‘I’m quite sure they were great and very well-deserved,’ said the little priest. ‘I understood the company had left the village before Maltravers died. But it’s all right. It’s quite all right.’ And he began to walk down the street with speed again.

‘He was to act Polonius[49],’ continued the unstoppable speakerbehind him. Father Brown suddenly stopped dead[50].

‘Oh,’ he said very slowly, ‘he was to act Polonius.’

‘That villain Hankin!’ screamed the actor. ‘Follow him. Follow him to the ends of the earth[51]! Of course he’d left the village; trust him for that[52]. Follow him – find him; and may the curses – ’But the priest was again running away down the street.

Two much simpler and perhaps more practical conversations were after this emotional scene. First the priest went into the bank, where he spent ten minutes with the manager; and then made a very polite call to the old and nice clergyman. Here again all seemed very much as described, without changeand that cannot be changedas one might think; a touch or two of faith from more harsh traditions, in the small crucifix on the wall, the big Bible on the bookshelf and the old gentleman starting with regret that people don’t respect Sunday enough; but all with a flavour of politeness, a little delicacy and style.

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.