Jean Innocent and Laura Hobson get to know each other a little better - they've only known each other for (probably) a decade or so by this point.
Set in a post s8 timeframe when Robbie Lewis is retired again but Laura and Jean keep going.
It's always struck me that there has to be a good reason for Jean to have formed the original habit of referring to her absent husband as 'Mr Innocent' and Laura has to be way more than 'just' a Coroner/Medical Examiner, so I've tried to explore a little more of what I suppose is my personal 'head canon'.
Never written for Lewis before, haven't written anything for almost a year... read on at your own risk!
"Jean?" Startled at hearing her name in the crowd of tourists who still congregated at the entrances to the colleges even in a thunderstorm, Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent was surprised to see Dr Hobson just inside the college entrance.
"Hello Doctor."
"What is it with getting the police to use my first name?" teased Laura, pleased to see that Jean had taken the hint and stepped through the crowd of tourists so she was stood next to Laura in the relative shelter of the main entrance, rather than forcing Laura out into the torrential rain.
"Conditioning from Hendon," quipped Jean, before adding, "I don't remember there being a call?"
"Nope, no call - this is my day off, sort of," explained Laura before, in anticipation of Jean's next question, "and no clarinet either."
"Am I that predictable?" asked Jean, rather impressed with Laura's ability to guess her train of thought, although the absence of the clarinet now created new questions. If there was no body and no orchestra, what exactly had Laura been doing in the college?
Before Laura could answer however, a new voice interrupted their conversation.
"Professor?"
"Yes?" Both ladies turned at the interruption, but it was Laura who answered.
"Mr Lewis has just telephoned - he's coming here, apparently the road is flooded and it's a shame he never kept the canoe?" It was clear from the expression on the bowler hat wearing porter that he had no idea what the message meant, but protocol and decorum meant he wouldn't be asking.
"Thanks Fred," and, with a nod and a smile, Laura turned back to Jean, "...can I borrow your phone please? Then yes, you may question me, Chief Superintendent." Whilst the words were formal, the tone and smirk indicated that Laura was trying to contain her humour at her friend's slack-jawed expression as she wordlessly handed over her mobile phone, instinctively pulling up Robbie's contact as she unlocked it, ready for Laura to use.
"It's me... no, just bumped into Jean at the porter's lodge...no idea, but I'm going to see if she can stop for a cup of tea and a chat...yeah, the SCR...ok, see you soon."
"Thanks." Passing back the phone to Jean, she explained, "turns out that morgue freezers and smartphones don't exactly mix, so I'm phone-less for a couple of days until it's fixed. Now, what are you doing here?"
"Believe it or not, a day off and a chance to try and work out what I need to do for Christmas."
"So time for a cup of tea then?" suggested Laura, canting her head back in the direction of the college where she knew there were roaring fires, warmed teapots and comfortable armchairs with the added advantage of no tourists or usual Oxford chaos.
"Lead the way, Professor."
"So…." began Laura, once they were settled in a comfortable pair of armchairs, protected from the rain by the centuries old college building, distracted from the cold and damp by the roaring fire in front of them and the cups of tea in their hands.
"You don't have to explain," said Jean, suddenly wondering if she'd pressured Laura into something she didn't want to do.
"But now I know you didn't know, I might want to?"
"You're a Professor? Here?" asked Jean, unable to keep a reign on her curiosity any longer once she's realised she had a genuine permission to ask her questions.
"Yes. Professor Dr Laura Hobson, Fellow of St Clement's College and Head of Pathology and Forensic Medicine at Oxford University. Pleased to meet you," she concluded wryly, enjoying Jean's normally tensed and controlled jaw drop for the second time in less than an hour.
"I... I don't know what to say..." stumbled Jean, trying to comprehend exactly what she was learning - how had she not known that Dr Laura Hobson, Chief Medical Examiner for Oxfordshire and Thames Valley Police was also the most senior academic in her field at the University, which meant, "...you're the best in the world then?"
"Top ten, depending on sub-speciality, but yes. Goes with the Professorship really," shrugged Laura, not particularly interested in her 'global ranking' but knowing that, for a number of her fellow professors, their status was all that really interested them.
"How did I not know this?"
"Not sure really, I suppose it just wasn't relevant. It comes up every time I give evidence, but it's not often that your lot are in court for that bit," mused Laura, now seriously giving consideration to how, despite knowing each other for almost a decade, it had never come to Jean's attention.
