Opening
On a Cornish river and in a cozy English dining room, two “curses” close in—one of fire and wreck, the other of exotic vengeance. Father Brown peels back both legends to reveal calculated, domestic murder, proving that the strangest lights and the spiciest sauces can hide the simplest truths.
What Happens
Chapter 5: The Perishing of the Pendragons
Recovering from illness, Father Brown joins his friend Flambeau and a young squire, Sir Cecil Fanshaw, on a yacht along the Cornish coast. They nose inland to an island estate owned by the retired Admiral Pendragon, whose house is crowned by a crazy patchwork tower of old timbers. Fanshaw recounts the local legend: a Pendragon ancestor murdered two Spanish prisoners at sea; a third escaped and prophesied fire and shipwreck upon the family—a doom seemingly carved into an oak beam in the house. The tower has burned more than once; Pendragons have drowned at sea.
They land and meet the Admiral, a romantic old sea dog slashing at a fence with a sabre and grumbling about being confined to a “muddy little rockery” by a family compact. He thunders against superstition and declares himself a scientific atheist. Over dinner he explains the compact: to “test” the curse, Pendragon heirs must sail one at a time in order of succession. His father and elder brother both perished in wrecks. He awaits his nephew Walter’s return that very night to break the legend at last. Yet when a dark-haired girl—the canoeist they glimpsed earlier—peers in at the window, Father Brown reads the panic behind the Admiral’s bravado.
Father Brown asks to sleep in the “cursed” tower to perform an “exorcism.” The Admiral erupts in a sudden, irrational fury. That night, the priest potters about the garden—sweeping leaves, then turning a powerful hose on the flowerbeds—until the smell of smoke becomes a sheet of flame racing up the tower. As he douses the blaze, the gardener and two servants, armed with cutlasses and prompted by a voice from the house, attack. Flambeau and Fanshaw beat them back. The hidden commander—Admiral Pendragon—bolts, circles the island in mad terror, and drowns in the river.
Father Brown lays out the plot: the Admiral has staged the “curse” for years. The tower, when fired, creates a false second light on the horizon—a treacherous beacon that lures ships onto the rocks. He used it to murder his father and brother and planned to repeat the trick to kill Walter and seize the estate. The supposed “chart of the Pacific Islands” on the wall is a map of the local river mouth. The girl in the canoe is Walter’s fiancée, keeping vigil to foil the trap. The curse is human, not heavenly.
Chapter 6: The Salad of Colonel Cray
Walking home from early Mass, Father Brown hears a gunshot and, oddly, six sneezes from the house of Major Putnam. Inside, he finds the Major and their guest Colonel Cray in pajamas; Cray, holding a revolver, says he fired at an intruder who vanished—sneezing. The family silver, including a distinctive cruet-stand, is missing. The genial Major calls it a common burglary. Cray insists it is the latest stroke of an Indian secret society that vowed revenge after he witnessed a forbidden ritual; the fear has strained his friendship with Putnam and his engagement to Putnam’s ward, Audrey.
Cray details three past “supernatural” attacks: a fine red line across his sleeping throat, a room filling with invisible poison, and a boomerang-like club bursting through his window. The Major scoffs. Father Brown, noting Cray’s desperate wish to be proven wrong, decides the man is sane precisely because he hates his own theory. While the Major cooks a lavish luncheon for his guest, the priest pokes around, finds the “stolen” silver hidden in a dustbin, and encounters Audrey’s other suitor, the sleek Dr. Oman, nose-deep in a book on poisons.
At table, Father Brown refuses food but offers to make a salad, producing, piece by piece, a full cruet-stand from his pockets. As Cray lifts his fork, Father Brown catches Dr. Oman watching through the window, then abruptly mixes mustard with water and forces Cray to drink. The Colonel vomits violently. Oman bursts in. The priest names the culprit: the jovial Major. Every “curse” was staged—blood from a razor, poison from a domestic gas leak, and an Australian boomerang from the Major’s own collection. The “burglary” exists to remove the household cruet-stand, because mustard and vinegar are simple emetics that would have thwarted the lunch’s poison. Even the sneezes give him away: Cray’s bullet struck the stolen pepper-pot in the Major’s pocket. Exposed, Putnam dashes off to “summon police” and vanishes from history.
