Our September 2024 production of Patrick Rieger’s Father Brown (based on stories from G.K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown) has ended. We are pleased now to make this “secret” post public for your enjoyment. Whether you followed every detail of the cases solved by Father Brown, you may be amused by our backstory.
THE PROLOGUE
The first “case” solved by Father Brown takes place during the Prologue, and serves primarily to introduce us to the main characters in the story: Father Brown, Chief Inspector Valentine, Officer O’Brien, Laura Galloway and Flambeau.
The story as published was titled, “The Blue Cross”. Here’s what happened: Father Brown was tasked, for an unknown reason, with delivering an antique and valuable jeweled cross to Westminster Abbey, despite the fact that he is Roman Catholic, and the Abbey is Church of England. This fact, also for an unknown reason, became public knowledge. Flambeau, a well-known but elusive jewel thief based in France, has disguised himself as an Anglican priest and has somehow become Fr. Brown’s traveling companion.
Fr. Brown smelled a rat right away and began to test this stranger: he put salt in the man’s tea, he altered his bill in a restaurant. As his suspicions were confirmed, he began to make a small scene in these places (there are several others mentioned in the story): throwing tea at the wall, breaking a window pane. He is doing this specifically to attract the attention of the police, as he seems convinced that Valentine will recognize that these are clues to be followed.
In a bakery, Fr. Brown manages to create a duplicate parcel while Flambeau talks with the proprietor, Laura Galloway, with whom he is instantly smitten. We are to imagine that he puts this duplicate (peppermints) where Flambeau can then steal it. The men leave, but then Fr. Brown rushes back saying that he’s lost a parcel. He somehow secrets the cross where Laura will find it later, and leaves her the address. Now, carrying Flambeau’s duplicate, he calmly goes into a secluded wooded area.
As the play begins, he has engaged Flambeau in philosophical, spiritual conversation. Flambeau is trying to answer like a cleric, but his own materialist skepticism shows through. Eventually he reveals that he is Flambeau and claims to have the cross. Of course, he does not. Valentine meanwhile has seen the brilliance of Fr. Brown’s plot, even though they have never met. He leads his men to the woods but Flambeau eludes them.
CHAPTERS ONE to THREE
Chapters one and two center on the story known as “The Hammer of God”. We are first introduced to two brothers: Anglican clergyman Rev. Bohun, and his brother, Colonel Norman Bohun, a veteran, perhaps of the Boer War. (Equally possibly, he served in India, since he sports a pith helmet.) Col. Bohun is a wealthy landlord, but also a drunk and an adulterer. In the book, it is not at all clear why Margaret Barnes would have agreed to an affair, so we have suggested in one added line of hers that he was blackmailing her in some manner…perhaps with threats of raising the rent on the smithy, or evicting them?
Rev. Bohun is appalled by his brother’s behavior but feels powerless to do anything about it. He warns him that God is not mocked and that Col. Bohun is daring God to judge him. We are left to imagine that Rev. Bohun, desperate to stop his brother from bullying and harming the neighbors, wants to at least frighten him, if not stop him entirely.
Our cast discussions led us to the following conclusion: Rev. Bohun, not a large man himself, picked up a small hammer in the blacksmith’s shop thinking to find a way to warn his brother. From the belltower, he sees the hatted colonel below him like a large beetle. It is possible that he despises him in that moment and decides to drop the hammer. We found it unlikely that he would think himself to have good enough aim to hit such a far-away target with such a small hammer. More plausible, we feel, is that he was hoping to have the hammer land nearby and frighten Norman with the idea of a divine thunderbolt. He is stunned and deeply upset by having actually killed his brother and casts about for a way to explain it without falsely accusing someone who could be hanged for the crime.
Father Brown sees the truth of the matter and urges him to turn himself in, which will ultimately mean Rev. Behun’s execution as a murderer. However, in Fr. Brown’s theology, confessing the crime is better for his soul and ultimate salvation. (He is able to prevent the Reverend’s guilt-ridden suicide, an act which would have compounded his guilt by taking another life. In Catholic theology at the time, suicide was an unpardonable sin.)
Meanwhile, Flambeau is at large, but hasn’t left the London borough where Laura lives and works. (This plotline is loosely adapted from scenes in “The Invisible Man” and “The Flying Stars”.) He disguises himself as a postman in order to learn her name and deliver a letter declaring his love. Seeing her again, he is torn between disappearing–perhaps returning to Europe–and staying near Laura, which will require him to give himself up.
He then disguises himself as a harlequin and teases O’Brien before stealing his coat and pistol…perhaps thinking to escape in that disguise. But Fr. Brown has rightly discerned that Flambeau is ambivalent about continuing his life of crime. He follows him into the woods and urges him to give himself up.
