Disclaimer: "Broken Souls," like all of "Foyle's War," is the property of Anthony Horowitz, not me. All I do is borrow some of the dialogue.
Author's Notes: Amazingly, despite the fact that this chapter tangles with canon, it's not a two-parter.
Many thanks to my Beta, GiullietaC, for ironing out the wrinkles in my prose. As with most talents, she makes it look effortless.
October, 1944
Sam ticked off the passing days on her calendar as September turned into October and her self-imposed deadline for turning in her notice as Mr. Foyle's driver loomed nearer and nearer. Very little of note happened during that time; sometimes, she almost found herself wondering if there could really be the beginning of another human being growing inside her body. Her new ration book, however, and the food that it procured were tangible proofs of the new state of affairs, as was her continued increase in appetite and the fact that the belt she wore over her uniform tunic (to say nothing of the waistline of her skirt) was starting to become increasingly snug.
One morning, about a week before she had promised both Paul and herself to tell Mr. Foyle about her impending motherhood, she had an unexpected visitor at the station. Hearing her name spoken by a woman (not an everyday occurrence at the Hastings constabulary), Sam had turned to see a tall blonde about five years older than herself with a little boy in tow. The woman was glowing; both from the autumnal chill in the air outside and from an inner joy.
"Rose?" Sam had exclaimed incredulously at the sight of her old friend. Rose Dawson lived on a farm outside of Hastings, and while the two women had seen a fair amount of each other a couple of years earlier, the dual responsibilities of Rose's young son Danny and running the farm after the death of her father-in-law meant that they had seen very little of each other for quite some time. Rose's presence at the station, however, was explained immediately by the glorious news that she had come to impart to Sam – her husband Fred had just returned home after spending the past five years as a POW.
Thankfully, it was a slow morning; both Paul and Mr. Foyle were principally occupied with paperwork and neither needed to be chauffeured anywhere. There was plenty of time for Sam and Rose to talk about Fred's unexpected homecoming, and even to run them all over to her house when Rose asked to borrow one of Sam's dresses.
Sam sat on her bed watching Rose ransack her closet while Danny played quietly in a corner and thought back to the first time they had properly met. Rose had grown up in Littlehampton, just one village over from Lyminster, and Sam had known her in a vague, acquaintances sort of way. Then, on Sam's first Christmas home after beginning to work for Mr. Foyle, Catherine Stewart had commissioned her to deliver a large parcel of baby things to Rose, who was expecting sometime at the end of January. Sam had made her way out to the farm on her first day off. Rose had invited Sam in for tea while she looked over the nappies, jumpers, and knitted caps that had been collected for her use. Rose was desperately lonely and it wasn't long before she was pouring out her troubles to Sam's willing and sympathetic ears – how she and Fred Dawson had only just been married a few months before he was taken prisoner at Dunkirk. And how she didn't know when – or even if – he would meet their son or daughter.
"Are you sure you won't miss this dress?" Rose asked Sam when she had finally chosen one she fancied.
"Not at all, you're more than welcome to borrow it," Sam had replied, wondering when she would be able to wear half of the things in her closet once again. Sam had heard that some women never got their figures back after having babies; she hoped (despite her voracious appetite) that this wouldn't be her own lot.
Sam was tempted to tell Rose that she herself was now in the family way, but held herself back. She didn't want to steal this moment of high excitement from Rose with competing news of her own, and moreover, Sam wanted Mr. Foyle to be the first person (apart from her parents) to hear about it.
"Are you going out?" Sam asked, as much to distract herself from the urge to let the cat out of the bag as from genuine interest.
"No, I'm cooking for him," Rose replied animatedly, "He's got so thin, Sam. I'll put Danny to bed early and then we can just eat and talk like we used to."
"I'm so happy for you, Rose," Sam said in heartfelt congratulation.
"I don't suppose you've got any lipstick?" queried Rose as she held the dress up in front of her body, and examined her reflection in the mirror critically.
"I haven't had any lipstick since my wedding day – my aunt let me use some of hers. I swear by beetroot juice myself," Sam declared – though truth be told she didn't bother with it terribly often. "Have you got any beetroot?"
Rose pretended to give the matter some serious thought.
