Chapter Text
The paperwork, never ending as it typically was, had reached some truly impressive new heights. Jack’s team had been busy over the preceding weeks, closing back-to-back cases of varying severity and the reprieve that the South of Melbourne’s criminals had given them was something of a relief for the entire station, even if it meant a full day of copious amounts of paperwork for all involved.
Jack’s in-tray was starting to look busier than Miss Fisher’s wardrobe.
With Miss Fisher several hours away in Adelaide for the week, Jack had made it clear that even if she found a murder, he was not driving over to help. Two or three hours down the road was one thing, an overnight to Adelaide quite another. It did give him some much-appreciated time to set his focus on the stack of files and attempt to get the to-do list less reminiscent of a child’s block tower.
Tea long gone cold at his elbow, he doggedly worked through the pile of petty crimes, reading over reports of varying readability and signing them off with a brisk efficiency (except some truly awful ones that were going back to green constables to be re-written). He had plans for lunch, and was determined to get that stack done at least before turning to the more serious crimes that afternoon.
The ring of the phone, therefore, was nor particularly appreciated. Even with Miss Fisher in Adelaide, he found his pen pausing over the signature box, listening intently to try and gauge the pitch of Collins’s voice to judge if it was Miss Williams or even Miss Fisher herself on the phone. He hoped not. He knew Phryne would somehow rope him into the robbery case she was working on, even 10 hours and hundreds of miles away. He had to stand firm – no matter how enjoyable a case with Miss Fisher typically was, Adelaide was too much too far. And cases with Miss Fisher usually required far more creative writing than a police report should.
Though, she had jokingly promised to let him know when she’d arrived safely so he ‘wouldn’t worry like a mother hen’ to use her own words. He didn’t expect she actually would.
When Hugh’s voice didn’t pitch up like it always did when Miss Williams called him at work, Jack felt his shoulders relax, and he signed the report with a mixture of disappointment and relief. The disappointment, he told himself sternly, was just at the lack of variety in a paperwork day and nothing to do with wayward murder-finding women in his life. He almost believed it.
Instead, Jack pulled another report towards him, flipped it open and resolved to see if he could best his previous target of five reports in half an hour. He’d fully immersed himself in the more banal aspects of policework when the familiar apologetic knock of Collins sounded at the door.
Jack’s face had arranged itself into polite neutral by the time Collins opened the door, tapping his notebook nervously against his hand and a slightly more puzzled than usual look on his face.
“What has she managed to dig up this time?” Jack sighed in dry amusement, hands resting on his stomach as he leant back, though inside he was pointedly ignoring the spread of warm glee making its way around his heart. “They’ve barely been there an hour surely.”
Collins managed to look even more confused for a moment before his face cleared. If he wanted to make it to Detective, Jack needed to teach this boy poker. Everything was written on his face.
“Oh, no Sir, Miss Fisher hasn’t called,” he said in a rush before pausing to consider and tacking a “yet” onto his statement. “No, sorry Sir, only there is a lady here for you. She says she’s your mother?”
Somehow, his mother being here was more improbable than Phryne not stumbling across a murder within twenty-four hours of arriving somewhere. Jack stared at his Constable and then pushed himself up to cross the room slowly, leaning slightly around Collins to check the waiting area.
Indeed, standing there at the front desk to the station and perfunctorily examining the notices on the pinboard was his mother, still clad in a travel coat.
He glanced back towards his paperwork strewn desk with a sudden longing for the peaceful and productive day he’d had planned. He loved his mother dearly, but he’d done an admirable job over the last year of keeping Miss Fisher from his family and now that was clearly at an end. It was far easier for mother to not realise quite how entwined his life had become with the Wardlow family when she was at home on his sister’s farm helping with the children.
Apparently his general stoicism failed him, because Hugh grimaced slightly.
“I take it this wasn’t a planned visit then Sir,” he asked, looking sympathetic.
“No, Constable, it was not,” Jack sighed, indicating that Hugh should lead them both out. “I might trouble you for some tea though.”
He left Hugh nodding, though not moving, as he approached the gate, his mother already turning towards him with a faint smile on her face. She looked tired, presumably from the travel, her face familiar and comforting under the bottle green hat pinned above light brown-grey curls. Age suited his mother, the lines around her eyes from a life of laughter and sorrow worn like badges of honour.
“Mother,” he greeted, bending down slightly to kiss her cheek, “How lovely to see you but very unexpected, is everything alright?”
“Does a mother need a reason to visit her son?” his mother teased, patting his cheek. “Especially when he hasn’t been home in six months?”
He had cancelled his previous trip home a few months before, reluctant to leave Phryne and Jane in the wake of Murdoch Foyle’s re-incarceration and the discovery of Janey Fisher’s remains. He’d told his mother there had been a big case at work and he couldn’t leave. It wasn’t exactly untrue, after all.
“I’m sorry Mother, but there was a case,” Jack replied easily, sidestepping the guilt with the ease of experience. He opened the gate to allow her to step through towards his office. “But some notice is generally appreciated. I might have been out on a case.”
He hoped he hadn’t tempted fate with that gentle reminder, the last thing he wanted today was a murder.
“Then the nice Constable here would have told me you were unavailable and I’d have left a note and gone over to that nice looking café down the street until your shift had finished,” Mother shrugged nonchalantly. “Given I hadn’t called ahead.”
Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes, fighting back a smile. Mother would never change and he didn’t want her to. She’d have found something to amuse herself with while he wasn’t around.
“Constable Hugh Collins, my mother, Esther Robinson,” Jack made the necessary introductions while Hugh hovered, eyes wide. Hugh immediately became flustered, stammering his way through a greeting as his mother shifted a suitcase to offer her hand to him.
“Lovely to finally meet you Constable Collins, Jack has good things to say about you and it is good to put a face to the name,”
Jack looked down at the suitcase with some concern, even as Hugh thanked her with a stammer, glanced at Jack and fled to the kitchen where he would inevitably be updating the unexpected member of the City South Constabulary today.
“Where are you staying, Mother?” he asked, indicating for her to lead the way to his office, already expecting her answer.
“Why, with you of course,” she answered predictably. “You still have a guest room do you not?”
He did. And she knew it.
“Mother,” he sighed, “You know you need to give me at least a days notice if you are planning to stay with me. I’ve been working late and the guest room isn’t made up.”
He was also fairly certain that he’d left dishes in the sink as his housekeeper wasn’t due that day. He supposed he should be grateful that not only had Mother’s last unexpected visit been just before he’d met Miss Fisher, but that this one occurred while Miss Fisher was in another state. Then he remembered his lunch plans, and thought it might be worse after all.
“Nonsense, I will sort all that,” she said briskly, setting her case down and sinking into the chair with something approaching relief. “And I couldn’t give you too much notice anyway. Hetty Greenwood’s son Paulie was driving to Melbourne and offered me a lift only last night. We left before first light and I didn’t want to call you from the road. By that point, I wanted to surprise you.”
Well, he was certainly surprised and not entirely in a good way.
“I have a train booked for next week,” Mother continued, peeling her gloves off carefully and setting them on his desk, eyeing the chaos of paperwork with a frown. She always had thought him too disorganised. “I thought I could take you out for lunch, and then you could drop me back at your house. I could nap and have dinner prepared for when your shift is done. How does that sound?”
She looked so hopeful, like her coming to play housekeeper was her greatest joy. She’d been so dismayed to hear Rosie had left, worrying (probably warranted) that Jack would end up not taking care of himself if left to his own devices. Then her eyes sharpened, eyes tracking down.
“You’ve put weight on!” She said, delighted. “You don’t look quite so much like a swift wind’ll knock you over now. Not enough though, how about a pie and mash for supper?”
He rolled his eyes. Of course she’d notice that his waistcoat fitted a little better than several months ago. Of course she’d notice the impact of regular dinners and lunches by Mr B and whiskeys with Phryne.
“I’m afraid that as lovely as that sounds,” he shifted awkwardly against the filing cabinet, hoping he didn’t look like a young lad making excuses. “But I am afraid I have plans tonight.” He winced as her eyes gleamed. “And… lunch plans.”
He still harboured a desperate hope that he could get mother out before those said lunch plans turned up.
“So perhaps we do lunch tomorrow, Mother,” Jack asked hopefully, “And I call a cab to take you back to my house. Or a café, if you’d prefer to keep to lunch.”
She stared at him silently, eyebrow raised and waiting, perfectly poised. Someone had once asked him how he knew how to wait a suspect out. He hadn’t answered the truth that he’d learnt it on the receiving end of his mother’s looks growing up. Some things were private, after all.
“It’s not what you think,” he sighed, answering her unspoken but silently shouted question. He wondered if he would be allowed to leave this with his dignity fully intact, but doubted it. No, no matter what she thought, it would probably be worse for her to know the truth.
“And what do I think I know?” she asked archly. He was far too well versed in her face to believe the blank indifference mask she wore. He’d learnt from the best after all. Jack half glared at her without any real heat and she smiled. “What’s her name?”
Then, of course, to make the day even more topsy-turvy, there was a soft knock at the door. Jack glanced at the small shadow in the window and bit back a sigh before calling for them to come in.
“Jane,” he replied reluctantly, as the girl herself entered the room concentrating on the laden tea tray. Of course she’d bought the tea. She was too much like Phryne Fisher sometimes and he didn’t doubt she’d extracted as much information from Hugh as she could while making tea and was here for more to share with her family. Or, if she was channelling Phryne, her own amusement.
“Constable Collins said you had a guest,” Jane offered the tray as evidence of her good intentions and smiled sweetly at his mother. “I made tea, and found some of Dottie’s biscuits too.”
“Thank you dear,” his mother looked at her curiously, even as she helped clear a space on the desk for the tray. Jack stepped forward to snag a few files before Jane could see the contents, filing them to one side to revisit later. Jane made to pour the tea, but stopped, glancing quickly up to Jack in question as to whether she could stay. He shrugged helplessly. She pressed a smile down and ducked her heads to fill the cups.
“Sugar?” Jane asked sweetly, Jack’s tea already made how he liked it. Jack watched his mother frown slightly at the familiarity as he accepted the cup.
“No, thank you, just a dash of milk, yes, perfect. Thank you, dear,” she cast an eye over Jane’s grammar school uniform and her neat plaits. “Aren’t you a little young to be a tea lady?”
Jane looked startled, fumbling the sugar tongs as she plopped her own sugar into the tea, before looking down at her neat uniform. “Oh, I’m not a tea lady,” she said in clarification, offering one of Dottie’s excellent cookies. “School got cancelled and apparently I’m not trusted to be home alone again quite yet so I’ve been doing my homework in the kitchen area.”
“It’s not that we don’t trust you home alone,” Jack sighed with a roll of his eyes. They’d already had this discussion twice that morning, and at least once last week, and yet another time with Miss Fisher. “It’s that –“
“I know,” Jane huffed, “I’m not safe if I stay at home on my own and mum’ll worry if she doesn’t know where I am. I know, Inspector.”
Jack frowned at the disgruntled tone, and resolved to speak to Miss Fisher on her return about possibly easing up on Jane’s safety now Murdoch Foyle was safely buried and most definitely dead (Jack had checked the body himself and stood watch as his remains were delivered to the furnace). Yet another free spirit disliking being caged. His mother was watching them both with interest and he knew that any chance he had of passing Jane off as someone unimportant in the grand scheme of things had passed. He waved at the opportunity reluctantly as it dashed past. Time to face the music.
“Jane, I’d like you to meet my mother, Esther Robinson,” Jack waved a hand, and Jane smiled innocently at the introduction. “Mother, this is Jane Ross. She is Miss Fisher’s adopted daughter.”
“Jane?” his mother checked, glancing up at him and clearly trying to reconcile how the Jane he had revealed before her entrance was the reason for his recent weight gain. He’d not get any peace until she had answers, and probably no peace once she knew. The illusion of some peace while Miss Fisher was away had been nice while it lasted.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs Robinson,” Jane said eagerly, smiling prettily before glancing slyly across to Jack. He didn’t trust that smile. It had mischievous Phryne written all over it. “Really nice to meet you.”
His mother sipped her tea. Jane snagged another biscuit and turned to Jack, all business-like and he accepted the biscuit with some situational reluctance.
“I finished Hamlet, like you told me to,” Jane said to him, hands folded neatly for all the world like she was a well-bred, demure young lady and not like two hours ago she had picked the lock to the pantry door and scaled the shelves to see if any sweets were hidden on the top shelf. “And my conjugations homework is done. You promised we’d talk about Hamlet over lunch so I could do my paper.”
“And we will,” Jack agreed, he’d been looking forward to it. He enjoyed Jane’s attitude towards books and learning and helping her on her way. “But you’ll have to wait for Miss Fisher to check the French homework.”
“I know that, Inspector,” Jane mocked him gently. “Your French isn’t much better than mine.”
Jack levelled an affectionate warning glance at her, and she just smiled back.
“So, Miss Ross, wasn’t it?” Mother delicately took a biscuit and nibbled it.
“Oh, please call me Jane, Mrs Robinson,” Jane said quickly, sinking down onto the available chair with a smile. “You are the Inspector’s family after all.”
