Lucien woke extremely early the next morning. He gently kissed his wife, careful not to wake her, before quietly dressing for the day and leaving for work. He wanted to get to the morgue to examine the body of Randall Brix. Alice surely had done most of the work the day before, but he had his own methods he wanted to utilize, and he wanted as much time as he could get to conduct his tests.

Alice arrived about an hour after he did. She shared her earlier findings, which coincided with the conclusions he'd come to. They finished the autopsy and tests together and drafted the report for the police.

As was usual when he was personally interested in a case, Lucien went to the police station to deliver the report himself. Frank Carlyle preferred this method, as it allowed him to ask any questions to the doctor right then and there. Though it did invite the good doctor to be more involved in the case than he was perhaps supposed to be. Nevertheless, there had yet to be a case in Ballarat that Dr. Blake hadn't been able to solve, so Frank let it slide.

Lucien remained at the station for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. The police had brought in a number of suspects, so Lucien decided to sit in on the interviews, listening quietly and carefully. Every single person gave a clearer picture of what had happened to Randall Brix, yet further obscured the mystery.

At long last, the final interview was complete. Lucien looked at his watch and realized that he'd not only skipped breakfast that morning but he'd completely missed lunch. He immediately hurried home.

He found Jean, once again, in the kitchen. This time she was scrubbing an enormous pile of dishes. Suddenly he was distracted from everything else and was fixated on her unending household chores.

"Jean, what are you doing?"

She turned her head to look at him with confusion. "I'm washing dishes," she replied, stating the obvious.

"You shouldn't be doing that."

"Mattie and Charlie are unfortunately not to be trusted in the kitchen without supervision, it seems," she replied with a sigh, returning to her task.

"No, I mean…Jean, you're my wife now."

"Yes, I know. I've been enjoying it so far," she teased.

Lucien sighed. He wasn't getting his point across. "The lady of the house doesn't do dishes. You aren't the housekeeper anymore. And if things need doing, we can certainly hire someone to come in to do that."

Her eyes went wide, and she turned off the sink to turn to him. She opened her mouth to shout but quickly closed it, changing her mind. No, she'd see where this was going before she shouted at him. "If we hire someone to do all the work I usually do, what do you suppose I'll do with my time?"

"I don't know, anything you want, I suppose," he said, thinking of this for the very first time. "You like volunteering for the church. Or you could be more active in the dramatic society. Anything you like." Lucien saw her eyes narrow dangerously and began backtracking his statements. "Or…if you'd prefer, you can still work. I don't mind. If a job would make you happy, you should do that."

"Lucien, I know your first married life was very different, when you were an officer in Singapore, and you had a house full of staff, but I certainly didn't. I've always worked, be it in the fields of the farm or here in this house. And I have no intention of changing that." Her tone was quite definitive.

"Yes, but Jean, you don't work for me anymore. You're my wife!"

"And I should act like it, is that it?" she fired back accusingly.

"No, it isn't that, it's that I don't want you to feel like a housekeeper! Especially since I'm not going to be paying you anymore. You shouldn't be doing the same job without pay when you could be doing anything else you could possibly want!" Lucien let out a huff of air, satisfied that he'd finally found the words to express what was bothering him.

Jean's expression sharpened. She hadn't actually thought about the fact that she wouldn't be paid anymore. During their engagement, he'd continued to pay her wages each week. She'd been so focused on the wedding and the honeymoon that she hadn't considered how things would change—really change—when they were married. Lucien was absolutely correct, he shouldn't be paying her as an employee anymore. But the money…that may prove to be an awkward situation. Jean had never had to ask for money before. Most wives had to ask their husbands for money, she knew, but she'd been financially independent for such a long time. It would be a difficult habit to break.

Lucien waited for her to respond. She seemed mildly frozen in place. "Jean?" he checked tentatively.

She blinked rapidly and turned back to her dishes. "We can work out the finer points later, but I will not have you hire another housekeeper. I'll continue on as I have. If I'm the lady of the house, I'll be the one to take care of the house." And with that, the subject was closed. Tension hung in the room between them. Jean took a deep breath to calm herself down. "I assume you worked on your case this morning. What have you found?"

Lucien refocused his attention, glad for the change in topic. He launched into a summary of his morning. "I ran some tests on the body first thing. Blood coagulation and internal organ damage and the like. Randall Brix was hit on his left side by an oncoming train. It eviscerated his arm and shoulder and gave him an extremely nasty blow to the head. The train wasn't going too fast, because he would have died on impact if it had. Instead, he was hit and knocked to the ground on the side of the tracks, which was where he was found after the internal bleeding killed him."

