G. K. Chesterton

“ And the solicitor, who had been stamping impatiently about the emptier gallery, turned suddenly and darted into the more crowded room. He was running towards the tall and well-dressed young man with the short hair and the foreign-looking beard.
The two walked away together, talking; and for some moments afterwards Father Brown followed them with his screwed, short-sighted eyes. His gaze was shifted and recalled, however, by the breathless and even boisterous arrival of his niece Betty. ”

“ It's not done by somebody who thinks all medieval people lived at the same time. Sometimes they make up suits of armor out of different bits; but that suit all covered one man, and covered him very completely. You see it's the late sort of tilting-armor.”
“I think he's a late sort of host, if it comes to chat,” grumbled Granby. “He's keeping us waiting the devil of a time.”
“You must expect everything to go slowly in a place like this,” said Father Brown. “I think it's very decent of him to see us at all: two total strangers come to ask him highly personal questions.” ”

“ It was the sharp but not unfriendly face of a lawyer named Granby, whose patches of gray hair might almost have been the powder from a wig, so incongruous were they with his youthful energy of movement. He was one of those men in the City who run about like schoolboys in and out of their offices. He could not run round the fashionable picture gallery quite in that fashion ”

“ When you come to think of it, it's a very good plan for a murder, and meets the permanent problem of the disposal of the body. The body could stand inside that complete tilting-armor for hours or even days, while servants came and went until the murderer could simply drag it out in the dead of night and lower it into the moat, without even crossing the bridge. ”

“ And there you have the whole story.”
“You mean,” said Granby slowly, “that this pleasing youth killed his father, hid the corpse first in the armor and then in the moat, disguised himself and so on?”
“They happened to be almost exactly alike,” said the priest. “You could see from the family portraits how strong the likeness ran. And then you talk of his disguising himself. But in a sense everybody's dress is a disguise. The old man disguised himself in a wig, and the young man in a foreign beard. ”

“ Sometimes it is a joy in the very heart of hell to tell the truth. And above all to tell it so that everybody misunderstands it. That is why he liked that antic of pretending to be somebody else and then painting himself as black—as he was. And that was why my niece heard him laughing to himself all alone in the picture gallery.”
Granby gave a slight start, like a person brought back to common things with a bump.
“Your niece,” he cried—“didn't her mother want her to marry Musgrave? A question of wealth and position, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Father Brown dryly ”

“ When he shaved and put the wig on his cropped head and with a little make-up he was exactly like his father. Of course you understand now why he was so very polite about getting you to come up next day here by car. It was because he himself was coming up that night by train. He got in front of you, committed his crime, assumed his disguise, and was ready for the legal negotiations.”
“Ah,” said Granby thoughtfully, “the legal negotiations! You mean, of course, that the real old baronet would have negotiated very differently. ”

“ As soon as the body was at all decayed in the stagnant water there would sooner or later be nothing but a skeleton in fourteenth-century armor, a thing very likely to be found in the moat of an old Border castle. ”

“ And when I saw that, I suddenly saw a picture that told the whole story.'
“Well,” asked the other impatiently, “and what about it?”
“An old man of eighty can walk,” said Father Brown. “An old man can even walk a good deal, pottering about in country lanes. But an old man can't jump. He would be an even less graceful jumper than I was. Yet, if the baronet came back while we were waiting, he must have come in as we came in—by jumping the moat. ”

“ The lawyer remained in the same respectful attitude, but he was now respectfully staring.
“Why, what on earth has he—”
“I am a private gentleman,” said Musgrave, “as well as the custodian of a great inheritance. And my son did something so horrible that he has ceased to be, I will not say a gentleman, but even a human being. It is the worst crime in the world. Do you remember what Douglas said when Marmion his guest offered to shake hands with him?”
“Yes,” said Father Brown. ”

“ Granby, the greatness of a great house and history is something more than these accidental individuals who carry it on, even though they do not grace it. From father to son our heritage has come down, and from father to son it shall continue. You may assure yourselves, gentlemen, and you may assure my son that I shall not leave my money to a home for lost cats. Musgrave shall leave it to Musgrave till the heavens fall.”
“Yes,” said Father Brown thoughtfully ”

“ Edward the First governed England well. Edward the Third covered England with glory. And yet the second glory came from the first glory through the infamy and imbecility of Edward the Second, who fawned upon Gaveston and ran away from Bruce. ”

“ I ought to have guessed it when I first went in and saw the thing standing there.”
'“When you saw what?” asked Granby impatiently.
“When I saw there was only one suit of armor,” answered Father Brown.
There was a silence during which the lawyer only stared at his friend, and then the friend resumed:
“Only the other day I was just going to tell my niece that there are two types of men who can laugh when they are alone. One might almost say the man who does it is either very good or very bad. You see he is either confiding the joke to God or confiding it to the devil. ”

“ That is his son, Sir James, one of the noblest of the Jacobite martyrs and one of the first men to attempt some reparation to the Church and the poor. Does it matter that the House of Musgrave—the power, the honor, the authority—descended from one good man to another good man through the interval of a bad one? ”