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?”