“Indeed,” his mother glanced up at him quickly, before asking Jane her opinions on Hamlet. Jack knew that glance. It was one that said he had an awful lot of explaining to do when the company had left. Never a glance he enjoyed seeing, even as he approached the end of his third decade on this Earth.
Jack looked to the tea set, out to the reception, and then at his watch, gauging that it was just about lunch time, and the sooner he got them both through a café the sooner he could have a few hours to pretend his worlds weren’t colliding rapidly. The only way this could be more awkward was if Miss Fisher telephoned.
As if on cue, the desk phone began to ring. Jane brightened immediately, sitting up straight as he slipped past to answer it.
“Is that mum?” She asked hopefully. For all she was grating against the safety boundaries in place, she hadn’t been away from Phryne for much longer than a day at school since they’d returned home from the hospital that night. This was by far the longest, and furthest, they’d been separated. Privately, Jack and Mac had discussed it at length and determined it would do them both good.
“Probably,” Jack sighed, sinking into his chair, “Or the Deputy Commissioner.”
It was Phryne, of course.
“Hello Jack!” she sang down the line, and he could almost see the sunny smile she was directing his way. “I am doing as promised and letting you know Dot and I have made it to Adelaide safely and we are in our hotel. We’re at the Dorchester on Grover Street, if you needed me.”
“Miss Fisher,” Jack greeted her, genuinely relieved she had in followed through on her half-joking declaration she’d call when she arrived. “Glad to hear I don’t need to issue a missing person’s report. The paperwork is very tedious and I’m relieved it’s not necessary.”
Jane grinned at him, used to the banter. His mother, oh god his mother, however, looked faintly scandalised, or at least concerned. Miss Fisher, on the line, snorted a laugh.
“No, sorry to disappoint. All present and correct and ready to investigate!”
“Well, so long as that investigation doesn’t involve me,” he said drily, and then glanced at Jane with a half-smile. “While you’re on the line, do you want to speak to Jane?”
He could hear her demeanour change across the miles.
“Jane’s there? Is everything alright? Is she hurt? Is she-”
“She’s fine,” Jack said firmly. “Burst pipe at school so I bought her to the station. Here, she can tell you herself.”
Jack handed the receiver over without any further preamble and gestured for his mother to follow him to the doorway to give Jane a little privacy. She looked up at him expectantly, eyebrows raised in question.
“Jane is Miss Fisher’s daughter,” he said, hedging his bets and not wanting to give too much information at once. “And Miss Fisher is currently on a case in Adelaide. With the rest of the household likewise engaged, the school called me when they had to close unexpectedly, so I bought her here to do her homework as I have, as you can see, plenty of paperwork to be keeping up with.”
“This doesn’t explain why the school called you when her… mother? was unavailable,” His own mother raised a challenge.
She did have a point. It probably wasn’t considered normal for the second port of call for the school was City South police station in search of Inspector Jack Robinson. Her aunt would make more sense, but after the recent debacle when Jane had been unwell, Mrs Stanley and Miss Fisher had very pointedly added Jack to the limited list of people who could take Jane off the premises.
“Um, well, Mrs Stanley - that is Miss Fisher’s aunt and so Jane’s great aunt – was also called but as she is tied up in meetings all day and as Mac is on nights I went to collect Jane…” He trailed off, fairly certain he was digging himself a hole that he’d struggle to get out of.
“It still doesn’t explain why, when her family weren’t available, you ended up on the phone tree,” his mother pointed out and Jack frowned. The problem, he was finding, with not having told his mother anything was that it was hard to work out the simplest way of explaining anything to do with Miss Fisher and Jane and the family they’d made there. Or. Maybe it wasn’t that hard after all.
“I am family, as much as I can be,” he said at last, “Miss Fisher consults on my cases, and I have become very good friends with the whole family there. Jane’s had some … unsafe situations in recent months so it makes sense that Jane stays with the police officer so she feels safe.”
His mother examined his face intently and he had to resist the urge to shuffle in place awkwardly exposed.
“Is that all?” she asked gently, clearly not believing him. He wasn’t sure he’d believe him either, but explaining Phryne without context would be… baffling. And he wasn’t sure where to even begin.
He was saved from finding a response by Jane calling across the room to him, telephone handle stretched out, declaring her mum wanted to speak to him. He wanted to roll his eyes. While they all called Phryne Jane’s mum to various degrees in different contexts, Jane tended to need to be ill, or to want to make a point when she called her that name. This was clearly the latter – she was making her relationship to Miss Fisher very, very blunt for his mother’s sake.