"About… six acres," Rose replied. Both women lapsed into a fit of giggles, but it wasn't long before Rose grew serious and sober again. "I'm scared, Sam," Rose confessed earnestly, her earlier levity suddenly shadowed. "All this time we've been apart. I don't know if we'll get on…"
Sam thoughts turned briefly to Paul's first marriage and how things had broken down irreparably when he returned from Trondheim. But in the next moment she put it out of her mind. Rose was all sorts of things that Sam was sure Jane Milner hadn't been: kind, sympathetic, and above all happy to have Fred back. Sam couldn't for a minute imagine Jane rushing off to borrow a dress so that she would look especially nice for Paul once he had come home. She did her utmost to reassure Rose that all would go well.
...
The next day brought excitement at work: the murder of one, Dr. Worth, and the report of a runaway from London, thought to be headed for the family who had sheltered him as an evacuee at the start of the war. Sam drove Paul and Mr. Foyle out to the psychiatric hospital where Dr. Worth had been working – and where he had been found dead. Like so many similar facilities dotting the landscape, it had once been a fine country house, now requisitioned for the war effort. The owners – Sir John and Lady Muriel Sackville – had relocated to a cottage elsewhere on the estate.
To Sam's delight, she was allowed to do more than simply wait with the car once they had all arrived at their destination. With all of the staff to interview about Dr. Worth, Paul had no time to visit the Sackvilles about Tommy Crooks, the London runaway – for they were the couple he'd been placed with. Sam knew them slightly – they were friends of Uncle Aubrey's and at his request she had called on them once or twice – so, naturally, she offered to do the same on this occasion and combine the visit with a little discreet snooping.
Her call hadn't borne much fruit. Sir John and Lady Muriel very graciously invited her in and served her tea. They inquired after Aubrey Stewart. When Sam explained about Tommy Crooks' disappearance, they spoke of him with great fondness. Sir John even told Sam to feel free to have a look about the place if she really thought they were hiding the young man, but Sam found that she didn't have the stomach to call the bluff – if it was a bluff – of such an affable, elderly gentleman. She left Dial Cottage quite disappointed.
The sequel to Sam's attempt at sleuthing, however, more than made up for her earlier failure. Walking back to the hospital, she had been nearly run down by one of the resident psychiatrists – a Dr. Novak – riding his bicycle out of the gate and away from the estate. Though she only glimpsed it briefly, Sam registered something quite odd about his face. It held a sort of grey, glazed abstraction as though he hadn't seen her at all.
When she reported to Mr. Foyle about her conversation with the Sackvilles, Sam also mentioned seeing Dr. Novak. Apparently, the DCS found this quite odd, given that Dr. Novak had promised to speak with him a short time earlier regarding Dr. Worth's murder, and ought to have known better than to leave the premises before being interviewed. Mr. Foyle ordered Sam to drive himself and Paul to Novak's house.
...
That night as she and Paul climbed into bed, Sam was still too preoccupied by what they had all discovered at Dr. Novak's to talk about anything else.
"I am never going to twit my father about the workings of Providence again. Only think, if I hadn't seen him leave when I did," Sam shuddered, recalling the locked, seemingly empty house that they had found. The only signs that betrayed Dr. Novak's presence were his bicycle, thrown down haphazardly near the front door, and the faint strains of some classical music wafting from a gramophone somewhere inside. Neither she nor Paul could identify the piece, but Mr. Foyle had recognized it, and whatever meaning the music offered him had doubled his determination that they get in by whatever means necessary.
The DCS had ordered his Sergeant to break down Dr. Novak's front door, and when Paul had finally succeeded, the tableau that greeted them had been ghastly. They had found Dr. Novak in his bathtub, taps running full blast, and steaming water spilling out onto the tiled floor. He had slit his wrists and the scarlet-dyed water gave the first impression that the psychiatrist was submerged in an overflowing tub of blood. Sam had come closer to vomiting than she ever had before for a work-related reason, though fortunately, only after she'd had the leisure for reflection. At first, all three of them had been too busy hauling the doctor out of the bath and trying to save him. Sam still couldn't believe that they had not only found him alive, but that he had recovered so quickly from his self-inflicted trauma. An ambulance had taken him to hospital, but Dr. Novak had been sent home again by the end of the day.
"You were absolutely marvelous," Sam added, determined to distract herself from thoughts of Dr. Novak's attempted suicide. She gave Paul's right shoulder a gentle kiss and caress. "I still can't believe that you were able to actually break down Dr. Novak's front door."
"Neither can I," Paul winced slightly; it wasn't every day that he used his body as a battering ram and he suspected that his shoulder was going to give him gyp for the next week as a result. "I should probably share the credit with woodworm or some such thing."
