“Who found his body?” asked Father Brown.
“Some girl attached to the Court named Hedwig von something or other,” replied his friend, “who had been out in the wood picking wild flowers.”
“Had she picked any?” asked the priest, staring rather vacantly at the veil of the branches above him.
“Yes,” replied Flambeau. “I particularly remember that the Chamberlain, or old Grimm or somebody, said how horrible it was, when they came up at her call, to see a girl holding spring flowers and bending over that—that bloody collapse. However, the main point is that before help arrived he was dead, and the news, of course, had to be carried back to the castle. The consternation it created was something beyond even that natural in a Court at the fall of a potentate. The foreign visitors, especially the mining experts, were in the wildest doubt and excitement, as well as many important Prussian officials, and it soon began to be clear that the scheme for finding the treasure bulked much bigger in the business than people had supposed. Experts and officials had been promised great prizes or international advantages, and some even said that the Prince’s secret apartments and strong military protection were due less to fear of the populace than to the pursuit of some private investigation of—”
“Had the flowers got long stalks?” asked Father Brown.
Flambeau stared at him. “What an odd person you are!” he said. “That’s exactly what old Grimm said. He said the ugliest part of it, he thought—uglier than the blood and bullet—was that the flowers were quite short, plucked close under the head.”
“Of course,” said the priest, “when a grown up girl is really picking flowers, she picks them with plenty of stalk. If she just pulled their heads off, as a child does, it looks as if—” And he hesitated.
“Well?” inquired the other.
“Well, it looks rather as if she had snatched them nervously, to make an excuse for being there after—well, after she was there.”
“I know what you’re driving at,” said Flambeau rather gloomily. “But that and every other suspicion breaks down on the one point—the want of a weapon. He could have been killed, as you say, with lots of other things—even with his own military sash; but we have to explain not how he was killed, but how he was shot. And the fact is we can’t. They had the girl most ruthlessly searched; for, to tell the truth, she was a little suspect, though the niece and ward of the wicked old Chamberlain, Paul Arnhold. But she was very romantic, and was suspected of sympathy with the old revolutionary enthusiasm in her family. All the same, however romantic you are, you can’t imagine a big bullet into a man’s jaw or brain without using a gun or pistol. And there was no pistol, though there were two pistol shots. I leave it to you, my friend.”