"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Sign of the Four"
http://www.amk.ca/quotations/sherlock-holmes/page-2.html

[NOTE: apparently a misquotation. TPK]

See rather THE SIGN OF THE FOUR, Chapter Vi as recorded at

http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext00/sign410.txt
 
 

"Yes, the ally!" repeated Holmes, pensively.  "There are features
of interest about this ally.  He lifts the case from the regions
of the commonplace.  I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground
in the annals of crime in this country,--though parallel cases
suggest themselves from India, and, if my memory serves me, from
Senegambia."

"How came he, then?"  I reiterated.  "The door is locked, the
window is inaccessible.  Was it through the chimney?"

The grate is much too small," he answered.  "I had already
considered that possibility."

"How then?" I persisted.

"You will not apply my precept," he said, shaking his head.  "How
often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the
impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the
truth?  We know that he did not come through the door, the
window, or the chimney.  We also know that he could not have been
concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. 
Whence, then, did he come?"

"He came through the hole in the roof," I cried.

"Of course he did.  He must have done so. If you will have the
kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our
researches to the room above,--the secret room in which the
treasure was found."

In “The Honour of Israel Gow” GKC in eleven pages of THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN tosses out some of the most imaginative solutions to a mystery in the history of the literature. First four, then seven clues/bits of evidence are laid out and discussed.

And Father Brown comes at one point to a plausible but totally wrong explanation.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

THE STORY

(77) At the end of a grey Scotch valley lies “the strange castle of Glengyle.” It betrays a peculiarly Scotish nobility atmosphere of “devilry” (78) “the sense of blood in the aristocrat and the sense of doom in the Calvinist.”

[NOTE: This is a MISCUE. Much of the "mood music" of descriptions of place and the mind of Father Brown seems designed to lead away from the strange but ordinary sort of truth behind the tale.]

Father Brown had been on business in Glasgow. He now joined Flambeau and a local detective investigating “the life and death of the late Earl of Glengyle.”He had been the last of an evil lineage which had lied about Mary Stuart. The family is known by a rhyme

   “As green sap to the simmer trees
    Is red gold to the Ogilvies.”

[NOTE: remember this CLUE. Chew on it.]

The last Glengyle had simply disappeared. Only one man might know the answer: the deaf, apparently half-witted combination groom/gardener ISRAEL GOW. He has energetically dug large quantities of potatoes.

One day the minister visited the castle. He found that Israel had put his master in a coffin (79). Now a legal investigation is under way.. Father Brown was received in the castle by Flambeau and Inspector Craven.  They had collected “evidence” on a table. 

Four odd finds in castle:

--(1) many precious stones, almost all diamonds. All loose. No setting. (80)

--(2) scattered heaps of loose snuff.

--(3) little heaps of minute pieces of metal, like steel springs, microscopic wheels.

--(4) abundant wax candles but no candlesticks.

Inspector Craven: (81) “By no stretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose clockwork.”

Father Brown: POSSIBLE CONNECTION NUMBER ONE:

On the spur of the moment and with little attention to the facts, Father Brown suggested: The old earl loved French monarchy, tried to re-enact the milieu of the last Louis. Snuff was the 18th C. luxury.  Wax candles were the 18th C. lighting. Mechanical bits of iron represent the locksmith hobby of King Louis XVI. Diamonds were for a necklace of Marie Antoinette.

This is not the truth but you said no one could possibly make a connection.  I did it off-hand. “real truth ...It lies deeper.”

[COMMENT: The scientific method is based on creating simplified mental models presumably related to the phenomena to be explained and then working out the implications of the models. Models have a life of their own, whether they explain anything or not!]

Father Brown: POSSIBLE CONNECTION NUMBER TWO:

The Earl was a thief.  He used candles in his lantern (to thieve by). Snuff he hurled into eyes of captors/pursuers. Diamonds and small wheels were to cut a pane of glass.

Father Brown: POSSIBLE CONNECTION NUMBER THREE: (82)

Glenglyle thought he had found precious jewels on his estate. In a hidden cavern somewhere. He used metal diamond-cutting machines. Shepherds helped him. Snuff is their one great luxury. They preferred to hold candlesticks IN THEIR HANDS in the caves.

Brown: “But are there no other exhibits?”

Flambeau:

--(5) Lead from lead pencils--but no pencils.

--(6) A stick of bamboo with its top rather splintered.

--(7) A few old missals and Catholic holy pictures.  “curiously cut about and defaced.”

Father Brown: there is only one reason for defacing holy texts/pictures: “the reason goes down to the roots of the world.” (83) The great ornamented name of God (83) was taken out. Also the golden halo around head of Child Jesus. Therefore we must open the casket. “There is black magic somewhere at the bottom of this.” [COMMENT: another wrong guess.]

The three go down to the grave site. BROWN: In prehistoric times Scots “really worshipped demons. That ... is why they jumped at the Puritan theology.”

(84) They open the tomb. Bones. (85) But the corpse has no head!  What shall we do? BROWN: we must sleep! “We have found the truth; and the truth makes no sense.” [COMMENT: substantially all the clues needed are now at hand.]

Back at the castle Brown throws himself into sleep. Brown is up the earliest of the three. Brown watched the gardener in his kitchen garden. Brown noted that (86) Israel Gow digs neatly but that there is an irregularity in this row of potatoes. He did not put his spade in this one space. Flambeau impetuously put his spade into the ground. It clicked. A skull!  “The Earl of Glengyle,” said Brown sadly.

Brown: I have spoken with old Gow. There is no black magic, except for this last: the skull.

Flambeau: As a criminal “I always made up the story myself, and acted it as quick as I chose. (87) This detective business of waiting about is too much for my French impatience. All my life, for good or evil, I have done things at the instant ... I always paid bills on the nail; I never even put off a visit to the DENTIST --------”

“Father Brown’s pipe fell out of his mouth. ... Lord what a turnip I am! he kept saying.”   Our night in hell is now over.  “ ... and the radiant form of the dentist consoles the world.”

“This is not a story of crime ... rather it is the story of a strange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It is a study in the savage living logic that has been the religion of this race.”

Remember:

“As green sap to the simmer trees
Is red gold to the Ogilvies”

BROWN:  It was not just metaphorical, also literal. The Ogilvies did more than seek wealth. They gathered GOLD. Had a huge collection of golden instruments. We found no gold in the castle. It had all been removed, even from the halos and name of God. (88) Taken away but not stolen. All by the mad moralist the gardener.

“The late Archbishop Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good man ever born at Glengyle.” 

[NOTE; NOT ARCHBISHOP BUT EARL. Maisie Ward’s bio p. 161 got it right: “he trusted his memory too much and never verified.” AKA: a poor proofreader,} 

The earl was a miserly misanthrope. Believed all men dishonest. Swore that if he ever found one man who took his exact rights -- no more and no less -- that man should have all the gold of Glengyle.”

One day a deaf boy, Israel Gow,  from a distant village brought the earl a telegram. The earl had given the boy a farthing--he thought. It was a sovereign. Boy would either keep the sovereign or smugly bring it back. That would make the boy either a thief or a snob seeking a reward. In middle of the night boy returned. “The idiot brought with him not the sovereign, but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three-farthings in change.”

“Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold on the mad Lord’s brain like fire. He made a new will. Which Brown had seen. Took the boy as his solitary servant -- and later his heir, at least partially. (88) The servant has with permission stripped the house of its gold. Took not a grain that was not gold. “He will put the skull back in the grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth.:

Later that morning Flambeau saw Israel Gow doing just that.

[COMMENT: GKC rather withholds evidence until too close to the end of the tale: Father Brown's conversation with the gardener. But by then enough clues were on hand so that it is possible to regard that conversation as merely confirming what Brown and alert readers had already guessed for themselves.

-OOO-
09/04/2003
 
 

Flambeau, the former master criminal of France (long converted and tutored in goodness by Father J. Brown) is now a respectable detective in Westminister. With Brown his is taking a month's holiday in a small sailing boat on the small rivers of the Eastern counties, latterly Norfolk (103). He was trying to run down a Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk. Years earlier the prince had invited him to come see him if he ever retired from crime and became respectable. His note read:

     "If you ever retire and become respectable, come and visit me. I wsant to meet you, for I have met
     all the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting one detective to arrest the other
     was the most splendid scene in French history."   [CLUE!}

The prince had eloped with a married woman and the insulted husband had then allegedly committed suicide. The lived in restless motion and international travel. The river scene seemed fairyland to Flambeau. To Brown entering fairyland is always dangerous (105) A man pointed the way to Reed House: a low islet with a long buingalow of reed canes. Inside windows alternated with a large numbers of mirrors. [COMMENT: much is made of the mirrors but they are probably intended to distract from the real clues.]

A butler named Paul met them. Said his highness was away but would soon arrive. Sketches of the two Saradine brothers were on the wall. An obviously Italian housekeeper Mrs Anthony was also on hand. (207):Brown: we are the right persons in the wrong place. Butler told Brown his master had been mistreated. The Saradine brother, Captain Stephen, was the worst mistreater. Had milked his brother of vast sums, forced him to flee round the world. Mrs Anthony (108) agreed with Flambeau that it would be hard to tell the good from the bad brother. Both brothers were evil! 

Paul: His Highness has just arrived. The Prince is affable. Greets Flambeau, known by reputation. [COMMENT: he does not recall his earlier invitation to Flambeau!] Recommends (109) the fishing. The Prince looked familiar. Was it the mirrors "multiplying human masks?" Mr Paul was more a chamberlain than a servant. Dined alone and in style.

The Prince philosophizes with Brown. Do you believe in Doom? No replied Brown, "I believe in Doomsday."

What do you mean?

"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry. ... The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person."

The prince repeated, "the wrong person, the wrong person."  Brown to self: Is this man sane?

Mr Paul: a boat with six men has jsut pulled in. A newcomer asks: Your name is Saradine?: -- Yes.
--Well, my name is ANTONELLI. Slaps prince. Presents sabres. (111) When I was in my cradle (112) you and my wicked mother threw my father off a cliff. Brown tried to intervene. Rebuffed by both. Brown saw Mrs Anthony. "Your son is outside." "Where is Mr Paul? She: he is at the landing stage, signaling for help. Brown: no he has taken a canoe, to do what? She swoons. Old Paul is seen pushing canoe up river. "I will save my master ... yet." (113)

The duel was on. An even match. Brown ran to the fight. Flambeau was still out fishing. Antonelli kills Saradine. Brown attends to the corpse (114). A police boat shoots up from the nearby village. Very late it came. Why so late?

(Later Antonelli pled guilty at trial.)

Flambeau returned. Brown is distraught (115). The two found Paul and Mrs Anthony dining at same table.

Flambeau accuses Paul of stealing his master's dinner. No: I own this island and house. He laughs.

Brown (116) we must get away "from this house of hell." Brown explains what happened. A man had two enemies: his brother and son of man he murdered/wronged. He found two enemies were better than one. How play one against the other?  The captain blackmailed his successful brother. Impoverished him. Made it impossible for the real prince to keep moving ahead of his pursuers. For he knew that Paul had committed murder.

The prince suddenly surrendered to both his antagonists! Like a Japanese wrestler (jiu jitsu?)  He stopped his brother. Told him: you have cleaned me out. All I have left to give you is my island and my home. (117) Come and take it. The prince shaved own face (the young Sicilian avenger had seen only pictures.) And waited. "The trap worked."

But there was still the risk that the Captain would reveal he was not the Prince. So the Prince fled in the canoe. Antonelli, the prince gambled, would remain silent and not reveal to police the shame of his family. And perhaps the captain would remain silent out of pride, or thinking he could beat the upstart. "Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fight was over. Then he roused the town, brought the police, saw his two vanquished enemies taken away for ever, and sat down smiling to his dinner."

Flambeau: did he get his idea from Satan?

Brown: no from you. Remember his original invitation to you? He just copied your trick of getting one detective to arrest another. "With an enemy on each side of him he slipped swiftly out of the way and let them collide and kill each other."

(216) Flambeau tears the ancient invitation and throws it into the stream. Maybe it will poison the fishes. Was this all a dream? The wind rose and moved their boat onward "down the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men."

