The Incredulity of Father Brown
"I saw a photograph the lady had which the Australian sent on before him," said the priest, "and there are several ways in which he could have learned things when the new heir was once recognized. We may not know these details; but they are not difficulties. You remember he used to help in the dark room; it seems to me an ideal place, say, to prick a man with a poisoned pin, with the poison's all handy. No, I say these were not difficulties. The difficulty that stumped me was how Wood could be in two places at once. How could he take the corpse from the dark-room and prop it against the camera so that it would fall in a few seconds, without coming downstairs, when he was in the library looking out a book? And I was such a fool that I never looked at the books in the library; and it was only in this photograph, by very undeserved good luck, that I saw the simple fact of a book about Pope Joan."
"You've kept your best riddle for the end," said Payne grimly. "What on earth can Pope Joan have to do with it?"
"Don't forget the book about the Something of Iceland," advised the priest, "or the religion of somebody called Frederick. It only remains to ask what sort of man was the late Lord Darnaway."
"Oh, does it?" observed Payne heavily.
"He was a cultivated, humorous sort of eccen-
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