First published in The Saturday Evening Post on July 23, 1910 as Valentin Follows a Curious Trail. Then as The Blue Cross in September 1910 in The Story-Teller magazine. Afterward, in The Innocence of Father Brown collection, 1911. This edition: The Complete Father Brown Mysteries (Carousel Books, 2021). SPOILERS AHEAD?
"In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people." - GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy. From this story: "... he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea." This courtesy of Valentin upon first blush of Father Brown. Now, as it will turn out, Valentin himself would prove quite odd. More odd still is (perhaps) Flambeau--the man Aristide Valentin is pursuing. This, of course from the perspective of Father Brown and therefore, we readers.
[Quickly, Flambeau reads like a physical combination of Tarzan and Paul Bunyon, yet is also a master of disguise. Valentin is a genius of the world caliber and in particular of the French varietal.]
An almost pleasantly done chaotic trail of oddly quaint breadcrumbs. That's what Father Brown lays out for the cloaked in a thin veneer of normalcy Valentin, famed investigator and head of the Paris police. And he does indeed follow the scent of broken glass, an over-charged bill, and other Professor Chaos level makings of scenes--clear up to its desired (by Father Brown) end of thwarting Flambeau, 'this colossus of crime.' I don't wish, necessarily to compare Father Brown to Sherlock Holmes but perhaps I'd, in fact, be remiss to not.
While Moriarty's 'The Napoleon of Crime' reads nicely-enough, how better a ring than that does Flambeau's nom de nefariousness offer? Much, I daresay. I don't, also, feel as if I'm taking too great of liberties in this comparison of the two famous detectives, for the text of this tale itself seems to do-so. Well, indirectly, at least (or most) when it runs "He was not a 'thinking machine', for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think." This is said of Valentin but I feel more than that it was directed at Holmes and then, in turn, cast well upon Father Brown. Shots fired.
Father Brown is the height of normalcy, if not a bit on the short side of any other measure. But it is via that normalcy or is it an ornate blandness--a kind of tabula rasa--which he intuits solutions to sharply perceived oddities. This along with a heavy helping of emotional IQ along with lessons from the great schoolroom of evil deeds explained, the Roman Catholic confessional. Father Brown does not need Holmes' "Data! Data! Data!" because his clay for making bricks is really just that, of the earth and in turn of humanity. More on Valentin: he is full of whimsy.
The trail itself starts where it shouldn't because it simply shouldn't start anywhere. "He defended this crazy course quite logically."
GK Chesterton delivers the tale in a flowing sort of impossibly ethereal poetic prose which carries a lilt of the lyrical. I understand he saw these stories as bits of ephemera, and perhaps that allowed him to play at them in a more loosey-goosey fashion. Although his other writings aren't so much tighter (just dense) and if you wonder about Apologetics, look there. "As the cross will always be saved." There's an overall feeling of something like joy, and only fleetingly almost comforting danger in full anticipation of salvation.
You see, Father Brown is in complete control from start to finish and sees all along the way a soul worth saving. In fact, that's the only thing he ever sees, I'd reckon. There is no promise of punishment, no comeuppance on the line. No ego. There is just the switching of sugar for salt and salt for sugar, and if I were a hair-bit smarter I feel as though I could go to town on that parable. Also, the switching out of Flambeau's prize for "nothing but paper and sticks of lead."
I understand that in Amish communities, there is sometimes a backdoor competition to see who might be most plain and therefore godliest. Father Brown is plainest but there is no such competitive silliness nor even competitor to sneakily raise its ugly head. Just some mailing ahead of a quite important object and "Some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls." That and Flambeau's bad theology of attacking reason which susses himself out from his guise of a fellow man of the cloth. The thief and the policeman are left mastered and to look-on "while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella."
It is interesting to note that Valentin is who this story centers on. More interesting still is to note that it is neither Flambeau nor The Blue Cross that the detective is tasked to hound and tree for our sake, but instead and ultimately, Father Brown. And thus we are sufficiently introduced; but what to make of the other two of this trio ('trinity' is too on the nose)? We shall see.