Before You Begin

Before you begin.

At dawn, a passenger train is brought to an abrupt halt beneath a tall house on the rural edge of Hampstead. On the green railway bank lies Sir Aaron Armstrong, the celebrated optimist whose booming good humour seemed able to fill every room he entered.

The house above him is less cheerful. Its servants and family offer incompatible explanations, while a length of rope, a red dagger, and a discharged revolver seem to multiply the possible crimes. Detective Merton follows the evidence with Father Brown, whose first concern is not which weapon killed, but why there are so many.

First published in 1910, "The Three Tools of Death" is the twelfth and final story in The Innocence of Father Brown. Chesterton closes the collection with a mystery about public happiness, private suffering, and the moral difference between a falsehood told for vanity and one told to protect another person.