A few days later Matthew appeared at the morgue, looking for Alice; on entering the room he found Alice elbow deep in the torso of a poor unsuspecting soul on her table.
"You're not getting out of here early today, are you?"
Alice looked over and saw Matthew stood in the doorway and said, "if I can get this finished soon, I could be out of here by 4 pm. Are you leaving early?"
"Actually, there's nothing going on at the station, I was coming over here to see if you wanted to play hookie!"
"Matthew Lawson! A man of the constabulary suggesting to the police surgeon to play hookie?!" she laughed and continued, "if only I could…I can give you the key to my house…if you'd like to take your things and the food over now?"
"That might be a plan. I'll go home and get changed, get the dessert from the kitchen and pick the turkey up at the butcher then head over to yours…If that's ok with you?"
"Of course…" Alice looked up from what she was doing, looked at her bloodied gloved hands and said, "my house keys are in my bag. It's on my desk." She pointed in the direction of her desk and said, "don't worry, there's nothing in there that will scare you!"
Matthew limped over to the desk, opened her bag and found a set of car keys and Alice's house keys.
"Ok, I'll be there when you get back. I'll leave you to 'your man' there and see you later."
As Matthew left, Alice wished that Mr Makepeace had waited a few more days at least, to find his way into her morgue. She would rather be at home with Matthew than stood here like this.