The Might-Have-Beens
Author: Firebird9
Rating: T
Aaand I'm back. Wow, that lasted a long time, didn't it?
What if WWI had never happened?
Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was enjoying a peaceful Sunday afternoon at home with his wife and children. Really, he wondered, what more could a man want out of life than a game of backyard cricket with his sons after church while his wife and daughters prepared a delicious meal inside? True, he would have liked to have seen a bit more of the world: he had gone overseas once, in 1914, meaning to serve in the European War, but after the initial hostilities it had all come to nothing, and by the time he and his fellow antipodeans had arrived in England there had been little to do except turn around and come back home. In a way it was a shame. Jack would have liked the chance to test his mettle against a real enemy, to engage in the kind of death-or-glory actions he had read about in books, but he supposed the life of a Senior Detective Inspector would have to suffice until he could make a move further up the ladder. For the moment, the police force was top-heavy, but with retirements looming for many of the most senior officers his father-in-law assured him that he wouldn't have to wait much longer. It would certainly be a relief. Johnny would be ready for university soon, and that wouldn't come cheap, but Jack was determined to see his talented eldest son make something of himself. Not for him the ever-straitened circumstances of a humble police officer. Perhaps if the wages were higher... but the Powers that Be knew what they were doing. You could always trust those in authority.
"Father? The telephone for you!" Ada called from the doorway, and he reluctantly pitched the ball back to young George.
"Duty calls, I fear," he told the boys before heading inside.
It was, of course, a homicide, and he kissed his wife's cheek – darling Rosie, whom he made certain to keep well-sheltered from the horrors that permeated his working life – before making his way to the morgue to examine the body. A woman, pale-skinned and dark-haired, gaunt and worn by hardship and want, her tattered dress and many scars testimony to a life of poverty and abuse, the bruises around her neck telling the story of a violent end.
"Do we know who she is?" he asked the young constable, thinking of home, and lunch, and wanting to get this cleared up quickly. It was beyond him why they had felt the need to call him in for another dead harlot.
"Uh, yes sir. Seems she has quite a record. Breaking and entering, theft, assault, prostitution. She hails from Collingwood. Name of Phryne – sorry, sir, I'm not quite sure how you pronounce that – Fisher."
...
Jack Robinson sat bolt upright in bed, panting in terror, feeling his horror subside only slowly as he looked down at the woman lying peacefully asleep between silken sheets at his side. The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, his lover. Surely not, he thought. Phryne was clever, resourceful. Surely such a fate as that would never have befallen her, no matter how bad the hand Fortune might have dealt her. And yet... He could accept that he had been right to do his duty in the War, but he couldn't help but wonder whether it had been worth the personal cost; his mates, his marriage, the life he might have led, the lives that might have been, had things only been different. He had never really thought too much about what might have become of Phryne, had the War not intervened to raise her from the circumstances of her birth. Tonight, for the first time, he thought that just maybe her future had been worth his.