest level, Father Brown has let his investigative powers wither. The sound of the paper ripping brought the old priest out of his reverie.
“They’re not in his room and they’re certainly not here. Where would the old goat hide underpants?”
“I take it the ‘old goat’ is your husband? And did I understand you to say that he is hiding his underwear from you?”
“He hates changing his drawers in the winter – he says the new ones are too cold and he gets a grue.” The old lady dropped into a seat opposite the priest, happy that she had his full attention.
“I lay out a fresh pair every Sunday morning without fail so he can be decent for mass, if he ever went to mass.”
Her husband of thirty-six years is the sexton and gravedigger for the parish and he often misses mass when he sleeps off his overindulgence on Saturday nights.
“He used to put the clean pair back in the chest of drawers and keep the old pair on but I soon caught him at that little game!”
The issue had nothing to do with hygiene and very little to do with her husband’s attempt at deception, since he had been trying to deceive her since they had known each other. What was upsetting her was the fact that for the first time in their marriage, he was succeeding.
Father Brown sat up straight in his chair and a little smile played around his lips. His gloomy mood was forgotten. In his youth he had built his reputation on the locked room mystery, explaining to baffled policemen how the trick was done. It was just like old times the way the solution to the mystery of the missing underpants sprang into his mind – and they thought he was too old!
“Go and make a pot of tea and I’ll tell you how he’s making his underpants disappear,” he told his housekeeper.
“Well?” she asked, placing the cup in front of the priest with exaggerated care. Over the years she had learned to live with his idiosyncrasies but she still felt her temper rise when he sat as he now was looking smugly complacent.
“Well,” he replied, lifting the cup with both hands and inhaling the aroma of the freshly brewed tea. “As that humbug Sherlock Holmes once said, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth’. So you see that your little mystery of the missing underpants can have only one solution.”
He held out his cup for a refill but the housekeeper ignored him, grinding out between her teeth: “No I don’t see, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you, you exasperating man!”
“You have two pairs of drawers unaccounted for. He hates to take off the dirty pair in cold weather, so he has obviously kept them on.”
“But where has the clean pair got to?”
“He’s pulled them on over the dirty ones. He’s wearing two pairs of pants.”
Swearwords: None.
Description: With apologies to the wraith of G K Chesterton.
_____________________________________________________________________
Father Brown was grumpy. He was sitting in his usual place at the kitchen table but the world had shifted leaving his surroundings oddly unwelcoming. For a start he was no longer ‘Father’: the Bishop had called yesterday to say the Cardinal had been pleased to bestow the honorific ‘Canon’.
It seemed too large a title for him. He had always been small in stature and it felt as if his new title would hold him back as he dragged it along. He appreciated the honour, of course, but he doubted that he was worthy of it.
It was largely thanks to his old adversary Flambeau that the Cardinal had noticed him. A little more than a year before, a pretty young French girl had called at the presbytery to talk to him. She introduced herself as the only daughter of the master criminal and she gave Father Brown a ticket for the left luggage area of the Gare du Nord in Paris.
She had tears in her eyes when she described her father’s death from an apoplexy but the gay laugh with which she finished the tale reminded the priest of the way Flambeau would react to his plans being thwarted.
“C’est la vie, mon Pere.”
“Do you think he would mind if I said masses for his soul?”
This time her laugh was warm and genuine.
“I think you are the only man alive who would dare to pray for him without risking a thunderbolt! He had the greatest respect for you, Father. When I was little he would tell me that you could have been an even greater criminal than he was.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. He could never have been a priest, although he would have made a good archbishop.”
As she left, the girl handed over an envelope addressed to Father Brown in Flambeau’s copperplate script. It contained a very brief letter.
‘Farewell, old friend – I always thought of you as a friend even when you had just stopped me from completing what you persisted in calling a crime. The chest I have left in the station is my final revenge on you. It contains many items I have taken from churches all over Europe. You can keep them and be rich or you can return them and suffer the glare of publicity. Adieu, mon ami.’
The next day Father Brown gave the left luggage receipt to the Bishop who could take the credit for the recovery of the church treasures and now he had been promoted to Canon. He did not show the letter to anyone.
The new title was not the only present the Bishop brought. A new priest would arrive within a day or two to allow the Canon to retire; a place had been found for him in a pleasant retreat on the south coast. Father Brown had no wish to retire. His private view was that a home for retired priests would be a foretaste of Purgatory!
On Saturday he would wed the granddaughter of one of the first couples he had married when he arrived in the parish and he had christened a great grandson of another parishioner only last month. His enforced retirement was not the reason he was grumpy, although he had prayed before the altar for two hours last night for an obedient and accepting heart.
