By G.W. Thomas
Spoiler Alert: This column will reveal the solution to a famous Mystery story. If you haven’t read it (shame on you!), I apologize in advance. – GW
First off, let’s be clear. The Father Brown stories were largely written by the time H.P. Lovecraft was penning his brand of cosmic horror. That’s why this is called “Goes Mythos” rather than “Goes Lovecraft”. The story in question is G. K. Chesterton’s “The Blast of the Book” from Brown’s final collection, The Scandal of Father Brown (1935).
The story that gave Chesterton his inspiration was Robert W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow (1895), a collection of stories revolving around an evil book containing a play of that title. This book was one of the many influences on H.P. Lovecraft as he created his series of inter-connected horror tales, in particular, the story “The Yellow Sign”. Chambers’ book was well-known at the turn of the century and into the 1930s, when Raymond Chandler wrote a story called “The King In Yellow” (Dime Detective, March 1938), about a champion boxer who wore a yellow cape. The detective Steve Grayce says: “The King in Yellow. I read a book with that title once. He liked yellow, I guess….” It is a fleeting nod to Chambers.
The Father Brown stories are mysteries featuring a most unlikely detective: “The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting.” Despite appearances, Father Brown is quite capable of finding murderers. As he does this, the author has a second agenda, that of acting as a critic on matters theological. Chesterton was firmly based in the Catholic faith and his subtext is usually to lambaste other theological perspectives, from atheism to weird cults. This tale is no different.
In “The Blast of the Book”, Chesterton takes on Spiritualism. While he could have had a heyday with a figure like Arthur Conan Doyle (shamed over his belief in a fairy hoax back in 1920), he chooses instead a scientist, a Professor Openshaw, who is a fencesitter, being neither for nor against the belief in ghosts. A Reverend Luke Pringle, a man with a bushy red beard, brings the Professor a tale of a book from West Africa. He recounts how a Captain Wales looked at the book and was never seen again. The book is to be delivered to a Doctor Hankey, on the outskirts of the London. The Professor’s clerk Berridge is the next victim, having looked at the book while the Reverend talked with the Professor. The Reverend is next, disappearing in a most Lovecraftian fashion, narrating how he is looking at the book, and his fate, over the phone. (There is no ghoulish voice to say, “Fool, Pringle is dead,” though.) The Professor and Brown go out of the city to meet with Doctor Hankey. When Openshaw arrives at the Doctor’s humble abode, he finds that he, too, has been taken by the nameless flying terror. The terrible book rests on the table, bearing the following inscription: “They that looked into this book Them the Flying Terror took.” The professional supernaturalist is convinced the book is cursed and that five or more men have died by looking into it. Father Brown comes to his rescue and reveals the truth of the matter.
No men have been taken by the Mythosian flying death. The whole thing is a trick done by Openshaw’s much-neglected bookkeeper, Berridge. The Professor, in a most Ebeneezer Scroogian way, has not paid much attention to his servant. When Berridge puts on the bearded disguise as Luke Pringle, Openshaw doesn’t even recognize him. Brown explains that there never was a Captain Wales (a fiction created by Berridge), nor a Doctor Hankey (the doctor’s home is actually Berridge’s). Lastly, Brown knows the whole thing is a send-up from the start, because, “I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It’s all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.” Thus, Chesterton tells us, is the power of faith.
The final trick is ingenious and a wonderful take on the power of suggestion. It isn’t surprising that Chesterton should be able to think in such ghoulish ways, for he, too, was fond of weird fiction, as Daylight and Nightmare (1986), a posthumous collection, shows. His novel The Man Who Was Thursday was also reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (March 1944). Many of the Father Brown stories feature weird scenarios and seemingly supernatural occurrences, but Brown always sees through them to the earthly killers behind them. Mystery has always been an element of the Mythos. Writers use it to generate a feeling of expectation, of creeping anticipation. Whether the solution is supernatural or not is up to you.