The Secret Garden

Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however, met by his servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall – a hall hung with weapons. Valentin's house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house, with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine; but the oddity of its architecture was this: that there was no other exit at all except through this front door, which was guarded by Ivan and the weapons. The garden was large and well-kept, and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there was no exit from the garden into the world outside; all round it ran a tall, inaccessible wall with special spikes at the top.

As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was delayed for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements^[41] about executions and such ugly things; and though these duties were unpleasant to him, he always performed them with accuracy. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French police methods, his great influence had been used for making sentences milder. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers.

When Valentin arrived he was already dressed in black clothes and the red rosette – an elegant figure, his dark beard already with grey. He went straight through his house to his study. The garden door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was rising, and Valentin regarded it with wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. From such mood he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there. He saw all the other members of the little party; he saw Lord Galloway, the English Ambassador. He saw Lady Galloway, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an oval face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, and a pointed brown beard. He saw Father Brown, whom he had recently met in England. He saw – perhaps with more interest than any of these – a tall man in uniform, who had bowed to the Galloways, and who now advanced to pay his respects^[42] to his host. This was Commandant O'Brien, of the French Foreign Legion. He was slim, clean-shaven, darkhaired, and blue-eyed, and he had an air at once dynamic and melancholic. He was by birth an Irish gentleman, and in boyhood had known the Galloways – especially Margaret Graham. He had left his country after making debts, and now expressed his complete freedom from British etiquette by demonstrating his uniform, sabre and spurs. When he bowed to the Ambassador's family, Lord and Lady Galloway bent stiffly, and Lady Margaret looked away.

But no one of them was in the host's eyes the guest of the evening. Valentin was expecting, for special reasons, a man of world-wide fame, whose friendship he had got during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States. He was expecting Julius K. Brayne, that multi-millionaire whose colossal donations to small religions have been reported in the American and English papers. Nobody could quite make out whether Mr. Brayne was an atheist or a Mormon or a Christian Scientist; but he was ready to invest money into any intellectual project. One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare. He liked anything that he thought “progressive.” He thought Valentin “progressive,” which was totally wrong.

The appearance of Julius K. Brayne in the room was as decisive as a dinner bell. He had this great quality, which very few of us can have, that his presence was as big as his absence. He was a huge fellow, as fat as he was tall, dressed in complete evening black. His hair was white and well brushed back like a German's; his face was red and fierce. Not long, however, the salon stared at the celebrated American; his lateness had already become a domestic problem^[43], and he was sent into the dining-room with Lady Galloway on his arm.

Except on one point the Galloways were non-official. So long as Lady Margaret did not take the arm of that adventurer O'Brien, her father was quite satisfied; she had decorously gone in with Dr. Simon. Nevertheless, old Lord Galloway was restless and almost rude. He was diplomatic enough during dinner, but when, over the cigars, three of the younger men – Simon the doctor, Brown the priest, and O'Brien – all went away to mix with the ladies or smoke in the conservatory, then the English diplomatist grew very undiplomatic indeed. Every sixty seconds he thought that that scamp O'Brien might be making advances^[44] to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the Yankee who believed in all religions, and Valentin, the Frenchman who believed in none. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him and it was tiresome. After a time Lord Galloway got up and went to the drawing-room. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought, were probably arguing about “science and religion.” But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing – he saw that Commandant O'Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was absent too.

From the drawing-room, he stamped along the passage once more. His duty of protecting his daughter from the Irish-Algerian had become something central and even mad in his mind. As he went towards the back of the house, where was Valentin's study, he was surprised to meet his daughter, who swept past with a white, scornful face. If she had been with O'Brien, where was O'Brien! If she had not been with O'Brien, where had she been? With suspicion he groped his way to the dark back parts of the mansion, and eventually found a servants' entrance that opened on to the garden. The moon lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; it was Commandant O'Brien.