"Do you know what train hit him? Because if you know what time he died, you can match it with the railway schedule," Jean suggested.

He nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what we did. Frank had already gathered the timetables for the day, and once Alice and I pinned down a time of death, and I delivered the report to the police, we figured out what train had hit him. So all morning, Bill and Ned and Charlie brought in every single suspect for interview."

"You sat in, I assume?"

"Yes. And it had a somewhat unexpected outcome, actually."

"Oh?" she asked curiously.

"We spoke to the supervisor who found the body and called the police. He said Brix was generally not well-liked. He had a bit of a temper and a sharp tongue for those around him. No family to speak of, unfortunately. Frank asked for next of kin and the supervisor said there aren't any."

"How very sad," Jean commented.

"Quite. But don't feel too sorry for him. The police brought in three of his coworkers, all of whom would have been in the same area during the time of impact. And they all had the most terrible stories about Brix. How he would shout at them for no reason, criticize their work, make rude comments about their wives and mothers, tell the supervisor about any slight discretion, all sorts of awful things."

Jean frowned. "I see why you're working on the theory that he was pushed. It seems like any one of them would have a motive."

"Ah but that's just the problem," Lucien replied, pointing out the exact issue. "Every single person on duty was somewhere else. All have alibis. A few saw him working in the area before his death. And all of them were later seen by others at the exact time the train went by somewhere else at the station. The three we interviewed at the station were the ones who came across his body after he'd died and done nothing, which is just horrendous. You'd think that alone betrays guilt, but no. Everyone has a motive and everyone has an alibi!"

"No one saw what happened? Not even anyone on the train?"

Lucien shook his head. "No, it was a freighter, so there were only about three people on board. We interviewed the engineer, and he hadn't even realized the train hit anyone. Very sweet young man. Got very upset at the news, feeling horribly guilty that the train he was driving had killed someone. It wasn't his fault, of course. Trains can't just come to a sudden stop, so even if he had seen Brix on the track, the same result would have still occurred."

Jean's brow furrowed as she tried to think of other alternatives. "Is it possible he wasn't pushed?"

"That he threw himself in front of the train?"

"If he was a miserable man with no friends and no family, is it possible that he did commit suicide?" Jean hated to even think such a thing. It was too horrible. But it did seem to be a reasonable alternative.

"That is an interesting idea." His mind began to whirl with possibilities, methods of proving suicide.

Jean watching him for a moment, seeing his vision unfocus as he became lost in thought. She turned back to her remaining dishes with a small smile, content she'd been of some small assistance to the investigation.

The sound of the water brought him back to reality. "Here, why don't you scrub—since you're the only one who does it properly—and I can rinse and dry for you?" he offered.

She gladly accepted his help. The work would go much faster this way, and then they could spend a little time alone before she needed to start dinner.

But it soon became clear that Lucien had no intention of helping her with the dishes in the same way he had before they'd been married. Then, he would make polite conversation and keep a respectful distance between them. Now, he was strangely quiet, and every dish he went to rinse, he took a half-step closer to her. He said nothing about it, making no indication that he was now brushing her arm when he reached to the sink, or that their hips were practically touching from him standing so close. Jean just held her ground, trying not to smile or laugh at his subtle attempts to get close to her. It didn't take him long to cross the line.

He went to dunk one of the last few dishes in the sink and instead let it rest on the bottom of the sink. His hands emerged from the water and came to rest on her hips.

"Lucien!" she shrieked at the sudden wet feeling on her skirt, practically jumping out of her skin.

But he just laughed as he stood behind her and moved his hands up her waist and ribcage, his fingers gently grazing her breasts before following the outline of her body back down to her hips.

"I really do need to finish these dishes," she informed him. But Jean made absolutely no attempt to stop him. When he didn't move away from her, she sighed happily and leaned back against his chest. "I wonder if the novelty will ever wear off," she thought aloud.

"The novelty of being able to touch you and kiss you as I please?"

"Mmm," she confirmed with a contented hum.

"I hope it doesn't wear off. I hope I'm never too used to you. Though I can't see how I ever could be. You surprise me with new, wonderful things all the time."

Her eyebrows went up her forehead. "Are you referring to last night?"

He growled and nibbled lightly on her earlobe. "I don't know that I'll survive many more surprises like that."

Jean laughed, still proud of herself for her bravery. She turned in his embrace and beamed up at him with love and gratitude for allowing her to feel able to do such things with him. She still had wet rubber gloves on her hands from washing the dishes, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He didn't mind the water dripping from the gloves down the back of his jacket, nor did she mind his wet handprints all over her clothes.