The Secret Garden Gk Chesterton

John is a retired librarian who writes articles based on cloth gleaned mainly from obscure books and journals.

Father Brown

The first Father Brown story, "The Blue Cantankerous" had introduced Chesterton's detective, an otherwise insignificant Roman Cosmic priest with remarkable analytical skills. We as well met the master criminal Flambeau and the French police chief Aristide Valentin. The latter reappears in the second story.

"Secret Garden": The Story

The setting is Valentin's house alongside the River Seine in Paris, i feature of which is the garden that is surrounded by a loftier wall and which has no entrance apart from through the business firm. This might sound like a somewhat impractical arrangement but it is essential to the plot of the story.

Valentin is hosting a dinner, at which Father Brown is one of the guests. The other guests include Dr Simon, "a typical French scientist", and Lord Galloway, who is the British ambassador, accompanied by his married woman and daughter, the latter beingness Lady Margaret Graham.

Also present are Commandant O'Brien, an Irishman who is a member of the French Foreign Legion, and Julius K Brayne, an American multi-millionaire who is intent on making big donations to religious organisations.

It is before long fabricated clear that O'Brien wants to lavish his attentions on Lady Margaret, but that Lord Galloway distrusts him and wishes to keep the couple apart.

After dinner Lord Galloway walks round the house trying to discover Lady Margaret with a view to ensuring that O'Brien is not with her. He sees O'Brien entering the house from the garden and, when he goes into the garden himself, he falls over a dead body in the long grass shut to the wall.

When the body is moved, it is found that the head has been cut cleanly from information technology. The only weapon in the business firm that might have been used is Commandant O'Brien's cavalry sabre, which he was wearing when he arrived just is now missing, O'Brien having taken information technology off before dinner to go out it on the library tabular array.

It is and then established that O'Brien had been in the garden with Lady Margaret, where he had proposed marriage to her simply she had refused. She tin can therefore vouch for O'Brien's innocence. All the same, no trace can be found of Julius Brayne who appears to have left the house, taking his hat and coat.

Ivan, Valentin's manservant, then appears with the bloodstained cavalry sabre, which he has establish in a bush-league in the road outside the house. Suspicion has now fallen entirely on Julius Brayne, although it is still not known who the victim is.

Valentin has asked everyone to stay on the premises overnight, so it is the side by side morning before whatever further progress tin can be made.

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A Few Problems

This is a strange story from a number of perspectives. For one affair it contains a number of inconsistencies. The sabre was thrown over the garden wall but Ivan reported having found information technology "fifty yards up the road to Paris". Julius Brayne'due south chapeau and coat are non where he left them, but where are they? This bespeak is non touched upon at all.

And then in that location is the question of how Valentin knew non only that Commandant O'Brien would get in wearing his cavalry sabre but that he would leave information technology conveniently on the library table. In lodge for Valentin's plan to work, he would take needed to be certain of having access to a weapon that would have the same effect every bit the blade of the guillotine.

I as well has to ask what the point was of throwing the head and sword over the wall when it was nigh sure that they would be found? If the thought was to kill Julius Brayne and go far look as though Brayne had been the killer of an executed man's twin brother, that seems to be a strange way of going about things.

There was ever going to be the fundamental difficulty of explaining how Arnold Becker got into the garden.

Finally, why did Valentin kill himself? He was non nowadays when Father Brown produced the solution, so it could non have been considering he knew that the game was upwards. Did he ever intend to commit suicide but wanted to leave an intriguing mystery backside him? No explanation is given for this in the story.

All in all, this is a clever plot that is allow down past not having thought it through with sufficient intendance. Dodge is commanded in a detective story to an extent, but all the pieces have to make sense and fit together. Unfortunately that is not the example with "The Hugger-mugger Garden".