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G.K’s Weekly

John Whitworth

Jun 01 2010

2 mins

Murder most foul is on the prowl. We have a corpse. We have a room.

He had to die but how and why? What fingers grasped the fatal knife?

What flutterings of the human heart disturbed the silence of the tomb?

What dark designs of Catalines have broken up the House of Life?

The questions breed and multiply. Our quest is just beginning.

Though Sin is endless, here and now must be an end to sinning.

When Father Brown hits town then God is definitely winning.

The scent of flowers, the strew of verse, the creak and rattle of the hearse,

The mourners mumbling at the back, the customary suits of black,

The children’s tears, the wasted years, the whining of the widow’s curse,

The will destroyed, the null and void, the foxes fighting in the sack.

Some eat strange salad with their meat. Some boil a bitter brew. Some,

Who trade in twine and razor-blade, facilitate the gruesome,

But God and Father Brown combine to make a winning twosome.

There’s plenty on the solver’s plate. The suspects all alliterate.

Fenella Fay and Harry Hay and Damascene Dubois Duquesne,

They go in threes and, like as peas, prefigure turmoil in the state:

Bad Bolsheviks, sad Millionaires, Professors, most of them insane.

Great Holy shit! He’s on to it. The trail will grow no colder.

Without a doubt he’ll smoke it out before we’re that much older

For moonstruck, godstruck Father Brown strikes gold in every boulder.

The clues are solved, and all involved delight to hear a crime confessed.

A rigorous analysis has quite dispelled the mists and murks.

All’s clear and nothing is suppressed, and thus the brightest and the best

Practitioner of quips and quirks, old Satan with his hellish works,

Though rarely far to seek, is up the creek without a paddle.

The chips are down and Father Brown confounds the fiddle-faddle.

Yes, Father Brown is on the case and God is in the saddle.

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