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"And then of course there was Dimitri," she goes on, a dreamy smile spreading on her face at what is clearly a very pleasant memory.
Jack groans silently and looks beneath them at the bull still stomping angrily around the tree they’ve been perched in for nearly an hour now. Either it’s not fed up with her anecdotes yet, or it just enjoys his suffering. It certainly doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact that just now there are very few places he’s less interested in being than stuck up a tree with Phryne Fisher. (They’re barely back on speaking terms after she failed to kill herself in an automobile accident she wasn’t actually involved in at all when it came down to it, and he’s not quite ready yet for… whatever this is.)
He has stopped wincing every time the animal steps on the handbag she dropped on her way up the tree. If the gun she undoubtedly has tucked in there was going to go off, it would’ve happened by now.
"We met in Petrograd," she elaborates, although he’d struggle to signal that he cared any less where they met, or how or why or what happened next. Especially what happened next, actually. "Leningrad now, of course." As if even the broader strokes of international politics were beyond him. Or perhaps merely to drag this on for a long as possible. Really, either is a plausible explanation.
"And what were you doing in Petrograd, Miss Fisher?" he asks pointedly, hoping to distract her into relating a tale of some foolishly daring do instead of the story she’s planning on telling him.
Her smile goes from nostalgic and smug to wicked and he rolls his eyes. Which she does an admirable job of pretending not to notice, he has to admit. "Are you familiar with The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood?"
He nods, although he’d imagine he’s decidedly less familiar with it than her, wondering where this could possibly be going. Is she about to reveal that this is where she had personally hid Anastasia Romanova from the Bolsheviks? Because that’s definitely a story he’d enjoy more than a detailed description of her encounter with ‘Dimitri’.
"There's a small tower on one side of it. Not the most spectacular view of the city, perhaps, but it does offer a modicum of privacy..."
"I meant why were you in Russia," he cuts her off, sighing, unsurprised but still mildly disappointed. Perhaps he should accuse her of being predictable, it seems like the sort of thing she’d resent enough to change the subject just to surprise him. Perhaps she’d dazzle him with a display of her vast knowledge on flower arrangements? (Frankly, that would be surprising. Which perhaps should make it unsurprising. Jack rubs his temple, feeling a headache coming on.)
"Oh." She looks at him as if it had never occurred to her that he'd be interested in that. Which, to be fair, he isn't particularly. He'd just much rather hear about that than get another lecture on the proficiency of a stranger's hands or tongue or... This situation is uncomfortable enough as it is. "That's neither here nor there, Jack. But I assure you, if you ask his majesty's government they'll say I wasn't there at all."
Of course.
“So Dimitri and I had ensconced ourselves in this tower for the night and…” She trails off, realising that Jack is no longer bothering to even pretend that he’s listening, his head turned away, his eyes fixed on the road that he imagines he can see in the distance.
(In fact he’s pretending he’s not listening. The truth is every word she’s saying is being etched into his memory, every hinted to scenario - and in her defense, hinting is really all she’s doing, but it’s more than enough - playing itself out in his mind in much more vivid detail than it has any right to.)
Out of the corner of his eye he can see her leaning back in her seat, somehow managing to look self-possessed and elegant sitting on what he’s sure is an incredibly uncomfortable branch (at least if the way the one he’s sitting on keeps digging into his thigh is anything to go by) whereas he can feel his leg cramping and his back getting sore and he’s certain his suit is nowhere near its usual pristine state - unlike her dress, which appears to barely have a wrinkle.
“Mr. Butler is roasting a duck tonight,” she says. He would call her tone wistful if it hadn’t been incredibly pointedly so.
Annoyingly, his stomach chooses that exact moment to growl. The rest of him remains quiet.
“He makes the most delicious Sauce Bourguignonne,” she goes on ruthlessly.
Their eyes meet. Her expression is challenging and it’s obvious that she’s angling for a fight. He blinks slowly.
She huffs, clearly frustrated that he’s not rising to her bait.
There’s silence for a blissful minute and then…
“Now, when I went to Sweden in ‘21 I met this artist who was--”
“This is all intended to suggest that it’s my fault we’re here, isn’t it?” he asks, refusing to sit through another assignation he has no part in.
“It is your fault we’re here.”
She’s not entirely wrong, of course, but surely there’s enough blame to go around? After all: “Need I remind you that you were the one who suggested a short cut?”
“Need I remind you that you’re the one who neglected to close the fence?”
“It’s your car that broke down!”
She glares at him; clearly that comment hit a sore spot. “If you drove any faster we wouldn’t have had to take the Hispano.”
He scoffs. “I drive as fast as the law permits, Miss Fisher.”
It would seem that even scoffing is a competitive sport to her, because she does it more loudly. “You are the law, Jack.”
“I uphold the law,” he corrects her, wondering why he even bothers.
Her impeccably painted red lips transform into a thin line, but she doesn’t reply.
Aha, imagine that. He’s thrilled for about as long as it takes him to realise she’s only planning her next line of attack, she’s not actually impressed by either his debating skills or his relationship with the law. So that thrill doesn’t last nearly long enough.