Jack took the handle and gave her hair an affectionate tug, “I haven’t told my mother about yours,” he warned quietly, and she just looked at him as if to say that wasn’t news and she was going to ignore him. She slipped past, asking his mother brightly if she’d be happy to come to the kitchen with her so she could tidy up before lunch. He watched them leave, and put the telephone to his ear.
“Hello again, Miss Fisher,” he said pleasantly, internally very concerned about just what Phryne Fisher could manage to do several hundred miles away. He hadn’t expected to miss her so quickly, even knowing his own spiralling feelings as he did.
“Jane tells me your mother is visiting!” She said gleefully with all the subtlety of her golden pistol. “Why didn’t you tell me!”
“She turned up less than half an hour ago, Miss Fisher,” he was going walkabout, far away from all the nosy, detecting women around him. “And I don’t recall it being something I needed to tell you.”
He probably should have led with that first, on balance.
“Jaccck,” she wheedled. He remained silent, thought a smile played at his lips because she couldn’t see his face for once. “How long is she down for? Will I be meeting her or just my daughter?”
“She had been here scarcely ten minutes before Jane arrived with tea and thoroughly derailed any chance I had of finding all this information out,” Jack pointed out fondly. “She takes after another charming freight train.”
“Jane isn’t a freight train,” Miss Fisher dismissed immediately, “She is far too good at being subtle for that. She did tell me that she doesn’t think your mother has heard of me. Or her.”
The question in there was very evenly delivered. He wished he could see her face now; to gauge just how hurt she was by this omission.
“Well, you are rather impossible to describe,” he admitted, “She knows I work with a consulting detective sometimes, but I don’t tend to talk work with mother, so she never asked. And I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said quietly with a sigh of understanding. “Thank you for picking up, Jane. I know she said that the plan was for you to watch her until Mr B arrives back from his sister’s this evening, but I can telephone Aunt P to take Jane for a few nights. You know she won’t mind.”
“No need,” he reassured her, leaning back in his chair. “Mrs Stanley and I have already discussed at great lengths over the phone and we determined with Jane that she’d prefer to be at home, and as I haven’t got a lady detective interrupting me every five minutes, I could easily take Jane home from here. Via dinner of some sort of course.”
He paused, feeling icy tendrils that she might have another reason to prefer Jane stay with her aunt.
“Unless you see this as overstepping, I apologise. I can take her to Mrs Stanley after I have finished work if you’d prefer for Jane’s safety.”
There was a beat of silence on the phone, then a somewhat incredulous snort of laughter. “Jack, you can’t possibly believe that I don’t think she is perfectly, entirely safe with you? You are family, Jack, whether you want to be or not. There is no-one else I would entrust her care to so easily, except perhaps Mac.” Her voice softened, “Jack I just meant that you haven’t seen your Mother in months. I thought you might enjoy having some time together before she returns. I promise I have no concerns over my daughters safety.”
He ignored the warm bubble in his chest at this clear an explicit declaration of trust with the most important person in her life. It was nice to hear spoken aloud things you already knew.
“Mother is staying for the week,” he said into the retriever, wishing she was right in front of him as he had so often before. “I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time. I’ll take Jane home, send her to bed, and perhaps avail myself of the guest room. Mother is coming with us to lunch, and if you hurry and get this case sorted, you’ll be back to Melbourne in time to meet her yourself.”
He heard her breath hitch at the promise, and a flare of panic in his own chest that after all this time downplaying Miss Fisher in stories and keeping everything vague and separate, he wanted to introduce her to his mother. He rather worried they’d all get on too well, but he did want them to meet.
“Well, with an incentive like that…I’ll do my very best then,” she answered in the soft, private way she sometimes spoke to him when no-one else was around. “Thank you, Jack.”
There was a shuffling, and a murmuring, and Phryne returned to the phone reluctantly, her voice becoming brisk and melodious again. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go. This was only meant to be a quick confirmation of arrival and the taxi has arrived to take us to the client. I’ll call home tonight, around nine o’clock to speak to Jane, and you, before bed.” She paused and then added, “And Jack, your mother is welcome to Wardlow whether I am there or not. Just so you have options for this evening.”
“Thank you, Miss Fisher,” he half-smiled into the received, “Happy hunting, and no murders please.”
He hung up with her laugh still tinkling through his ears and looked thoughtfully towards where Jane had led his mother. He stood up, collecting his coat and hat from the hook and stepped through the door to find his mother and Jane, all neatly done up in her coat and hat, waiting for him. They turned to him with a concerningly similar expression. He smiled at them.
“So where have you two ladies decided for lunch?”