Hello, and welcome to another episode of nostalgic mystery radio.

I'm your host Stevie Kay, and it's my honor to bring you the radio shows of yesterday year.

For this episode, I bring you Father Brown, episode titled The Mirror of the Magistrate,

where a conservative judge is found shot to death in his garden,

and Father Brown sets out to prove that the outspoken socialist arrested for his murder is innocent.

So sit back and relax, and I hope you enjoy this nostalgic mystery radio.

Thank you for listening.

The mirror of the Magistrate.

It would not be fair to record the adventures of Father Brown without some mention of the curious experience which he always referred to as the mirror of the magistrate.

The case might equally well and indeed more properly have been called the looking glass of the judge, but no doubt the alliteration of the magistrate. The case might equally well, and indeed more properly, have been called

the looking-glass of the judge, but no doubt the alliteration of those capital M's appeal to my

friends liking for euphony, and so in deference to him, I shall adhere to the title which he himself

chose to bestone it. As you shall hear, it was only by the merest chance that our little priest came to be

involved in the strange circumstances at all, but the tale really begins when two old cronies,

James Bagshaw and Wilfred Underhill, were taking their customary evening stroll through the leafy

labyrinths of the large suburb in which they lived. Bagshaw was, by profession, a police detective. While his friend

could best be described as an amateur interested in detection, they talked interminably as they

walked. But contrary to general belief, it was, on the whole, the detective who did the talking,

and the amateur who listened. Yes, this is the only trade underhill in which the professional is always supposed to be wrong.

After all, people don't write stories in which hairdressers can't cut hair and have to be helped by a customer,

but in which a cabman can't drive a cab until his fare explains to him the philosophy of cab driving.

No, I suppose not. But for all that,'d never deny that we often tend to get into a rut. Or, in other words, have the disadvantage of going by a rule. But where these writer chaps are wrong is that they don't allow us even the advantages of going by a rule. Surely Sherlock Holmes, for example, would say that he went by a logical rule.

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