"It was just like something out of Bulldog Drummond," Sam added with deliberate facetiousness, "It's par for the course in all of his cases: breaking in somewhere so that he can rescue the damsel in distress or the kidnapped millionaire before the arch villain's bomb goes off."
"You're probably right." In the dark, Paul allowed himself a brief, self-satisfied grin. It had been years and years since he had read any of the Bulldog Drummond stories – or gone to see one of the subsequent films. He was ready to acknowledge that they had never been particularly sophisticated or edifying. But the adventure and mystery that they contained had set his adolescent brain on fire with dreams of thwarting villains, solving cases, and saving Britain from her enemies.
His subsequent career with the police had never included the levels of mayhem and gore which he had admired so much in his teens. If he had ever chaffed over the quiet and routine that came with much of the reality of detective work, those blood-drenched hours at Trondheim had cured him of any desire to court violence for its own sake. Nevertheless, Paul indulged in a warm glow of nostalgia as he turned Sam's words over in his mind. The boy of fourteen that he had once been would have considered it gloriously thrilling to break down a locked door and rescue someone.
Not a bad day's work for a man in his mid-thirties with only one leg.
...
The second day of the investigation brought none of the intense drama of the first – which suited Paul – as he continued interviewing the hospital staff that morning. He strongly suspected that Dr. Campbell, the most senior psychiatrist on staff, was having an affair with his very beautiful – and very married – assistant. It was difficult to say at such an early stage in the investigation, however, whether or not this had any bearing on Dr. Worth's murder.
Back at the station after lunch, Mr. Crooks senior had come in, impatient that the Hastings constabulary had failed to collar his wayward son. Just as Sam had the previous day, Mr. Crooks had gone to see Sir John and Lady Muriel. Unlike Sam, Mr. Crooks hadn't been allowed past the front door: Sir John had warned him off with a hunting rifle. Paul had managed to convince the irate parent not to press charges, and to have a little more patience that his son would be found before very long.
Both of these more professional developments, however, rather took a back seat to the bee Brookie had in his bonnet about the War Cup being played in few days' time and the possibility of winning a large cash prize for guessing which team would carry the day. He managed to finagle small sums as well as guesses from Sam, Paul, and even DCS Foyle. Sam and Paul spent most of their dinner enjoying some airy flights of fancy over how they would spend a sudden monetary windfall. Most of the things on their list, however, were the sort that would have to wait for the end of rationing in any event. They were just getting started on the washing up when they heard a knock at the door.
"You weren't expecting anyone, were you?" Paul asked Sam in puzzlement, wondering for a moment if she had invited Mr. Foyle over for tea to tell him about the baby and then forgotten about it.
"No," Sam replied in equal bewilderment. "You carry on with the dishes and I'll see who it is." She was at a complete loss as to who might be calling on them after dark – perhaps someone who had lost their way in the blackout. Upon opening the door, however, bewilderment turned to shock as the hall light fell on Rose and her son Danny.
"Rose?" Sam exclaimed, "Whatever's the matter?" Without waiting for a reply, Sam ushered them both in out of the dark and cold and into the warmth and light of the kitchen. She made quick introductions between Rose and Paul; Rose's face was crimson with embarrassment, Paul's as puzzled and surprised as Sam imagined her own expression must be.
"Have you had anything to eat?" Sam asked. Danny shook his head immediately while Rose began stammering something about having come into Hastings to do some shopping and staying longer than she had meant to. Sam sat the two unexpected visitors down at the table and began making a quick survey of what she could feed them. There were her jacket potatoes for work the next day, just out of the oven. To this she added some bread and milk. When she offered to whip up some powdered eggs, however, Rose adamantly refused to let Sam go to the trouble; she looked near to tears over the trouble she was already causing.
Directly after Rose and Danny had eaten, Sam moved everyone to the sitting room, settling Paul and Danny in one corner near the wireless. Danny seemed to have warmed up to Paul quite nicely, and they sat together, poring over the newspaper. Paul appeared to be making up stories about the pictures. The tableau they made gave Sam the simultaneous desire to bounce with glee and to cry from happiness; it was so easy to see what a splendid father Paul would make. She couldn't wait to see him with their own son or daughter.
