Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - Detective Sleep Story - Father Brown and The Wrong Shape

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Starting point is 00:00:46 please go to sleepcove.com slash support. That's sleepcove.com slash support. If you can't support the show right now, please subscribe with the bell to get alerts on all new free content thank you have you ever gazed in wonder at the great pyramid have you marvelled at the golden face of Tudankhamun

Starting point is 00:01:16 or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti if you have you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast every week we explore tales of this ancient culture The history of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of ancient Egypt. Welcome to mysteries at midnight. With me, Sleep Cove's Christopher Fitten, I've heard a mystery for you,

Starting point is 00:01:58 with a famous priest-detective, Father Brown. In the story, a poet is found dead, with an apparent suicide note, thinks that it's not a suicide but a murder. I really enjoyed guessing what was really going on as I narrated the story and I'm sure you'll enjoy it too. And please don't forget to follow and subscribe for more.

Starting point is 00:02:29 So let's begin the story. The innocence of Father Brown The wrong shape certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and interrupted specter of a street with great gaps in the building

Starting point is 00:02:55 but preserving the line here will be a group of shops followed by a fenced field or paddock and then a famous public house and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden and then one large private house and then another field

Starting point is 00:03:19 and another inn and so on if anyone walks along one of these roads you will pass a house which will probably catch his eye it is a long low house running parallel with the road, painted mostly white and pale green, with a veranda and sunblinds, and porches capped with those quaint sort of cupolas, like wooden umbrellas that one sees in some old-fashioned houses.

Starting point is 00:03:57 In fact, it is an old-fashioned house, very English and very suburban, in the good old wealthy clapham sense. And yet the house has a look of having been built chiefly for the hot weather. Looking at its white paint and sun blinds, one thinks vaguely of palm trees. I cannot trace the feeling to its root. Perhaps the place was built by an Anglo-Indian. Anyone passing this house, I say, would be namelessly fascinated by it,

Starting point is 00:04:39 would feel that it was a place about which some story was to be told. And you would have been right, as you shall shortly hear. For this is the story. The story of the strange things that really did happen in it, in the Whitson Tide of the year 1899, anyone passing the house on the Thursday before Wits Sunday at about half-past 4pm would have seen the front door open and Father Brown of the small Church of St. Mungo come out smoking a large pipe in company with a very tall French friend of his called Friolm. Flombeau, who were smoking a very small cigarette. These persons may or may not be of interest to the reader.

Starting point is 00:05:42 But the truth is that they were not the only interesting things that were displayed when the front door of the white and green house was opened. There are further peculiarities about this house, which must be described to start with. Not only that the reader may understand this tragic tale, but also that he may realise what it was that the opening of the door revealed. The whole house was built upon the pan of a tea, but a tea with a very long crosspiece and a very short tailpiece.

Starting point is 00:06:26 The long crosspiece, the long cross piece, was the frontage that ran along in face of the street with the front door in the middle. It was two stories high and contained nearly all the important rooms. A short tailpiece which ran at the back immediately opposite the front door was one story high and consisted only of two long rooms, the one leading into the other. The first of these two rooms was the study in which the celebrated Mr Quinton

Starting point is 00:07:05 wrote his wild oriental poems and romances. The father room was a glass conservatory full of tropical blossoms of quite unique monstrous beauty and on such afternoons these glowed with gorgeous sunlight. Thus when the whole door was open, many a passer-by literally stopped to stare and gasp, for he looked down a perspective of rich apartments to something really like a transformation scene in a fairy play. Purple clouds and golden suns and crimson stars

Starting point is 00:07:54 that were at once scorchingly vivid and yet transparent and far away. Leonard Quentin the poet had himself most carefully arranged this effect, and it is doubtful whether he so perfectly expressed his personality in any of his poems, for he was a man who drank and bathed in colours, who indulged his lust for colour, somewhat to the neglect of form, even of good form. This it was that had turned his genius so wholly to Eastern art and imagery, to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries, in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos.

Starting point is 00:08:53 having nothing to typify or to teach. He had attempted, not perhaps with complete artistic success, but with acknowledged imagination and invention, to compose epics and love stories, reflecting the riot of violent and even cruel colour, tales of tropical heavens, of burning gold, of blood-red copper, of eastern heroes, who rode with twelve turbaned mitres upon elephants painted purple of gigantic jewels that a hundred men could not carry, but which burned with ancient and strange-hued fires.

Starting point is 00:09:48 In short, to put the matter from the most common point of view, he dealt much much. in eastern heavens, rather worse than most Western hells, in Eastern monarchs, who we might possibly call maniacs, and in Eastern jewels, which are Bond Street, Juna, if the hundred staggering men brought them into his shop, might possibly not regard as genuine. Quinton was a genius, if a morbid one, and even his morbidity appeared more in his knife than in his work. In temperament he was weak and waspish suffered heavily from oriental experiments with opium, his wife, a handsome, hard-working and indeed overworked woman, objected to the opium, but objected much more to a live Indian hermit in white and yellow robes

Starting point is 00:11:00 whom her husband insisted on entertaining for months together a virgil to guide his spirit through the heavens and the hells of the east it was out of his artistic household that father brown and his friend stepped on to the doorstep, and to judge from their faces, they stepped out of it with much relief. Flombo had known Quinton in wild student days in Paris for a weekend, but apart from Flombo's more responsible developments of late, he did not get on well with the poet now, choking oneself with opium and writing little erotic verses on vellum was not his notion of how a gentleman should go to the devil. As the two paused on the doorstep before taking a turn in the garden, the front garden gate

Starting point is 00:12:10 was thrown open with a young man with a bitty-cock hat on the back of his head, tumbled up the steps in his eagerness. He was a disableness. He was a disableness. He was a disableness. painted-looking youth, with a gorgeous red necktie all the rough he had slept in it, and he kept fidgeting and lushing about with one of those little jointed canes. "'I say,' he said breathlessly, "'I want to see old Quinton. "'I must see him now. Has he gone?' "'Mr. Quinton is in, I believe,' said Father Brown, cleaning his.

Starting point is 00:12:56 his pipe, but I do not know if you can see him. The doctor is with him at present. The young man who seemed not to be perfectly sober stumbled into the hall, and at the same moment the doctor came out of Quinton's study, shutting the door and beginning to put on his gloves. See, Mr. Quinton, said the doctor coolly. "'No, I'm afraid you can't. "'In fact, you mustn't, or nobody must see him. "'I've just given him a sleeping draught. "'No, but look here,' said the youth in the red tie,

Starting point is 00:13:44 "'trying affectionately to capture the doctor by the lapels of his coat. "'Look here, I'm simply sewn up, I tell you, I.' "'It's no good, Mr. Atkinson,' said the doctor. forcing him to fall back. When you can alter the effects of a drug, I'll alter my decision. And setting his hat, he stepped out into the sunlight with the other two. He was a bull-necked, good-tempered little man with a small moustache, inexpressibly ordinary, yet giving an impression of capacity.

Starting point is 00:14:29 The young man in the Billy Cock, who did not seem to be gifted with any tact in deaning with people beyond the general idea of clutching hold of their coats, stood outside the door, as dazed if he had been thrown out of, silently watched the other three walk together through the garden. That was a sound spanking lie I just told now, or remarked the medical man laughing. In point of fact, Paul Quinton doesn't have his sleeping draught for nearly half an hour,

Starting point is 00:15:10 but I'm not going to have him bothered with that little beast who only wants to borrow money that he wouldn't pay back if he ever could. He's a dirty little scamp, though he is Mr. Quinton's brother, and she's as fine a woman as ever walked. Yes,

Starting point is 00:15:30 said Father Brown. She's a good woman. So I propose to hang about the garden, till the creature has cleared off, went on the doctor. And then I'll go into Quinton with the medicine. Atkinson can't get in, because I knock the door, Dr. Harris, said Flombeau. We might as well walk round at the back by the end of the conservatory. There's no entrance to it. way, but it's worth seeing, even from the outside. Yes, and I might get a squint at my patient, laughed the doctor,

Starting point is 00:16:14 for he prefers to lie on an ottoman right at the end of the conservatory, amid all those blood-red ponsettas. It would give me the creeps, but what are you doing? Father Brown had stopped for a moment. and picked up out of the long grass, where it had be hidden, exquisitely, in coloured stones and what is this, regarding it with some disfavour? O Quintons, I suppose, said Dr. Harris carelessly. He has all sorts of Chinese knick-knacks about the place,

Starting point is 00:17:07 or perhaps it belongs to that mild Hindu of his whom he keeps on a street, drink. What Hindu? asked Father Brown, still staring at the dagger in his hand. Oh, some Indian conjurer, said the doctor lightly. A fraud, of course. You don't believe in magic? asked Father Brown, without looking up. Oh, cricky, magic, said the doctor. It's very beautiful, said the priest in a low, dreaming voice. The colours are very beautiful, but it's the wrong shape. What for? asked Flombo staring. For anything, is the wrong shape in the abstract?

Starting point is 00:18:00 Did you ever feel that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely, but the shapes are mean and bad, deliberately mean and bad I have seen wicked things In a turkey carpet Bride flambo laughing There are letters and symbols

Starting point is 00:18:23 In a language I don't know But I know they stand for evil words Went on the priest His voice grains go wrong Gets this mystics cloud on him He said But I give you fair warning That I have never known him

Starting point is 00:19:02 to have it except, said the scientist. Why, look at it, cried Father Brown, holding out the crooked knife at arm's length, as if it were some glittering snake. Don't you see it as the wrong shape? Don't you see that it has no hearty and plain purpose? It does not point like a spear. It does not sweep like a scyth.

Starting point is 00:19:38 it does not look like a weapon. It looks like an instrument of torture. As you don't seem to like it, said the Johnny Harris. It had better be taken back to its owner. Haven't we come to the end of this confounded conservatory yet? This house is the wrong shape, if you like. You don't understand, said Father Brown, shaking his head. The shape of this house is quaint.

Starting point is 00:20:12 It is even laughable. But there is nothing wrong with it. As they spoke, they came around the curve of glass. At the end of glass, however, was clear, and the sun still bright, but the frail figure of the poet in a brown velvet coat, lying languidly on the sofa, having apparently, fallen half asleep over a book. He was a pale, slight man,

Starting point is 00:21:09 with loose chestnut hair and a fringe of beard. That was the paradox of his face. These traits were well known to all three of them. But even had it not been so, it may be doubted whether they would have looked at Quinton just then.

Starting point is 00:21:36 that eye exactly in their path immediately else was standing a tall man whose drapery fell to his feet in faultless white and whose bare brown skull

Starting point is 00:21:59 face and setting sun like a splendid bro he was looking through the glass at the sleeper and he was more motionless who is that cried Father Brown stepping back with a hissing in...

Starting point is 00:22:22 So it is only the Hindu humbug, but I don't know what the juice he's doing here. It looks like hypnotism, said Flombo, biting his black mustache. Why are you unmedical fellows always talking bosh about hypnotism? cried the doctor. It looks a deal more like burglary. He will speak to it at any rate, said Flamble. Flombo, who was always ready for action.

Starting point is 00:23:00 One long stride took him to the place where the Indian stood. Flombo bowed from his great height, which overtopped even the tall Indians. He said with placid impudence, Good evening, sir, do you want anything? Quite slowly, like a great ship turning into a half. the Indian turned and looked at last over his shoulder. They were startled to see that his eyelids were quite sealed, as in sleep. Thank you, said the face in excellent English.

Starting point is 00:23:45 I want nothing. Then half opening the lids so as to show a glimmer of eyeball, he repeated. I want nothing. Then he opened his eyes wide with a startling stare. He said, I want nothing, and went rustling away into the rapidly darkening garden. The Christian is more modest, muttered Father Brown. He wants something.

Starting point is 00:24:17 What on earth was he doing? Asked Flombo, knitting his black brows and lowering his voice. I should like to talk to you later, said Father Brown. The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light of evening, and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blacker against it. They turned round the end of the conservatory and walked in silence down the other side to get round to the round to the front door. As they went, they seemed to wake something as one stuttles a bird. In the deeper corner between the study and the main building, and again they saw the white-robed man slide

Starting point is 00:25:14 out of the shadow and slip round towards the front door. To the surprise however, he was not alone. They found themselves abruptly pulled up and forced to banish their bewilderment by the appearance of Mrs. Quinton, with her heavy golden hair and square pale face advancing on them out of the twilight. She looked a little stern but was entirely courteous. Good evening, Dr Harris, was all she said. Good evening, Mrs Quinton, said the doctor heartily. I'm just going to give your husband his sleeping draught. Yes, she said in a clear voice, I think it is quite time.

Starting point is 00:26:11 And she smiled at them and went sweeping into the house. That woman's overdridden, said Father Brown. That's the kind of woman that does her duty for 20 years. and then does something dreadful. A little doctor looked at him for the first time with an eye of interest. Did you ever study medicine, he asked. You have to know something of the mind as well as the body, answered the priest. We have to know something of the body as well as the mind.

Starting point is 00:26:50 Well, said the doctor, I think I'll go and give Quinton his stuff. they had turned the corner of the front facade and were approaching the front doorway. As they turned into it they saw a man in the white robe for the third time. He came so straight towards the front door that it seemed quite incredible that he had not just come out of the study opposite to it, yet they knew that the study door was locked. Father Brown and Flombeau, however, kept this weird contradiction to themselves, and Dr Harris was not a man to waste his thoughts on the impossible.

Starting point is 00:27:37 He permitted the omnipresent Asiatic to make his exit, and then stepped briskly into the hall. There he found a figure which he had already forgotten. The inane Atkinson were still hanging about, humming and poking things with his knobbly cane. The doctor's face had a spasm of disgust and decision, and he whispered rapidly to his companion. I must knock the door again, or this rat will get in, but I shall be out again in two minutes. He rapidly unlocked the door and knocked it again behind him, just bulking a blundering charge from a young man in the bitty-cock.

Starting point is 00:28:33 The young man threw himself impatiently on a whole chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the wall. Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully-eyed the door. In about four minutes the door opened again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held open the door for an instant, and called out. Oh, I say Quinton, I want. From the other end of the study came in the clear voice of Quinton,

Starting point is 00:29:11 in something between a yawn and a yell of weary laughter. Oh, I know what you want. Take it a nebian piece. I am writing a song about peacocks. Before the door closed, half a sovereign game flying through the aperture, and Atkinson, stumbling forward, caught it with singular dexterity. So that's settled, said the doctor, unlocking the door savagely, he led the way out into the garden.

Starting point is 00:29:48 "'Poor Leonard can get a little piece now,' he added to Father Brown. "'He's knocked in all by himself for an hour or two.' "'Yes,' answered the priest, "'and his voice sounded jolly enough when we left him. "'Then he looked gravely round the garden "'and saw the loose figure of Atkinson, "'standing and jingling the half-sovereign in his pocket, in the purple twilight, the figure of the Indian sitting bolt upright upon a bank of grass,

Starting point is 00:30:27 with this face turned towards the setting sun. There he shouted abruptly Quinton. She has gone up to her room, said the doctor. That is her shadow on the blind. Father Brown looked up and frowningly scrutinised a dark outline at the goutline at the gas-lit window. Yes, he said, that is her shadow. And he walked a yard or two and threw himself upon a garden seat. Flambeau sat down beside him. But the doctor was one of those energetic people who live naturally on their legs. He walked away smoking into the twilight and the two

Starting point is 00:31:21 friends were left together, my father, said Flambeau in French. What is the matter with you? Father Brown was silent and motionless for half a minute. Then he said, superstition is irreligious, but there's something in the air of this place. I think it's the Indian fellow, the distant outline of the Indian man, who was still sat rigid as if in. At first sight he seemed motionless. But as Father Brown watched him, he saw the man swayed ever so slightly,

Starting point is 00:32:13 with a rhythmic movement, just as the dark tree-tops swayed ever slightly in the wind that was creeping up the dim garden path, shuffling rapidly dark, as if for a storm. but they could still see all the figures in their various places. Atkinson was leaning against a tree with a listless face. Quinton's wife were still at her window, had gone strong.

Starting point is 00:32:55 The conservatory. They could see his cigar like a willow the wisp, and the Indian still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him began to rock and almost to roar. A storm was certainly coming. When the Indian man spoke to us, went on Brown in a conversational undertone, I had a sort of vision, a vision of him, and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times.

Starting point is 00:33:35 When first he said, I want nothing. it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself away. Then he said again, I want nothing, and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the third time, I want nothing, he said it with blazing eyes. and I knew that he meant literally what he said, that nothing was his desire, and his home, that he was weary for nothing as for wine,

Starting point is 00:34:20 that annihilation, the mere destruction of everything or energy. For some reason, Flambeau started and looked up, as if they had stung him, and the same instant, the doctor down by the end of the consulment, conservatory began running towards them, calling out something as he ran. As he came among them like a bombshell, the restless Atkinson happened to be taking a turn nearer to the house front,

Starting point is 00:34:59 and the doctor clutched him by the collar in a convulsive grip. Foul play, he cried. What have you been doing to him, you dog. Her priest had sprung up, and had the voice of steel of a soldier in command. No fighting, he cried coolly. We are enough to hold anyone we want to. What is the matter, Doctor? Things are not right with Quinton, for the Doctor quite white. I could just see him through the glass, and I don't like the way he's lying. It's not. as I left him anyhow. Let us go to him, said Father Brown shortly. You can leave Mr. Atkinson alone.

Starting point is 00:35:50 I have had him in sight since we heard Quinton's voice. We'll stop here and watch him, said Flambeau hurriedly. You go in and see. The doctor and the priest flew to the study door and unlocked it and fell. In doing so, they nearly fell over the large mahogany table in the centre, at which the poet usually wrote, for the place was lit only by a small fire kept for the invalid. In the middle of this table lay a single sheet of paper, evidently left there on purpose. The doctor snatched it up.

Starting point is 00:36:40 up, glanced at it, handed it to Father Brown, and crying, Good God, look at that! Plunge towards the glass room beyond, where the terrible tropic flowers still seemed to keep a crimson memory of three times before he put down the paper. The words were, I die, inimitable, not to say inedgeable, handwriting of Leonard Quinton. Then Father Brown, still keeping the paper in his hand, the conservatory, only to meet his medical friend, coming back with a face of assurance and cum.

Starting point is 00:37:40 He's done it, said Harris, through the gorgeous and natural beauty of cactus and flower, and found Leonard Quinton, poet and romancer, with this head, hanging downward off his ottoman and his red curls sweeping the ground. Into his left side was thrust the strange dagger they had picked up in the garden, still rested. Outside the storm had come at one stride, like the night in Coleridge, and garden and glass roof were darkened with a driving rain. Father Brown seemed to be studying the paper more than the corpse. He held it close to his eyes and seemed trying to read it in the twilight.

Starting point is 00:38:42 Then he held it up against the faint light, and as he did so, the lightning stared at them for an instant, so white darkness after the thunder. And her father Brown's voice said out of the dark, Doctor, this paper is the wrong shape. What do you mean? asked Dr. Harris with a frowning stare. It isn't square, answered Brown. It has a sort of edge snipped off at the corner.

Starting point is 00:39:24 What does it mean? How the deuce should I know? Growed the doctor. Shall we move this poor chap, do you think? He's quite dead. No, answered the priest. We must leave him as he lies and send for the police. But he was still scrutinising the paper.

Starting point is 00:39:47 As they went back through the study, he stopped by the table and picked up a small pair of nail scissors. Ah, he said, with a sort of relief, this is what he did it with. But yet, and he knitted his brow. No stop falling with that scrap of paper, said the doctor emphatically.

Starting point is 00:40:13 It was a fat of his. He had hundreds of them. He cut all his paper like that, as he pointed to a stack of sermon paper, still unused on another small table. Father Brown went up to it and held a sheet. It was the same irregular sheet. shame. Quite so, he said, and here I see the corners that are snipped off, and to the indignation

Starting point is 00:40:45 of his calling, he began to count them. That's all right, he said with an apologetic smile, 23 sheets cut and 22 corners cut off them, and as I see you are impatient, we will rejoin the others. Who was to tell his wife? asked Dr. Harris. Will you go and tell her now, while I send a servant for the police? As he will, said Father Brown indifferently, and he went out to the hall door. Here also he found a drama, though of a more grotesque sort. It showed nothing less that his big friend Flambeau in an attitude to which he had long been unaccustomed, while upon the pathway at the bottom of the steps

Starting point is 00:41:42 were sprawling with his boots in the air that amiable Atkinson, his biddy cock hat and walking cane sent flying in opposite directions along the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of flambos' almost paternal custody and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means a smooth game to play with a Roy de Apaches, even after that monarch's abdication. Frambeau was about to leap upon his enemy and secure him once more, when the priest patted him easily on the shoulder. Make it up with Mr. Atkinson, my friend, he said, beg a mutual pardon and say good-night.

Starting point is 00:42:35 We need not detain him any longer. Berners Atkinson rose somewhat doubtfully and gathered his hat and stick and went towards the garden gate. Father Brown said in a more serious voice, Where is that Indian? They all three, for the doctor had joined them, turned involuntary towards the dim, grassy bank amid the tossing trees with twilight,

Starting point is 00:43:08 where they had last seen the Indian man swaying in his strange prayers. The Indian was gone, confound him, cried the doctor, stamping furiously, now I know that it was the Indian that did it. I thought you didn't believe in magic. said Father Brown quietly. No more I did, said the doctor rolling his eyes. I only know that I loath the devil when I thought he was a sham wizard, and I shall loathe him more if I come to think he was a real one.

Starting point is 00:43:48 Well, his having escaped is nothing, said Fumbo, for we could have proved nothing and done nothing against him. one hardly goes to the parish constable with a story of suicide imposed by witchcraft or auto-suggestion. Meanwhile, Father Brown had made his way into the house and now went to break the news to the wife of the dead man. When he came out again, he looked a little pale and tragic. But what passed between them in that interview was never named. known, even when all was known. Flombo, who was talking quietly with the doctor, was surprised to see his friend reappear so soon at his elbow.

Starting point is 00:44:43 But Brown took no notice, and merely drew the doctor apart. You have sent for the police, haven't you? He asked. Yes, answered Harris. They ought to be here in ten. minutes. Will you do me a favour? said the priest quietly. The truth is, I make a collection of these curious stories, which often contain, as in the case of our Hindu friend, elements which can hardly be put

Starting point is 00:45:16 into a police report. Now, I want you to write out a report of this case for my private use. yours is a clever trade he said looking the doctor gravely and steadily in the face i sometimes think that you know some details of this matter which you have not thought fit to mention mine is a confidential trade like yours and i will treat anything you write for me in strict confidence but write the whole the doctor who had been listening thoughtfully with his head a little on one sign, looked the priest in the face for an instant, and said to the study, closing the door behind him. Flambeau, said Father Brown, there is a long seat there under the veranda, where we can smoke out of the rain.

Starting point is 00:46:25 You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you or perhaps be silent with you they established themselves comfortably in the veranda seat Father Brown against his common habit accepted a good cigar and smoked it steadily in silence

Starting point is 00:46:49 while the rain shrieked and rattled on the roof of the veranda My friend, he said at love, this is a very strange case, a very queer case. I should think it was, said Flombo, with something like a shudder. You call it queer, and I called it queer, said the other, and yet we mean quite opposite things. The modern mind always mixes up two different ideas. mystery in the sense of what is marvelous, and mystery in the sense of what is complicated. That is half the difficulty about miracles.

Starting point is 00:47:36 A miracle is startling, but it is simple. It is simple because it is a miracle. It is power coming directly from God, or the devil, instead of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now you mean that this business is marvellous because it is miraculous, because it is witchcraft, worked by the Indian. Understand, I do not say that it was not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know by what surrounding influences strange sins come into the lives of man, But for the present, my point is this. If it was pure magic, as you think,

Starting point is 00:48:31 then it is marvellous, but it is not mysterious. That is, it is not complicated. The quality of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple. Now the manner of this business has been the reverse of simple. The storm that has been the reverse of simple. The storm that had slackened for a little seemed to be swelling again, and there came heavy movements as of faint thunder.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Father Brown let fall the ash of his cigar and went on. There has been in this incident, he said, a twisted, ugly, complex quality that does not belong to the straight bolts. of heaven or hell, as one knows the crooked track of a snail. I know the crooked track of a man. The white lightning opened its enormous eye in one wink. The sky shut up again, and the priest went awkward things. The crookedest was the shape of that piece of paper. It was cricketer than the dagger that killed him, confessed his suicide, said Flombeau. I mean the paper on which Quinton wrote, answered Father Brown.

Starting point is 00:50:12 The shape of that paper, my friend, was the wrong shape, the wrong shape, if I ever have seen it in this wicked world. It only had a corner snipped off, said Flombo. and I understand that all Quinton's paper was cut that way. It was a very odd way, said the other, and a very bad way, to my taste and fancy. Look here, Flumbo, this Quinton, God receive his soul, was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was an artist, with a pen as well as the pencil. His handwriting, though hard to read, was bold and beautiful. I can't prove what I say.

Starting point is 00:51:02 I can't prove anything. But I tell you, with the full force of conviction, that he could never have cut that mean little piece off a sheet of paper. If he had wanted to cut down paper for some purpose of fitting in, or binding up, or what not, he would have made quite a different slash with the scissors. Do you remember the shape? It was a mean shape. It was a wrong shape.

Starting point is 00:51:35 Like this, don't you remember? And he waved his burning cigar before him in the darkness, making irregular squares so rapidly that Flombo really seemed to see them as fiery hieroglyphics upon the darkness. Hieroglyphics such as his friend had spoken of, which are undecipherable, yet can have note, said Fombo, as the priest put a cigar in his mouth again,

Starting point is 00:52:13 staring at the roof, suppose somebody else did use the scissors. Why should somebody else cutting pieces of his sermon paper, make Quinton commit suicide. Father Brown were still leaning back and staring at the roof, but he took his cigar out of his mouth and said, Quinton never did commit suicide. Flambeau stared at him.

Starting point is 00:52:44 Why confound it all? He cried. Then why did he confess to suicide? The priest lent forward again. settled his elbows on his knees, looked at the ground and said in a low, distant voice. He never did confess to suicide. Flombo laid his cigar down. You mean?

Starting point is 00:53:09 He said that the writing was forged? No, said Father Brown. Quinton wrote it all right. So the aggravated Flambeau, Quentin wrote, I die by my own hand, with his own hand, on a plain piece of paper. The long shape, said the priest calmly. Er, the shape be damned, cried Flambeau. What as the shape to do with it?

Starting point is 00:53:43 There were 23 snipped papers, resumed brown and moved, and only 22 pieces snipped off. Therefore, one of the pieces had. been destroyed, probably that from the written paper, does that suggest anything to you? And he said, there was something else written by Quinton, some other words. They will tell you I die by my... Hotter, as the children say, said his friend. But the piece was hardly half an inch across.

Starting point is 00:54:29 There was no room for one word, less alone five. Can you think of anything hardly bigger than a comma which the man with hell in his heart had to tear away as a testimony against him? Think of nothing, said Frumbo at last, to quotation marks, for the priest, and flung his cigar far into the darkness like a shooting star. All the words had left the other man's mouth, and Father Brown said, like one going back to fundamentals. Leonard Quinton was a romancer and I was writing an oriental romance about wizardry and hypnotism.

Starting point is 00:55:19 He, at this moment, the door opened briskly behind them and the doctor came out with his hat on. He put a long envelope into the priest's hands. That's the document you wanted, he said, and I must be getting home. Good night. Good night, said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left the front door open so that a shaft of gaslight fell upon the light of this. This is D. Galilee, which are very penetrating ones. Can it be possible that there is something in all that stuff of yours, after all? Ever since boyhood believed in nature, long before I became a doctor, when I was a schoolboy keeping mice and spiders. I believed that to be a good animal is the best thing.

Starting point is 00:56:43 But now I am shaken as if nature could betray a man getting morbid. What was nature told me to, and it's love that makes the world go round. I also thought quite sincerely that she would be happier with a clean animal like me, a little lunatic. What was there wrong in the world? I was only facing facts, like a man of science. She would have been happier. According to my own greed, I was quite free to kill Quinton, which was the best thing for everybody, even himself. but as a healthy animal I had no notion of killing myself. I resolved therefore that I would never do it until I saw a chance that would leave me scot-free. I saw that chance this morning.

Starting point is 00:57:58 I have been three times all told into Quentin's study today. The first time I went in he would talk about nothing but the weird tale called The Cure of a saint, which he was writing, which was all about some Indian hermit who made an English colonel kill himself by thinking about him. He showed me the last sheets and even wrote me the last paragraph, which was something like this. The conqueror of the Punjab, a mere yellow skeleton, but still gigantic, managed to lift himself on his elbow and gasp in his nose. nephew's ear. I die by my own hand, yet I die murdered. It so happened by one chance out of a hundred that those last words were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left the room and went out

Starting point is 00:59:00 in the garden intoxicated with a frightful opportunity. We walked around the house and two more things happened in my favour. You suspected an Indian and you found a dagger which the Indian might most probably use. Taking the opportunity to stuff it in my pocket, I went back to Quinton's study, knocked the door and gave him his sleeping draught. He was against answering Atkinson at all, but I urged him to call out and quiet the fellow, because I wanted a clear proof that Quinton was alive when I left the room for the second time. Quinton laid down in the conservatory and I came through the study. I am a quick man with my hands and in a minute and a half I had done what I'd wanted to.

Starting point is 01:00:00 I emptied all the first part of Quentin's romance into the fireplace where it burned to ashes. then I saw that the quotation marks wouldn't do, so I snipped them off, and to make it seem aliclier, snipped the whole quieter match. Then I came out with the knowledge that Quinton's confession of suicide lay on the front table,

Starting point is 01:00:27 while Quinton lay alive but asleep in the conservatory beyond. The last act was a desperate one. You can guess it. I pretended to have seen Quinton dead and rushed to his room. I delayed you with a paper and being a quick man with my hands, killed Quentin while you were looking at his confession of suicide. He was half asleep, being drugged, and I put his own hand on the knife and drove it into his body. The knife was of so strange a shape, that no one but an operator could have calculated the angle that would reach his heart.

Starting point is 01:01:14 I wonder if you noticed this. When I had done it, the extraordinary thing happened. Nature deserted me. I felt ill. I felt just as if I'd done something wrong. I think my brain is breaking up. I feel some sort of desperate pleasure in thinking I have told the thing to somebody, that I shall not have to be alone with it if I marry and have children.

Starting point is 01:01:44 What is the matter with me? Madness? Or can one have remorse, just as if one were in Byron's poems? James Harris Father Brown carefully folded up the letter and put it in his breast pocket, just as there came a loud peal at the gate bell. and the wet water-proofs of several policemen gleamed in the road outside.

Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - Detective Sleep Story - Father Brown and The Wrong Shape

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