Deus ex Machina
Although his sense of self preservation was not as finely honed as it once had been, Dr. Blake was no fool. Well...not all of the time. And when the arrival of his housekeeper, home at last from the church theatrical committee meeting, was marked by the slamming of the front door hard enough to rattles the pane and the solid twack of a script book slamming onto the kitchen table…
Suffice it to say, he was smart enough to knock back what was left of the whiskey in his glass and flip to the next page of his newspaper. While he couldn't keep his eyes from drifting over towards the kitchen, where sounds of a tea kettle being vigorously filled echoed, he was damned if he was going to make an appearance before whatever was eating Jean Beezley had run its course.
She'd be in soon enough and he'd get an ear wag. Casting an another quick glance towards the kitchen, wincing at the slam of a cupboard, he quickly made sure there was sufficient sherry left in the decanter – just in case.
"Would you care for a cuppa?" she called from kitchen. Her tone of voice implied that the question was a polite formality at best rather than a sincere offer.
"Ah...no, I don't think so. Thanks anyway," he replied, pouring himself another shot.
Folding the paper up and setting it to one side occupied his time until Jean finally made an appearance. Although her expression appeared calm, she gripped her tea cup as if she was preparing to hurl it into the back garden. The script book was in her other hand, tapping lightly against her leg.
"Why don't you join me, Jean," he offered, keeping a wary eye on her cup while wondering if that scriptbook was going to leave bruises on her thigh. He wouldn't be averse to helping ice it.
She sat in the chair across from him with a heavy sigh. He admired the graceful cross of her ankles for a moment, then looked at her expectantly.
"How was the meeting? Did you decide on a spring production?"
"We certainly did," she replied with an eyeroll. She extended the script book towards him and he accepted it gingerly.
"Pygmalion?" he mused, trying to place it. "George Bernard Shaw…a bit light on the drama for this group, isn't it?"
"We decided last year that we'd like to try for lighter fare for a change," she replied. "Well, Susan decided, anyway, and we followed her lead, of course."
Lucien felt the corners of his mouth twitch up into a smirk, which he tried unsuccessfully to hide from Jean. She glared at him for a moment before tossing her head and lifting her cup to her lips.
"I wonder who told her she was funny," he muttered, grinning when Jean sputtered into her tea.
"Doubt it was Patrick," she replied dryly. "At any go, we'll find out, won't we. She's eyeing Eliza Doolittle like it already belongs to her."
"Susan Tyneman trying on a cockney accent," he mused. "That'll be worth the price of admission right there."
Jean tried unsuccessfully to stifle a bark of laughter, then shook her head with a resigned smile.
"Auditions are Tuesday. I guess I'd better decide which supporting role I'm going for."
"Well, whatever you do, I'm sure it'll be loverly."
The look she threw him - half pleased, half exasperated - was worth the price of admission as well.
"Lucien! It's the Superintendent!"
"Right..right..." he muttered as she nearly threw the phone at him in her haste to return to preparing for play rehearsal. He indulged in a quick eyeball of her retreating figure as she attempted to secure an earring while juggling her script book under her arm. Her dedication to the show in spite of the fact that she had been given the role of Mrs. Pearce - the bloody housekeeper - baffled and impressed him by turns.
"I'm assuming there's an insalubrious corpse somewhere out there, Matthew?"
"Hello to you too, Blake," the Chief Superintendent barked irritably. "Would I be bothering with you if there wasn't?"
"Probably not," Blake replied cheerfully. "Any details?"
"You'll love this. There is a dead body in the cellar of the Tyneman's bloody manor."
"You don't say?"
"And if the Tyneman's butler is to be believed, there's every indication that the dead woman was up to no good," Matthew added.
"I'm not surp- dead woman? You did say 'dead woman' didn't you?"
"I did," Matthew replied grimly. "It's not pretty, Blake."
"It never is," Blake replied quietly. "I'll be on my way, then."
"And try not to set Patrick Tyneman's bloody back up the minute you get here."
"Why do you ask the impossible of me, Matthew?"
"Hop it, Blake!" Matthew snapped, hanging up the line. He stared at the phone in his hand in bemusement for a moment.
"You're called out, I suppose?" Jean asked as she shrugged into her coat.
"It would appear so," he replied absently, his mind already in the basement of the Tyneman's house. He caught a glimpse of disappointment on her face as she turned away to grab her handbag. "I could drop you on the way, if you'd like."
"Could you? That would be wonderful. I'm sure I can get a ride home."
Lucien frowned briefly at the thought of the director bringing Jean home at the end of rehearsal, then hurried to grab his own outerwear and open the door for his housekeeper.
Lucien arrived to a scene of utter chaos. While police officers went about their business as efficiently as they could considering the broad grins on their faces, the Police Superintendent was trying desperately to prevent Susan Tyneman from attacking her husband with a vase. Blake was no judge of decorative accents, but he'd wager that vase was worth more than his yearly stipend from the Ballarat Police Force. Patrick, while trying to avoid the wrath of his wife, was bellowing that he had absolutely no idea who the dead woman in the cellar was, and he most certainly hadn't been sleeping with her.
"What are the odds he's telling the truth?" Blake muttered to Sgt. Charlie Davis as he slipped past the altercation to descend towards the cellar.
"I'm not a gambling man, Doc." Charlie with a roll of his eyes and shone his torch down the stairs.
"Electricity not working?" Balke asked as he descended cautiously. The stairs underfoot were coated in a sticky substance. "What's this?
"Creosote," Charlie replied. The Tynemans were having the stairs gritted to prevent the maid from falling when she took the laundry down. I guess they lost one last month to a broken collar bone."
"Bloody kind of them..." Blake trailed off when the torch light hit the body of a young woman sprawled out on the dirt floor of the cellar. He squinted at the shadow emerging from her spine until it resolved into a steel breaker bar.
He and Charlie stood in silence for a moment before Lucien let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. As he crouched down to get a better look at the two feet of steel sticking out of her back, he noticed a wire trialing from her hand into the darkness.
"Play your light over there, Charlie," he ordered.
As Charlie did so, their eyes followed the wire until it disappeared into a nondescript red box with a toggle switch on the side and a timer face on the top. Blake drew in a quick breath.
"What's that?" Charlie murmured to himself, beginning to walk closer to the box. He was abruptly tackled from behind. "Doc! What the bloody hell is wrong with you?"
Not bothering to answer the outraged sergeant, Blake collared him and dragged him towards the stairs.
"Get everyone out of here!" he bellowed up the stairs as loudly as he could. Pushing a reluctant, sputtering Charlie ahead of him, they stumbled up the dark, sticky stairs as quickly as they could.
"What are you on about?" Matthew demanded as they burst into the kitchen. Patrick Tyneman glared furiously at Blake as he sprawled on the floor. He quickly levered himself to his feet.
"Get a demo team out here, Matthew," he ordered grimly. "She wired to a bloody detonator of some sort."
A flash of fear crossed Matthew's face, but he immediately began ordering everyone to evacuate.
"What d'you mean, Blake? How would you know if there was a bomb? You claim to be a doctor," Patrick snarled.
"I've seen them before, Patrick, but if you'd like to go down and check, be my bloody guest."
Mr. Tyneman declined the offer and evacuated as ordered, but not without a great deal of grumbling. It was going to be a long night for all concerned.
Chief Superintendent Matthew Lawson scrubbed his face with his hands and heaved a long sigh. The head of the demo team held out the detonator with a bemused expression.
"So, you're telling me there's no way this would have gone off? No way at all?"
"Not like this. It's for plastique and the only explosives down there in that bag were a few sticks of old dynamite, probably cadged from an abandoned mine site. They were sweating up a storm and might have gone pop, but certainly wouldn't have taken out the house, even if it had been hooked up proper to the detonator. Complete amateur attempt, if that what is was."
Lucien cringed slightly at the jaundiced glare his old friend cast his way.
"Sorry to have brought you out for this," the Chief Superintendent apologized to the demolitions team.
"No worries," the team leader replied cheerfully. "Better safe than sorry, eh? It had all the looks of a boomer, it just never would have gone off."
With that, hands were shaken all around and the officers of the Ballarat Police were left with a dead woman lying in the cellar with three foot of steel bar thrust through her torso. As one, they turned to look at the police surgeon.
"Well," he said brightly, "best get on with it. C'mon, Charlie, let's figure out how to get that poor, young woman out of the cellar."
"Yes, why don't you do that, Blake," Matthew said, shaking his head and turning to leave. Lucien grabbed his shoulder to stop him.
"You've got the Tynemans down at the station?"
"Where else?"
"We've still got a case of foul play here," he began. Matthew gave him a skeptical look. "Breaker bars don't spring naturally from the bodies of young women, Matthew. And young women no one has ever seen before don't typically show up dead sporting a bag full of explosives in a cellar."
"Yeah...about that..."
"Oh get off it! If you'd seen the bloody wire and box in the torchlight next to a speared corpse, you'd have gotten out sharpish too."
"Fair enough," Matthew admitted. "What's your point about the Tynemans?"
"Someone wanted to blow them up; they just didn't know how to go about it. We've got to figure it out before they can settle back in." Looking around to make sure no one was listening, Lucien lowered his voice. "It would be easier all around if they were off in, well, protective custody somewhere."
"You mean, like Melbourne?"
"I was thinking Perth," Lucien replied dryly, "but Melbourne would do, if they stay away until we get this sorted."
"That could take weeks, Blake!"
"Why, yes. Yes it could."
Matthew just shook his head in exasperation as Lucien winked at him.
"Alright then," he said as he kneeled next to the body, the Kleig lights they'd hauled down for the demo team lighting up the Tyneman's cellar like mid-day. "What are we going to do with you?"
"What in heaven's name is all over your suit?!"
Lucien winced and rubbed the back of his head. Jean stalked into the sitting room, holding his creosote covered suit out in front of her and shook them in his general direction. The case of the speared co-ed hadn't left him with a lot of time on his hands and he'd not had time to ditch the evidence from the bottom of his wardrobe.
"It's creosote," he said wearily.
"This will never come out," she informed him indignantly. "If you're going to be crawling about on railway ties at your crime scenes, perhaps you ought to wear some dungarees!"
He nodded in agreement and apologized profusely, but Jean was not best pleased to have to throw out an expensive suit. And she didn't seem to believe his sincere promises to be more careful in future.
Convincing the Tynemans to go to Melbourne for their safety and the opportunity to work on their marriage had been easier than dealing with his housekeeper as she coped with taking on the lead role in the spring production while keeping up with the house as he and Charlie were in and out at all hours.
However, his suggestion that maybe Susan, at least, might be able to return under police protection for rehearsals hadn't gone over well.
Not well at all.
"Ah well," he said to himself as he watched Jean throw his second best suit into the bin while she whispered her lines to herself, "the show must go on, after all."
Hopefully they'd get this mystery cleared up before opening night. He'd already reserved a ticket.