"He will be alright, won't he?" The priest had asked, his voice lined with worry.
He was perched on the end of the Inspector's bed, watching as Dr Crawford gathered up his equipment. He was winding up a long grey tube, and Father Brown grimaced at the memory of its function.
"Hopefully so. The stomach pump has done its work." Crawford said, dumping the pipe back in his bag and snapping the clasp shut. "He'll probably sleep for quite a while, and of course he'll be very groggy and disoriented. But in the long term, fingers crossed, he should be fine."
Father Brown didn't look convinced. "Thank heavens Lady Felicia realised something was amiss. I hate to think what might have happened if she hadn't raised the alarm."
"He's very lucky we got to him in time," The doctor reassured, glancing at Sullivan's unconscious form slumped in the bed. A basin, blackened with liquidised charcoal, sat beside him, and all throughout the room there was grisly sense of illness. He strode over to him, and examined the empty pill bottle on the bedside locker in more detail.
"How did he get them?" Father Brown asked, staring at the little brown phial.
"I prescribed them to him. He came to me several times, saying he had trouble sleeping. Put it down to stress at work." Doctor Crawford frowned, turning the bottle over in his hands. "He knew how strong they were. He knew almost as much about them as I did. He'd seen what they could do."
He bent down beside the bed, groping about in the gloom under the bed. He pulled out an empty whiskey bottle. Then two.
"Self medication," He scoffed, before turning to the priest again. "Insomnia is widely believed to be a symptom of depression." He said matter of factly.
The priest's face was grave. He was scanning the jumbled room, so unlike the meticulously tidied office in the police station. Sid was sleeping in the corner, head lolling against the wall. The washed out grey dawn was starting to seep through the curtains.
"Certainly not an accident then." He stated quietly, even though he knew the answer.
"I'd stake my job on it. We could almost count that phone call as a note."
"What do we do now?" Father Brown asked.
The doctor looked again at Sullivan. He was pale as death, frowning as though he knew what was going on and disagreed with it strongly.
"We shouldn't leave him alone." He said uneasily.
"You think he'll try again?" Asked the Father, somewhat alarmed.
"He seemed pretty determined this time round." Crawford reasoned. "Young, clever men don't make half-hearted attempts at these things. He lives on his own and still locked the doors to prevent interruptions. I'd say that if he did come round on his own, he'd almost certainly try again."
"And there are many ways for a man to kill himself," Father Brown said grimly, parroting Sullivan's own words.
The two men stared silently at the unconscious man. Sid coughed in his sleep.
"We'll have to bring him to the presbytery." He said quietly. What other feasible alternative was there?
"My car's outside," Crawford immediately offered. "Though I'll need some help to get him down the stairs."
"Sid!"
Sid snapped awake, blinking blearily, mouth open in a stupor. "Eh?"
"Do you reckon you could carry the Inspector down to the car?"
He nodded, all too keen to get out of the police cottage. He felt as though his very presence there was the equivalent of desecrating holy grounds, and staring at Sullivan lying twisted in the bedclothes with black liquid dribbling down his face was just plain wrong.
He remembered bursting in, terrified of the silence, and Sullivan - the cool, suave, confident purveyor of justice who bit at him sarcastically, wore tailor made suits, and had a smirk that made every sensible lady in the village go weak in the knees - lying face down in bed in a ratty pair of pyjamas with a bottle of whiskey glugging out onto the floor beside him, and an empty pill bottle resting under his fingertips. He felt sick.
Staggering slightly under the other man's dead weight, Sid cautiously stumbled up the presbytery staircase, carrying the still unconscious Sullivan to the guest room.
Wrapped in a tartan picnic blanket propped against him in the car, Sid had noticed his eyelids flicker a few times, tiny little signals that he was still alive.
His head, skin soft with sleep, lolled against his shoulder, and under the acidic smell of the stale, bitter drink and charcoal Sid could still smell faintly the pricey hair cream and vanilla soap. The smell that lingered like the dust that danced in the musty light of the Inspector's office. Just before the doorway, he unconsciously muttered a half hearted little sigh. Sid felt himself gasp in relief, without even realising he was holding his breath.
Thw guest room door was narrow, and Sid had to go through sideways to ensure that Sullivan, who he was carrying bridal style, didn't get caught. Father Brown pulled back the covers, and he dumped the Inspector as carefully as he could between the covers, before falling back down into a chair, suddenly exhausted.
Father Brown fussed around Sullivan as a nurse would a patient: carefully propping the pillow up behind him, tucking the blanket in, quickly wiping away another trickle of charcoal from his mouth.
"Looks peaceful, doesn't he?"
"Yeah," Sid agreed uneasily. The glowing light bulb left Sullivan vampire pale. Pale as death.
"Are you alright Sid?" Father Brown asked cautiously, turning around to face his companion for the first time that evening.
Sid didn't bother to hide his uncharacteristic worry.
"Why?" He breathed, staring at the oblivious figure in the bed. "What-I just, why did he do it? He was so desperate to clear his name and now... I just don't know."
He shook his head and stood to leave, stretching upwards till his fingertips brushed the ceiling.
"I'd better go tell Lady Felicia about it all. She'll want to know. Only she had that Duke of Whatever and his missus over for dinner she'd have came herself, but at the same time she didn't want to cause too much fuss."
The priest frowned at the tableu before him. "I hardly need remind you not to tell anyone else about this." He warned.
"Trust me, I wouldn't." Sid said, looking somewhat appalled that he even had to be told that. "You sure you're gonna be alright with him on his own?"
"Doctor Crawford said that he would probably sleep until tomorrow afternoon at least, so I'll probably just head to bed and..." Father Brown winced, "Try to come up with a plan on what to do next."
Sid was out the door, but leaned back for another glance at Sullivan, still out for the count. "Mrs M cleans in here." He said suddenly. "What are we gonna tell her?"
"I don't know." Father Brown admitted. "For once, telling the truth could complicate matters drastically. Then again, Mrs McCarthy does tend to have an extraordinary knack of figuring out what's going on, especially where illness is concerned."
"Yeah, she really does." Sid agreed. "The other coppers, though."
"I think Doctor Crawford was going to have a quiet word with Goodfellow."
"Bloody hell." Sid pinched the bridge of his nose, staring at the hallway as if he couldn't bear to look at what lay in the bed.
"I'm off, see if I can get there 'fore morning."
"Mm." Father Brown surveyed the scene one more time, before stepping out and turning off the light, leaving the door open to cast a glow across the room that didn't quite reach the sleeping man, leaving him still out of reach.