"So have we been calling you the wrong thing all this time?" If in doubt, revert to the containable, understandable, logic-based facts: or at least, that's what her first DI had always told her.
"No - I'm a medical doctor as well as an academic, so in the Coroner's offices I'm always Doctor. It's only in academic circles that I'm Professor, and it's usually other people who use it," shrugged Laura, genuinely not bothered as to whether her academic title was used - in her experience, those that obsessed about their titles were usually the most insecure about their abilities and rights to those titles, two things that she didn't have any problems with.
"How long?"
"How long have I been Professor? Or how long have I been Chief Medical Examiner?"
"All of it? I guess I'm just realising how little I know about you," admitted Jean, starting to wonder how much anyone other than Robbie knew about the generally amiable and continually brilliant Dr Hobson.
"Ah, well, for that, we either need a fresh cup of tea..." before Laura could say anything else, the room was lit up with a brilliant flash of lightning and filled with the booming echo of a clap of thunder, "...or something stronger."
"I shouldn't..." began Jean, looking out of the window sceptically.
"You can stay here," offered Laura, crossing to the corner of the SCR where the decanters of stronger drinks were laid out, along with a service bell which she rang.
"I..." Jean's immediate and instinctive protestation died quickly on her lips as she remembered that Mr Innocent wasn't home and wouldn't be before Christmas Eve. What she was wearing wasn't so bad that she couldn't wear it into the station tomorrow and her office had at least two outfits from the dry cleaners that would do. "...wouldn't want to cause any issues..."
"Then stay here tonight - we'll have dinner in College and you can have a guest room; it's out of term so there should be a good choice."
"Professor?"
"Ah, Mary, sorry for the short notice," although the St Clement's housekeeper looked fierce Laura was relieved to see her as it meant her request would achieved without fuss, "but is it possible for a room to be made up for Chief Superintendent Innocent please?"
"Certainly Professor - Mr Engels and I have already prepared the guest rooms on your staircase. Ma'am - here's your room key and an access card to enable you to move around the College buildings if neither the Professor nor Mr Lewis are with you. Are you vegetarian?"
"Thank you," said Jean, her 'circuit' manners coming to the fore as she accepted the key ring with a warm smile, "no, I'm an allergy-free omnivore."
"Thank you, I'll let the chef know. Dinner will be in the SCR dining room rather than Hall Professor. Would you like anything sent up to your rooms for the evening?"
"No idea," admitted Laura honestly, struggling to remember what she had in her rooms in the way of refreshment."
"Should I ask Mr Engels to prepare a tray of something appropriate?"
"Thank you, and Mr Lewis is joining me..."
"I understand Mr Engels has some new ales for Mr Lewis to try - I'm sure they'll end up on the tray."
"Thank you very much Mary," and, with a final nod and a smile, the efficient housekeeper had tidied up their tea cups onto a tray that she'd found from somewhere and quietly disappeared.
"Mr Engels?"
"Head Porter and Newcastle native. He and Robbie have an alliance of sorts."
"Of sorts?"
"Shared grumbling about football and southerners that's entirely for show given they've both lived in Oxford for three decades or more."
"I see..."
"What do you see Jean?" asked Laura, slightly concerned that the normally 'in control and in charge' CS Innocent had been accidentally thrown rather more surprises than she might have expected for a supposed quiet day off window shopping in Oxford.
"That having a dead body somewhere in the College invariably affects the level of hospitality on offer..."
"And?" prompted Laura, pouring out two small Sherries and bringing them back to their warm spot by the roaring fire.
"And I know nothing about you, Professor you."
"I'm not sure how much there is to know, really," pondered Laura thoughtfully, sipping her sherry as she watched the flames.
"What was he like?"
"Who?"
"Morse, Robbie...Strange when he was a Super...there's all this history that I don't know..." admitted Jean, finally voicing what she'd felt pressing on her from the moment she'd first stepped into the station almost a decade earlier.
"They were people, just people..." pondered Laura, lost in the memories of the people and cases of her shared past with Robbie, "...but they're ghosts now."
"It's a good night for ghost stories..." observed Jean, her comment coinciding with another flash of lightning, "...and this sherry's very good."
"Morse was...someone Robbie could tell you much, much more about, obviously." Laura kicked off her boots so she could curl up more comfortably in the armchair, smiling at Jean in encouragement to get equally comfortable, "I only did a handful cases with him, and the first one didn't exactly get off to a good start."
