n.

"But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan to
make sure I'm alone with him?"

Lord Pooley's eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he looked at the
little clergyman. He only said: "If you want to murder somebody, I
should advise it."

Father Brown shook his head, like a murderer of much riper experience.
"So Flambeau said," he replied, with a sigh. "But consider. The more a
man feels lonely the less he can be sure he is alone. It must mean empty
spaces round him, and they are just what make him obvious. Have you
never seen one ploughman from the heights, or one shepherd from the
valleys? Have you never walked along a cliff, and seen one man walking
along the sands? Didn't you know when he's killed a crab, and wouldn't
you have known if it had been a creditor? No! No! No! For an intelligent
murderer, such as you or I might be, it is an impossible plan to make
sure that nobody is looking at you."

"But what other plan is there?"

"There is only one," said the priest. "To make sure that everybody is
looking at something else. A man is throttled close by the big stand at
Epsom. Anybody might have seen it done while the stand stood empty--any
tramp under the hedges or motorist among the hills. But nobody would
have seen it when the stand was crowded and the whole ring roaring,
when the favourite was coming in first--or wasn't. The twisting of a
neck-cloth, the thrusting of a body behind a door could be done in an
instant--so long as it was that instant. It was the same, of course,"
he continued turning to Flambeau, "with that poor fellow under the
bandstand. He was dropped through the hole (it wasn't an accidental
hole) just at some very dramatic moment of the entertainment, when the
bow of some great violinist or the voice of some great singer opened
or came to its climax. And here, of course, when the knock-out blow
came--it would not be the only one. That is the little trick Nigger Ned
has adopted from his old God of Gongs."

"By the way, Malvoli--" Pooley began.

"Malvoli," said the priest, "has nothing to do with it. I dare say he
has some Italians with him, but our amiable friends are not Italians.
They are octoroons and African half-bloods of various shades, but I fear
we English think all foreigners are much the same so long as they are
dark and dirty. Also," he added, with a smile, "I fear the English
decline to draw any fine distinction between the moral character
produced by my