The clergyman also gave his guest a glass of port-wine; but with it he gave an old British biscuit instead of seed-cake. The priest had again the weird feeling that everything was almost too perfect, and that he was living a century before his time. Only on one point the nice old clergyman refused to be nicer than that; he kindly but firmly said that he would not meet a stage player. However, Father Brown put down his glass of port-wine with thanks; and went off to meet his friend the doctor at the corner of the street; from wherethey were to go together to the offices of Mr Carver, the lawyer.

‘I suppose your trip was not interesting,’ began the doctor, ‘and you've found it a very boring village.’

Father Brown’s reply was quick and almost shrill. ‘Don’t call your village boring. I am sure it’s a very unusual village indeed [53] .’

‘I’ve been working with the only unusual thing that ever happened here, I should think,’ noticed Dr Mulborough. ‘And even that happened to somebody from outside. I may tell you they managed the exhumation quietly last night; and I did the autopsy this morning. In plain words we’ve been digging up a body that’s simply full of poison.’

‘A body full of poison,’ repeated Father Brown. ‘Believe me, your village has something much more unusual than that.’

There was sudden silence, and then also a sudden sound of the old bell on the doorstep of the lawyer’s house; and that legal gentleman invited them in, and he presented them to a white-haired, yellow-faced gentleman with a scar, who was the Admiral.

By this time the atmosphere of the village stuck hard in the mindof the little priest; but he knew that the lawyer was indeed the sort of lawyer who gives advice to people like Miss Carstairs-Carew. But though he was an old bird, he looked like something more than that. Perhaps it was becauseof the uniformity of background; but the priest had again the strange feeling that he himself was put back into the early nineteenth century, rather than that the lawyer had survived into the early twentieth [54] . His collar and tie looked almost like a pillar as he put his long chin into them; but they were clean and neat; and there was even something about him of anold dandy. In short, he was what is called well-preserved, even if partly by being like a stone.

The lawyer and the Admiral, and even the doctor, showed some surprise on finding that Father Brown was rather ready to defend the priest’s son [55] against the local complaints on the side of the priest.

‘I found our young friend rather attractive, myself,’ he said. ‘He’s a good talker and a good poet; and Mrs Maltravers, who is serious about that at least, says he’s quite a good actor.’

‘Indeed,’ said the lawyer. ‘Potter’s Pond, outside Mrs Maltravers, is rather more interested if he is a good son.’

‘He is a good son,’ said Father Brown. ‘That’s the strange thing.’

‘Damn it all,’ said the Admiral. ‘Do you mean he really loves his father?’

The priest was uncertain. Then he said, ‘I’m not quite so sure about that. That’s the other strange thing.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’ asked the sailor with a curse.

‘I mean,’ said Father Brown, ‘that the son still speaks of his father in a hard unkind way; but he seems after all to have done more than his duty by him [56] . I had a talk with the bank manager, and as we were looking privately into a serious crime, under authority from the police, he told me the facts. The old clergyman has left thechurch work; indeed, this was never actually his church. The people who go to church at all, go to Dutton-Abbot, not far away from here. The old man has no money of his own, but his son is making good money; and the old man is well looked after. He gave me some port-wineof absolutely first-class quality; I saw manyold bottles of it; and I left him sitting down to a little fine lunch in an old-fashioned style. It must be done on the young man’s money.’

‘Quite a model son,’ said Carver with a sarcasm.

Father Brown agreed, frowning, as if thinking ofa riddle of his own; and then said:‘A model son. But rather an unnatural model.’

At this moment a postman brought in an unstamped letter for the lawyer; a letter which the lawyer opened impatiently after a quick look. As it fell apart, the priest saw a spidery, crazy handwriting and the autograph of ‘Phoenix Fitzgerald’; and made a conclusion which the other supported.

‘It’s that highly emotional actor that’s always annoying us,’ he said. ‘He’s got some conflict with his dead and gone fellow actor, which can’t have anything to do with the case [57] . We all refuse to see him, except the doctor, who did see him; and the doctor says he’s mad.’

‘Yes,’ said Father Brown, pressing his lips. ‘I should say he’s mad. But of course there can’t be any doubt that he’s right.’

‘Right?’ shouted Carver. ‘Right about what?’

‘About this being connected with the old theatrical company,’ said Father Brown. ‘Do you know the first thing that surprised me about this story? It was that idea that Maltravers was killed by villagers because he said something bad about their village. It’s strange what court investigators can get jurymen to believe [58] ; and journalists, of course, trust them too. They can’t know much about English villagers. I’m an English villager myself; at least I was grown, with other turnips, in Essex [59] . Can you imagine an English peasant thinking abouthis village as an ideal place, like the citizen of an old Greek city-state; taking the sword to protect it, like a man in the small medieval republic of an Italian town? Can you hear a merry old villager saying, “Blood alone can wipe out one spot on the emblem of Potter’s Pond”? By St George and the Dragon [60] , I only wish they would! But, in fact, I have a more practical argument for the other idea.’

He paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts [61] , and then went on:‘They didn’t understandthe meaning of those few last words poor Maltravers was heard to say [62] . He wasn’t telling the villagers that the village was only a hamlet. He was talking to an actor; they were going to put on a performance in which Fitzgerald was to be Fortinbras, the unknown Hankin to be Polonius, and Maltravers, no doubt, the Prince of Denmark. Perhaps somebody else wanted the part or had views on the part [63] ; and Maltravers said angrily, “You’d be an ugly little Hamlet”; that’s all.’