sort of hypnotised horror,
while Father Brown listened with his head a little on one side, really
interested and attentive. The doctor went on with more hissing emphasis:

"Why do these idiots always assume that the only person who hates the
wife's lover is the wife's husband? Nine times out of ten the person
who most hates the wife's lover is the wife. Who knows what insolence or
treachery he had shown her--look there!"

He made a momentary gesture towards the red-haired woman on the bench.
She had lifted her head at last and the tears were drying on her
splendid face. But the eyes were fixed on the corpse with an electric
glare that had in it something of idiocy.

The Rev. Wilfred Bohun made a limp gesture as if waving away all desire
to know; but Father Brown, dusting off his sleeve some ashes blown from
the furnace, spoke in his indifferent way.

"You are like so many doctors," he said; "your mental science is really
suggestive. It is your physical science that is utterly impossible. I
agree that the woman wants to kill the co-respondent much more than the
petitioner does. And I agree that a woman will always pick up a small
hammer instead of a big one. But the difficulty is one of physical
impossibility. No woman ever born could have smashed a man's skull
out flat like that." Then he added reflectively, after a pause: "These
people haven't grasped the whole of it. The man was actually wearing an
iron helmet, and the blow scattered it like broken glass. Look at that
woman. Look at her arms."

Silence held them all up again, and then the doctor said rather sulkily:
"Well, I may be wrong; there are objections to everything. But I stick
to the main point. No man but an idiot would pick up that little hammer
if he could use a big hammer."

With that the lean and quivering hands of Wilfred Bohun went up to his
head and seemed to clutch his scanty yellow hair. After an instant they
dropped, and he cried: "That was the word I wanted; you have said the
word."

Then he continued, mastering his discomposure: "The words you said were,
'No man but an idiot would pick up the small hammer.'"

"Yes," said the doctor. "Well?"

"Well," said the curate, "no man but an idiot did." The rest stared
at him with eyes arrested and riveted, and he went on in a febrile and
feminine agitation.

"I am a priest," he cried unsteadily, "and a priest should be no shedder
of blood. I--I mean that he should bring no one to the gallows. A