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It has always come in handy, being a detective, to have a slight talent at telepathy.
He can’t remember exactly when he acquired that ability, but he suspects it was always there, although it grew stronger and more conscious in adolescence. Now, it is just a part of his life.
As a rule, he doesn’t hear people’s actual thoughts, not really. He feels the direction of their thoughts, like a nebulous form in his mind. He senses guilt and hesitance, when people are lying, and when they are thinking about something that they desperately don’t want to tell him.
Generally, that is the extra piece of the puzzle he needs to solve a case.
People differ in how easy they are to read. Collins’ presence, for example – the constable assigned to assist him, and who is right now sitting next to him in the police car – is a distinct jumble of innocence and ambition. When the lad had just been hired at City South, his attempts at being good enough for his job and his boss were so overwhelming they were actually distracting, drowning out everything else and causing Jack to miss important leads. But he has learned to block that out now, to treat it as a background noise he doesn’t pay attention to. It’s a trick he learned at the front, and then perfected in living with Rosie, managing to live with her constant feeling of disappointment. Disappointment and – even worse – unfulfilled, vague longing.
It was a relief when she decided to move out. It brought a peace of mind to him that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
And maybe – he thinks as he drives to the next case, to an address in an affluent part of Melbourne where a businessman has just dropped dead in his own bathroom – maybe this is how his life will be now. Calm and easy, possible to survey and control, steeped in routine and utter normalcy.
And then he meets Phryne Fisher.
Collins comes to ask him if a lady can be allowed to use the bathroom, and he follows the lad to make sure she doesn’t contaminate the crime scene. He is set on scolding her for traipsing straight into a scene of a crime, but when she opens the door and sets her challenging eyes on him, he can hardly breathe.
He can’t remember the last time he could sense so many things at once from another person. The complexity of her thoughts is astounding, he can’t make out anything at all from her – it makes him feel intoxicated to even try. She is a roller coaster of thoughts and feelings and calculations as she defends her presence by showing she is wearing gloves.
Her different thoughts are too much to take in. That is, until she tilts her head and asks for his card, since she’s “a woman alone, newly arrived in a dangerous town” – then her mind instead becomes sharp as steel, an unambiguous challenge, daring him to see through her act. He sizes her up, hiding his heavy breathing as well as he can. When he produces his card he tells her that he’s planning to make Melbourne a less dangerous town. When she thanks him, her flirtatious smile and coquettish moves are followed by a change in her mind – the challenge warps into a sensual one, and he feels how he is being considered, weighed and measured and scrutinized and somehow found interesting.
The next second, she is out of the door. Jack is left standing, with a surprised Collins by his side, both wondering exactly what had happened.
One thing, at least, Jack is certain of: this is not the last he will see - or sense - of the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher.