27 May 1959
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Matthew grumbled as he came marching towards his desk - the desk Lucien was currently sitting behind, staring at the autopsy report.
"Now, Matthew," Lucien said with a forced and brittle cheerfulness, "where would I want to be if not here with you?"
"That's what I've been wondering," Matthew said. He flapped his hand vaguely and Lucien rose to his feet, slipping out from behind the desk so that Matthew could reclaim his chair. "For months I can't get you out of my hair, and then suddenly you're rushing off home every day at teatime."
"Every other day," Lucien grumbled under his breath. He had standing appointments with Jean every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, and though he had a somewhat lackadaisical approach to punctuality he had determined from the outset that he would, always, be there for Jean when she needed him. Only she didn't appear to need him now; certainly didn't appear to want him. He could still hear her voice in his mind, raggedly begging him to leave, and it grieved him now, all these many hours later, as much as it had done that morning. It grieved him to think that his presence wounded her, offended her, grieved him to think that he had caused her distress, that she preferred solitude to his company. He had been trying, so damnably hard, to look after her, to keep her comfortable, to make her happy, to the extent that it was within his power to do any of those things. He had thought at her birthday that perhaps they might have reached a crossroads in their relationship, that perhaps all the mistrust and misgivings were behind them, that they were, at last, friends, actual friends, not just courteous housemates. It would seem he had been wrong, on that score.
"What was that?"
"I said your man was poisoned," Lucien said, changing the subject at once. Jean's ailment was not exactly a secret; the ladies from the sewing circle came by to visit, on occasion, and if they knew then surely the whole town knew. Still, it was not something that Lucien was prepared to discuss with anyone; Jean guarded her privacy too fiercely for him to be loose with the details of her disease now. He'd not told a soul, not even Matthew, that it was Jean he was meant to be looking after when he raced out of the station with one eye on his watch, but perhaps word had reached the Superintendent's ear. Then again, perhaps not; Matthew didn't attend the church, and he had no wife to bring gossip home from the butcher's. Unsure of how to interpret Matthew's pointed comment - which seemed to carry with it an insinuation of something, though Lucien couldn't be sure quite what that something was - Lucien elected to ignore it entirely.
"Presence of petechiae," Lucien said, handing over the autopsy report. "And blood in the sputum. Alice has sent some blood samples off to the lab for further testing."
"Any idea what we're looking at?" Matthew was ostensibly perusing the report, but Lucien knew he wasn't actually reading it; he'd get his answers from Lucien's own lips, the way he always did.
"No idea yet," Lucien said. "Probably not anything too exotic, here in Ballarat. We'll know more in a day or two."
"Right," Matthew said, closing the report and slapping it down on the desktop. "Danny and Bill have finished interviewing the witnesses, and so far we've got nothing. We'll come back to it in the morning. Time for you to go home, Blake."
Lucien grimaced. Yes, he really ought to go home. He really ought to check in on Jean; usually when she had a difficult morning he liked to look in on her at lunchtime, but she'd been so frightfully distraught, and so terribly cross with him, that he had instead spent most of the day hiding from her. Oh, he would never have described his behavior as such, not if forced to defend himself - he did need to perform the autopsy and he did need to pop into the hospital to speak with Nicholson and the sandwich from the cafe had been perfectly acceptable, as far as lunches went - but he knew himself well enough to recognize cowardice in his own heart. He was afraid that he had somehow, however unknowingly, offended Jean, afraid that she would close her door to him, no longer allow him to come and sit on the sofa in front of the fire with her, afraid of how his heart would break, should she look at him with eyes baleful and angry, and not warm and affectionate.
There had been affection in her before now, he was certain. She had smiled at him so gently, had held his hand while he sat next to her on her birthday, the little brooch balanced beneath their hands on her lap. Surely, he thought, if she was not at least somewhat fond of him she would not have turned her hand over beneath his, would not have twined their fingers together, would not have clung to him so fiercely.
Unless she was only afraid, a nasty little voice whispered in the back of his mind. Unless she was only looking for comfort wherever she could find it. And you no longer offer her any comfort at all. She blames you for doing this to her. For making her so ill. For losing her beautiful hair. You did this to her.
No, Lucien wasn't ready to go home just yet. To face a cold supper of leftover stew and a chunk of bread gone stale three days after its making, to face the doors of the studio closed to him once more, to feel the chill air of dissatisfaction and regret and resentment that must surely be festering in that place, now that Jean had been laid so low by his own hands. He was only trying to help her, to save her, to give her back the life she should have had, but she grew paler and thinner by the day, and his many years' experience as a doctor had taught him that no outcome was guaranteed. What if Jean could have lived out her days in only mild discomfort, and been taken quickly by failing organs, rather than the protracted, undignified suffering he'd brought to her? What if in trying to save her he had killed her, just the same?
With such terrible thoughts swirling through his mind there was only one place he could go. He took himself off to the club, to a dark corner of the reading room, and hid his face behind a newspaper, purchasing round after round, trying to ignore the way Cec's expression grew increasingly more concerned as the evening slipped by. He drank with a grim determination, for his mind was a prison of memories; he had thought that by putting his girls on a boat he had saved them, but they had been lost just the same, and no matter how the intrepid Mister Kim continued to search Lucien was becoming more convinced by the day that they were gone. Killed by his decisions, his prideful choice to send them to Hong Kong, rather than to his father. And now Jean, too, was fading quickly, suffering, laid low by a choice he had made. Accusations and dreadful pleas echoed through his mind, and the minutes passed slowly, heavy with self-recrimination.
It was very, very late. On any other night Jean would have long since gone to bed; she longed for it now, exhausted down to her very bones and hardly able to keep her eyes open, but she had resolved herself not to sleep until she saw Lucien's face. His supper sat on the table in front of her, gone cold beneath the cloth she'd used to cover it. Her tea had gone cold, too, though she still cradled the mug in her hands, a thin excuse to remain where she was. Mattie had trudged up the stairs perhaps half an hour earlier, but still Jean lingered, sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in her robe, listening hard for the sound of Lucien's footsteps at the door.
It was the first night since she'd fallen ill that Lucien hadn't been home in time for supper. It wouldn't take a genius detective to work out why he'd suddenly chosen this day to stay away; Jean knew it was her own doing, her own bitter words that had sent him fleeing. The moment she'd gathered her wits that morning she'd known she'd made a mistake, and she had been waiting all day for a chance to make things right, but though the hours passed Lucien did not arrive, and the gravity of her error pricked at her like a thousand tiny needles. Things had been going so well between them; they had been comfortable and content with one another, and he had been so kind, and she had been so grateful to him. Her outburst that morning had not been a result of his own conduct, but if he never came home she'd never have the chance to explain it to him. And then what would become of them?
He doesn't want anything to do with you, a sad little voice whispered from deep within her heart. He only helped you because he felt responsible, and now you've gone and thrown his help back in his teeth.
Would he still consent to keep her on, when she could not feed him, could not clean up after him, and could not even be bothered to offer him gratitude in exchange for all the many things he had done for her?
Perhaps I should have gone with young Christopher, after all.
That might have been easier. It might have been easier for Lucien, not to have to look after her, and it might have been easier for Jean, not to remain in such close proximity to him. For the longer she stayed in his house, the more often he touched her, the more often she caught sight of his gentle smile, the more her heart began to ache. For comfort, for affection, for the warmth of a hand to hold, for a heart that understood her own, for the connection she'd not shared with another living soul since Christopher's death. These things she yearned for desperately, now that she found herself alone, without occupation, and full of fear. And perhaps, she might allow if forced to speak the truth of it, perhaps she had begun to long for those things with him. But how could he ever care for her in such a way, when she was wretched, and weak, another burden for him to carry, when she was no longer lovely, or strong, or any of the things she once had been? No, it would be better to leave him entirely than to waste away beneath his pitying stare.
Behind her she heard the sound of the front door opening, and rose slowly to her feet, her heart beginning to race. The time had come for Jean to apologize to him, to explain herself, but remorse had always tasted bitter in her mouth, and she was not looking forward to this, to asking for his forgiveness. But she must, and so she would; Jean Beazley never backed down from an obligation simply because it was difficult.
But as she started to cross the kitchen she could hear Lucien's lumbering footsteps, could hear him crash into the entry table, could hear him cursing, and her heart sank. He hadn't just been avoiding her, then, she realized; he'd been out drinking, drowning his sorrows. It had been months since the last time he'd drunk himself into a rage, crying out in the night, banging on the piano, but now Jean's disregard of him had pushed him to the bottle once more. She wanted to scream, to cry, to stomp her foot; could the man not endure one single slight without losing his head completely? Oh, why had she spoken to him so crossly? It was such a bloody mess, but it was one mess that, as tired as she was, Jean was still capable of straightening out.
She found him in the foyer, leaning heavily against the wall, a dazed expression on his face and a brown paper bag clutched in his hand, the top of a glass bottle just peeking out of it. His tie was askew, his face red, his waistcoat half-unbuttoned, and his eyes were closed as he rested against the well, as if he could not bear to open them. Where he had been, where he had gotten the bottle, how on earth he had got home Jean could not say, but he had made it back to her in one piece, and for that she knew she ought to be grateful. She had sent one man fleeing from her side with harsh words before, and he had never made his way home at all.
"Oh, Lucien," she sighed, rushing to him at once. Gingerly she caught hold of the bottle in its paper bag, and Lucien let her take it from him, let her sit it on the sidetable, out of the way.
"Sorry, Jean," he slurred at her, his eyes still closed. "I'm so sorry." His voice sounded miserable, terrible, full of grief, and Jean could not understand it; it sounded to her as if he were apologizing for rather a lot more than stumbling home drunk, but as far as she could see he had nothing to be sorry for at all. She was the one meant to be apologizing.
"I'm sorry, too," she told him, and he cracked his eyes open blearily, something vaguely incredulous in his expression.
"Come on," she said. "Bed."
There was no sense in trying to have a proper conversation with him, not when he was in this state. The best thing for both of them would be a bit of rest, and so she reached for his arm, tugged on him hard until he flung that arm round her shoulders.
"Shouldn't, I shouldn't," Lucien started to say, but he couldn't quite form a full sentence. Not that Jean had expected him to, anyhow.
"Come on," she said again. "Nearly there."
And they were, nearly there; his bedroom was right by the front door. They went staggering through it, Jean's knees weak from the weight of him and Lucien's knees weak from the whiskey. He fell inelegantly on the bed, flat on his back with his arms flung out to the side, his eyes closed once more.
"Too good, Jean," he said. She wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, but she rather thought he wasn't quite sure himself.
Now that he was in bed - or rather, on it - she knew she ought to leave him to his own devices. It would hardly be the first time he'd fallen asleep in his clothes. But it didn't seem right to leave him wearing his shoes; he'd be dreadfully uncomfortable come morning. He was probably asleep already anyway, she told herself, he was so quiet and so still, and so she went and carefully began the process of slipping the shoes from his feet.
"Don't deserve," Lucien said faintly as first one shoe and then the other dropped to the floor, as Jean did her best not to look at his feet, large and broad and yet strangely vulnerable, in just his socks. She'd never seen him in just his socks before. She didn't want to hear what it was he thought he didn't deserve; he certainly didn't deserve her poor treatment of him, but she could not bear to hear the sorrow in his voice, the sorrow she had put there.
"Sleep now," she told him, placing her hand on his chest, gently, the way she would have done for one of her boys if he'd woken from a nightmare. She wanted only to comfort him, but the warm, solid breadth of his chest beneath her hand sent a shiver down her spine, and she pulled away from him reluctantly.
"Don't deserve you, sweet Jean," he said, and then his whole body went slack as consciousness deserted him at last.
For a moment she stood watching him, confused by his words. What on earth had he meant by that? Jean didn't have the first idea. This impossible, hopeless man; he was so strong, so handsome, wealthy and clever, the whole world lay open at his feet. He could have done anything, gone anywhere, been anyone he chose, and yet he had chosen to remain here, and for the life of her Jean could not understand it. Could not understand him. The sight of his warm, weathered face, his broad shoulders, his heavy legs, his feet in their black socks, provided only more questions, and so she slipped quietly from the room, closing the door behind her in silence and retreating to her own bed, and her own tumultuous thoughts.
