The episode as broadcast takes us from the fight at the Flamingo at night to Milner reporting the incident to Foyle the next morning. How did Milner know about it? Obviously, Sam told him, but we don't see that scene. So I wrote this (years ago) to fill in the hole.
September 1940Paul Milner shifted his long limbs to a more comfortable position in his chair and turned a page of the newspaper he was trying to read. Behind him, muffled by the closed door, he could hear the steady flow of water filling the bathtub. He stared down at an article about the Italian advances in Egypt but his mind was unable to take in the news. Instead, he was imagining the scene now taking place behind the bathroom door: Jane removing her dressing gown, immersing herself in the warm water, drops clinging to her … Don't think about it, he told himself firmly. Think about something else.
Not an easy thing for Milner to do these days. He had hoped, when his wife had abruptly left to visit her sister in Wales for a couple of weeks, that she would use the time to reconcile herself to the reality of his new circumstances. It hadn't happened. Despite the fact that her visit had lengthened to nearly three months, she had returned as emotionally distant as before. He was no longer able to deny that she seemed physically repelled – by his amputated stump, by his prosthetic leg, by him. She'd been home now for less than a fortnight and each small rejection caused him fresh pain. The way she turned away from his kiss. The locked bathroom door. Her averted eyes when he undressed at night, as though she were desperate to avoid looking at his maimed limb. The rigid body next to him in bed, back turned firmly against any advances he might venture to make.
Isn't it enough that I've been crippled? he thought morosely, the newsprint blurring before his weary eyes. No more sport? No more driving? Am I to lose my wife as well?
He loved Jane. Theirs had been a happy marriage for the first year or so, until the war broke out. She'd opposed his joining up, pointing out the potential for rapid career enhancement in a police force denuded of personnel, but he had enlisted anyway, irresistibly drawn by a sense of duty to King and country. And now here he was a year later, faced with a maimed body and a crumbling marriage, trying to pick up the pieces of his police career.
There, that was something else he could think about – their latest case. Black-market petrol. Milner's return to the police force three months ago was proving to be his salvation, providing not only an outlet for his mental energies but also an arena in which he could feel he was still contributing to the war effort. He was only starting to realize how much he owed his superior officer, DCS Foyle, not only for giving him the opportunity to return to police work but also for accepting his disability with neither revulsion nor pity.
His jaw tightened as he remembered their interview with suspected fuel racketeer Frank Gannon that morning in his dimly lit office over his nightclub, the Flamingo. The crook's thinly disguised contempt for the law and his smooth false bleating about patriotism had made Milner want to slam his oily head into a wall. God, he hoped they'd get something on Gannon soon. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to put that man in prison for a very long time.
The telephone interrupted his musings. Rather late for someone to be calling, he thought as he got to his feet. Getting on towards eleven o'clock. "Paul Milner speaking."
"Milner!" said a female voice, high-pitched and rather breathless. "It's Sam. I'm sorry for ringing so late, but …"
He was instantly on alert. "What is it? Has something happened?"
"Well, rather – "
"At the Flamingo?"
"Yes."
"Do you want me to come down?"
She hesitated. "Well, I – I'm not really sure. Bit of a disaster, really …"
That was enough for him. "I'm on my way. Where are you? Still at the club?"
"No. I'm at a call box just down the hill, on Warden Street."
"Right. Be there as soon as I can." He rang off.
Quickly Milner tightened his tie and shrugged into his coat. Briefly he considered telephoning the station for a ride but dismissed the idea when he remembered how short-staffed the night patrol was. And since The Flamingo wasn't too far away, it would probably be just as fast to walk anyway. He was half-way to the door when he remembered his wife.
Crossing to the bathroom, he rapped lightly. "Jane?"
He heard a faint gasp. "Yes?" she said tightly.
"I have to go out. Work. Don't wait up for me."
There was a pause. "All right," came the reply. She didn't trouble to disguise the relief in her voice.
Don't think about it, he told himself again as he snatched his hat and overcoat from the hall-tree and hurried out into the night.
He found Samantha Stewart exactly where she said she'd be, by the phone box at the bottom of Warden Street. Much to his surprise, he didn't recognise her until she spoke his name. To be sure, with the blackout regulations in force the only illumination was provided by the moon and his small pocket torch, but still – he realised that he'd been looking for Sam as she always appeared, in trim khaki uniform and regulation flat service shoes, hair pinned up behind in the ubiquitous Victory roll. He'd never seen her dressed as she was now, in a flowing, feminine dress, earrings and high heels.
"Sam," he greeted her. "What's happened? Is everything all right?"