"Oh? What happened?"
"She called him Chief Inspector Mouse," said a new voice from the doorway where a very wet former Inspector stood, dripping.
"What?" Grinning, Jean made no attempt to conceal her amusement, amusement that Laura ignored as she stood up and headed to her bedraggled partner.
"You ok?"
"Yeah, it's only water. But there's no way you'd have got down the lane on your bike, I only just got out with the Land Rover," explained Robbie, running his hand through his wet hair.
"Mary's making up the guest room for Jean to stay the night and apparently Fred's got some new beer for you to try after dinner."
"Good job I put food down for Monty..." Robbie leaned forwards and pressed a kiss to Laura's cheek before asking softly, "...she ok?"
"Yeah..." Laura returned the kiss before saying slightly more loudly, "...you want to go get dry?"
"Alright pet, I'll be back in a bit," and, as abruptly as he'd appeared, a very wet Robbie Lewis disappeared, intent on heading out across the Quad to Laura's rooms where a hot shower and dry clothes awaited him, as well as some umbrellas they could use to move around the College without getting completely drenched.
"Chief Inspector Mouse?" asked Jean finally, once Laura was settled again in her chair, sherry glass in hand.
"It was my first day on call and the note I'd been passed was written in the worst handwriting imaginable."
"So says a Doctor!" teased Jean, knowing that Laura's handwriting was not without character. "When was that?"
"Oh, mid 90s sometime...it wasn't that long after I'd returned, so 1995?"
"And you never left?" asked Jean, trying to work out why, if Laura had been in Oxford for 20 years, she'd only worked with Morse a few times.
"No, but I've never taken many cases, and I probably do more now than I did in Morse's time."
"Oh?" There was a piece of this jigsaw that Jean was missing and she was rapidly concluding that the pieces that would be the hardest to extract from Laura would be those pieces that were about Laura herself.
"As you know, I was a student here..." Laura trailed off as she remembered the time when her professional and personal life had collided in the worst possible way by being delayed going to dinner with a friend to be called to a body that was her friend.
"...well, once I'd got my MD and my DPhil I went away but came back in the mid 90s to do research and teach. That first case I wasn't actually supposed to take, but there was a staff shortage and I was technically on the Coroner's staff, so off I went."
"And that's how you met Lewis?"
"Yes, that's the first time I met Robbie... twenty years ago," confirmed Laura thoughtfully, her mind flashing with memories of that day when a grumpy DCI and his Geordie DS had first got in her way over a dead body, "... but I only did four or five cases a year, so only worked with Morse on a few of them. Contrary to how he sometimes behaved, there were other Detectives capable of solving murders and securing convictions."
"What were you doing the rest of the time?" asked Jean, fascinated. It was about this time she was start to move out of uniform and start gaining the specialist experience in the various different squads at the Met.
"Teaching, research... doing some hospital work and discovering that I didn't mind the teaching but I did generally prefer my patients to be dead."
"Which explains why you're not my GP?"
"I'd be a horrible GP," laughed Laura, shuddering at the idea of having to sit in an office every day and be nice to the constant stream of people who could have anything from a cold to a cancer, "much easier to find the answer if you can cut right through to the problem and have a look for yourself!"
"One way to deal with waiting lists..." mused Jean, taking another sip of the very good sherry and waiting for Laura to continue with her story.
"True, but not sustainable. Anyway, around about the time Morse died I started to do more coroner work and somehow became part of the furniture."
"When did you become Chief?"
"Just before Val died, so it was already old news by the time you arrived," said Laura, her body language subtly suggesting to Jean that she didn't really want to pursue that line of questioning any further.
"Which is a polite way of saying I roared in and trampled on everyone and everything," observed Jean wryly, having enough self-awareness to recognise that, in retrospect, she had been a bit too fierce in her early days at Oxford.
"You made quite a first impression," agreed Laura, deciding she'd had quite enough cross examination for one evening and that it was now time to turn the tables, "still do, sometimes."
"I'm probably too old to change."
"If 'old' is a euphemism for experienced and headstrong, then here's to two old gals," joked Laura, raising her glass, knowing it was a bit mean of her to pick on Jean's style of leadership when, in her own twin backyards of the hospital and university department, Laura was not entirely flexible.
"I'll drink to that," said Jean, joining in the toast, pleased she wasn't driving as it really was an excellent sherry.