-OOO-

09-04-2003

====-=-=-=-=-

What we are meant to remember after reading “The Man in The Passage,” is, I think, this. We easily misidentify barely seen shapes. We add to them features drawn from what we have most recently admired, disliked or otherwise emoted about.

To achieve this effect, however, Chesterton creates a story with many, far too many, distractions, implausibilities and the like. For instance:

--(1) The covered passage between the theater and the boarded up restaurant. It has to be COVERED to diminish the light that gets into it.  Otherwise you have just an alley. But what covers the passage? Canvas? Another entire building?

--(2) How does the old man with the spear manage to get in and out of the actor’s dressing room, the second time with a BLOODY spearhead, without the actor noticing him.

--(3) The mirrors: why on earth do they slide out of the actress’s dressing room into the alley?

For the rest, let me read a couple of key passages and then we can discuss this very OPTICAL tale.
 

QUOTATIONS

"Father Brown and Parkinson were left alone, and they were neither of them men with a taste for superfluous conversation. The dresser went round the room, pulling out looking-glasses and pushing them in again, his dingy dark coat and trousers looking all the more dismal since he was still holding the festive fairy spear of King Oberon. Every time he pulled out the frame of a new glass, a new black figure of Father Brown appeared; the absurd glass chamber was full of Father Browns, upside down in the air like angels, turning somersaults like acrobats,
turning their backs to everybody like very rude persons.

Father Brown seemed quite unconscious of this cloud of witnesses, but followed Parkinson with an idly attentive eye till he took himself and his absurd spear into the farther room of Bruno. Then he abandoned himself to such abstract meditations as always amused him-- calculating the angles of the mirrors, the angles of each refraction, the angle at which each must fit into the wall ... when he heard a strong but strangled cry.

My name is Brown," said the priest sadly, as he bent over something and straightened himself again. "Miss Rome sent for me, and I came as quickly as I could. I have come too late."

The three men looked down, and in one of them at least the life died in that late light of afternoon. It ran along the passage like a path of gold, and in the midst of it Aurora Rome lay lustrous in her robes of green and gold, with her dead face turned upwards. Her dress was torn away as in a struggle, leaving the right shoulder bare, but the wound from which the blood was welling was on the other side. The brass dagger lay flat and gleaming a yard or so away."

"The general impression in court was that the little priest, who was gobbling away, had literally gone mad in the box. But the judge still looked at him with bright and steady eyes of interest; and the counsel for the defence went on with his questions unperturbed.

"If Parkinson did it with that pantomime spear," said Butler, "he must have thrust from four yards away. How do you account for signs of struggle, like the dress
dragged off the shoulder?" He had slipped into treating his mere witness as an expert; but no one noticed it now.

"The poor lady's dress was torn," said the witness, "because it was caught in a panel that slid to just behind her. She struggled to free herself, and as she did so Parkinson came out of the prisoner's room and lunged with the spear."

"A panel?" repeated the barrister in a curious voice.

"It was a looking-glass on the other side," explained Father Brown. "When I was in the dressing-room I noticed that some of them could probably be slid out into the passage."

There was another vast and unnatural silence, and this time it was the judge who spoke. "So you really mean that when you looked down that passage, the man you saw was yourself--in a mirror?"

"Yes, my lord; that was what I was trying to say," said Brown, "but they asked me for the shape; and our hats have corners just like horns, and so I--"

The judge leaned forward, his old eyes yet more brilliant, and said in specially distinct tones: "Do you really mean to say that when Sir Wilson Seymour saw that wild what-you-call-him with curves and a woman's hair and a man's trousers, what he saw was Sir Wilson Seymour?"

"Yes, my lord," said Father Brown.

"And you mean to say that when Captain Cutler saw that chimpanzee with humped shoulders and hog's bristles, he simply saw himself?"

"Yes, my lord."

The judge leaned back in his chair with a luxuriance in which it was hard to separate the cynicism and the admiration. "And can you tell us why," he asked, "you should know your own figure in a looking-glass, when two such distinguished men don't?"

Father Brown blinked even more painfully than before; then he stammered: "Really, my lord, I don't know unless it's because I don't look at it so often."

+++++++++++++
 

10/26/2003