"I'm not sure," she replied. "There was a – a fight."
"A fight!" He strained to see her clearly in the darkness. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes, I'm fine. It's just – there's this man, O'Halloran …"
"Wait," he interrupted her. "Not here." He nodded up the lane toward the club, which was filling the air with a jazzy dance tune. "Come on."
He tried to think of the best location for them to go to talk. The police station, the most logical place, was inconveniently distant. He considered taking her to his house before he remembered his wife's likely reaction. Especially after that unfortunate misunderstanding a few weeks back, when Jane had walked in on him with Sam in his kitchen. Overhearing Sam's giddy chatter about dancing, she had jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion. For heaven's sake, he wasn't interested in Sam! Certainly she was bright and lively and enthusiastic but to Milner she seemed scarcely more than a child. No, better not bring her home with him again, especially this late in the evening.
What about Sam's own digs then? He couldn't imagine that her landlady was likely to look favourably upon her arriving home with a male caller at this hour. In the end he directed her into a nearby hotel called The Crescent, steering her to a sofa in a quiet corner of the lounge. "All right, Sam. Tell me what happened. From the beginning."
The girl took a deep breath. Under the brighter lights of the hotel she looked distressed and rather pale, despite the carefully applied makeup. "Well, we went to The Flamingo, you know. Connie and Violet took me."
"Connie and Violet?"
"Connie Dewar and Violet – Violet Davies, I think. They both work at Bexhill."
"Are they tanker drivers?"
"Connie is. Violet's a clerk in the office."
"I see. What time did you get there?"
"About eight, I think."
"Did you meet someone?"
"There was a group of pilots – Connie's and Violet's boyfriends, and some others. Everything was fine for a while, and then this man started talking to me in the bar. I've seen him at Bexhill – he's in charge of the crew building the new fuel tanks. His name's Sean O'Halloran. He was nice enough at first, but then he seemed to get … well, suspicious, I suppose. He said I asked too many questions. At any rate, he suddenly said that if you work with petrol it ruins your hands and demanded to know why mine weren't." She raised her right arm, cradling it with her left. "He grabbed hold of my wrist and wouldn't let go."
Milner's eyes widened. "Did he hurt you?" he demanded.
"No, not really … not much, anyway …"
The sergeant frowned at the faint discolorations on her pale skin, the beginning of bruises. "How did you get him to let go?"
Sam looked uncomfortable. "I didn't … Andrew did."
"Andrew? Andrew Foyle?"
She nodded. He looked at her in surprise but made no comment. Instead he asked, "So what about the fight?"
"Well …" Sam swallowed. "Andrew started shouting at O'Halloran. He told him to get out and that the Irish were just over here to get rich while we fight. Before I knew what was happening the whole room was fighting."
"Who threw the first punch?" Milner asked. Sam opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Andrew?" The girl nodded reluctantly.
"But really, he only did it because he was defending me! I mean, he may not like the Irish, but it was only when he saw O'Halloran – well, bullying me – "
"I understand," he told her. "Tell me about O'Halloran. What do you know about him?"
"Not much. His name's Sean O'Halloran. From County Offerly, I think he said."
"What does he look like?"
"Mid-twenties, I'd say … tall. Reddish-brown hair. Brown eyes."
Milner nodded, his mind already churning over the possibilities. Was this O'Halloran involved with the fuel racket? Or did he have other, more sinister associations?
"All right, Sam," he said after a moment, noticing how tired she looked. "Let's go. Time we get you home." They slipped out of the hotel. "Where do you live?" he asked once they were back on the pavement.
"Off St. Helen's Road, near Alexandra Park. But it's all right; I can go by myself."
Milner insisted on accompanying her; he wasn't about to let a young girl make her way across Hastings unescorted in the blackout, especially at such an hour. After he had delivered her safely to her digs he turned toward home, thinking about what he'd learned tonight. Foremost in his mind was O'Halloran's treatment of Sam and what it might portend. If the Irishman was involved in the theft of petrol, had Sam's questions made him suspicious? Suspicious enough to put her in danger?
He frowned. He felt more than a little responsible for the girl's safety, since he had supported her when she'd volunteered to go undercover at the Bexhill depot. Sam's account of O'Halloran's manhandling was more than enough to raise his protective instincts. He certainly couldn't fault Andrew Foyle for stepping in to defend her; surely any decent man would have done the same. But to have turned the situation into an anti-Irish fisticuffs … well, that was something else again.
Milner suddenly realised that he was going to have to report the story to Andrew Foyle's father in the morning. All of it. His frown deepened. He certainly wasn't looking forward to that …
THE END