“You don’t always,” she points out. Her voice is low and serious, but it seems all the anger has gone out of it.
“What do you mean?” he asks suspiciously, wondering if this is a trick.
“You don’t always uphold the law,” she repeats. “Sometimes you… don’t.”
He suspects there was something more she meant to say, possibly something slightly more specific. But she doesn’t look like she intended it as a criticism - in fact she’s smiling, and he can feel his stomach contracting from something other than just the thought of roast duck and Mr. Butler’s red wine sauce.
“You gave me those plates,” she says.
His mind still drifting vaguely around thoughts of food, it takes him a moment to understand her meaning. Charles Freeman and Bobby Sullivan. Sometimes that feels like a lifetime ago. In terms of his sanity, it probably is.
“In fact, Inspector,” she goes on, a teasing note back in her voice. “You’ve let me get away with all sorts of things.”
“Perhaps I simply realised very early on that there was no point in trying to stop you, so I might as well just let you get on with it.” He meant to say that much more sarcastically than it comes out. To his own ears it sounds positively adoring. “Except now I’ve learned to regret that choice, of course,” he tries again, managing dryness at last, waving a hand at the bull, who now seems to be eyeing them with either suspicion or hunger, he can’t really tell.
He’s fairly certain bulls don’t actually eat people, though - they tend to just maim them for the heck of it.
“You could’ve just not come along,” she says, her tone equally dry.
He could have, of course. Some people might think that he should have. He might even be one of those people.
If he hadn’t done, neither of them would be stuck up this tree right now with no idea of when or how they’d get back down.
Below them the bull scrapes at the trunk of the tree with a hoof that looks sharp and heavy, even from this relatively safe distance.
He could be back in his office right now, eating a sandwich and enjoying some peace and quiet while he did his paperwork. He shifts, tired and uncomfortable and annoyed. Across from him Miss Fisher looks perfectly comfortable, one leg bent at the hip and knee, her foot resting on the branch she’s sitting on, the other dangling slowly back and forth as if perhaps she’s trying to hypnotise the animal below them.
“Have you come up with a plan for getting us down yet?” he asks, too frustrated to be entirely reasonable.
“I thought this was your plan, Jack. You’re the one who was so eager to get up here in the first place.” That’s fair enough, perhaps, he did all but push her up the trunk of the tree. (She had seemed amused, at first, made it halfway through a would-be witty remark about times and places, and then had clearly seen the wisdom in the scheme as she bull got closer and done as he suggested.)
“A bull was chasing us,” he reminds her. He has made this point twice already. Both of those times he regretted it. On the other hand he now knows quite a lot about just how flexible trapeze artists are and that it’s true what they say about the Scots and what they wear under their kilts.
She opens her mouth, undoubtedly to tell him another fascinating anecdote, but he cuts her off before she can begin.
“Don’t even start about the gate.”
Her mouth closes, then opens again, her eyes crinkled with amusement. “I wasn’t going to mention the gate.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.” He is. Entirely.
“Did I ever tell you about the time in Constantinople when I...”
“Istanbul,” he interrupts her.
She rolls her eyes indulgently at him. “Not at the time.”
His interest in the Republic of Turkey is limited, but he has apparently succeeded in distracting her, so reading that feature article last year clearly wasn’t a complete waste. He leans back in his seat, satisfied, but then feels another branch digging into his backside and shifts again. Finally giving up, he removes his coat and bundles it up to turn it into a pillow. Just before he’s about to raise himself up so he can sit on it, he catches her looking at him.
He sighs and offers the coat to her with an air of perfunctoriness.
To his complete horror and disgust, she takes it.
By the time he has removed his suit jacket, she’s already sitting on his coat, both her feet dangling merrily back and forth.
He raises one buttock and pushes the jacket under himself, his other hand holding onto the branch so he doesn’t slip off.
“Anyway, I was at this incredible market in Constantinople,” she begins again. “Where I was just about to purchase a really rather marvellous carpet when I was interrupted by a young man who…”
“I wonder how long it’ll be before Collins figures out where we are,” he cuts her off, shifting to distribute his weight more evenly on the jacket.
“Oh, hours, I’d imagine,” she says indifferently. “I believe he’s going to the pictures with Dot tonight.”
Frustratingly, Jack believes so too. It’s unlikely the constable will even realise Jack is missing until tomorrow. He is, however, desperate to keep the conversation going, and to make sure it doesn’t stray back towards Turkey or Russia or Sweden, or wherever else she might’ve ‘been interrupted’. “And no-one else would come looking, I suppose. What about those red raggers?”
“Cec and Bert are… investigating other leads,” she says vaguely.
He can’t possibly imagine what those leads might be, since the best one he’s been able to come up with so far is joining her on this wild goose chase to question the ageing aunt of their least unlikely murder suspect. Her expression suggests that he’d rather not know and the frustration he feels as a result is all too familiar.
“You really think this lady will be any use?”
Other than to inconvenience him (and he might as well have just stayed in Melbourne, as she has pointed out repeatedly, and he has told himself even more often), he can’t think of much reason to talk to the woman. But with Miss Fisher there usually is a reason, so he came along - and it seems unlikely that this situation should be it.
