Author's Note:

Mention of characters and situations from Death Knocks Twice, a canon Death in Paradise novel by Robert Thorogood. No spoilers for it though, and you don't have to have read that book in order to understand this chapter. I just thought a tie-in would be fun. And the novel introduced something into the canon of the DiP universe that I couldn't easily ignore if I was situating my story on Mt. Esmee.

Also, a brief reference to S01E03 "Predicting Murder" that is maybe a little spoilery. But honestly, if you haven't seen the 3rd episode of the entire series, and you are already reading deep AU fanfiction, then aren't we just a wee bit eager? ;) lol


Chapter Two: What was needed

The Beaumonts had effectively moved into the old drying shed on their property. It was the only structure on the whole plantation that was made entirely of stone, and as such, it was the most stable. The drying shed had been converted to a shower room in recent decades, and even more recent than that, it had served as the crime scene in one of Richard's cases. But now, Richard tried not to let his mind wander back to that time and that case. Not because it could potentially make things awkward between himself and the remaining members of the Beaumont family, but because every single one of those memories involved a certain detective sergeant, who he was very much trying to keep out of his thoughts as of late.

"What have you brought for us today, Detective Inspector?" Mr. Beaumont asked, stepping out of the drying shed, wiping his hands on what appeared to be an already dirty rag.

"Food mostly," Richard answered, looking down into his satchel.

"Where're the rest of your jugs?" Mr. Beaumont asked, noticing how only two of Richard's men carried the usual water containers in their hands.

Richard glanced over his shoulder at his men, nodding towards the hose for them to get started on the water before answering, "We're only doing a half load of the water today. Hoping to carry something else down." Richard handed the satchel over to the other man.

There was a curious expression in the man's eyes as he peered down into the bag. "Thank you," he said when he looked back up at Richard. Food was growing to be a more and more precious commodity. So when it was given freely, even in small quantities, it was a large gesture. "What were you looking for?"

"Sheets, tarps, ropes, anything big and brightly colored that resembles a blanket."

Again, Mr. Beaumont cast a curious look in the inspector's direction. "Doesn't sound like that's just for warmth anymore."

"No, we think we have a plan. A way of potentially contacting the others on the island, but we'll have to use a lot of materials to stand a chance of it being seen."

"Well you're welcome to look in the house. We have lots of bedrooms in there that still have the sheets on the beds. But I'd be careful. Especially on the first floor, the floors aren't always stable. And don't have anyone in the rooms below if you're going to have people up searching the other floor at the same time. That's just asking for trouble."

"Noted," Richard said, turning to stare at the foreboding manor. Without meaning to, his mind took him back to the first time he stepped foot in it, so long ago now. He had been wearing a dark, woolen suit which stood in stark contrast to the green, cotton trousers and short-sleeved, checkered shirt of his beautiful colleague. In truth, his old attire stood in contrast to just about everything on this island. It had been earlier that morning that Richard could recall his subordinates all trying to cajole him into wearing shorts and several loud, tropical-themed shirts, which he had adamantly rejected, opting instead for his staple, professional attire, heat be damned.

Fast forward a bit and now, the white shirt was the only piece from his original ensemble that he still wore, though to be accurate, it was really more of a drab tan these days. He wore it without a tie or jacket and with the sleeves rolled halfway up his arms at all times. His heavy trousers had been traded in for a pair of cargos, and his brogues had been replaced by a pair of loose-fitting hiking boots that had once belonged to Mrs. Beecher's late husband. With the steady beard that was overtaking the lower half of his face, Richard imagined he more closely resembled an Indiana Jones-esque character rather than a typical, English police detective. He wondered if Camille would even recognize him if she could see him now.

"On second thought, I'd better go in with you," Mr. Beaumont said, yanking Richard out of his thoughts and back to reality. He suddenly recalled that they were just discussing the dangers of Beaumont Manor.

"No, I couldn't ask that of you," Richard began, but his objection was cut off by the other man's hasty reply.

"Well good, as long as we've established that you couldn't ask for it," he said cheekily with a slap to Richard's back, and then he headed off towards the house.

After some talk it was decided that the plantation might have other resources that would be useful to the project, so Richard split his team into two. Fidel and he would accompany Mr. Beaumont into the manor and salvage whatever they could find. The remaining four members of his team would check the other storage buildings around the plantation for any ropes, tarps, and tools they could find.

It was slow work. As long as they were on the ground floor, they were in relative safety, but as soon as they moved upstairs to the first floor, every step had to be tested and retested before they could commit their weight to it. They stripped the ground floor of all of its many drapes and curtains, as well as the formal table cloths. In the kitchen, they found many hand rags, but Richard thought they would be too small. They would all have to be sewn together to make a bigger footprint before they would really be useful for this project. Richard instructed Fidel to remove them from the house anyway, just to make them more accessible. They wouldn't carry these smaller rags all the way down to the camp unless they proved desperate enough for fabric yardage later.

The first floor was where all of the bedrooms were located, and as promised, the beds were all still fully dressed in their linens. It was a rather eerie feeling, walking into a bedroom that had been totally deserted at the drop of a hat. Even though the room looked as though someone could have occupied it only yesterday, Richard still felt like he had stepped through a time machine, not because the furniture was outdated, but because the life that furniture represented was. Richard walked by a vanity, noticing a brush on the desk, strands of yellow hair still caught in the bristles. Suddenly something that used to be so commonplace and useful now seemed totally foreign to him and completely without importance, a luxury and a triviality all at the same time.

They slowly and systematically worked themselves from room to room. Stripping every bed and emptying the linen closets they encountered along the way. It was a big house, and a part of Richard felt they had hit the jackpot with this particular excursion. But the logistician side of his brain suspected that they would likely need a great deal more than this to really make the sign noticeable. He could only hope that Ronnie's team was finding comparable success down in Honoré. And that they were staying safe, of course.

Even as the words were crossing through his mind, Richard felt the floor board beneath his left foot give way. His leg punched a hole through the ground and he heard the ceiling below him go crashing into dining room on the ground floor. He would have fallen even more if it weren't for Fidel's tight grip on the front of his shirt, hauling him back to safety. The two men fell back onto their rears, each panting from the fright of a close call, with Fidel cradling his boss back against his chest.

Richard sat up slightly to peer through the hole he had created in the floor. A fall like that would have definitely broken his leg, if not much worse. He looked back at Fidel, a look of gratitude in his eye. Then he said, "See? I told you I'd be needing you today."

Fidel rolled his eyes which ended in a pointed glare at his boss. "You are ridiculous, you know that?"

Richard breathed out a laugh and all he could do was grin at the other man before they both moved to stand back up. Richard struggled, only noticing for the first time that he was not exactly unscathed. His left leg was cut up badly, and his knee felt like it needed to pop.

Fidel held onto Richard by the forearms, letting the older man steady himself as they both looked down at the damage. "Can you walk on it?" he asked.

"I think so," Richard answered, putting a bit of pressure on his leg just to test it.

"Why don't you take what we have and carry it back outside? Mr. Beaumont and I will finish up with the last few rooms, and Dr. Holden can have a look at you when we get back to camp," Fidel said, still looking down at the inspector's leg.

"Yes chief," Richard said, smirking up at Fidel, which earned him another roll of the eyes.

"It should only take a few more minutes, sir."

Richard bent to gather the latest wad of bed sheets into his arms. "Right then, carry on Fidel. And do be safe about it."

Walking down a set of stairs with a giant ball of fabric in one's arms is not easy. Nor is doing so with a hurt leg. Nor is doing so when the stairs are not all reliable and have to each be tested before it can be trusted. But slowly, with a great deal of caution (and some discomfort), Richard eventually managed.

