The Jade God by Alan Sullivan (snow like ashes series txt) 📕

of Perkins seemed to stand close to his shoulder, the sensation did not oppress him. Edith talked generalities till, nearly at the end of the meal, she sent him a frank questioning look.

“Of course I’m just dying to know if anything new came out this morning. Martin turned up an hour ago. He seemed to me like another man, got out his tools and went to work without a word, and it made me more curious than ever. That queer puzzling expression has gone out of his eyes, and I couldn’t help thinking he was something like a dog that had been stolen and found his way back to his old home.”

Derrick nodded cheerfully. “I rather fancy he feels like that, just for the present, anyway, but we’ll probably have to find another gardener. He won’t want to stay here.”

“No, I suppose he couldn’t.” She hesitated a moment, then gave him the straightforward glance he knew so well. “Do you know, Jack, I think we’ve all been rather stupid about that poor woman; yes, I mean you, too.”

“It’s quite possible,” he admitted, “but why?”

“Well, I suppose it’s easy to put things together, afterward; but, looking back at everything, what happened seems in a way as natural as it was dreadful. The poor soul had her terrible secret and took the only way out of it, but couldn’t we have anticipated that somehow?”

“It was the last thing one could imagine.” He went on, and told her some of what had transpired that morning in Bamberley jail, but not all. She listened silently, with little gestures of wonder, and a softened light in her honest, brown eyes. At the story of Martin’s devotion they filled with tears.

“One has heard of men like that with one great passion in their lives that no one else can understand because there seems nothing to bring it to life. Perhaps women are apt to be hard on women, but it’s hard to see how Perkins could have roused such a thing. After all, it may be the men who are queer, and not us. I suppose this story will be all over England in a few days?”

He made a grimace. “I’m afraid so. The reporters will gather like a flock of crows.”

“But after that’s over will you be able to settle down to work, and⁠—and the other thing?”

“What other thing?”

“When do you go to see the Millicents?” she asked cheerfully. “It’s all a frightful mixture, I know, and it seems rather appalling that you two should have been brought together like this, but perhaps stranger things have happened.”

“Not much stranger,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m going there in an hour or so. They’re expecting me.”

“Well,” she went on with growing earnestness, “I know it’s your affair, but I wouldn’t say a word more than necessary. The thing is done with, Jack, all except this horrid inquest, at which you say Jean and I won’t have to appear, and you don’t know how glad I am of that. I’ve a feeling that you’ll have a good many years in which to tell her the rest of it⁠—I mean anything more you think she should know⁠—but don’t burden her with what is so grim, if you can help it. She’s too young. Girls like her often seem to offer themselves unconsciously to wounds, but they don’t find out till afterward how deep the thing has gone. As for Mrs. Millicent, I wouldn’t attempt to say much to her. Let Jean do that in her own way. Nothing can be as close as mother and daughter in a time like this, and they can’t hurt each other. You’ll probably think me dreadfully cheeky, but I rather feel that you and Jean have been dwelling mentally far too long on things you both think I can’t understand because I’m not occult, but I do understand them just enough to feel that they’re neither cheerful nor in a queer way healthy for people of your age. So please forgive all this, and give me a cigarette, and help clear this table, and for goodness’ sake tell me where I can get a cook and housemaid who won’t imagine Beech Lodge is full of horrors.”

He laughed outright, the first real laugh for weeks. “You’ve got my future pretty well mapped out, but I think you’re right about the Millicents. Been in the study this morning?”

“Yes, and the room is just as it was when we came here. But that desk was a fearful weight.”

“You moved it yourself?”

“Of course, seeing there was no one else, and all the time I had an odd feeling that the things were glad to be moved back. Is that sort of feeling accounted for in your philosophy?”

“It is now, thanks to you.”

“I’ve been wondering what you’re going to do with that jade image. I couldn’t find the panel this morning.”

Derrick told her.

“But have you the right? It isn’t yours.”

“I’ll chance that.”

“But, Jack, if it was included in the inventory you can’t destroy it without all kinds of dilapidations to the Thursbys. Isn’t it supposed to be valuable?”

“It may be, but most decidedly it was not in the inventory, therefore it was not sold to the Thursbys, and consequently I needn’t answer to them, but only to the Millicents. And I fancy I know what they’ll say.”

“Well, you ought to by this time, and, speaking of the Thursbys, I’ve an idea that if everything that has taken place since we came had happened eighteen months ago they wouldn’t have let this house when you came along and fell in love with it.”

“But they weren’t in it then.”

“No, but they would have been; at least, something suggests they would.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked curiously.

“Because she’s not the kind of woman to be afraid of anything obvious, anything she can see and even partly understand. If poor Perkins had done away with herself then, I rather think Mrs. Thursby would have been as much fascinated as horrified. Don’t you know that