“No, thanks, I want to use it for a while. By the way, do you know whether I can get a couple of pounds of green wax in Bamberley?”
Jean Millicent’s unpremeditated visit to Beech Lodge had marked a turning-point in the long, gray months that followed her father’s death. The violence and brutality of this had shocked her beyond words, while to her sense of loss was added the numbing knowledge that on the very threshold of life she had been confronted with the worst that life had to exhibit. Millicent himself had had no surviving relations; her mother’s people, after the first horrified sympathy, did not allow the matter to burden them further; and, as the girl impulsively told Derrick, she felt tremendously alone.
Between mother and daughter there was complete love—and a limited understanding. The real link had been with Millicent, from whom Jean inherited the subjective side of her nature. She had a profound belief in mysterious influences, incapable of analysis, but controlling nevertheless the world of unseen things. She realized that she moved among these, swaying unconsciously to their faint pressure, the recipient of distant and unmistakable signals that flicked over the horizon of existence. She had never talked much about this with her father. His own belief had of late been too burdened with an apprehension she never fathomed. But she understood where her mother often failed to understand, silently completing the sentences he sometimes left unfinished, putting her mind parallel with his, and building up a queer unexplainable union that expressed itself not so much in speech as in those fleeting glances of comprehension that are more eloquent than any words.
Something of this she recognized in Derrick, and the psychology of the moment was such that it meant more than she could well express. While she was with her mother, her heart needed no other companion, though her spirit was lonely. But she had not been lonely during her visit to Beech Lodge, however strange the circumstances. She knew now that the visit was intended. For the first time she had been in touch with another intelligence that acknowledged what she acknowledged but remained poised and unafraid. It was like traveling through an unknown and threatening country, and meeting one to whom all its roads are familiar and who traverses them without fear.
A few days after Derrick’s visit to the sergeant, he and his sister walked two lovely miles to the Millicents’. Edith was glad of it for several reasons. She admitted being lonely, and also welcomed anything that lifted her brother out of himself. For the past few weeks she had watched him closely, saying nothing. He was less distrait and more like his old self, but she knew that the novel progressed not at all. He was busy in his own peculiar way, and she asked no questions.
She was charmed with Mrs. Millicent, found they had much in common, and noted with contentment that Jean and her brother seemed like old friends. While all four were together, the subject of Beech Lodge was instinctively avoided, but a little later Derrick found himself in the cottage garden with Jean. It was after a pause that she sent him a straight questioning look.
“Well, I’m waiting. Something tells me you’ve been very busy and, I think, successful.”
“Busy, yes,” he smiled, “but I don’t know how successful.”
“Did you have a long talk at the police station?”