Valentine is once again frustrated by Flambeau’s elusiveness and Fr. Brown’s refusal to break the seal of the confessional. But as Act One ends, Rev. Bohun appears and confesses to murdering his brother, and Flambeau yields the pistol to Fr. Brown, agreeing to turn himself in.
CHAPTER FOUR
It is five years later. Chief Inspector Valentine is entertaining Dr. Galloway, along with O’Brien and Fr. Brown. They speak of Valentine’s imminent retirement. Fr. Brown and Valentine talk of their competing philosophies on the criminal mind. O’Brien defends Fr. Brown and the concept of prisoners reforming their lives, which Valentine scoffs at. Flambeau arrives–at Fr. Brown’s invitation. He has served his term and has set up shop as a private detective nearby. Valentine, angry and derisive, orders O’Brien to search Flambeau’s office, as he is sure Flambeau will always be a criminal.
Note: Fr. Brown’s explanation of his methods in this scene comes from “The Secret of Father Brown” in a later book of stories, The Further Adventures of Father Brown. Originally this scene in the play opened with a reminiscence about a former case, based on items in Valentine’s curio cabinet. However, the explanation of the case was at odds with the story from which it was taken, and did not help advance the plot of the play, so we cut it.
CHAPTER FIVE
This chapter is based on “The Eye of Apollo”. In it, Margaret Stacey, an abrasive “modern” woman, has convinced herself that any physical weakness is unacceptable. She falls under the spell of a charlatan who has started his own religion and who goes by the name, Kalon. Believing herself to be in love with Kalon, she decides to gift him all her money and property. It is unclear whether this is tied to their marriage or is free and clear. The script refers to a “contract” and we’ve left that word alone. However, astute audience members may notice that the actual document is titled a “Deed of Gift.”
In the original story, the person who witnesses Margaret’s signature is a cousin who would have inherited at least some of the fortune if it weren’t for Kalon. Therefore her silence regarding the contract is more clearly criminal–though surely easily remedied later had Margaret lived.
It is also unclear in the play why Margaret is in the same building where Kalon lives. We leave it to you whether an inappropriate relationship was taking place. Kalon’s plot to allow Margaret to step into an empty elevator shaft seems a bit risky unless there was literally no one else in the building who might be harmed. Since the building has to be tall enough for her to fall several stories, it seems unlikely the building was unoccupied. However, this was one plot hole too many for us to solve.
Younger viewers may need to look up old-fashioned elevators to understand that the door was a folding metal screen which opened manually from both inside and outside the elevator. Kalon simply left the folding door open, stepped into the elevator and descended to the ground floor. Margaret stepped into what she thought was the elevator awaiting her, and fell down however many flights of the shaft onto the top of the elevator. An ironic end for someone who never wanted a man’s assistance with anything.
CHAPTER SIX
The final scene is based on a story called “The Secret Garden” and involves a rather convoluted plot on Valentine’s part. The entire plan is well-explained by Fr. Brown in the final moments of the scene: Valentine has managed to secure the guillotined head of a French criminal. He showed off his prowess with his cavalry saber to O’Brien in the garden, cut off his head and threw it (and the saber) over the garden wall. He placed the criminal’s head with O’Brien’s body. What is not easy to explain is how O’Brien was lured away from Flambeau without Flambeau being aware of it. Since the original story involved characters who did not appear in other stories, it was tricky for the playwright to weave these recurring characters into the plot.
The playwright also opted to make O’Brien (called “Brayne” in the original script) a socialist and that was why Valentine killed him. We found enough context clues in the script to determine that it made more sense for O’Brien to become a Christian (and likely a Catholic, with his Irish name). Valentine’s animosity against the Church is obvious throughout the play, and we decided that this monomania had driven him mad.
One detail of the script was puzzling: there were twigs in the hair of the head found in the garden…but eventually one canny actor realized that it was the wrong head! Why would the criminal’s hair have twigs in it? We decided there must be many cut twigs in the grass right in that spot, so BOTH heads have them. We added a line about “more twigs” when O’Brien’s head is discovered.
A final word for the romantics in the audience. It’s our theory that, since O’Brien and Valentine are both dead at the end of the play, the London force will be seeking another Chief Inspector. Perhaps Flambeau will join the force and eventually rise to that position? Surely Laura will not spurn him forever! We see marriage in their future.
We hope you enjoyed this foray into the world of the British murder mystery! Please leave a comment with your thoughts, other questions, and whether you’d like to see more shows like this in the future.