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“Father Brown?” she said.

“Mrs Boulnois?” he replied gravely. Then he looked at her and immediately said: “I see you know about Sir Claude.”

“How do you know I know?” she asked steadily.

He did not answer the question, but asked another: “Have you seen your husband?”

“My husband is at home,” she said. “He has nothing to do with this.”

Again he did not answer; and the woman drew nearer to him, with a curiously intense expression on her face.

“Shall I tell you something more?” she said, with a rather fearful smile. “I don’t think he did it, and you don’t either.” Father Brown returned her gaze with a long, grave stare, and then nodded, yet more gravely.

“Father Brown,” said the lady, “I am going to tell you all I know, but I want you to do me a favour first. Will you tell me why you haven’t jumped to the conclusion of poor John’s guilt, as all the rest have done? Don’t mind what you say: I–I know about the gossip and the appearances that are against me.”

Father Brown looked honestly embarrassed, and passed his hand across his forehead. “Two very little things,” he said. “At least, one’s very trivial and the other very vague. But such as they are, they don’t fit in with Mr Boulnois being the murderer.”

He turned his blank, round face up to the stars and continued absentmindedly: “To take the vague idea first. I attach a good deal of importance to vague ideas. All those things that ‘aren’t evidence’ are what convince me. I think a moral impossibility the biggest of all impossibilities. I know your husband only slightly, but I think this crime of his, as generally conceived, something very like a moral impossibility. Please do not think I mean that Boulnois could not be so wicked. Anybody can be wicked–as wicked as he chooses. We can direct our moral wills; but we can’t generally change our instinctive tastes and ways of doing things. Boulnois might commit a murder, but not this murder. He would not snatch Romeo’s sword from its romantic scabbard; or slay his foe on the sundial as on a kind of altar; or leave his body among the roses, or fling the sword away among the pines. If Boulnois killed anyone he’d do it quietly and heavily, as he’d do any other doubtful thing–take a tenth glass of port, or read a loose Greek poet. No, the romantic setting is not like Boulnois. It’s more like Champion.”

“Ah!” she said, and looked at him with eyes like diamonds.

“And the trivial thing was this,” said Brown. “There were finger-prints on that sword; finger-prints can be detected quite a time after they are made if they’re on some polished surface like glass or steel. These were on a polished surface. They were half-way down the blade of the sword. Whose prints they were I have no earthly clue; but why should anybody hold a sword half-way down? It was a long sword, but length is an advantage in lunging at an enemy. At least, at most enemies. At all enemies except one.”

“Except one,” she repeated.

“There is only one enemy,” said Father Brown, “whom it is easier to kill with a dagger than a sword.”

“I know,” said the woman. “Oneself.”

There was a long silence, and then the priest said quietly but abruptly: “Am I right, then? Did Sir Claude kill himself?”

“Yes” she said, with a face like marble. “I saw him do it.”

“He died,” said Father Brown, “for love of you?”

An extraordinary expression flashed across her face, very different from pity, modesty, remorse, or anything her companion had expected: her voice became suddenly strong and full. “I don’t believe,” she said, “he ever cared about me a rap. He hated my husband.”

“Why?” asked the other, and turned his round face from the sky to the lady.

“He hated my husband because…it is so strange I hardly know how to say it…because…”