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

“Where has this man been for the past two years?”

“He did not say, sir.”

“You can tell me whether he was satisfactory in every way to Mr. Millicent?”

She nodded. “Mr. Millicent used to say that he was the best gardener in the county.”

Derrick paused. “Perkins, I’m going to ask you another question, but you need not answer unless you like to.”

“I will tell you anything I know, sir.” She spoke steadily and without a trace of surprise.

“Then from all you know, and I refer to more than his ability as a gardener, do you think it would be a good thing to take him on?”

“Why do you put it that way, sir?”

“I leave that to you. The matter may be more important than one can realize⁠—as yet.” He lingered a little over the last words.

“Then, yes, sir, if you want a garden like Mr. Millicent’s.”

The shrewdness of the answer took him aback. “Send him in,” he said shortly.

The man entered, the man whose dark features had peered through the parted curtains a short hour before. He was powerfully built, very broad, and dressed in loose and much worn tweeds of a foreign cut. He came forward with the lurching walk of a seafaring trade, a colored handkerchief twisted round the column of his brown neck. His swinging hands were wide and knotted, and every motion spoke of great physical strength. No mere Sussex gardener this, who had spent his placid years among his roses and dahlias, but one who carried with him nameless suggestions of the jungle and the faint pounding of distant surf. Dangling his cap, he gave a sort of salute, making at the same time a swift survey of the room. From this furtive and searching glance it seemed to Derrick that the man missed something he knew of old in Millicent’s time, but no flicker of change of expression could be discerned on the weather-beaten face. The face itself was neither cruel nor merciless but conveyed a grim, implacable resolution. Here, reflected Derrick, was the man who disappeared three days after Millicent’s death. What brought him back now?

“What is your name?”

“Martin, sir, John Martin.” The voice was deep and husky.

“Perkins tells me you were in Mr. Millicent’s service.”

“Yes, sir, for some years after his last trip to the East.”

“Did you come from the East with him?”

“No, sir, I⁠—I was engaged here at Beech Lodge.”

“Several years service, yet you left three days after your employer died?”

Martin jerked up his head. “Yes, sir; that’s it.”

“How did you happen to go so quickly? Were you discharged by Mrs. Millicent?”

A dull flush rose in the tanned face. “You might as well ask how my master happened to die three days before I left, sir. Mrs. Millicent was giving up Beech Lodge and didn’t want a gardener. There was no other job in sight about here, and I couldn’t afford to hang on in the village.”

Derrick nodded with seeming carelessness. “Perhaps that’s fair enough, and as it happens I do want a gardener, but you’ll have to satisfy me completely on all points before I consider you. The circumstances are a bit out of the ordinary.”

“I’m ready to tell you anything I can, sir.”

“Then where do you come from now?”

“Upper Burma, by way of Canada. I have a sister in Alberta.” He fumbled in his pocket. “Would you be wanting to see my passport?”

“Not now, at any rate. I don’t understand why you should clear out of Sussex for Burma just because there was no job close at hand.”

“Well, sir, to tell the truth, I was that upset I wanted to get away as far as possible. I couldn’t put the master out of my head. He’d always been good to me from the first day I came, and we liked the same things, sir.”

“What was that?”

“Roses.”

He shot this out with rumbling assurance, and, strange as it sounded, Derrick believed him. It was difficult to picture this great hulk among the roses, these thick fingers training the delicate buds, but Martin’s reputation had already been established far beyond Beech Lodge. There had been, too, an assuring little break in the voice, suggesting a depth of feeling in strange contrast to this forbidding exterior. If this was acting, it was good acting. He scanned the man’s face, but as for promising any future revelations it was no more expressive than that of Perkins herself. Anything might lie hidden here. There were hints of passion in the eyes, but over him rested the touch of a complete control. If one could only get underneath that! It was obvious to Derrick that he must act deliberately⁠—and delicately. It would be a matter of weeks, or perhaps months. The strangeness of the situation came over him with redoubled force. It was all part of a plan. Whose plan?

“How is it, Martin, if you can tell me, that after two years on the other side of the world you turn up here within a week or so of my coming? There has been no job going for all that time, but you arrive as soon as the job, your old one, is open.”

Martin scratched his head and seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Dunno, sir. It’s queer to me, too, but here I am. I didn’t know there was a job open till a few minutes ago.”

“I take it, then, you had no particular reason for getting back here today?”

The man glanced at him with a sort of awkward interest. He hesitated a little, as though about to put forward something hardly credible even to himself, and finally jerked out an answer.

“I can’t say much more than that things kind of hinted at it, sir, and kept on hinting till they made me uncomfortable. There wasn’t any special reason I know of. I was doing well enough, trading up the Irawadi, when something began to get at me to come back, and it kept on till I started for Rangoon. It stayed with me, hustling me along, and I felt I didn’t