“Had the flowers got long stalks?” asked Father Brown.
Flambeau stared at him. “What an odd person you are!” he said. “That’s exactly what old Grimm said. He said the ugliest part of it, he thought—uglier than the blood and bullet—was that the flowers were quite short, plucked close under the head.”
“Of course,” said the priest, “when a grown up girl is really picking flowers, she picks them with plenty of stalk. If she just pulled their heads off, as a child does, it looks as if—” And he hesitated.
“Well?” inquired the other.
“Well, it looks rather as if she had snatched them nervously, to make an excuse for being there after—well, after she was there.”
“I know what you’re driving at,” said Flambeau rather gloomily. “But that and every other suspicion breaks down on the one point— th
