Work Text:
March, 1923
Teddy should have realised he was in for a long evening, when Kitty bounded up to him in the Larkrise hall full of her usual nineteen questions to the dozen, and more energy than attended God Tuesday, dachshund in residence. He was straight off the back of an arrest, so of course Kitty had got to hear of it. How exactly, when they'd only taken the knobby-kneed youth in question in late this afternoon was beyond Teddy, but neither was he inclined to ask. Questions were Kitty's territory, and anyway, he wasn't altogether sure he wanted an answer to the conundrum that was her sixth sense for news.
'You promised me an interview,' she said when Teddy tuned back in to her chatter, her eagerness cutting through the tempting smell of tea brewed to exactly the right strength. It smelled of malt and musk, and some spice that probably Mara had a name for but Teddy hadn't. Biscuits too, he thought. Freshly baked ones, at that. Both would have to wait. Reporters, like dachshunds, could not be put off.
'Did I?' said Teddy,dazedly as Kitty installed him in the wingback chair that the Inspector more usually claimed.
'Yes,' said Kitty. She sat down cross-legged at his feet, effectively barricading him, and recommenced his inquiry, but now armed with a pen and paper.
'What tipped you off that it was Mick Harris? Is it true he has a record for assaulting an officer? What about his brother? Did the police ever suspect him?'
'Kitty,' said Teddy, 'You know all this. Why on earth are you – '
He never did get to the end of his sentence. In a trice, Kitty was on her feet, round the corner and taking the stairs three at a time, muttering darkly as she went. Teddy blinked confusedly at the wallpaper with its mingled strawberries and thrushes and shook his head.
'What,' he demanded of it, 'was all that about?'
No answer being forthcoming from the wallpaper, he got to his feet and made to follow Kitty up the stairs.
'I wouldn't, if I were you,' said Faith from behind him.
Teddy jumped. Not that he should have, this being Faith's house. Jem Blythe's, too. He doubly shouldn't have because Faith's presence explained the tea and biscuits. He was becoming sloppy. Blame the day he had had. And small wonder, now Teddy thought of it, the Inspector hadn't recommended him for the Detective's exam this go-round. Anyone with half a brain should have detected Faith there at the table. After all, it wasn't as if Kitty could brew tea that was tea. Mind you…He turned to the spindly-legged table, and sure enough, there was Mara, and Di with her, because Faith had about as much gift for tea that wasn't stewed as the average cat had for modesty.
'I suppose,' said Teddy resignedly, 'that made sense to you?'
Mara went for another teacup – further proof Faith hadn't had the brewing of it – and the others nodded. Faith motioned Teddy into a place at the table, and he sat down uncertainly. For no good reason he was rendered suddenly, stupidly awkward, here amongst the well-brewed tea, Morris stamp china, and familiar women with their unfamiliar, unwritten and feminine codes between them. Despite all that, Teddy knew them, and they knew him.
He accepted a cup of tea and swallowed a mouthful along with his awkwardness and confusion. 'Enlighten me?' he asked.
Faith hummed. She said, 'It's still very much your world, Teddy.'
'How d'you mean?' asked Teddy.
Somebody - Mara? - offered him the plate of biscuits. Teddy declined. Vaguely he was aware of Di replenishing his teacup. He retrieved his cup and looked to the contents for clarity. They were milky, opaque, and smelled of what Teddy was beginning to suspect was cloves.
'You used her name,' said Faith, as if this were obvious.'Her Christian name.'
'It's only what I always do,' said Teddy. 'The Doc too.'
'Mm,' said Faith. Not what one would call expansive, Teddy thought. 'At home, of course you do. But how often are you Teddy to anyone in the Station House?'
'I'm not,' said Teddy. He swallowed a mouthful of tea too hastily and it scalded and bubbled against the lining of his throat uncomfortably. 'And I really don't see,' this probably needlessly, 'what that has to do with anything.'
Again there was that faint prickling and thickening of incommunicable things as some current, alien but definitely extant, passed between the women around the table.
Teddy spared another glance for the tea and considered, something tugging at the edges of his conscience. He took another breath of milky tea. It was definitely cloves underneath the pekoe, he decided.
'You don't use their names either, I suppose,' said Faith.
'No,' said Teddy. ' I hadn't thought. The Doc's just Doc, and the Inspector...More guts than mine to call him anything else, I can tell you. Benwick, though...well, that's different. And I wouldn't do it at work. He's Benwick in the office.'
Something snagged whatever it was that was pricking at the edges of Teddy's mind and slotted into place.
'Right,' he said. 'And Kitty's working. I never thought. I mean, she never seems to stop – does it matter so very much?'
He thought, in the silence that followed, that it probably did. He picked up, but did not eat, one of the biscuits, turning it again and again between his fingers. Shortbread; Mara's grade, all crumbs and rice flour.
Faith said sympathetically, 'It wouldn't to you. I mean, you're Sergeant Lovall, world without end, whatever they call you. Not that you have to remind them. Kitty isn't.'
'All those endless cups of tea,' said Di in agreement. 'It's all we can do to get work that is work done. As if the men have never had to boil a kettle before.'
'The hospital's the same,' said Faith, nodding. 'If they could find a way to extricate me, they'd seize on it.'
'But,' said Teddy, spitting out a mouthful of tea in his haste to contradiction, 'but you're bloody good at what you do.' Then sheepishly, 'Sorry. I only mean everyone knows there's no one better at – '
'Not the point,' said Faith. 'Though you're not wrong. That doesn't mean the men have to like it, though. On the contrary. If they could get shot of me, they would.'
'Right,' said Teddy, feeling the word deeply inadequate. The shortbread was long reduced to so many crumbs on his saucer. He let Mara take his teacup from him and refill it, unsure when she'd seized a culinary takeover, but not surprised.
Teddy said, trying to puzzle this new information out and feeling woefully short of the task, 'But...the Inspector is always going to you for advice - and the Doc, too.'
Faith hummed. Thoughtfully she said, 'Do you know, Teddy, you must be surrounded by every exception to the rule there is?'
Teddy blinked at her, and Faith shook her head. Di smiled. Faith said, generously, 'Every rule has an exception, or two.'
'That's a rule,' said Di.
Laughter from the others.
'Goerdie and Jem,' said Faith, 'happen to be our exceptions.'
Unable to think of anything intelligent to argue, Teddy twisted his teacup on his saucer. He felt his own name to be a notable omission from this list, and all right, it stung, but not in the way an errant swat by a needlessly offended cat stung. It was more like a cricket ball hitting home. He braced himself for another swallow of tea, surprised that Mara Blythe hadn't so far expressed an opinion. She always had at least one going spare, for Teddy's money.
Nothing being forthcoming, he turned to her and said, 'I suppose it's the same with you?'
'Oh, nothing like that,' said Mara lightly.
Exactly why this should make Teddy's skin prickle was a question he directed mentally towards this second cup of tea. It was still milky, still opaque. Still mired in the residue of the shortbread. Apparently the uneasiness was catching, because he looked up in time to intercept the tail end of a conversation passing silently between Di and Faith from across the table.
'There's an ominous like something else there,' said Faith.
'One you aren't saying,' said Di.
'Hazards of acting,' said Mara, still too light by half. 'Attracts all kinds of hangers-on. We started walking home in twos.' She said this to no one in particular. It reminded Teddy of the way suspects got when you caught them out in a lie.
'The Evensong girls,' said Mara, by way of elaboration. 'This was when our theatre group was starting up. Actually, no, we still do it. The thing was, even in twos, you got a crick in your neck, walking and looking over your shoulder. It got so that it was easier to ask Shirley to wait about for me. More security in it, I suppose I mean.'
Teddy looked at her and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Di, who had gone an awful colour said, 'Did we know about this?'
'I didn't, if you did,' said Faith.
Mara smiled. She said, 'I wasn't much after explaining to Jem why the pair of you were being tried for murder.'
'You know,' said Di, with a smile of her own, 'the logic there isn't altogether faulty.'
'No jury would convict,' said Faith.
Mara raised two golden eyebrows to astronomic heights. 'Oh?' she said. 'And was I missing women getting elected jurors while Shirley and I were away away in Scotland? Did we catch it off of Britain?'
'Well...' said Faith.
Simultaneously, Di said, 'Not exactly...'
'Ah, but the men are all noble-minded Chaucer types since I got back?' asked Mara.
'You hadn't noticed?' asked Di and summoned a smile.
'Between the solicitations and the cat-calls and appropriating Shirley's arm to prove I was definitely still attached to someone you mean?' asked Mara. 'It slipped my mind, Miss Monarch.'
Teddy nursed his cooling tea and wondered queasily how they could laugh about it. He was suddenly glad he had neglected to touch the shortbread laid out on the table, all rich and buttery. His stomach curled intopainful leaden knots. Years of knowing them, and he had never once thought – had never looked at them as anything other than – what? Adoptive family? Friends? The Doc's people? No, they were more than that last. If they were the Doc's people they had got to be Teddy's too, somewhere along the line. Faith, and Mara, Judith, and the assorted gremlins. Di and Kitty too, he thought grudgingly, for all he had never hankered after a sister. Perhaps, after all, and in spite of the Inspector's jokes, he hadn't only stumbled into the police force after all.
'Right,' he said, clumsily, because the word was still inadequate, and because he couldn't sit there with them mutely any longer. 'I suppose I ought to apologize. Or something.' He gestured indeterminately at the ceiling.
So saying he got to his feet, threaded his way through the furniture and mounted the stairs. Gingerly, he knocked on Kitty's door. If she was disinclined to answer it, he'd leave her alone. But no, that was cowardly. He knocked again, surer this time. A long pause, and then a scrape of furniture, followed by Kitty's wary face at the door, God Tuesday the dachshund folded under one arm.
'Oh,' she said, seeing him, 'it's you.'
'Look,' said Teddy, still clumsily, 'I'm sorry. If you'll let me, Miss Foster, I believe I owe you an interview.'
He stuck a hand out, but Kitty didn't take it. One hand disappeared into her jacket pocket, whence appeared a notepad, while the other extracted a pen from behind her ear. Tuesday, indignant, slithered from her arms in a manoeuvre calculated to injure his long spine. Somehow Teddy succeeded at not laughing. 'All right,' she said, pen poised, 'now, about Mick Harris…'