Beguiling as it was to watch Paul and Danny, however, Sam turned her attention to Rose and discovering the reason for this unexpected visit. With Fred's homecoming so recent and this utter about-face in Rose's demeanour, it was clear that whatever circumstances had brought it about couldn't be good.
A great number of people could have testified to Sam's powers of sympathetic curiosity and before too long, Sam had lived up to her reputation, getting the bare outlines of the story from Rose. All of her friend's hopes for a romantic, quiet evening in to get reacquainted with her husband had been an absolute and miserable failure. He couldn't seem to talk to her about anything, least of all whatever he had been through as a POW. The dinner she had put together with such care had made him sick after a few bites. She had been horrified and he ashamed at the sight of his blackened, frostbitten feet. He hadn't let her near him and had gone to sleep in the guest bedroom.
"And then there was the awful to-do with Johann…"
"Johann?"
"I got him from our own POW camp to help keep the farm running when Fred's father died. He grew up on a farm and he managed everything so well. I couldn't have got by without his help."
But of course, that was a disaster too, once Fred returned. Rose's judgment of the situation was clearly hampered by how well she had come to know Johann, seeing him as a person rather than the enemy. Sam, however, could easily imagine what sorts of feelings Fred would be experiencing, having endured unknown horrors at the hands of the Germans for so many years, then to come home to the sight of a young, strapping German running his farm and being chummy with his wife, however innocent the whole situation must have seemed from Rose's perspective.
"The things he said to me, Sam," Rose choked out, "The things he…"
"Did he hurt you?" Sam hadn't noticed any bruises on Rose before, but now she looked critically at her friend's face in case she had missed something.
"He tried," Rose burst out in fierce indignation. "He raised his hand to me. To me, Sam!"
"Do you want Paul to go and talk to him?" Sam ventured tentatively, "Read him the Riot Act?"
"He was passed out drunk when I left the farm," Rose replied bitterly, "I don't know what's happened to him, Sam. I don't seem to know him anymore."
...
It didn't take long to make up the guest room for Rose and Danny. Sam told Paul briefly that Rose and Fred had had a bad falling out, though she didn't give any other details and Paul had already deduced as much for himself. Paul dropped off to sleep shortly after his head had made contact with his pillow. When he woke up, feeling slightly disoriented, he saw blearily from the glowing face of his clock that it was close to midnight. And Sam was sitting up in bed next to him, her whole body shaking with silent sobs.
"Sam, what is it, are you alright?" Paul said hurriedly, pushing himself into a sitting position beside her. At the sound of his voice Sam jumped and all but flung herself on her husband's chest, sending them both back against the mattress with a thump and a protesting squeal from one of the mattress springs. He wrapped his arms around her instinctively and held her close. "Did you have a nightmare?" Paul pressed his wife, "Is it…is it the baby?"
"No, no," Sam managed as she disentangled herself from Paul's embrace, turned around for a moment, and fumbled in the top drawer of her bedside cabinet for a clean handkerchief. After giving her nose a good blow, she added, "I think I'll blame Baby, though, for falling to pieces like this." She settled herself back in Paul's arms. "I couldn't sleep," Sam murmured, "I was thinking about Rose and Fred and feeling just so wretched for them both. She was so happy not two days ago, happy to have him back and looking forward to picking up where they left off and having a future together. And now everything's so…wrong."
"He's only just got back," Paul replied quietly, "It hasn't even been a week. They can still make it up."
"And I started to think just how… lucky you and I have been. That we got to do everything in the usual way without being… interrupted. And then I started to wonder what would have happened if we had been married before you went off into the army and what would have happened when you came back. Whether we would have managed to get through everything or whether I would have made a hash of it all…"
Alone and awake in the dark, Sam had started thinking back to her time with Andrew. Based on her experience with him, Sam hadn't felt at all confident that the answer to her hypothetical question would have proved to be a positive one. She'd tried to do the best that she could at the time, of course, dealing with Andrew's mood swings and battle fatigue, but maybe she should have done a lot of things differently. Not that Sam wished in the least that she and Andrew were still together; they hadn't suited in the end and she was grateful beyond measure to be married to Paul.
Paul considered Sam's question for a few minutes in silence before replying. He thought back to the man he had been after Trondheim. He had been an absolute mess; mired in pain both physical and mental. In a state of shock. Full of anger over what had happened to himself and all of the other shattered and wasted lives, sacrificed to poor planning and worse strategy.