He came through the French windows into the house, leaving Lord Galloway furious and confused. The grace of the Irishman's stride maddened him as if he were a rival instead of a father. He stepped quickly after his enemy. As he did so he tripped over some tree or stone in the grass; looked down at it first with irritation and then a second time with curiosity. The next instant the moon and the tall poplars looked at an unusual sight – an elderly English diplomatist crying and running hard.

Lord Galloway was crying: “A corpse in the grass – a blood-stained corpse.” O'Brien at last had gone out of his mind.

“We must tell Valentin at once,” said the doctor. “It is fortunate that he is here;” and even as he spoke the great detective entered the study, attracted by the cry. It was almost amusing to note his typical transformation; he had come as a host and a gentleman, fearing that some guest or servant was ill. When he was told the gory fact, he turned instantly bright and businesslike; for this, however, was his business.

“Strange, gentlemen,” he said as they hurried out into the garden, “that I should have hunted mysteries all over the earth, and now one comes to my own back-yard. But where is the place?” They crossed the lawn, and under the guidance of the shaken Galloway they found the body in deep grass – the body of a very tall and broad-shouldered man. He lay face downwards, so they could only see that his big shoulders were covered in black cloth, and that his big head was bald. A scarlet serpent of blood crawled from under his fallen face.

“At least,” said Simon, “he is none of our party.”

“Examine him, doctor,” cried Valentin rather sharply. “He may not be dead.”

The doctor bent down. “He is not quite cold, but I am afraid he is dead enough,” he answered. “Just help me to lift him up.”

They lifted him carefully an inch from the ground, and all doubts disappeared. The head fell away. It had been entirely cut off from the body. Even Valentin was slightly shocked. “He must have been as strong as a gorilla,” he muttered.

Not without a shiver, though he was used to anatomical dissections, Dr. Simon lifted the head. The face was substantially unhurt. It was a yellow face, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids. Nothing else could be noted about the man. As Dr. Simon said, the man had never been of their party. But he might very well have been trying to join it, for he had come dressed for such an occasion.

Valentin went down on his hands and knees and examined with his closest professional attention the grass and ground for some twenty yards round the body, in which he was assisted by the doctor, and the English lord. Valentin's attention was drawn by a few twigs, snapped or chopped into very small lengths, which he lifted for an instant's examination and then tossed away.

“Twigs,” he said gravely; “twigs, and a total stranger with his head cut off; that is all there is on this lawn.”

There was an almost creepy stillness, and then the unnerved Galloway called out sharply:

“Who's that! Who's that over there by the garden wall!”

A small figure with a foolishly large head came near them in the moonlight; looked for an instant like a goblin, but turned out to be the harmless little priest whom they had left in the drawing-room.

“I say,” he said meekly, “there are no gates to this garden, do you know.”

Valentin's black brows had come together somewhat crossly. “You are right,” he said. “Before we find out how he came to be killed, we may have to find out how he came to be here. Now listen to me, gentlemen. We shall all agree that certain distinguished names might well be kept out of this. There are ladies, gentlemen, and there is a foreign ambassador. If we must mark it down as a crime, then it must be investigated as a crime. I am the head of the police; I am so public that I can afford to be private. Please Heaven, I will clear everyone of my own guests before I call in my men to look for anybody else. Gentlemen, upon your honour, you will none of you leave the house till tomorrow at noon; there are bedrooms for all. Simon, I think you know where to find my man, Ivan, in the front hall. Tell him to leave another servant on guard and come to me at once. Lord Galloway, you are certainly the best person to tell the ladies what has happened, and prevent a panic. They also must stay. Father Brown and I will remain with the body.”

Dr. Simon went through to the armoury and found Ivan, the public detective's private detective. Galloway went to the drawing-room and told the terrible news to the ladies tactfully enough. Meanwhile the good priest and the good atheist stood at the head and foot of the dead man motionless in the moonlight, like symbolic statues of their two philosophies of death.