Character Development
Appearances flip as the true moral weather clears.
- Father Brown: Physically frail but emotionally steady, he trusts small senses—smell of smoke, odd “sneezes,” missing condiments—over grand theories. His “absurd” acts (sweeping, watering, pocket-salad) are covers for precise experiments and lifesaving timing.
- Admiral Pendragon: A swashbuckling skeptic who mocks superstition, he turns out to be its engineer—cold, calculating, and terrified when his own trap catches fire in public.
- Major Putnam: The bluff, hospitable cook is a poisoner and gaslighter, weaponizing dinner and domesticity out of jealousy for Audrey.
- Colonel Cray: Branded paranoid, he reveals humility; he longs to be wrong and accepts rescue when it ruins his pride but saves his life.
- Flambeau: The loyal man of action, he backs the priest’s quiet logic with timely force, subduing armed attackers when the plot erupts.
Themes & Symbols
The Deceptiveness of Appearances: In both tales, the obvious villain hides behind normalcy. The Admiral’s “scientific” swagger screens a superstition he himself manufactures; the Major’s hearty common sense conceals a domestic murderer. The exotic explanations—an ancestral curse, an Indian vendetta—mask crimes planned with local maps and kitchen tools. The most frightening masks are familiar faces.
Reason and Divine Logic: The Admiral’s reasoning is neat and godless, using optics and inheritance law to make murder look like fate. Father Brown’s reason is moral and incarnational: he reads souls through small, physical truths—the wink of a light, the utility of mustard and vinegar—trusting human nature and conscience over spectacle.
Humility vs. Pride: Cray’s humility (his hunger to be disproved) contrasts with Putnam’s pride (confidence he can script a perfect haunting). The Admiral’s hubris—trying to command sea and legend—ends in panic and self-destruction.
Symbols:
- The Flaming Tower: A folk omen turned precision weapon; to the crowd, magic— to the Admiral, camouflage— to Father Brown, a telltale second light.
- The Cruet-Stand: Homely salvation. What a murderer hides, a priest carries; mustard and vinegar become both antidote and parable.
- The Pilot’s Rhyme: A working sailor’s rule that decodes the entire riddle—practical wisdom triumphing over melodrama.
Key Quotes
“Both eyes bright, she’s all right; one eye winks, down she sinks.”
This pilot’s jingle explains the false beacon: two steady lights guide a ship safely, but a single, “winking” light—created by the burning tower—leads to wreck. Chesterton lets a scrap of craft knowledge outthink a baroque family legend.
“Muddy little rockery.”
The Admiral’s sneer at his island confinement betrays more than temper; it hints at motive. He rages at limits—legal, familial, even geographic—and his crimes try to break them by mastering the very waters that hem him in.
“Have you heard of faith like a grain of mustard-seed; or charity that anoints with oil? And as for vinegar, can any soldiers forget that solitary soldier, who, when the sun was darkened—”
Father Brown’s half-homily over the cruet-stand turns pantry items into theology and medicine at once. The line fuses symbol and function: what seems trivial saves a life, and the sacred hovers over the ordinary.
“Exorcism.”
The word, tossed out by the priest as a request to sleep in the tower, jolts the Admiral into fury. It’s bait and barometer: the reaction exposes a man who doesn’t fear ghosts—he fears witnesses.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters crystallize the Father Brown pattern: supernatural stories are smokescreens for human sin, and the “rational” villain often believes his cleverness lifts him above law and mercy. The Cornish wrecks and the domestic luncheon both stage the same contest—spectacle versus simplicity. By trusting small, knowable things—a rhyme, a hose, mustard—Father Brown restores reality against melodrama, showing that evil thrives not in curses from afar but in pride nearby, and that the plainest remedies can pierce the grandest lies.