“Leave no stone unturned, Jack,” she says, as if she’s educating him on investigative procedures. Ha!
“Geoffrey Winters hasn’t spoken to his auntie since she left Melbourne in 1916, when he was eleven. What do you imagine this stone will reveal when you turn it?”
“We won’t know until we kick it, will we?”
She’s being aggravatingly vague and he’s entirely certain she has some idea. “Miss Fisher,” he scolds. If she can pretend he needs teaching, he can pretend she needs parental supervision. Which, well, really…
“Why do you suppose she left, Jack?”
“Her brother died in the war, left her the family farm. Her own husband was still in France.”
She looks at him, eyebrows raised. She doesn’t look as impressed by his meticulous research as he would have liked.
“Where heperished, just weeks later.”
The smugness is there and then gone in a flash, but he doesn't miss it. “If her husband is dead, Jack, how has he been collecting a war pension since 1919?”
Oh.
“You think Mrs. Winters is collecting her dead husband’s pension?”
“No. I think her dead husband isn’t quite as dead as we’ve been led to believe. And I think Peter Burton found out about that and paid the price for it.”
Jack hadn’t looked into Frank Winters’ military records at all, after finding the notice listing him as killed in action, but he had read Peter Burton’s record repeatedly. Mainly because there was very little else read, and at least it made him feel as though he were doing something. He just still doesn’t quite know what.
“Mary Winters’ maiden name is Woodhouse,” Miss Fisher says, apparently deciding that he has had enough time to connect the dots on his own.
Woodhouse… Jack frowns, trying to remember why that name should be significant. “Peter Burton’s commanding officer was named Woodhouse,” he says slowly, the answer dawning on him at last.
She smiles, gloating slightly less than he would have expected her to under the circumstances.
“You think Frank Winters killed his brother-in-law and then faked his own death?”
“I think it’s possible,” she confirms in a tone that suggests that’s exactly what she thinks.
“And you decided to come out here, alone, to look for him?”
“I’m not alone, Jack.” She looks at him, her head tilted slightly, an amused smile on her lips. “I have you and this very welcoming bull for company.”
He looks down. He had damned near forgotten about the bull.
“What if I hadn’t come along?”
“Then it’d just be me and Angus here.”
He pulls a face.
“And you did come along, Jack. Because I asked you to.”
“Asked me to?” He snorts. “I believe what happened was, Collins happened to overhear you telling Miss Williams that you were going as you were leaving the station this morning and I demanded that you bring me with you.” In hindsight, perhaps he should've let them both believe she had in fact suggested it. It'd be better than reminding her of the truth.
“Would you have preferred a formal invitation, in writing?” she jokes.
He would, rather. “I would’ve preferred not having to always be chasing after you, trying to catch up as you throw yourself into one reckless scheme after another.”
That was perhaps slightly more honesty than he had intended, just at the moment.
She looks momentarily taken aback, but rallies quickly. Nearly. “But that’s half the fun, Jack.”
It is, of course. To her. But there’s a slight hint of worry in her expression that would suggest she’s realising that at times he finds it all somewhat less entertaining.
Like when he thinks she has died, or when she doesn’t trust him, or like now, when he’s stuck up a tree while a bull is circling underneath and he’s starving and he has no idea when they’ll get down.
“I’d say we’ve both been caught by this point,” he says.
“I guess we have,” she agrees, smiling at him and suddenly his remark, meant more as a deflection than anything else, seems a lot more significant than he had perhaps intended.
He smiles back, trying and failing to look as annoyed as he feels he ought to be. At least she’s as stuck as he is, and she’s the one missing out on roast duck.
Below, the bull has stopped moving, except now and then to lower its head in order to pull out another mouthful of grass to chew on. Jack's reluctant to tempt fate just yet, but he wouldn't be surprised at all if it had completely forgotten that they were there.
“Do you think we should risk it?” Miss Fisher asks him.
He looks back at her, a quip about how knowing her means not trusting such an illusion of calm ready on his lips, but when their eyes meet he's not entirely sure it's the bull she's referring to, although if pressed he's not certain he'd be able to put his finger on what exactly she does mean. But he thinks it might scare him even more than raging bulls all the same.
“I think we can,” he agrees. “But... slowly?”
She's lowering herself from the branch she has been perched on (Jack trying his very best but still failing not to feel a little bit smug when he notices the stains on the back of her black trousers as he reaches over to grab his coat before it falls to the ground) when the bull raises its head and sniffs her leg. “Slow is good,” she agrees, and then – when the animal goes back to grazing – she lets herself drop to the ground, looking up at him daring him to manage the getting down as gracefully as that.
*
Three months pass and Mr. and Mrs. Winters are both safely behind bars when Jack returns from work one day to find a thick, cream-coloured embossed envelope in his letterbox. Not a particularly frequent correspondent, he turns it over twice before realising who it must be from and tearing it open, slowly.
Inside he finds, formally and in writing, an invitation to dinner at Wardlow.