The Innocence of Father Brown

Valentin hosts a dinner at his house with many guests. These include Father Brown; Valentin’s assistant, Ivan; a French doctor named Dr. Simon; English Ambassador to France Lord Galloway and his wife, Lady Galloway; their daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, the Duchess of St. Michel; Irish-born Commandant Neil O’Brien of the French Foreign Legion; and American millionaire Julius K. Brayne, who has an interest in “progressive” ideas and religions. Valentin disapproves of Brayne’s openness to religion and the Church and starts arguing with him. As this goes on, Lord Galloway goes into the drawing room, where he listens to the argument while also eavesdropping on a conversation between Dr. Simon and Father Brown. Noticing that O’Brien and Margaret are gone, he looks through the house for them. He finds Margaret in Valentin’s study but wonders where O’Brien is. He sees O’Brien enter the house from the garden and becomes angry. Lord Galloway informs the dinner party that a corpse has been found in the garden.

Valentin, the men, and Margaret go to look, and Dr. Simon sees that the corpse’s head has been completely severed. The male body is wearing a black suit, and the head appears oddly yellow. Valentin has everyone stay the night while the investigation is conducted. He and Father Brown will stay by the body. When they go inside, the Duchess says that Brayne is gone, and Lord Galloway says that O’Brien is still outside as well. When Dr. Simon says that the killer did not use a knife, Valentin concludes that a saber must have been used due to the force of the cut. Ivan lets O’Brien back inside, and Valentin has O’Brien’s saber retrieved from the library. Margaret explains that she and O’Brien were in the garden when they found the corpse and that O’Brien asked her to marry him, but she refused. After Father Brown asks about the cigar that Brayne was smoking, Valentin tells Ivan to let Brayne back in, but Ivan soon comes back and says that Brayne has left. Ivan also finds O’Brien’s sword, which he believes Brayne may have thrown aside as he made his escape. Valentin gives the sword back to O’Brien. Early that morning, Dr. Simon tells O’Brien that Brayne must have killed the man in the garden, but he wonders why he used a sword and how the stranger got into the garden. During their conversation, Father Brown tells them that another murder has occurred.

They go into the library, where they find a drawing of a decapitated Valentin. As the police and Father Brown investigate, Father Brown initially considers that Brayne must have committed this murder as well, but he then finds that the second corpse is Brayne, noticing that the hair and chipped ear are the same. Father Brown also tells Valentin that Brayne was considering joining his church, to which Valentin sneeringly remarks that Brayne was probably going to give much of his fortune to the church. Valentin then retires to his study. Ivan, Valentin’s attendant, argues that the first corpse belongs to Arnold Becker, a criminal who went by many names. Arnold had a twin brother named Louis, who was guillotined nearby only the day before. In a conversation with O’Brien and Dr. Simon, Father Brown tells them that Brayne did not leave the garden and that after he was killed, his head was switched with the guillotined head of Louis Becker. He then explains that Valentin was present at the execution and was able to take the head on the pretense of wanting to use it for criminological study. This is why the head had an odd, yellow color—it had been dead much longer than the body found with it. Valentin, being fiercely anti-clerical, reacted violently to the suggestion that fellow skeptic Brayne might give his fortune to the Catholic Church, and to prevent this, he killed him using O’Brien’s sword before switching his head with Becker’s. Father Brown then goes to the study to have Valentin confess his crime, but the men find Valentin dead, having deliberately taken an overdose of pills.

An unnamed narrator tells the story of Father Brown’s luckiest case. A Jewish man named Mr. Lever invites Father Brown to the Vernon Hotel, where the prestigious club The Twelve True Fishermen meets for their annual dinner. He is there because a waiter at the hotel recently suffered a stroke and Mr. Lever suspects foul play. While writing in his room, Father Brown hears footsteps outside his door that start out small and rapid but then become slow and stamping, alternating between walking and running. Father Brown finds the nature of these footsteps strange, but he concludes that the steps are from the same person despite the vastly contrasting movements. Knowing that the door to the office is locked, Father Brown goes into the cloakroom to investigate. There, he encounters a tall, foreign man who asks for his hat and coat. Father Brown concludes that the man has silver in his pocket, noting that the semi-precious metal is highly valuable in large amounts. After the man menacingly says that he does not want to threaten Father Brown, Father Brown replies that he does want to threaten the man with his eternal fate. He then greets the man as Flambeau. Astounded, Flambeau sits down in a nearby chair.

Meanwhile, members of the club talk and joke at the dinner. These include the club’s vice president, the Duke of Chester; the manager, Mr. Audley; Colonel Pound; and others. When one of the waiters stops in the middle of walking, however, the wealthy men become disturbed. Another waiter says that he wants to speak to the proprietor. As the men discuss the number of waiters, Mr. Lever reveals that one of the waiters has died. The colonel suspects that the waiter was a thief and had stolen the silver fish plates. When asked, Father Brown says that he does not know the thief’s real name but that he repented before returning the silver. He then reveals the story of his encounter with Flambeau, noting that the criminal had donned the clothes of a waiter before Father Brown found him out. When Father Brown concludes his story, the men talk about how smart the thief must have been to be able to appear as a gentleman. Father Brown then says that he believes it must be equally difficult for a gentleman to pose as a waiter. He then says farewell and leaves the hotel.