And then to come home, in his case, to a wife who had no words of encouragement for him, no patience for the adjustments he needed to make, nothing to offer him except frustrations of her own and the bitter fruit of her own blighted hopes…
Thinking it all through, Paul also acknowledged a deep sense of gratitude that he and Sam had found each other long after he had regained his equilibrium, healed both inside and out. But he also remembered that their friendship had been forged well before that, during the time that he had been adjusting back into an everyday routine, while he was still searching for the balance that he needed to function day to day. Sam had been so cheery, and straightforward, and kind…
"I think we would have managed," Paul spoke at last, gathering Sam closer to him and kissing her hair, "If we'd been together before the war, I think we would have managed well enough when I came home. There would have been rough spots, mind you," he added, as he felt Sam nuzzle her head into the crook of his neck, "Because I needed to re-adjust to a lot of things. And that can't happen all in an hour or two. But I think we would have come through on the other side."
"Do you think Rose and Fred will come through?"
"I can't say, Sam. I hope they will. But Rose is going to have to keep trying for a while. She can't simply give up just when she and Fred are starting again."
"Paul?" Sam ventured after lying in quiet contemplation for a few minutes.
"Hmmmm?"
"I've never asked you before. But…what did happen? Between you and…her." Sam heard Paul let out a deep sigh and she began to backtrack. "Never mind if you'd rather not. I'm sorry."
"No, don't apologise," Paul reassured Sam as he tried to gather his thoughts. He stared up into the darkness, searching for the right words to sum up one of the most painful and confusing periods of his life. "I came back, without my leg… And Jane… I don't really know if she was too scared to face what had happened, or if she was just angry with me, or if she honestly thought that I couldn't possibly manage with only one leg. Maybe a little of everything. Because from almost the moment I saw her when I was still recuperating in hospital she just…shut down towards me. She wouldn't talk to me about anything important, she wouldn't look at me, wouldn't… let me touch her. I felt completely alone, even when we were sitting together at the kitchen table eating dinner. I could never understand how every part of our lives before the war could be…drained away so completely."
"She was a selfish idiot," Sam responded vehemently, squeezing Paul tighter, finally able to articulate her long-cherished opinion of Paul's first wife.
"Let's leave it in the past," Paul said dismissively, hoping that subject had been closed for good. He never really thought of his past with Jane anymore; the present that he shared with Sam was too engrossing and too wonderful to be indulging in backward glances. So saying, with one hand he caressed Sam's cheek; with the other, he began tracing her spine. Wordlessly, Sam signaled her agreement.
...
Rose and Danny had left the house before either Sam or Paul got up the next morning. Rose left a brief note of both thanks and apology for the trouble their arrival had caused the previous evening. Unfortunately, the matter didn't end there. The first thing that the couple discovered upon arriving at the station was news that Rose's POW friend Johann had escaped from his camp the previous night. Rose and Danny had subsequently discovered him floating dead in a pond near their farm as they returned early in the morning.
Paul was assigned to interview the guards at Johann's camp while Sam drove Mr. Foyle out to the Dawson farm to interview Rose and Fred. Before they parted for their respective assignments, Sam had promised Paul to tell Mr. Foyle that Rose and Danny had spent the night with them in Hastings. As she had with Paul the previous evening, Sam kept her narrative to the barest facts, but it was decidedly one of the more awkward conversations she had had with the DCS.
In any case, between the things that both Rose and Fred did and didn't say, combined with details from the interview with Johann's guard, and his own formidable intelligence, Mr. Foyle returned to Hastings with Fred Dawson in tow, as a suspect in Johann's murder.
All of their open cases seemed to be coming to a head simultaneously. Sam went back to Sir John and Lady Muriel's cottage to ask where Tommy Crooks was hiding. This time she was armed with the fact that Dr. Novak had reported coming across the boy and speaking with him. Sir John admitted candidly to Sam that he and his wife had been harbouring the boy for the past few days, but that Tommy had gone out the previous evening to try catching some fish for supper and never come back.
Back at the psychiatric hospital, while Mr. Foyle wrapped up the case of who had killed Dr. Worth, Sam decided to follow up on a hunch of where Tommy might be holed up, reasoning that he had spent years living at the manor and become familiar with all sorts of bolt holes that were never touched, even with all of the doctors and psychiatric patients now in residence. Mr. Foyle gave her the go-ahead to poke about and she ascended the staircases slowly, past the floors in daily use, into the vast and disused attics that she knew a huge old house like this was bound to contain.
