Disclaimer: Maybe someday I will create wonderful characters of my own. At the moment, I am simply playing with the ones dreamed up by Anthony Horowitz. And making absolutely no money in the process.

Author's Notes: Things I learned from my amazing Beta, GiulliettaC, in the course of writing this chapter: the phrase "all on her lonesome" is an Americanism. GiulliettaC's suggested substitution, "all on her own-ee-o" is taken from a music hall song about a young Italian lady pining for her faithless beau, Antonio (who has left her all on her "own-ee-o" - it rhymes, get it?) :O). You learn something new every day. Especially when GiulliettaC is your Beta.

This is where I stop playing quite so nicely with canon and things really start happening...

Late March, 1942

Paul Milner mounted the stairs gingerly and entered Will Grayson's bedroom. There was pitifully little left of it. Whatever the fire hadn't consumed to nothingness was a charred, black skeleton of itself. Water still dripped from the ceiling; the air was redolent of the sharp, acrid reek of smoke. Paul surveyed the room carefully, noting a set of keys lying among the rubble on Will's bedside cabinet.

He stared out the car window on the drive back to the Hastings station without taking in the scenery. He thought of the previous evening – Christ, was it really such a short time ago? – sitting with Will at the Wheatsheaf, sharing a few pints and catching up on everything they had been through since Trondheim. An invisible hand seemed to be twisting his insides. How was this possible? Will had saved Paul's life in Norway, carried him to safety after that explosion. Now Will was dead from his bedclothes catching fire and his bedroom door being locked, preventing his escape. Something about the whole sorry mess didn't seem quite right – of that Paul felt certain.

When he arrived at the station, Paul explained the circumstances of Will's death to Mr. Foyle and asked to spend his own time, over the weekend, making inquiries.

"I don't understand why he didn't get out," Paul finished with the part that was puzzling him the most, "He'd locked himself in, but he could have opened the door, there was a key right beside the bed."

"And why was it locked in the first place?" Mr. Foyle had a sometimes uncanny knack for seeing the really fundamental question that required answering. Better still, he had a generous respect for the instincts and intuitions of people other than himself. "All right," he told Paul, "Look into it."

...

First he'd visited Will's father, still confined to a hospital bed. Paul could see and hear his own shock and disbelief over Will's death mirrored in the older man. Will's father had waited up for his son that night and seen him come in, very drunk. Paul confirmed that they had both been together at the Wheatsheaf.

"He could barely stand up," Will's father concluded, then added, accusingly, "What were you drinking?"

"Just bitter." Paul felt a stab of guilt. If they hadn't been out drinking in the first place, would this still have happened? Quite possibly; Will's father said that his son had been out drinking every night. The war was eating at him from the inside out.

"Well he must have had plenty of it," Mr. Grayson declared. Paul thought back to the night in question, tallied the drinks they'd both consumed. The beer was on the weak side, as it was everywhere. When Paul had left Will to go home, he'd felt pleasantly mellow, as much from Will's company as from the beer. He himself had certainly been far from drunk. There was work to look forward to the next day and the last thing he would have wanted to do was show up at the station with a hangover. Will might have had a bit more to drink than Paul, but certainly not enough to incapacitate him…

Paul changed tack and asked about Will locking his bedroom door. Mr. Grayson found this circumstance equally mystifying; his son had never done that before. Then they spoke of the fire itself. Will's father had gone to bed after his son came home, then woke an hour later, around midnight.

"I knew something was wrong straight away."

"There was smoke?" Paul prompted gently.

"I smelled it before I saw it – the whole top floor was alight. When I got up the stairs I tried to open his door."

"Wasn't he awake?"

"Yeah, he heard me. I banged on the door and he shouted to me, 'I can't see!' That's all he said." Paul wondered what that meant. Will couldn't see because of the smoke? Shouldn't he have been able to reach for his keys even so? "Then the ceiling in the corridor came down and that's all I remember," Mr. Grayson concluded mournfully, "They dragged me out but they couldn't get Will. Couldn't get to him."

...

Paul's next stop was the Wheatsheaf, where he spoke to the landlord, Alan Carter. Carter claimed that Will had put back a few more pints and left the premises sober enough.

"He was after whisky," Paul said, remembering that Will had suggested they switch to something harder before he had decided to pack it in and go home.

"There is no whisky," Carter stated flatly, "We ran out." As had every other drinking establishment. Carter suggested that Will might have gotten something at one of the other pubs in the area. He hadn't noticed when Will left. Paul remembered that there had been a barmaid. Carter gave him her name and particulars. Susan Davies. Paul went to her home, hoping to speak with her, but she wasn't there.

...

