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

doubts the latter might have had about this unofficial conference had been laid at rest. The new master of Beech Lodge was animated by more than mere curiosity. That was now established; and, surveying the past two years, the big man realized how heavily the unfathomed crime had rested on his own spirit. The memory of it could never leave him till the mysterious scroll was unrolled. This visit of Derrick’s might result in nothing; but, in a way not entirely clear, the chance of solution seemed at last a little more probable. He looked at the young man almost with respect.

“As I said, Miss Millicent could really tell us little more than her mother. She seemed just as frightened of something that might still take place as of what had happened. She knew about the image, but nothing of its history; and my impression was that she linked it up with the crime in a way that none of the rest of us did. She had no explanation of this. I got the impression that she understood her father, if one can put it that way, better almost than her mother⁠—although I have no real reason for saying this.”

Derrick glanced at him shrewdly. “Nevertheless, I’m glad you mentioned it. Anything else?”

“No, sir. Perkins was the next witness. She had been in Mrs. Millicent’s employ for nearly five years. An Englishwoman, aged thirty-eight, she had traveled a good deal before she went into service. She stated that on the night in question she was on her way upstairs from the servants’ hall⁠—there was no other servant there at the time⁠—and passed the study. The door was closed, and there was no sound; but she could see the lamplight under the door. A little later, when she was ready for bed, she went back to the servants’ hall for a book and noticed that the door was ajar and the lamp still burning.

“She went in, thinking that Mr. Millicent had gone to bed and forgotten to put it out. There she found him, bent forward over the desk, his head on one side and a deep wound in his neck from which the blood had poured in a pool. She said that for a moment she could not move, then ran upstairs, hammered at Mrs. Millicent’s door, and told the latter that there had been an accident in the study. Mrs. Millicent called to her to send Martin at once for the doctor, so she raced down to the cottage at once without going again into the study. She found Martin, who ran for Dr. Henry, coming back a little later with the doctor and groom in the cart. Then the groom came for me. As you probably know, Beech Lodge is about halfway between Bamberley and the doctor’s house.”

“Did Perkins admit having missed anything from the desk?”

“She mentioned the paper-knife but said nothing about the image till she was questioned.”

“And then?”

The sergeant reflected a moment. “I didn’t make much of what she said then. She was very upset, and rambled a good deal, till I think the coroner was glad to have done with her. I almost thought she attached as much importance to that as to the paper-knife, but of course she was hysterical.”

“Possibly,” murmured Derrick. “So I take it that Martin could not actually have seen the body till he returned with the doctor?”

“That is his evidence, which I will come to in a minute, and also Perkins statement. It would be a matter of perhaps twenty or twenty-five minutes after Perkins waked Mrs. Millicent.”

“And Mrs. Millicent, and I suppose her daughter, stayed with the body till the doctor came?”

“Yes.”

“Where was Perkins then?”

“Also in the study, trying to help Mrs. Millicent, who she thought was going off her head.”

“Let me go back a minute. The first time Perkins passed the study on her way upstairs the door was shut, and the next time ajar. How long intervened?”

“Perkins says perhaps half an hour, while she undressed.”

“So during that half-hour the crime was committed, and the door was probably left ajar by the murderer?”

“I could never see it any other way, Mr. Derrick.”

“And that is the time left unaccounted for?”

“Exactly. Now you’ve reached the point where I’ve had to leave the thing for two years, and you’ve reached it by the same road of reasoning.”

Derrick smiled. “Tell me what the doctor said, sergeant.”

“Very little. He testified that from the condition of the body life could not have been extinct for more than one hour.”

“That again narrows it down to about one half-hour in which the thing happened. The question is what did happen, so perhaps we’d better hear what Martin said.”

“There again it didn’t amount to much. He stated that he was smoking in the garden of the cottage when Perkins came running in, half dressed, crying out like a mad woman that Mr. Millicent had been murdered, and⁠—”

“She used the word ‘accident’ to Mrs. Millicent,” interrupted Derrick.

“Yes, but not this time. She told Martin to get Dr. Henry as soon as possible. There was no horse at Beech Lodge then, so he ran all the way to the doctor’s place. The rest of it coincided with Perkins’s evidence. He also said that he had been outside the cottage all the evening and could swear that no one had entered the grounds from the road.”

“Had there been any difference between him and Mr. Millicent?”

“Apparently not. Mr. Millicent had been in the garden with him that afternoon, discussing the pruning of the roses and general preparations for the winter. Mrs. Millicent confirmed this, subsequently, and said that her husband trusted the man implicitly.”

“Did Martin mention the paper-knife?”

“He was questioned but said he knew nothing about it. From what the others testified, it seems that he very seldom came into the house, so it’s reasonable he should not have known.”

“Or the image?” asked Derrick thoughtfully.

“No, sir, nothing of that, either.”

“And how long had he been in Mr. Millicent’s employ?”

“A matter of something less than five years.”

“And before that?”

“According to his statement, knocking about in the Orient.”

“Do you think