“It’s quite true. I’m happier, and so is mother. I”—she hesitated a little—“I think we don’t feel so horribly alone.”
“You’re not.” His voice was queerly strained. “Indeed, you’re not.”
She glanced at him again, then turned quickly away.
Derrick looked after her, following the slight figure till it came to the corner of the green. Something of him went with her, and he reëntered the sergeant’s office wondering at himself.
Whatever 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 up-stairs 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 up-stairs, 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 half-way between Bamberley and the doctor’s house.”
“Did Perkins admit having missed anything from the desk?”