Sam sat at the back of the crowded lecture room as Mr. Foyle addressed the American servicemen about what they could expect now that they were stationed in England; all the little things that were different, all of the really important things that were the same. The young Americans seemed to enjoy the lecture. They listened more or less respectfully and asked questions. Sam eyed them curiously. In different uniforms, some of them might have passed for Englishmen. Others wouldn't, although in most cases, Sam couldn't quite put her finger on why. None of them looked like Clark Gable, of course, but a number of them were good looking enough to pass for film stars.

When Captain Kieffer thanked Mr. Foyle for his time and dismissed the assembled crowd, everyone wandered into the mess for supper, including herself and the DCS. The spread was eye-popping; Sam hadn't seen so much food on one table since she, Paul, and Mr. Foyle had spent a few days at the Land Army Hostel the previous spring. On that occasion, there had been a sturdy familiarity to the food. Now, much of what she saw was unfamiliar and even a trifle exotic. Sam wanted to try everything. However, strangely, when confronted by all this excess, she found herself frozen in hesitation.

"Hey, Sugar." A figure loomed in Sam's peripheral vision and she glanced around to see one of the American servicemen standing a few feet away from her, hands in his pockets and a smile on his face.

"I'm sorry, are you talking to me?"

"Well, I don't see anyone else around," the young man drawled. No other women, certainly.

"Well, my name's not 'Sugar,'" Sam said with as much dignity as she could muster.

"Well, what is it then?" The young man was clearly nothing if not persistent.

"Stewart. Sam Stewart."

"Sam. As in 'Samantha?'"

"Yes." Sam allowed some impatience to colour her voice. Honestly, if she had a pound for everyone who felt it necessary to comment on how she chose to shorten her name…

"You got a boyfriend?"

"Actually, I do." Impatience veered into outright annoyance with a touch of frost.

"Well, forgive me. I was just trying to be friendly." Despite his forwardness, he did seem sincere. Sam allowed herself to unbend slightly and they chatted for a few minutes. His name was Private Joe Farnetti, and he told her that the Americans were going to be hosting a dance to get to know all the locals. If she came, he could show her the jitterbug, a dance Sam had never heard of before.

The conversation didn't last long; Mr. Foyle decided to leave shortly after that. Sam grabbed a doughnut as she left in his wake, throwing regretful glances at the food she had barely been able to taste.

...

You got a boyfriend? The question echoed in Sam's brain as she drove Mr. Foyle home, then walked to her own. She had actually been tempted to answer Private Farnetti's question with the counter-question, "Which one are you referring to?" By her own reckoning, she had two, both equally impossible.

There was Andrew Foyle, her acknowledged beau. They hadn't seen each other in person since he had left for Scotland over a year ago. Something had always come up preventing him from getting enough leave to make it down to Hastings. They had been corresponding, of course. But the letters had become rather perfunctory things as time passed. He didn't enjoy being an instructor as much as he had thought he would. She wrote about the cases his father investigated, though they were seldom the stuff of cheap thrillers. They seemed to have run out of things to say to each other. Andrew might be a budding poet, but he was less than stellar at writing letters.

When he could be bothered to write. Sam hadn't heard from him in weeks; neither had his father. If she hadn't known that Andrew was stationed in Scotland, the long silence would have had Sam sick with worry. As things were, she was becoming fed up. If he had lost interest in their relationship, she wished he would come out and say so. As things were, he was like a bloody albatross hanging around her neck. Useful to put young men in their place if they tried to get fresh, but keeping her from doing anything else.

And then there was her of-course-not-really-it-was-just-impossible boyfriend… Paul Milner. Sam couldn't quite work out when her feelings towards Paul had changed from friendship to something much stronger – it had all been so gradual. If she had been forced to delineate a timeline, Sam supposed that her feelings had altered some time during the summer, although nothing untoward had happened between them during those months.

They'd gone to the pictures towards the end of June to see "The Great Dictator." They had just sat through an air raid together, and Sam thought that she and Paul had needed something fun to take their minds off of the war. The film had absolutely hit the spot. They had both laughed so hard, at various points, that they had shed tears of pure mirth, and Sam herself had actually developed a subsequent case of hiccups.

The whole evening had been such a palpable boost to both their spirits that Sam made a point of inviting Paul out every couple of weeks. It was much more fun going to the pictures with a friend than all on her own-ee-o. And although Paul seemed to have long ago found his feet again after Jane's desertion, the memory of his black depression in its aftermath rather haunted Sam. She wanted to make sure that he didn't forget that there were people who cared about his well-being. But there was nothing in the least romantic about any of these outings. She'd always insisted they go Dutch.

Towards the end of September, however, she'd noticed an increasing…awareness in Paul's presence. It was as though her senses had sharpened when she was near him, becoming attuned to the way his body moved: how the muscles in his shoulders shifted when he reached for a file or the small realignments behind his facial expressions. She found her fingers itching to trace Paul's lovely, dark eyebrows or to pick bits of lint off his suits. Whenever they happened to touch – for it suddenly seemed to Sam that Paul was always giving her friendly little pats of encouragement on her shoulder or elbow – little bunches of butterflies shifted nervously in her stomach. She didn't think Andrew had ever made her feel quite like this.

Sam had ignored these new feelings resolutely for as long as she could. Even when she had finally admitted to herself, just before Christmas, that she was falling in love with Paul, she had studiously kept her outward behavior just the same as it had been. She couldn't simply throw Andrew over, not when he was away doing his duty and couldn't help the distance between them. She owed him her constancy. And she could never face Mr. Foyle if she behaved that way towards his son.

At the same time, Sam also felt that she owed Paul her continued friendship. In fact, Sam didn't know which she dreaded more about the idea of trying to spend less time with Paul – losing Paul's friendship or for him to think that he had lost hers. So they'd continued just as they had, thick as thieves at the station and taking in the occasional picture.

And of course, Sam often thought in despair when she puzzled over the whole ghastly mess, quite apart from her entanglement with Andrew and Paul still being married to Jane (not that he owed that woman a damn thing given the way she'd treated him), Sam had no way of knowing if Paul could ever return her feelings. They'd been such good friends for so long, he probably thought of her as a sort of sister.

Arriving at her door, Sam let herself in and sorted through the accumulated post. Finally! – a letter from Andrew. She sat herself down in an armchair to read it.

Well. She had gotten her wish. Andrew had written, full of apologies and excuses, to say that he had met someone else in Debden. Sam felt a moment of perverse pain, as though there really was some sort of throbbing ache in her chest. Then she took a deep breath and a wonderful feeling of freedom and possibility rose within her. She read the letter again. Andrew concluded the letter with a wish that she could begin again with someone else.

Sam crumpled Andrew's letter in her fist. Begin again? Jolly good. She knew just where to start.

...

When Sam took her tea break the next day, she brought a cup for Paul, as she often did.

"What are you working on?" she asked, perching herself on one of the chairs in his office and taking a sip from her cup. It struck Sam that Paul was looking a little more drawn than usual. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and launched into the sad tale of his friend Will Grayson's death by fire, intoxication, and a locked bedroom door.

"Poor man," she murmured, remaining silent for a minute and staring down at her tea. When the silence started to feel too long, she filled it with an account of her adventures from the previous evening, including the open invitation to the dance the Americans were planning to host. "I've decided to go," Sam added in conclusion, "You should come too."

"I don't think I'd be up to much at a big party." Paul stared gloomily into his teacup, thinking that a noisy, boisterous party would simply compound the sombre mood he'd been in since Will's death.

"Nonsense," Sam protested briskly, "The bigger the party, the less anyone expects of you." She had anticipated that Paul would balk somewhat at the suggestion, but she was confident that she could overcome his scruples, "It will do you good to get out and clear your head," she added, knowing that his mind was still wrapped up in his case, "And you can get to know the Americans, which would be good for the war effort."

"I think that it would do much more for Anglo-American relations if the Americans spent their time dancing with you rather than talking to me." Paul looked up from his cup with a sudden, rather mischievous smile that loosed the butterflies in Sam's stomach and caused her to giggle a bit more nervously than she would have wished.

"That's another reason you should come, then," Sam added, taking inspiration from the moment, "You can rescue me if someone tries to get fresh." Paul looked at Sam speculatively for a moment. He would have thought that she was more than capable of warding off unwanted advances. Sam was clearly trying to get him to go to the dance come what may; probably because she thought it would do him good, like their forays to the pictures.

"If that happens, shall I say that you're my wife or my sister?" he deadpanned. Somewhat to his surprise, Sam looked slightly startled and her cheeks reddened. Maybe his jest had overshot; that happened sometimes when he delivered them with a straight face.

"Please promise me you'll come, Paul," Sam implored, ignoring Paul's question. She knew it had been for effect in any case, although she wasn't quite sure whether or not it was meant as a joke. She sensed, regardless, that he was close to agreeing to come, and she brought out the last argument in her repertoire to ensure his attendance. "Come for the food if you don't come for any other reason. You wouldn't believe the spread that the Americans put out."

"Very well, Sam, I'll come." Paul straightened up in his chair and picked up a pen, signalling to Sam that he wanted to get back to work.

"Good," Sam rose, relieved, and collected their empty cups. "And you must promise me at least one dance," she added, on her way to the door. "Just because the Americans have arrived doesn't mean they should have everything their own way."

More Author's Notes: True story - my father's parents, Jack and Hannah, met at a USO dance in the spring of 1944. (Actually, they met each other for the very first time a couple of weeks earlier, but that encounter didn't result in anything particular and they were certainly not attending the dance in question with each other.) Hannah was dancing with someone else and Jack decided he wanted to cut in, so he walked right up to them and said to the other fellow, "Excuse me, but you're dancing with my wife." The other guy let go of Hannah like she was a hot potato and beat a hasty retreat. Jack and Hannah were married roughly three months later.