The reason for his displeasure was in the headline of the newspaper lying on the kitchen table in front of him. It was a first edition of the local paper and it had been thrust through the presbytery door sometime after midnight when the presses rolled.
There had been a sensational murder in the neighbourhood and the paper announced that an arrest had been made and a confession obtained by the local police. Father Brown had inside information on the police investigation since the chief crime reporter was one of his parishioners who shared everything he knew or suspected with the priest. Despite this, the Father had utterly failed to identify the killer.
It seemed that the Bishop was right to put him out to graze along the beaches of the south coast retreat. He was clearly too old to solve crimes any more, so perhaps his faculties were already so far decayed that he had become a liability to his flock. No wonder he was grumpy!
He sighed and pulled the paper towards him to read again the things he had missed that the police had spotted, when the paper was covered by a laundry basket dumped on the table by his old housekeeper. This was no more than a skirmish in a long-running war.
Father Brown liked sitting at the kitchen table; the room is bright and warm while his study is cold and the light is poor because of a massive tree growing right outside the window. The housekeeper wants the tree removed or at least severely pruned but the priest wants it to live out its life unmolested. The truth is that Father Brown hopes that by sitting in the kitchen he will encourage visitors to gossip, which he loves, and extra cups of tea, his only vice.
The war is in a particularly active phase since the visit of the Bishop. The housekeeper has used all her wiles since he left to discover the purpose of the visit. Father Brown has not made any concessions at all, not even mentioning his new title, although he is aware that the news would give him respite from further questions. She would be out the door without checking whether her hat was on straight to spread such a wonderful piece of news to believers and un-believers indiscriminately.
“Where is he hiding them?” she mumbled audibly.
This is a familiar gambit between the priest and his housekeeper when her wily questions have failed to lead to a full confession. She intrudes her presence while ostentatiously avoiding the subject that she most wants to know about. At this point Father Brown often capitulates since he is fond of the woman and he will admit under duress that his own abiding sin is nosiness.
Today he chose to ignore her frantic search, even although it involved moving his newspaper and searching underneath his chair. The truth is that Flambeau’s death has hit him very hard and his chief remaining pleasure lies in baiting his long-suffering housekeeper. There were only half a dozen duels between the master thief and the priest but they were the crowning moments in the life of both men.
Without Flambeau to challenge him at the highest level, Father Brown has let his investigative powers wither. The sound of the paper ripping brought the old priest out of his reverie.
“They’re not in his room and they’re certainly not here. Where would the old goat hide underpants?”
“I take it the ‘old goat’ is your husband? And did I understand you to say that he is hiding his underwear from you?”
“He hates changing his drawers in the winter – he says the new ones are too cold and he gets a grue.” The old lady dropped into a seat opposite the priest, happy that she had his full attention.
“I lay out a fresh pair every Sunday morning without fail so he can be decent for mass, if he ever went to mass.”
Her husband of thirty-six years is the sexton and gravedigger for the parish and he often misses mass when he sleeps off his overindulgence on Saturday nights.
“He used to put the clean pair back in the chest of drawers and keep the old pair on but I soon caught him at that little game!”
The issue had nothing to do with hygiene and very little to do with her husband’s attempt at deception, since he had been trying to deceive her since they had known each other. What was upsetting her was the fact that for the first time in their marriage, he was succeeding.
Father Brown sat up straight in his chair and a little smile played around his lips. His gloomy mood was forgotten. In his youth he had built his reputation on the locked room mystery, explaining to baffled policemen how the trick was done. It was just like old times the way the solution to the mystery of the missing underpants sprang into his mind – and they thought he was too old!
“Go and make a pot of tea and I’ll tell you how he’s making his underpants disappear,” he told his housekeeper.
“Well?” she asked, placing the cup in front of the priest with exaggerated care. Over the years she had learned to live with his idiosyncrasies but she still felt her temper rise when he sat as he now was looking smugly complacent.
“Well,” he replied, lifting the cup with both hands and inhaling the aroma of the freshly brewed tea. “As that humbug Sherlock Holmes once said, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth’. So you see that your little mystery of the missing underpants can have only one solution.”
He held out his cup for a refill but the housekeeper ignored him, grinding out between her teeth: “No I don’t see, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you, you exasperating man!”
“You have two pairs of drawers unaccounted for. He hates to take off the dirty pair in cold weather, so he has obviously kept them on.”
“But where has the clean pair got to?”
“He’s pulled them on over the dirty ones. He’s wearing two pairs of pants.”
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned nine novels and many short stories. His six latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty and Killing Cousins – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned nine novels and many short stories. His six latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty and Killing Cousins – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.