"Is your car ok?"
"Parked at the Station – one of the perks I suppose."
"And no Mr Innocent waiting on your return this evening?" asked Laura slyly, wondering if tonight was the night Jean Innocent would finally crack.
"Nope, not for another 3 weeks." Maybe it was the sherry, maybe it was the firelight, but either way, that was rather more than she normally let on about her husband.
"What exactly does he do?" asked Laura, recognising that this was probably the only moment she would ever get to find out about her friend's seemingly reclusive and absent husband.
"Tim? Not really sure actually," said Jean thoughtfully, "but then he'd say the same about me I think."
"Jean!" Laura tempered her frustration with a smile, letting her friend know she was only superficially mad.
"What?" Bemused, Jean waited for a question she could answer, not really realising how evasive she was appearing.
"Who does Tim work for?"
"Technically, the Queen," began Jean, only to recognise that logical pedantry was not what Laura was after, "he's an officer in the Royal Navy – currently his rank is Commodore."
"And he's at sea?" asked Laura, trying to keep the conversation going whilst all the pieces of the jigsaw that was 'Mr Innocent' started falling into place for her, from the conscious lack of details about him and what he did to the lack of presence.
"Yes, but he'll be back for Christmas," explained Jean, unable to stop the smile that almost always formed when she thought about him.
Before Laura could ask anything further, their conversation was interrupted by the reappearance of a much drier Robbie, who, carrying a cup of tea and the sherry decanter, came and joined them in front of the fire.
"Top up?" he asked, even as he was pouring the sherry into their glasses.
"Thanks – I haven't had sherry this good since…" Jean paused, trying to place the date, only to decide that it was an embarrassingly long time ago, so changed her mind and went for a place instead, "…since I was working special events in the Met."
"The Met had good sherry?" asked Robbie, surprised.
"No, but the MoD did."
"You've lost me," said Robbie, prompting a half smile from Laura as Jean huffed a small sigh and switched into what Laura knew some of the more junior officers called her 'explaining to idiots' voice.
"Special Event planning often involved the MoD - I used to have lots of meetings with them, back in the days when a sherry was offered as often as a coffee."
"Was that how you met Tim?"
"Yes, actually. He was doing a staff posting with HQ London Division."
"Good bloke," said Robbie suddenly, earning him a startled look from Laura.
"He thinks the same of you, but I didn't know you knew."
"I didn't, not exactly."
"Wait, you mean you know Jean's husband?" Laura's head was spinning – had Robbie really known all these years and kept the details to himself.
"Know is a bit strong pet, I've had a few beers with him."
"In Oxford?"
"No, Road Town. The Royal Navy ships would tie up for a day or two and, when they did the Captain would generally come and play nice with the policeman whose week they were about to ruin."
"Ruin?"
"Generally they only visited if they had a particularly good seizure that they wanted to offload from the ship – in which case, the Island police detachment had to log all the evidence and people ready for onward transit to whichever country wanted it."
"And we all know how much you love paperwork," teased Laura.
"Anyway, your 'Mr Innocent' was one of the better ones," conceded Robbie, wondering what Jean's reaction was going to be.
"He's a Commodore now."
"Good on him," said Robbie, genuinely pleased for the man who, on the two occasions he'd sat and drank a beer with him, had come across as a down to earth and decent man.
"When did you know?" asked Jean.
"I had a pretty good idea about 3 months after I'd got back to Oxford, when I'd heard about a 'Mr Innocent' that no one had seen. Knew for sure when I met Chris: he looks a lot like his Dad."
"And you never said anything," marvelled Jean, knowing she owed a lot to this unassuming Geordie whose judgement she'd come to trust more than her own at times.
"Nowt to do with anyone else…" shrugged Robbie, only to be stopped by the sound of the gong alerting them to the fact that dinner was served, "…can I escort you ladies into dinner?"
And, with a smile and not too much cracking of back and knees, he managed to stand and offer a hand to both ladies, a hand Jean took briefly before, with a quick squeeze of thanks as she stood, she dropped it, leaving Robbie and Laura to lead the way to the dining room, hands together and feet instinctively in step.
As the three friends headed towards another roaring fire and a good meal with equally good conversation and company, they all instinctively shared the same thought – It wasn't quite how any of them had planned to spend yet another ordinary Autumnal Thursday evening and yet, why exactly had it taken this long?
Thanks for reading