Ivan, the confidential man with the scar and the moustaches, dashed out of the house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn to Valentin like a dog to his master. He asked his master's permission to examine the remains.

“Yes; look, if you like, Ivan,” said Valentin, “but don't be long. We must go in and clear this up in the house.”

Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.

“Why,” he gasped, “it's – no, it isn't; it can't be. Do you know this man, sir?”

“No,” said Valentin indifferently; “we had better go inside.”

Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and then all made their way to the drawing-room.

The detective sat down at a desk quietly; but his eye was the iron eye of a judge at the trial. He made a few fast notes upon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: “Is everybody here?”

“Not Mr. Brayne,” said the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, looking round.

“No,” said Lord Galloway in a hoarse voice. “And not Mr. Neil O'Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when the corpse was still warm.”

“Ivan,” said the detective, “go and fetch Commandant O'Brien and Mr. Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining-room; Commandant O'Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. I am not sure.”

The attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone could stir or speak Valentin went on:

“Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, his head cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you have examined it. Do you think that to cut a man's throat like that would need great force? Or, perhaps, only a very sharp knife?”

“I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all,” said the pale doctor.

“Have you any thought,” resumed Valentin, “of a tool with which it could be done?”

“I really haven't,” said the doctor, arching his brows. “This was a very clean cut. It could be done with an old headsman's axe^[45], or an old two-handed sword.”

“But, good heavens!” cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics, “there aren't any two-handed swords and battleaxes round here.”

Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. “ Tell me,” he said, still writing rapidly, “could it have been done with a long French cavalry sabre?”

A low knocking came at the door. Amid the frozen silence Dr. Simon managed to say: “A sabre – yes, I suppose it could.”

“Thank you,” said Valentin. “Come in, Ivan.”

The confidential Ivan opened the door and brought in Commandant Neil O'Brien, whom he had found at last pacing the garden again.

The Irish officer stood up on the threshold. “What do you want with me?” he cried.

“Please sit down,” said Valentin in pleasant, level tones. “Why, you aren't wearing your sword. Where is it?”

“I left it on the library table,” said O'Brien.

“Ivan,” said Valentin, “please go and get the Commandant's sword from the library.” Then, as the servant disappeared, “Lord Galloway says he saw you leaving the garden just before he found the corpse. What were you doing in the garden?”

The Commandant flung himself into a chair. “Oh,” he cried in pure Irish, “admirin' the moon. Communing with Nature, me bhoy^[46].”

A heavy silence fell and lasted, and at the end of it came again that terrible knocking. Ivan reappeared, carrying an empty steel scabbard. “This is all I can find,” he said.

“Put it on the table,” said Valentin, without looking up.

There was an inhuman silence in the room. The voice that came was quite unexpected.

“I think I can tell you,” cried Lady Margaret, in a clear voice. “I can tell you what Mr. O'Brien was doing in the garden. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder,” she added, “if he will care at all for it now. For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never did a thing like this.”

Lord Galloway had moved up to his daughter. “Hold your tongue, Maggie,” he said in a thunderous whisper. “Why should you protect the fellow? Where's his sword? Where's his confounded cavalry – ”

He stopped because of the stare with which his daughter was regarding him.

“You old fool!” she said in a low voice, “what do you suppose you are trying to prove? I tell you this man was innocent while with me. But if he wasn't innocent, he was still with me. Do you hate Neil so much as to put your own daughter – ”

Lady Galloway screamed. Everyone sat witnessing one of those tragedies that have been between lovers before now. They saw the proud, white face of the Scotch aristocrat and her lover, the Irish adventurer, like old portraits in a dark house. The long silence was full of historical memories of murdered husbands and poisonous lovers.

In the centre of this awful silence an innocent voice said: “Was it a very long cigar?”

The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to see who had spoken.

“I mean,” said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, “I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as a walking-stick.”

“Quite right,” remarked Valentin sharply. “Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once.”

As soon as Ivan closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl.