G. K. Chesterton

“ Anyhow, there's no doubt he was the villain of the piece; the only interest is in a rather original piece of villainy. It was really a new and unique motive for murder. It was the motive of using the corpse as a stage property—a sort of hideous doll or dummy. At the start he conceived a plan of killing Michael in the motor, merely to take him home and pretend to have killed him in the garden. But all sorts of fantastic finishing touches followed quite naturally from the primary fact: that he had at his disposal in a closed car at night the dead body of a recognized and recognizable burglar. ”

“ Smith, was moving accompanied by a short commonplace-looking companion in black clerical costume.
“I say,” burst in the irrepressible John before Devine could offer any polite greeting, “I've brought her round to give you a little run. You see if she isn't better than a Thunderbolt.”
Mr Carver's mouth set into a smile that may have been meant to be gracious but looked rather grim. “I'm afraid I shall be too busy for pleasure this evening,” he said.
“How doth the little busy bee—” observed Devine, equally enigmatically. “Your bees must be very busy if they keep you at it all night. ”

“ By this time they had assembled again in the room and the detective was getting his papers together for departure. Father Brown was standing opposite to him, looking down at the table, as if in a brown study. Then he spoke abruptly:
“Mr. Carver, you have certainly worked out a very complete case in a very masterly way. I rather suspected your professional business, but I never guessed you would link everything up together so quickly—the bees and the beard and the spectacles and the cipher and the necklace and everything.”
“Always satisfactory to get a case really rounded off.” said Carver. ”

“ Devine,” said Carver; “and, with Mrs. Bankes's permission, I will follow your example. My presence here necessitates an explanation. I rather fancy you suspected me of being an eminent and distinguished burglar.”
“I did,” said Devine grimly.
“As you remarked,” said Carver, “it is not always easy to know a wasp from a bee.”
After a pause, he continued: “I can claim to be one of the more useful though equally annoying insects. I am a detective, and I have come down to investigate an alleged renewal of the activities of the criminal calling himself Michael Moonshine. ”

“ There was her brother John, a burly youth particularly boisterous in his indifference to her spiritual development, and otherwise distinguishable only by his interest in motor cars. He seemed to be always in the act of selling one car and buying another; and by some process hard for the economic theorist to follow, it was always possible to buy a much better article by selling the one that was damaged or discredited. There was his brother Philip, a young man with dark curly hair, distinguished by his attention to dress—which is doubtless part of the duty of a stockbroker's clerk ”

“ Came over in it from my sister's place at Holmgate, and never been over that road in a car since. It was rough going I can tell you.”
“Ten years ago!” scoffed John Bankes. “Two thousand years ago you went in an ox wagon. Do you think cars haven't changed in ten years—and roads, too, for that matter? In my little bus you don't know the wheels are going round. You think you're just flying.”
“I'm sure Smith wants to go flying,” urged Carver. “It's the dream of his life. Come, Smith, go over to Holmgate and see your sister. You know you ought to go and see your sister. ”

“ But our own humane and enlightened age is only interested in a science about bad ones. Yet I think our general experience is that every conceivable sort of man has been a saint. And I suspect you will find, too, that every conceivable sort of man has been a murderer. ”

“ There was a silence, and then Devine started and spoke: “You don't seriously mean to say that nice old man—”
“Come, Mr. Devine,” said Carver, with a smile, “you believed a beehive was only a hiding place for me. Why shouldn't it be a hiding place for him?”
Devine nodded gloomily, and the detective turned back to his papers. “Suspecting Smith, I wanted to get him out of the way and go through his belongings; so I took advantage of Mr. Bankes's kindness in giving him a joy ride. Searching his house, I found some curious things to be owned by an innocent old rustic interested only in bees. ”

“ Smith is your man, then,” said Carver, with something almost like impatience. “I'm sure Smith is longing for a motor ride.”
Smith, who wore a broad grin, bore no appearance of longing for anything. He was an active little old man with a very honest wig—one of those wigs that look no more natural than a hat. ”

“ I've always said, ever since he got the place Philip ought to have had—”
“Nothing doing,” said Philip languidly, making his sole contribution to the conversation. “Not good enough.”
“The only one I know,” observed Devine, “is that man called Carver, who is stopping at Smith's Farm. He lives a very quiet life, but he's quite interesting to talk to. I think John has had some business with him.”
“Knows a bit about cars,” conceded the monomaniac John. “He'll know a bit more when he's been in my new car.” ”

“ Devine smiled slightly. Everybody had been threatened with the hospitality of John's new car. Then he added reflectively: “That's a little what I feel about him. He knows a lot about motoring and traveling, and the active ways of the world, and yet he always stays at home pottering about round old Smith's beehives; says he's only interested in bee culture, and that's why he's staying with Smith. It seems a very quiet hobby for a man of his sort. ”

“ The story may well begin in a sufficiently respectable setting—at the breakfast table of a worthy though wealthy suburban family named Bankes, where the normal discussion of the newspaper had for once been silenced by the discussion about a mystery nearer home. Such people are sometimes accused of gossip about their neighbors, but they are in that matter almost inhumanly innocent. ”

“ There was a sort of acid elegance about her, for her family had much more money than her husband's, if rather less education; and she even possessed a very valuable emerald necklace upstairs which gave her a right to prominence in a discussion about thieves. There was his daughter Opal, who was also thin and dark and supposed to be psychic, at any rate by herself; for she had little domestic encouragement. Spirits of an ardently astral turn will be well advised not to materialize as members of a large family. ”

“ John Bankes has gone; and the emeralds and all the other jewels with him.”
Next day, Devine found Father Brown moving to and fro in front of the row of beehives, sadly, but with a certain serenity. “I've been telling the bees,” he said. “You know one has to tell the bees!” Those singing masons building roofs of gold. What a line!” Then more abruptly. “He would like the bees looked after.”
“I hope he doesn't want the human beings neglected, when the whole swarm is buzzing with curiosity,” observed the young man. “You were quite right when you said that Bankes was gone with the jewels ”

“ Acts of pure revenge are acts of hopeless revenge. Thus a lover will sometimes kill a rival he could never supplant, or a rebel assassinate a tyrant after the conquest is complete. But more often even these acts have a rational explanation. ”

“ There is such a thing as irrational antipathy, though it's very seldom homicidal. Then we come to the true motives; of these some are less rational in the sense of being merely romantic and retrospective. ”

“ Rustic villagers tell tales about their neighbors, true and false, but the curious culture of the modern suburb will believe anything it is told in the papers about the wickedness of the Pope or the martyrdom of the King of the Cannibal Islands, and in the excitement of these topics never knows what is happening next door. ”

“ First, all killings can be divided into rational and irrational, and we'll take the last first, because they are much fewer. There is such a thing as homicidal mania or love of butchery in the abstract. ”

“ The stockbroker himself naturally regarded his own triumph with more solemnity, though not without nervousness.
“I had to do it,” he gasped, still panting with exertion. “I'm sorry: he fired at me.”
“There will have to be an inquest, of course,” said Carver, gravely. “But I think there will be nothing for you to worry about. There's a revolver fallen from his hand with one shot discharged ”

“ Barnard, was picked up in the garden, having evidently been shot by the escaping burglar.”
“That man,” ejaculated the lady of the house. “I believe he was—”
She encountered the grave gaze of the priest—and her words suddenly went from her, she never knew why.
“I communicated with the police,” he went on, “and with another authority interested in this case; and they say that even a superficial examination has revealed footprints and finger-prints and other indications of a well-known criminal.” ”

“ These again fall chiefly under two descriptions; man kills in order to obtain what the other man possesses, either by theft or inheritance, or to stop the other man from acting in some way; as in the case of killing a blackmailer or a political opponent or, in the case of a rather more passive obstacle, a husband or wife whose continued functioning as such interferes with other things. ”