It wasn't all that long before Sam found evidence of someone's recent and most likely unofficial habitation: a crude bedroll and an open can of beans. She heard the scuffling sound of feet and followed it with quickening pace and pulse, calling out into the attic gloom for Tommy to come out. Instead of complying, he hurried forward, and Sam finally caught up with him on the platform surrounding the manor's roof. Sam did her best to get him to talk to her, but he seemed to have the wind up something rotten, turning on the parapet and threatening to jump.
...
Having obeyed Mr. Foyle's directions in handing the keys of Dr. Worth's office over to Dr. Campbell (now their chief suspect), Paul had gone outside to wait by the Wolseley until the DCS either required further assistance or was ready to head back to the station. He had only been standing about for a few minutes, enjoying the warm autumn sunshine and the scenery, when the sound of an agitated voice reached his ear, causing him to look up.
Paul saw a tall, dark young man leaning over the roof's edge. He immediately recognized Tommy Crooks from the strong resemblance he shared with his father. Quite apart from all of this, however, the boy struck Paul as looking desperate and reckless. Paul stepped back a few paces to get a better view of whether someone had chased Tommy onto the roof. He simultaneously caught sight of Sam's face emerging from an attic window and heard a snatch of her voice (though the actual words were indistinguishable).
Paul felt his heart flip over in panic; these past few weeks, he thought that he had managed not to be the over-solicitous father-to-be that Sam had warned him about. Up until the past week, goings on at the station had been quieter and more routine than otherwise. He knew that Sam spent most of her day either killing time over the daily paper or driving on local roads. Paul even forgot – occasionally – that there was any reason he needed to concern himself with Sam's health.
But now here she was, teetering on the shallow slope of a roof several storeys above his head, trying to calm down a tall, stocky fifteen year old who was unbalanced enough to have run away from home, and whom Paul had been speculating might have been the person who killed the POW Johann. Fuelled by an adrenaline rush made up of equal parts terror and anger, Paul ran back into the house and rushed up the stairs.
Paul didn't know how he managed to reach Sam and Tommy so quickly, but within minutes he had found them both and began hauling himself through the same attic window, joining Sam in her task of simultaneously calming the lad down and ferreting out whatever had made him get the wind up in the first place. Thankfully, their efforts paid off in short order. Tommy had seen who had killed Johann. And it wasn't Fred Dawson.
...
With Fred Dawson released and on his way home, Sam decided that the time had finally come to make her big announcement to the DCS. Gathering her courage, she knocked on Mr. Foyle's door. He was sitting behind his desk, pre-occupied with paperwork, and looked up at her when she entered. Sam took a deep breath and came to stand in front of his desk.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Sir," she began, "But I have something rather important that I need to tell you. I…I'm going to have to leave the police."
"Oh?" Mr. Foyle looked up at her, eyes gone wide with surprise.
"I've… got a transfer, as it were," Sam forged ahead, finding herself unexpectedly tongue-tied. "Effective immediately."
"Do you want me to speak to anyone?" the DCS offered solicitously, "So you could stay on here?"
"Oh, well, that's frightfully kind of you, Sir," Sam stammered, "But that wouldn't do any good, really." How on earth was she supposed to come out and say the words?
"Are you sure, Sam?"
"Just…look over my paperwork, Sir. It will explain everything." And so saying, with sudden inspiration, she fished her new ration book out of her handbag and laid it on Mr. Foyle's desk. She watched as the DCS picked it up, looking momentarily puzzled to see a ration book rather than a sheaf of typed forms. Then his expression changed, warmed, and the corners of his mouth tugged down in that peculiar way they had when Mr. Foyle was really pleased about something.
"Congratulations, Sam. That's…wonderful. I'm so pleased for you both." Sam grinned back, a trifle self-consciously, feeling herself flushing. Mr. Foyle seemed about to say something further, when Sergeant Brooke came bursting in, dragging Paul in after him, to announce that Mr. Foyle's prediction in the football pool had netted the four of them one hundred quid. The idea of sudden riches (albeit on a small scale) was pleasantly dazzling for the space of a moment, then Mr. Foyle had (very properly, of course) directed that Brookie give their winnings to charity.
"And hold back a fiver," he added, as Sam, Paul, and Brooke re-arranged their faces to hide their disappointment, "We'll get ourselves the best meal that rations will allow." He smiled at Sam and Paul, "We've got some celebrating to do."