He made it outside and deposited his load on the ground, finding the remaining members of his team already hard at work to fold and wrap the fabrics into manageable bundles. They were taking their cues from Haley Matheson, a dental hygienist who spent her summers working at a youth camp (where she evidently came to be very good at tying knots). She seemed to have things pretty well in hand, so Richard saw no need to interject. He walked over to a shady place and sat down, waiting for his team to be ready to go. About thirty minutes later, Fidel reemerged from the house with Mr. Beaumont and the remaining piles of sheets. Haley walked over to the police sergeant and showed him how to wrap the sheets into three large bundles. Richard watched his group with keen interest, and resisted the urge to hike up his trouser leg and examine his hurt knee; that was the sort of thing that only drew attention, and Richard never needed attention (unless, of course, he felt he had something very interesting or important to say). He couldn't totally stop the grimace from his face though when Haley motioned to him that they were ready and Richard then tried to stand up.

They all looked like a band of strange Santa Clauses as they each hoisted a big, bulky bag over their shoulders. Richard struggled a little under the weight of his own. "Right then. We all ready?" he asked, watching as the last of them got their burdens situated. Richard shifted his grip a little to free up his right hand for a moment, extending it to Mr. Beaumont. The other man shook it as Richard said, "Mr. Beaumont, thank you once again."

"Come back any time," he answered.

After that, the group began the long trek back down the mountain. If he allowed himself the briefest moment of self congratulations, Richard would have to point out how he had really seen his physical endurance improve over the last few months. The distance between the plantation and the camp was probably close to six miles, roundtrip, and much of that was over steep and uneven terrain. Richard lost count of the number of times he had personally made the journey there and back again, but suffice it to say, he handled the physical toll a lot better now than he did two months ago.

Or rather, he would be handling it better, if it weren't for his throbbing leg. Sweat dripped from his forehead and Richard realized he wasn't breathing very evenly, holding his breath in extended intervals to keep from grunting against the pain.

He had only made it about a third of the way down before he felt the burden being lifted from his shoulders. In a whirl of confusion, Richard turned around to find Claude Palmer taking the detective's bundle of sheets and adding it to his own. He then handed Richard the smallest jug of water they had, and just kept walking, without a word. Claude was not that far from Richard in age, perhaps just a few years younger, but he was big and burly. Richard couldn't now recall what Claude did as an occupation before the surfacing. In fact, the only first-hand memory of him Richard had was when he had to issue a formal warning for disorderly conduct to him after Claude had had a few too many drinks at Catherine's bar. Probably not the best introduction. But whether it was intentional or not, the man was making up for that first impression now. The water jug was substantially lighter than the dense ball of fabric had been, and Richard's knee was grateful for the relief immediately.

Richard did hazard a look around him at his other compatriots though, and they all respectfully kept their gazes averted. He didn't much care for the feeling of not being able to "pull his own weight" as it were, but it was obvious to him that the others didn't intend to make a big deal of it, so Richard was left with no other option but to follow in their footsteps and try let it go.

A little over an hour later, the group finally returned to the camp. Approaching the mouth of the cave, Richard saw Dr. Holden sitting on a fallen tree beside a young man. The young man had his head drooped between his legs and the doctor held a wet rag against the back of the boy's neck. Richard instructed Fidel to take the others into the cave and find a suitable place to deposit their bounty while he himself walked over to join the doctor and his ward.

"Good lord, that's a lot of sheets," Holden said, looking over his shoulder at the returning plantation crew.

"In fact, that is a lot of sheets, drapes, towels, blankets, tarps, shower curtains, and table cloths," Richard corrected, setting his little jug of water down on the ground.

"Well well," the doctor replied, impressed. "You certainly made a good run of it, didn't you?"

"Indeed. What do we have here?" Richard asked, clasping his hands behind his back and looking down at the young man.

"Well, this is Trevor," Holden said, brightening up his voice in the way grown-ups always did when they didn't want kids to be overly concerned at their words. "And he was feeling a bit poorly, so we thought we'd come have a nice sit out here for a while." The doctor grabbed one of Trevor's hands and moved it to hold the damp rag in place. "Can you hold onto this for me, Trevor? I'm going to go have a word with the inspector for a bit, okay?"

The young man just moaned and weakly nodded his head. Holden stood and shared a pointed look with Richard before both men turned and put a few paces between themselves and the boy. "Anything I should be worried about there?" Richard asked quietly with a nod back in Trevor's direction.

"Well he's sick, Richard, and I have no means of helping him, so," the doctor snapped.

"Alright, alright," Richard recoiled, holding up his hands both defensively and calmingly at the same time.

Holden covered his eyes with one hand and let loose a heavy sigh. Richard recognized that sigh; it was the sigh of a man pressed beneath the weight of the world, with only good intentions left to strengthen him. He let the doctor gather his fortitude before asking, "Have we really run out of our medicines?"

Holden nodded, his arms clasped around himself in a subconscious hug. "Every last pill. Even the baby aspirin is gone."

Richard let that news hit him, a sickening feeling churning in his gut in a twist of poetic irony. "And…there's no other way?" he asked, looking around his surroundings almost desperately. In that moment, his mind went back to a certain case he had shortly after coming to the island. A woman had been a keen student of natural, herbal remedies of the island and had used this knowledge to create a vial of homemade cyanide. Richard had read her journal in his research for the case, and now wished he could remember some of what it said. "A root or something?"

"I'm a doctor, Richard, not an alchemist," Holden replied, a certain level of amusement in his voice despite himself. "But no, even if this island did grow some sort of natural remedy, I wouldn't know the first place to look for it, nor do I have any means of educating myself on the topic."

Again, the doctor sighed and a few seconds of silence passed by as both men allowed themselves a brief moment of fully indulged worry. "I did mention to Ronnie though, about the medicine," Dr. Holden said after a while. "Asked him to keep an eye out for some on their excursion to Honoré today."

"And they're not back yet?" Richard asked, his inner anxiety switching from one bad topic to the next. He turned and looked out towards the decline of the jungle floor, the direction in which the other team had set off that morning.

Holden looked over at his friend and recognized the worry in Richard's eyes. "Don't freak out," he said in what was meant to be a reassuring tone. "They still have a good four hours until they start to lose daylight. They'll be home by then."

Richard nodded, trying to adopt that optimistic attitude, and failing somewhat. "Let's just hope they don't bring back any work for you," he said, referring to the last time when Holden had to rip up four shirts to use as bandages just to stop the bleeding. The woman's name was June, and Holden very much doubted that she would ever reclaim the full use of her hand, or the full range of motion in her arm.

"Actually, I was wondering if you hadn't brought me back any."

"Hmm?" Richard asked, confused.

"You're limping," the astute doctor observed. "Don't think I hadn't noticed."

Richard glanced down at his leg and sighed dismissively, a bit chastened. But Holden was already kneeling to start rolling up the leg of Richard's trousers. The fabric stuck around the detective's knee and Holden couldn't get it to rise any further.

"Alright then, off they come."

"Excuse me?"

"The trousers, take them off."

"Doctor!" Richard exclaimed, sounding for all the world like a scandalized lady of the house in Victorian England.

Holden stared up at the other man and chuckled at his alarm. "Well I can't see the injury, can I? So come on then. Trevor's the only one out here and he's very well near passing out anyway," the doctor joked. "I don't think he'll notice."

Richard looked up at the boy and true to the doctor's word, he showed zero interest in lifting his head for any reason. Still, it seemed indecent to just drop his trousers out in the wide open like this. Begrudgingly, Richard dropped his hands to his waistline and peered around surreptitiously. Then, he nodded in the direction of a largish bush and shimmied over to it.

Holden stood up and followed the detective, not even trying to hide the amusement from his face. "Now this is just making it feel even more risqué, honestly," he teased.

But Richard just shushed him and continued to beckon the doctor over. "Do you want to see it, or not?"

Holden got a few more chuckles out and then stepped behind the bush. After just a moment more of hesitation, Richard undid the button and zipper on his trousers and let the doctor gingerly pull them over the wound. He was grateful when the physician seemed to curtail his teasing and switch into business mode upon seeing the knee.

"Now that's got a good swell to it, hasn't it? What'd you do?" Holden asked, looking up at his patient.

"Took a bad step at the plantation. Nearly went through the floor, but, it jammed on something before it pierced through."

"And you walked back on it like this?"

Richard just hummed a little noise that meant "yes," and the doctor gave him a disciplinary look in response.

Holden peered at the injured leg thoughtfully. "Well the cuts I'm not too worried about. None of them are very deep, but we'll clean them up anyway." He carefully reached for the knee and gingerly pressed his fingers around the back of the joint. Richard winced, but didn't make a sound. "Tender there?" the doctor asked, and Richard just nodded.

"It feels like it's out of joint," Richard admitted with a little grimace.

"Well it's not that, based on the mobility. It'd be pretty well locked if it was dislocated, and you wouldn't have been able to make the whole journey down from the plantation on it. But…" He felt around the joint of the knee a little more, noticing how Richard tended to retreat away from his touch around the lateral side of his knee.

"You might have torn your meniscus a bit, and that's why it feels like it needs to pop. Luckily, this kind of pain usually subsides in a few days."

"So there's nothing to be done for it now?" Richard asked, slightly disappointed.

"Tell you what, let's have you go back up to your mat and have a good lie-down. You've been on your feet now for too long and that's just making the swelling even worse. Go lie down and try to prop it up. See if we can't get the swelling to go down a bit and I'll be by in a little while to reduce it."

"Reduce?"

"Pop it for you."

Richard tried not to shudder at the thought of that. He had been accused (mostly by Camille) of being a baby when it came to following doctors' orders, and considering the fact that he already felt somewhat emasculated standing in the middle of the jungle in his underpants, he was in no hurry to hear that criticism be voiced again now. So after pulling up his trousers, he just thanked the doctor for his help and slowly limped his way back up the hill to the mouth of the cave. Passing Trevor, he bent to pick up the jug of water and dropped a fatherly pat to the boy's shoulder.

"I'll be alright, sir. Thank you, sir," came Trevor's muffled words.

Richard squeezed the boy's shoulder in encouragement and said, "good man," before continuing into the cave.

It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the diminished light, but when he had, he walked over to where Fidel and the rest of his crew were untying and unpacking all of their bundles. "How are things?" he asked, resting his hands on his hips and peering down at the busy work.

Fidel straightened up and mirrored his boss' stance as he answered, "Pretty good, sir. We're just unloading the bundles now, and we're about to start categorizing and taking a full inventory of what we have so far. So when Ronnie's team gets back, we should already have a system they can add to."

"Very good, Sergeant," Richard said, clapping the other man on the back. "Carry on then."

"Thank you, sir," Fidel replied with a self-satisfied grin. Then, more circumspect, he added, "How is your leg?"

"Just fine, Camille," Richard said, already beginning to walk away. Then he halted, his breath catching in a tiny gasp. It was the first time he had said her name in months, and he hadn't even meant to say it. But as soon as his ears heard the familiar name, his heart started to ache again. "Fidel, I mean…obviously, I meant, 'Fidel,'" he amended, a little weakly.

"It's okay, sir," Fidel answered softly. "I knew what you meant."

Richard cast a chagrined glance over at the police sergeant anyway, and then just turned and walked over to his little mat.

"Who's Camille?" Haley Matheson asked from her place on the ground, trying to untie one of her own knots.

Fidel looked at her and noticed how several other members of the team were all watching as the detective walked away. "A colleague of ours," Fidel answered at last. "Someone who means a good deal to him."


Fun fact: Richard's little slip of the tongue at the end of this chapter was actually MY mistake. I had gotten so used to typing "Camille" that it just kind of spilled out of my fingers by accident, and I thought, "Well, that's Freudian," so I kept it in. Led to a really nice moment at the start of next chapter as well, so stay tuned for that.

For those of you who aren't familiar, the Beaumonts and their plantation are canon to the Death in Paradise novels by Robert Thorogood and they appear in the novel Death Knocks Twice. My story takes place after that book and vaguely references its events, but I try to do it in a way that doesn't spoil anything. For example, I write about a character called "Mr. Beaumont," but by my reckoning, there are at least 3 characters in Death Knocks Twice who could reasonably be referred to as "Mr. Beaumont" (an argument could be made for 4). By not specifying which of them he is, I hope that I preserved the plot revelations of DKT well enough that you wouldn't be spoiled if you haven't read it yet.