Disclaimer: You all know the drill by now. I own nothing and make no money, yada, yada, yada...
Author's Notes: Since this story take place in my own variation of "Foyle's War" and I have elected for Sam to drive ambulances for St. Mary's rather than work at the library of Beverly Lodge, there are a few changes that have been made to the unfolding of the plot to "Plan of Attack." I think, however, that it still holds together reasonably well.
And, as always, many thanks for the help of my Beta, GiulliettaC.
April, 1944
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Meredith was still waffling at the end of the day over whether or not Paul was right about the Henry Scott case, or whether it was even worthwhile carrying on with the investigation.
"These priests and vicars aren't going to say anything to you," he grumbled as the two men prepared to exit the station for the evening. "And I'm not sure we can make them. As for the Air Ministry, I doubt we're going to hear from them."
"We can approach Wing Commander Foster again, Sir," Paul argued, well-aware that their chances of success from that quarter were quite slim.
"Well, we can always try, I suppose," the DCS replied with his usual languid fatalism. He didn't sound as though he meant to try very hard.
Paul gritted his teeth.
"Perhaps we should reconsider the whole thing," Mr. Meredith went on, "Are we sure we are dealing with murder here?"
"I have a gut feeling, Sir," Paul replied determinedly.
"And not much else," the DCS shot back, sounding somewhat irritated by Paul's confidence, "I mean this man, Scott, was suicidal. It seems an awful lot of trouble to lug him up into a tree."
"Unless it was to make it look like he killed himself," Paul argued desperately, his patience with the entire situation, and his superior's role in it growing brittle and cracked. He was clinging to his professionalism and the deference due to a superior officer by his fingernails.
"You do what you think is best," came Mr. Meredith's weary reply.
"Thank you, Sir." Paul's relief and gratitude for permission to carry on with the investigation would have tasted considerably less bitter if he could have felt that Mr. Meredith had actually been swayed by Paul's deductive reasoning rather than an apathetic desire to end the argument.
"I don't suppose you'd care for a drink before you go home?" Mr. Meredith asked Paul once they had gained the pavement outside the station. Paul found the question surprising and horrifying in equal measure. This was the first time that his superior had ever made such an offer. And Paul could think of a whole host of things he would rather be doing than spending more time with Mr. Meredith once the working day was over. Paul's reply, however, managed to be both gracious and truthful.
"No, Sir. It's very kind of you, but my wife is expecting me." A fine rain had started to fall and both men turned up the collars of their coats.
"Damn. I've left my fountain pen inside," Mr. Meredith muttered, turning back towards the station and brushing past Paul as he did so. He had only gone a step or so when Paul was startled by the loud crack of a firearm being discharged. Whirling around, he was in time to see the DCS stagger back against a wall, his hand at his neck and a look of the utmost surprise on his face. Paul rushed to the older man's side; when he put his hand against his superior's neck, it encountered something warm and wet. Colors were indistinct in the dim light, but Paul realized in a rush of panic that it was blood – that Mr. Meredith had been shot.
"Charlie?" Paul heard Mr. Meredith murmur someone else's name faintly. Looking around for some sort of help, Paul saw Sergeant Brooke's form silhouetted in the light of the station's open door, looking out to see what the commotion was all about. Paul yelled though the rain, now coming down quite hard, for Brooke to ring for an ambulance.
"I've missed you, Charlie," Mr. Meredith wheezed and Paul realized with horror that the other man was hallucinating; at this moment, in Mr. Meredith's mind, Paul was Charlie, whoever Charlie might be.
"Sir? Try to keep still," Paul urged, trying to remain calm and putting pressure against the wound in the DCS's neck.
"I'm glad you're here," Mr. Meredith replied. Paul saw his superior's eyes roll back in his head, felt his body give a peculiar shudder, and knew that the man was dead. Nevertheless, he remained as he was, crouching by DCS Meredith's body in the driving rain until the ambulance arrived.
...
Sam glanced at the clock as she stirred the fish stew. It was starting to smell quite good she thought, nearly as mouth-watering as the last time she had observed Mr. Foyle make it himself. The former DCS was currently in the sitting room with Uncle Aubrey. Each man had been supplied with a sherry glass of the greengage wine (Sam had done her best to telegraph apologies to Mr. Foyle when she handed him his) and she could hear the rise and fall of both their voices. They were probably discussing some of the day's sessions at the conference and she hoped that they would have gotten enough of it out of their system before dinner to simply give Paul and herself the highlights, without subjecting them to a blow-by-blow account of the entire day.
Sam dipped a small spoon into the contents of her cooking pot, which were bubbling in a slow, contented sort of way. Yes, the stew tasted just the way she thought she remembered as well. As soon as Paul got home, she would announce that dinner was served. She glanced at her watch, in case the wall clock should prove to be showing the wrong time. Paul wasn't late, exactly, but she had expected him to walk through the door nearly a quarter of an hour ago. And after the incident with the lorry the previous night, Sam's nerves were rather on edge over the delay…
The sharp trill of the telephone cut across Sam's thoughts; she jumped as though she'd received an electric shock, then dashed through to the hall to answer it.
"Hello," she answered, somewhat breathless with haste, "Milner residence… Sergeant Brooke?" Her startled voice carried to the sitting room and Christopher Foyle felt his ears prick when Sam said Brooke's name aloud. "Is everything alright?" he heard Sam query, her words overlaid with a thin film of anxiety, "Has Paul left the station yet?" Sam was quiet for a moment or two, during which Foyle began to chastise himself for eavesdropping.
"What do you mean, he was shot?" Sam exclaimed in response to Brooke's unheard information, rather more loudly than she had perhaps meant to. The conversation between Christopher Foyle and Aubrey Stewart ground to an abrupt halt and both men, as though acting in concert, rose to their feet and joined Sam by the telephone in the front hallway. They waited in deepening concern as she finished her conversation with Sergeant Brooke; nothing intelligible could be gleaned from her side of the conversation.
"Paul's all right," Sam managed, sounding rather disorientated, glancing from Mr. Foyle to her Uncle Aubrey; each man in his own way presented the very picture of anxious solicitude. "Someone… someone shot Mr. Meredith as he and Paul were leaving the station. He died almost immediately. Paul has to…has to see to things with the Medical Examiner and the Assistant Commissioner and…everyone. He asked Sergeant Brooke to telephone and say that he doesn't know when he'll be home. And not to delay dinner." With these last words, Sam seemed to wake suddenly from a reverie and ran back into the kitchen to turn off the gas under the fish stew, as though the mundane details of everyday life had acquired a sudden desperate importance.
Dinner, once they sat down, was a short, hurried, lacklustre affair. Everyone ate mechanically and spoke very little. The fish stew, despite having exceeded all of Sam's expectations, seemed flavourless and flat. Mr. Foyle excused himself shortly after the meal had ended. Watching him don his coat and hat as he prepared to leave, Sam speculated privately that he intended to find out what he could about DCS Meredith's murder. Uncle Aubrey helped with the washing up, then tried to persuade Sam to turn in for the evening. When she indicated that she preferred to wait up for Paul, he offered to wait up with her, but she managed to persuade her uncle to leave her to her own devices, and he eventually headed upstairs to his own rest.
Sam changed into pyjamas, a warm dressing gown, and slippers, then did her best to settle down with a novel in the sitting room. It provided occasional, brief distraction, but for the most part, she kept vigil with her own thoughts, speculating over who had shot DCS Meredith and why. Did Mr. Meredith have any enemies? Or had Paul been wrong about Bill Burton's friends? Had they progressed from driving lorries to wielding guns? Had Paul been the real target after all?
It was past midnight when Sam finally heard the front door open. When she hurried to meet her husband in the hall, he struck Sam as looking more profoundly weary than she thought she'd ever seen him before.
"You didn't have to wait up for me." Paul's voice was quiet and subdued as he hung up his hat.
"I wanted to," Sam shrugged as she helped him off with his coat, still damp from the earlier rain. When Paul reached for Sam, she closed the space between them with urgent relief. It was hard to say which one of them clung to the other more tightly or how long they remained that way. It seemed like a long time, yet each felt, when they finally let go, that it could never be for long enough.
"Are you hungry?" Sam asked when they finally broke apart.
"No, I don't want anything now." Paul's exhaustion grew palpable as he spoke; he swayed slightly where he stood.
"Let's get you upstairs, then," Sam agreed, "Once you've had this." She ducked into the sitting room momentarily and returned bearing a sherry glass filled with an unmistakable green liquid. "Before I finally packed Uncle Aubrey off to bed, he made me promise to give you some of this. We haven't got any whisky on hand, after all. And you have had a terrible shock tonight. I know it tastes rather vile, but just take it like medicine and you can go straight to bed."
Paul looked rather blankly at the glass of greengage wine, then he took it from Sam, downed it in one shot, and handed it back to her. He trudged up the stairs, which seemed to him to have doubled in number since he left the house that morning, changed into his night things, and was sound asleep by the time Sam climbed into bed beside him just a few minutes later.
...
Sam woke with a start. The cause of her abrupt change of consciousness became immediately clear. Paul was in the grip of a nightmare; thrashing in his sleep, half tangled in the bedclothes, muttering incoherently. In their year of marriage, Sam had witnessed a handful of similar events. She told herself that she shouldn't be surprised that Mr. Meredith's murder had triggered something of this kind.
Sam grasped one of Paul's flailing hands and held it tightly, glancing at the illuminated hands of the clock on her bedside cabinet. Barely two hours had elapsed since she and Paul had collapsed into bed. Sam used her other hand to push Paul's hair off of his forehead; she could feel that it was beaded with sweat.
"Paul," she whispered fiercely in his ear, shifting her hand from her husband's forehead to his shoulder and giving it a firm shake, "Paul, wake up. Wake up right now. It's all just a dream. Wake up." She hoped that the commotion wouldn't disturb Uncle Aubrey. A third party was the last thing that they needed just now; she knew that Paul would want to die of embarrassment if he were seen in this state by anyone other than herself, no matter how kind or tactful they might be.
It took several long moments of exhortation before Paul seemed to respond to Sam's cajoling. He gave a muffled shout that sounded like, "Where are you, Will?" and his whole body gave a terrible shudder. Then Sam felt Paul's grip tighten on her own hand, which was still in his. When he spoke, gasping for air, his voice was thick with sleep, his thoughts clearly trapped on the threshold of the waking and dreaming worlds.
"My leg. Is it there? I can't feel it. It's gone and I can't move. I can't get to him. I can't move. Help me."
Sam's free hand darted under the bedclothes and hurriedly snaked its way down Paul's body until she found his right calf, administering what under any other circumstances would be called a viciously sharp pinch. It had the desired effect; Paul yelped in pain, batting helplessly in the direction of Sam's hand.
"Did you feel that?" Sam asked.
"Yes," Paul gasped. In the velvet blackness of their room, Sam felt his accompanying nod and heard his breathing start to even itself out.
"Everything's all right, Paul," she whispered soothingly, guiding his head to rest against her shoulder and rubbing his back. "You're safe in your own bed. In Hastings. I'm right here, Darling. You've still got your right leg. Whatever you saw just now was only a dream. You're with me. And you're perfectly safe."
"He died right in front of me, Sam," Paul murmured, the image of Mr. Meredith's body slumped against the wall returning to him in full force. "He was shot and I couldn't do anything to help him." Again Paul felt the warm blood on his hands, mixing with the cold, pelting rain. "I never wanted him dead, Sam."
"Of course you didn't," Sam responded briskly, "Nothing of the kind. It's not your fault. Not in the least." She felt Paul begin to relax under the influence of her voice and her continued caresses. "You'll find whoever did this. I know you will."
"It should have been me," Paul said in a choked voice as he tried to fight off tears, "They must have been aiming for me and missed." Or maybe they had meant to miss him – had Bill Burton's friends been issuing another warning? Either way, Mr. Meredith had paid with his life.
"It should not have been anything of the kind," Sam retorted fiercely, holding Paul tightly. "Whatever happened, whatever the killer meant to happen is not your fault. Or Mr. Meredith's. You'll find whoever did this," Sam repeated before kissing her husband deeply and passionately. "And you'll bring them to justice."
...
Paul woke up at his usual time the next morning with a raging headache lodged in his left temple, the sobering memory of Mr. Meredith dying in his arms, and the knowledge that the burden of the investigation now fell largely upon his shoulders. In addition to the running of the station. Despite the difficulties of the past year, in which Paul had often felt as though he had to step up to the mark and take charge, he knew that the current situation put him out of his depth, and he needed help badly.
It was therefore with the most profound relief, liberally mixed with sheer joy, that Paul had looked up in answer to a knock on his office door mid-morning and seen Mr. Foyle standing in the doorway.
"The AC asked me back temporarily, just until the investigation into DCS Meredith's death wraps itself up," Mr. Foyle explained with customary downplay. Knowing the state of affairs between AC Parkins and Mr. Foyle, Paul could imagine the cajoling and the arm-twisting that must have been brought to bear before the former DCS could be persuaded back to his post. Lighter of heart than he felt he had any right to be under the circumstances, Paul spent the rest of the morning with Mr. Foyle, reviewing his case notes as they related to the death of Mr. Meredith. They also went through the ongoing cases regarding Bill Burton and Henry Scott, in case either one had any bearing on what had transpired the night before.
This feeling of rightness and the burgeoning delight of reunion lasted until they interviewed Mr. Meredith's widow. Paul had occasionally glimpsed her picture on Mr. Meredith's desk: a sharp-featured woman flanked by two young men in uniform. In person, she turned out to be sharp-witted and sharp-tongued as well, immediately piercing Paul's feeble attempts at polite tributes to her husband. She knew that he had not enjoyed working with him and that he had put in for a transfer. Mrs. Meredith, her voice at once tart and brittle, informed Paul and Mr. Foyle that both she and her husband had been shells of themselves, dead inside, since the death of the second of their two sons – Charlie – over a year ago.
Both men left DCS Meredith's house subdued, Paul with the queasy sensation that he had been punched in the stomach. This, then, was the reason that Mr. Meredith had never seemed to connect to anything or anyone at the station, why he always seemed half in a daze. Not senility, or dipsomania, or even simple incompetence, but overwhelming and paralysing grief. Paul wondered, guiltily, what he should have done differently in the past year. If there was anything he ought to have done.
And that also explained who Charlie was, and why Mr. Meredith had called Paul by that name as his life bled from the wound in his neck. When he told Mr. Foyle of DCS Meredith's last words, the older man tried to encourage Paul to take what comfort he could from the circumstances. Paul didn't see that there was much to be had.
...
When the two men returned to the station, they found a young woman in RAF blues waiting for them. Sergeant Brooke had installed her in Mr. Meredith's (also Mr. Foyle's) old office. She was petite, with ethereal features, and blond hair pulled back in severely pinned-up braids. Her manner was nervous, and her eyes were red from crying. She said that her name was Jane Hudson, and that she had come in with information about Henry Scott.
Mr. Foyle ordered tea, and Jane explained that she and Henry had worked together, had been very close, even nearly engaged at one point. She fancied that she knew him better than anyone and she was sure that he would never have hanged himself. She knew about the other suicide attempts, of course, but she was sure that Henry had never really intended to do away with himself; he was just so desperately unhappy about the war and his part in it, she saw it as a kind of a cry for help in his misery.
"Can you tell us what his work was?" Mr. Foyle queried gently. Jane hesitated for a long moment, then shook her head hurriedly.
"I daren't," she replied. The Official Secrets Act clearly had her fettered.
"Can you tell us anything else?" Mr. Foyle continued, "Did Henry have any enemies?"
Here Jane was more forthcoming. There was a man who worked in the same place as both herself and Henry: Adam Everett. He and Henry had loathed one another, and Henry seemed to know something about Adam. Once Henry had told Jane to ask Adam about his Uncle Bill; Adam's enraged reaction to this query had quite frightened Jane.
Jane also spoke about the last time she had seen Henry alive. He had been leaving work in the middle of the day, absolutely beside himself, almost (in her opinion) to the point of incoherence. She had asked him what was wrong to which he had replied, 'It's not there.' She had then asked what wasn't where and where was he going, to which he had said, 'The church.' Those had been his last words to her.
...
Sam re-heated the fish stew for dinner that night (remarking philosophically as she filled Paul's bowl that stew usually tasted all the better for aging overnight), and she, Paul, and Uncle Aubrey did it full justice this time. For the first time in days, the goings on at the ecumenical conference took a back seat to Paul's investigations; both Sam and her uncle were equally agog to hear about the inquiry into Mr. Meredith's murder. Paul, preferring to save what he had learned about Mr. Meredith's personal life for when he and Sam could discuss the matter privately, led with Mr. Foyle's return to the Hastings constabulary.
"Mr. Foyle's come back?" Sam exclaimed rapturously, as though the Second Coming had been announced, "Is he back for good and all?"
"Well, he says that it's only until we conclude the investigation into Mr. Meredith's death." Paul was hard-pressed to hold back a grin as he spoke – Sam's enthusiasm was infectious. "Though I certainly hope he can be persuaded to stay longer." Sam already knew how short-staffed they were without him having to say the words aloud.
"And who drove you about today?" Sam queried, somewhat self-consciously.
"Sergeant Brooke. He's quite a decent driver and he likes getting out from behind the desk every so often, you know." Paul fancied that he could read his wife's thoughts; she had the air of a hound that had just caught an unmistakable whiff of fox, practically quivering with hopeful anticipation. But that was another conversation he would prefer to have without a third party present, so Paul turned the conversation back to the investigation. After skating over their interview with Mrs. Meredith, he gave a potted report of their conversation with Jane Hudson.
"Well then, you really need to find out more about where Henry worked and what he did," Sam huffed, when Paul had concluded. "It looks like you're not going to get anywhere until you know more about that."
"Mr. Foyle thinks he can get AC Parkins to square things with the Air Ministry."
"The AC is actually being helpful?" Sam remarked with more than a hint of sarcasm, "That makes a nice change. He must be desperate to keep Mr. Foyle on." Paul didn't reply, concentrating instead on his stew, though he tended to agree with Sam.
...
Sam conducted her own interrogation while she and Paul prepared for bed later that evening.
"When will you know how long Mr. Foyle intends to stay?"
"Sam," Paul sighed, "You know I haven't the faintest idea. He said until the investigation concluded, but there's no knowing how long that might take, or whether he'll simply change his mind about staying."
"Exactly," Sam exclaimed, giving a little bounce as she climbed into bed, "And Brookie can't always be driving you, can he? You haven't got enough men as it is. Mr. Foyle would be pleased to have me back, don't you think?"
"I'm sure he would be," Paul replied, easing off his prosthesis and propping it within easy reach of the bed. He was sure that Mr. Foyle wouldn't have bothered taking Sam on as a typist this past year if he didn't enjoy having her about. Sam had complained often enough about her sub-par typing skills and Paul had also remembered that Mr. Foyle's own ability to use a typewriter had been quite impressive. He hadn't really needed a secretary, particularly one who possessed only mediocre skills to tackle the job at hand.
"And you?" Sam asked.
"And I what?" Paul asked as he lay back gratefully against his pillow. He glanced at Sam, who had propped herself up on one elbow, looking at him somewhat shyly.
"Would you mind having me about the station all day?" Sam enquired. Paul reached out one hand to caress Sam's cheek, drawing her face closer to his and administering a tender kiss.
"I'm always happier when I'm near you," he said, "And more than anything, I'm always happiest when you're happy. I know this is what would make you really happy. Though who's going to drive ambulances now?" he asked, his tone becoming lightly teasing, "You can't just leave Mrs. Gillis in the lurch, can you?"
"Oh, they'll find someone else, I'm sure." Sam spoke with great confidence; in her year at St. Mary's she had seen at least a dozen arrivals and departures for a wide variety of reasons. She planned on handing in her notice the next day. "It's funny, though," Sam remarked as she settled herself more comfortably on her side, nestling herself against her husband's body.
"What is?" Paul asked as one of his hands automatically wound itself around his wife's silken curls.
"Henry Scott's last words to poor Jane. Which question was he answering? She did ask him two after all."
Paul cast his mind back to Jane's interview and thought a moment. "I suppose he meant that he was going to the church…get some guidance from that Father Keppler about whatever it was that upset him. Though Father Keppler says that he never saw Henry that afternoon. Of course," Paul yawned, then allowed himself an exasperated grumble, "even if they had spoken, Father Keppler probably wouldn't tell us what it was all about – sanctity of the confessional…"
...
AC Parkins had apparently known the right strings to pull. The next day, Mr. Foyle received clearance from the Air Ministry to visit Beverly Lodge, the name of the nearby estate that had been taken over for the War Work that they did there – whatever that was. Given the secrecy that surrounded it, Paul wondered if Henry Scott had been some sort of scientist involved in creating new weapons. Unfortunately, the pass extended to Mr. Foyle alone, so he drove off with Sergeant Brooke behind the wheel while Paul remained behind at the station. Paul would have quite liked to have accompanied Mr. Foyle, but there was plenty to keep him busy in the meantime.
Bill Burton was finally talking.
Mr. Foyle had leaned on Burton quite heavily the previous evening, informing him of the murder of DCS Meredith, and the implications this development could have on Burton's case. After all, as Mr. Foyle had explained with a certain icily inexorable logic, when coupled with the incident of the lorry that had nearly run down Paul only a couple of nights earlier, it suggested that DCS Meredith had not been the intended target. And if Burton – or his friends – were behind the first incident, it would be child's play to convince a judge and jury that the same people had been involved in both attacks.
The threat of a murder charge – of a high-ranking police officer no less – and the shadow of the gallows did their work. Burton – now a sweating, dishevelled wreck of his usually debonair self – admitted to Paul that he had been behind the lorry attack. But guns had never been his style and never would be. On that point he was adamant. Paul smiled with grim relief to find that his first instincts regarding Burton had been true. In the aftermath of Mr. Meredith's death, Paul's confidence in his professional acumen had been badly shaken.
Despite his stated willingness to cooperate, it took Burton hours to compose a list of the contacts and associates in his lorry schemes. Though perhaps that was understandable; the list, when completed, was quite long. Burton had accomplices in nearly every military and civilian organisation involved in the war effort. Upon reviewing the list, one name stood out to Paul immediately: Wing Commander Stephen Foster.
...
Mr. Foyle returned to the station just before lunch and the two men compared notes. Henry's mysterious work, Mr. Foyle explained briefly, had involved mapmaking. Paul deduced, without Mr. Foyle being explicit (and thereby breaking the Official Secrets Act), that any mapmaking going on at Beverly Lodge must ultimately involve pinpointing targets for the bombings being undertaken in Germany at the moment. This explained the picture with the aerial view of Germany that they had found in Henry's pocket. Up to a point at any rate. Paul's common sense, as well as Wing Commander Foster's insistence on the photograph's return, told him that a piece of such valuable intelligence was not the sort of thing that any worker at Beverly Lodge would simply carry about in their pocket. There were probably regulations stipulating that such photographs should never leave the premises except for official purposes.
Paul, in his turn, showed Mr. Foyle Burton's list. After downing a few quick sandwiches, Paul, Mr. Foyle, and several constables returned to Beverly Lodge to arrest Foster for his role in Mr. Burton's fraud scheme. They took Adam Everett into custody at the same time as well, though not on any charge. It turned out, however, that Burton was Adam's mysterious "Uncle Bill," and when Adam had gotten the wind up about being shipped overseas, Burton had pressured Foster into hiring his nephew for the mapmaking team, despite his lack of qualifications. Judging by Everett's reaction when told that he would be rejoining his unit, Paul guessed that he might have preferred being arrested for Henry Scott's murder.
When most of the cars had rolled away from Beverly Lodge, Paul noticed that Mr. Foyle had disappeared back inside. He waited with Sergeant Brooke until Mr. Foyle reappeared nearly a quarter of an hour later. Looking grim, Mr. Foyle directed that Brooke return to the station for reinforcements immediately. He knew who had killed both Henry Scott and DCS Meredith.
...
"So the German priest was a spy!" Sam exclaimed, when Paul recounted his day over dinner. Uncle Aubrey had left Hastings that morning and it was just himself and Sam at the table one more. "That's what I said at the start, but no one ever takes my ideas seriously," she added eyes dancing with excitement, though she affected a pout.
"He fooled a lot of people," Paul countered calmly. "Including an army of bureaucrats and immigration officials, and all of his congregants, Henry Scott in particular."
"Poor fellow. What a terrible betrayal of Henry's trust, listening to him agonise over the morality of helping our side bomb German cities, then passing along information to the Jerries. And then that so-called "Father" Keppler murdering him on top of everything when Henry realized that he was really a fraud. But how did Mr. Foyle discover all this?"
"One of the other chaps in Henry's office approached him after we arrested Foster. He's with Intelligence and he was sent to investigate some information leaks. He showed Mr. Foyle Keppler's file. According to the file, Keppler ministered in Hochfeldhausen before coming here. But when Mr. Foyle looked at Henry's photograph under some sort of special magnifying glass, he saw that there was no church in the vicinity."
"So that was how Henry tumbled to Keppler in the first place," Sam observed.
"And Keppler killed Henry to keep him quiet," Paul continued, "Then he lied to me when I asked him about Hochfeldhausen. He told me that he'd never heard of the place and that he'd spent most of his time in Munich. I suppose that he panicked afterwards that if I read his file, I would notice the discrepancy and follow that up. So he tried to kill me as well. But he ended up killing Mr. Meredith instead." Paul flexed his fingers and pressed them into the kitchen table, thinking once more of the driving rain and DCS Meredith's warm blood welling between his fingers. Sam reached across the table and covered her husband's hand with her own.
"Mr. Foyle got a confession, though, didn't he?" she asked, all her earlier excitement and levity replaced with great earnestness.
"Yes. Before Keppler took his own life." Mr. Foyle had insisted on entering the church alone to confront their suspect – out of respect for the church – he had said. Straining his eyes and ears for some sign of what was going on inside, the wait had seemed like an eternity to Paul, though it hadn't been much more than five minutes. Then there had been the sound of a gunshot. And a terrible, sickening minute before Mr. Foyle had emerged from the church door, unharmed.
...
Sam had been sure that once he was back with the police, Mr. Foyle would stay on. And she had been correct. The collective cases of Mr. Meredith, Henry Scott, and Bill Burton had all been resolved (though the paperwork involved would last somewhat longer). Mr. Foyle, however, gave no indication of quitting the stage he had just re-entered, and without being told, Sergeant Brooke had removed Mr. Meredith's name from the office door, which now read "DCS Foyle" once more.
And at half-past eight, as Paul and Mr. Foyle were conferring on the work to be done that day, Sam reappeared as well.
"Here I am, Sir," she beamed, "All present and correct." Standing safely behind Mr. Foyle's back, Paul allowed himself a broad grin. Sam looked magnificent; she might have stepped out of a recruiting poster for the MTC. Everything about her radiated confidence, professionalism, and the willingness to do what was needed to get the job done. Paul felt himself transported for a moment to the time before their marriage, when he and Sam had spent all of their working hours together, and when they had first discovered each other.
Rather than offer Sam a warm welcome, however, Mr. Foyle appeared to feel the need to tease Sam before welcoming her back to their little "team."
"All present and correct for what?" he asked. Paul could hear him feigning polite puzzlement.
"Well aren't you going to need a driver, Sir?" Sam explained, "I've resigned from St. Mary's."
"A bit presumptuous, wasn't it?" Mr. Foyle parried calmly. Paul thought that he detected the tiniest bit of apprehension steal across Sam's face, but she stood her ground resolutely.
"Well, yes, Sir. I presumed you couldn't manage without me." There was a moment's silence, then Mr. Foyle seemed to decide that this particular game had gone on long enough.
"Get the car," he told Sam, "I'll be out in five minutes." And that was that.