A week went by. Maybe two. It got colder, and the pavements became slippery with frost and everyone rushed home to warm themselves at the fire.


Kembleford Station was quiet. Inspector Sullivan barely talked. He didn't snap at anyone any more-it was as if the fight had gone out of him, replaced with some strange sense of despondency. Goodfellow was sure he slept most afternoons; when he walked in there would be red marks on the side of his face, and more than once he caught him slumped forward on the desk with his head in his arms.

He never seemed very awake when he came in in the mornings, and always seemed exhausted. Goodfellow normally left him be - he felt he needed the rest.


Sid was moody and irritatable. He sat glumly in the corner of the presbytery and stopped helping Father Brown place his bets. He stopped chatting to Lady Felicia in the car, and while he still did the odd jobs for Mrs M, she definitely knew something was up.

If he anyone tried to ask him about it, he'd shrug it off with some feeble excuse.

"Lost a bet."

"Just tired."

"Sore tooth."

"Sore back."

"Sore head."

"Sore-"

This seemed to go on for months. Until Bunty decided enough was enough.


She was sprawled across the bed in her room while Sid was tinkering at some squeaky window she had invented as an excuse to get the chance to talk to him properly. He was standing surveying the non-existent damage, chewing pensievely on the end of his trusty screwdriver; the one that tended to cause more problems than it solved.

"So Sid," She asked casually, "Who was it?"

Sid was puzzled. "Who done what?"

"Who broke your heart?"

Sid almost swallowed his screwdriver.

"I-What-I-I never-"

"Look, I'm sorry to have phrased it that way," Bunty apologised, "But somebody had to say something. You've been a shell of who you really are-"

"I'm just tired, that's all." Sid lied.

"No you're not! There's something really wrong, and I've know you for long enough to know when you've got hurt. And I know you'd do this for me, so please just sit down and talk about it."

"I don't want to." Sid mumbled, swinging the window back and forward listening for the imaginary squeak.

"You know I won't stop until you tell me." Bunty continued.

"Well, you won't want to hear it." Sid protested.

"We both know that's not true. Besides, what is it Mrs McCarthy always says? A problem shared is a problem halved." She pouted at him sympathetically.

Sid puffed. There was no escaping her. He thumped down on the bed beside her.

"Right," He began, "What it was... I was seeing this bloke, alright, and it was just a casual thing; just sex, nothing emotional or anything, but I was starting to think we were going somewhere, romantically like. But then... He acted like a dickhead, so I shouted at him and then I left." Sid finished.

Bunty was nodding.

"Okay, so this... Mystery man... Do I know him?"

"No," Sid lied, "You won't have met him."

"Was it Inspector Sullivan?"

"What the-how did you know-I mean no, no, it definitely..." Resistance was futile. Bunty knew.

"So did the 'dickhead' incident happen to involve the way he talked to Father Brown at DC Albert's funeral? Aunt Fliss told me about it." She asked warily.

"Yeah." Sid admitted. "But I thought..."

"Thought what?"

He shook his head. "Doesn't matter."

"But it does." Bunty prodded him.

"Well... We'd started talking more and... I don't know, he was just different at home, and I thought he was starting to act a bit, a bit nicer, I suppose." Sid confessed. "He could be so different, and he used to..."

He trailed off again.

"It's over now." He waved his thoughts away with his hand.

"And are you happy that it is?"

Sid didn't answer.

"What was he like?" Bunty asked, switching tact, "When he wasn't being the Inspector? What's his name?"

"Edgar."

"Edgar!" Bunty spluttered.

"Yeah I know," Sid sniggered, "He wouldn't even tell me - his dad rang and I answered the phone."

"Why did you answer his phone?" Bunty was really laughing now, "What did you say-hello sir, I'm just here casually to have a quick illicit encounter with your son?"

"I answered without thinking, and then he roared at me. The father, that was."

Sid looked guilty.

Bunty put her hand on Sid's shoulder, and looked sincerely into his eyes.

"Sid, I'm sorry to ask this, but there's something we can't avoid any longer." She said seriously. "What was he like in bed?"

"Bunty! " Sid shrieked, rather traumatised.

"Oh come on Sid, you have to tell me. A handsome man like that-" Bunty pleaded.

"You really don't need to know!" Sid protested desperately.

"Sid-"

"It was..." Sid blushed as the flashbacks started.

Teeth clashing, clothes being torn away, bodies crashing against each other, the desperate moaning...

The soft, featherlight touches, the gentle movements, the slow, lingering kisses, the blissful sighs...

"It was good, wasn't it?" Bunty smirked.

"Actually quite incredible..."Sid said wistfully, before snapping back to reality. "But that's not the point! The whole thing is a mess now, and I don't know what to do..." Sid buried his head in his hands, as Bunty leaned over to give him a hug.

"What do I do, Bunts?" He asked, "What am I going to do?"

"Well, perhaps forget the bedroom bits for a moment." Bunty suggested. "What's he like to be around? Did you ever eat together or anything?"

"I'd stay for tea most nights," Sid recalled, "And breakfast. He's a good cook, though he had this thing about the way everything had to be arranged in his kitchen - he used to arrange the mugs that all the handles were facing outwards, and he'd sit all the glasses in order of size, and even if you mixed up two of them that look the same-" Sid laughed, "He always knew, and he'd have to change them around before we even sat down. He'd be a nightmare if he had a load of knick-knacks round the place. And he had this huge stack of racing magazines- all the latest models- and he had them all arranged by date, and he'd memorise all of them and point out all the most powerful cars, and the ones made for off-road, and then I'd disagree and we'd bicker about it..." Sid trailed off, remembering all those evenings lying on the sofa or in the bed, leaving through all the magazines, Sullivan's face lighting up when he saw a car he liked.

"That doesn't sound very casual to me, if you know all his little habits." Bunty observed.

"Yeah well maybe it wasn't, but that doesn't matter now. Whatever it was, it's over now." He repeated glumly.

There came a tap on the door, and Lady Felicia came breezing in.

"Hello you two," She said, descending onto the chaise lounge at the end of the bed, "What are you discussing?"

They both stayed quiet for a fraction too long.

"Um, these headaches Sid's been getting." Bunty conjured, trying her best to look believable, "I've been trying to convince him to see a doctor, because they really do sound dreadful."

Lady Felicia nodded, obviously in deep thought. "I'd have told him to go talk to Inspector Sullivan, who I assume has the pseudonym headache."

Sid fell off the bed with a crash. Gobsmacked was not the word.

"What...How on earth do you know!? Were you listening at the door?"

Lady Felica was scorned. "As if I'd stoop so low as that. I've known you since you were eleven, Sidney, and I definitely know how you look at your beaus. And I've known for ages that Sullivan had absolutely no interest in women-"

"Me, I understand," Sid interjected, "But how the hell do you know about Sullivan?"

"He caught me searching his office, so I employed my allure to try and get away with it." Lady Felicia recounted, "It still worked, but not in the way I expected."

"He brushed you off?"

"He was terrified, backed into a filing cabinet. He looked like a pheasant with a shotgun pointing at him." Lady Felicia said.

"He did seem pretty scared of me too, that day I introduced myself to him." Bunty agreed.

"You can be pretty full on though Bunty." Sid protested.

"Touche," Bunty countered, "I'm not the one who has been banging him."

Sid face planted onto the bedspread. A muffled voice announced that, "This is soul-crushingly embarrassing."

"How was he, when in action, as it were?" Lady Felicia asked.

Sid squeaked in distress.

"Quite incredible, I've been told." Bunty informed her.

Sid howled into the mattress.

"This cannot be happening." He moaned, face still deep in eiderdown.

"Oh grow up Sid," Lady F said rather brutally, "The point is, you've honestly parted ways despite the fact that you seem to be in love with him."

Sid popped up again, mouth open in shock.

"No I'm not- never was, never will be!"

"Despite the fact that suddenly your ideal evening involves being curled up at the fire with him reading car magazines?"

"You were listening!" Sid accused.

"Only for that bit." She admitted.

"'I am not in love with him." He repeated, though he sounded strangely uncertain.

"Do you enjoy being around him?" Bunty asked.

"Most of the time." Sid replied.

"You went to his house when he got sick." Lady Felicia offered.

"Yeah..." Sid agreed quietly.

"So you look after him?" Bunty questioned.

"Well, yes."

"And would you say you feel compelled to do that?"

"Not compelled, but..."

Sid remembered that day in the bathroom, the massage he'd given Sullivan, and how happy he'd been.

Happy that he'd made him happy.

"And he did get you out of that issue with the evidence-"

"That doesn't-"

"And although you say you can't stand him, you talk about him very affectionately, and why would you be moping about like if you hated him?"

"I do hate him! He's rude and irritating and he always tries to get me arrested-"

"Yet for some reason, he never charges you." Bunty said, somewhat sarcastically.

"Yeah, well-"

"Instead he makes you dinner, makes passionate love to you, talks to you about all your shared interests, obviously adores you..."

The two women looked at him knowingly. Sid sank back down onto the bed in shock.

I'm in love with Edgar Sullivan." He breathed.

Lady Felicia did a double take.

"Edgar?"

She sat in shock for a moment, and then gasped in apparent horror.

"I know, its shocking, isn't it? Who'd look at a baby and go oh, he looks like an Edgar."

"Its not that," She said in a worried voice, "I was talking to Mrs McCarthy earlier. Apparently, she decided that she'd waited long enough, and that she was going to go and tackle the Inspector about the way he talked to Father Brown at Albert's funeral."

"Oh no," Bunty gasped, "Sid's in love with a man who is about to be flayed alive."