A/N: because Henry has more old books than just world-famous classics and journals of past deaths. Takes place at the end of the day after The Frustrating Thing about Psychopaths, also kind of refers to The Pugilist Break.

Background information: The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk-borne Typhoid and Epidemiological Practice in Late Victorian Britain. J. S. Williams. J. of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 65, No. 4 (October 2010), pp. 514-545.

The self-made book was old and battered by the many journeys it had endured, and much beloved.

He'd taken it to work on impulse and spent the day either fretting about its safety or sighing that he had no time to delight in the familiar narrative, but now the evening came, and he knew what he had to do.

Henry Morgan courageously waved to his assistant and fumbled with his scarf. His fingers still itched to turn the pages.

'Need anything?' asked Lucas, leaning in. It was late, and he had to be hungry (they had accidentally worked through a lunch break), so he was to be excused some impatience.

'Your word to keep this treasure safe,' answered Henry, reluctantly picking said treasure up and offering it to the young man. 'It's an original report of – almost forensic medicine predating the Ripper case.'

Lucas blinked, eyes going round. Then his hands twitched like he wanted to grab the poor thing and never let go, and he started to divest himself of blood-stained scrubs with alarming speed.

'Easy!' exclaimed Henry, hugging the precious record to his vest. 'I'd rather you savour it than gulp it down like some half-cooked excuse for reading material.'

'Will do,' Lucas promised, throwing on his blazer. 'Wait, do I need gloves? Do you need gloves? Why aren't you wearing –'

'...It's not a piece of evidence.'

'Huh.'

For some reason, Lucas looked surprised.

'Yet.'

For some reason – Henry liked to think it was utterly unrelated to the previous one – Lucas looked not surprised at all.

'Okaay, apple of your eye, no problem.' And there it was, greedy paw approaching defenceless paper. Henry told himself very sternly to let go before he could change his mind and bolt.

He had a duty to his student.

'Radcliffe and Power. Radcliffe? No relation?.. Report on an Outbreak of Enteric Fever in Marylebone and Adjoining Parts of London. All in Capitals, too.' Lucas glanced up. 'Like... murder by enteric fever?'

'No,' he said. The hard part was behind him. Henry patted his neckwear into place and gestured to the door. 'More like half a thousand deaths arising from malpractice on the part of a dairy farm –'

'I'm reading it! I'm reading it!'

'At home.'

Chastised, his assistant took a moment to carefully pack the volume. They turned towards the exit, scanning the room for equipment which might have been left on.

'It happened in 1873,' said Henry, giving in to the urge to share some of the story in his own words. The outbreak was brief, relatively speaking, but oh, did it seem much longer. 'Back then, we knew, of course, that typhoid fever was contagious, but not the exact way it spread, despite Tait's article in '58'. The article that he'd initially missed. Henry Morgan swallowed. What current medical advances was he unaware of? One of this days he was going to learn how to use that Google Scholar; Abe was singing its praises like he knew exactly what he was doing to his poor father.

'Come on, cut them some slack.'

Oh, right. Lucas. Morgue. Waiting for the elevator.

'I mean, that was before –' Lucas waved an arm, obviously having trouble thinking of a relevant research landmark that was not DNA-this or DNA-that. It was all ancient times for him.

'Indeed,' Henry said drily. This was another reason why he wanted his assistant to expand his horizons. Progress was good, technology was great, up until you had to wait two weeks for a tox screen, or to identify an antique blade. 'Luckily, John Whitmore, Marylebone's Medical Officer of Health, was conscientous enough to rule out every possible avenue of contagion except for drinking milk from the same source.'

Even more than a century later, calling Whitmore merely 'conscientous' left a strange taste in his mouth.

'Legwork,' Lucas nodded. They entered the elevator. 'Got it.'

'Then, of course, there was the matter of convincing the company selling it to suspend the deliveries.'

'Corruption... Lack of administrative powers... Same old, same old.'

'You sound so wise,' said Henry, unable to help himself.

Lucas bowed a little.

'And lastly, the need to find the culprit – the farmer who diluted the milk with contaminated water. That was a watertight piece of investigative work, Lucas! Seven dairies out of the eight that sold their products to the company, were found respectably clean; but the last one was exactly what they were looking for. Typhoid fever – going just a bit back before it spread to London.'

'Yay!'

Dimly he saw that they had reached the lobby, but excitement surged through him when he recalled that terrible week – a whole week before the Dairy Reform Company agreed to an inspection – and Lucas's mouth was slightly ajar. He couldn't just leave the tale 'to be continued'.

'The owner himself had died, among other people. They surveyed the land – the well was at the bottom of a depression, meaning a chance that seepage could have gotten in the water supply – and it was 'distasteful', Lucas, it wasn't used for cooking in the household!'

'There you are!'

'Excavations showed it was polluted by leakage from the pigsty and the ash heap.'

'So it was the pigsty!' cried Lucas.

There was an odd, vast sound of wordless agreement.

'Ah, but it wasn't! The physician who had treated the owner instructed them to pour the drainage – that is, the feces – into the ash heap, precisely so that other members of his family would escape harm!'

'Gosh! What a piece of bad luck!'

'Yeah,' said the distinctly unimpressed voice of Lieutenant Reece. 'Simply awful.'

They turned as one, and she was standing there with Detective Hanson. Hanson, who was still not over Jo's brush with a serial killer, and so was reluctantly supportive of Henry going with her into Dangerous Situations (as long as it wasn't the other way round), was trying to give the impression that the folder he was holding contained the secrets of the universe.

There were other people standing further away, who apparently had folders or cups or – yes, it was a doughnut – of no less significance, but they looked like they would really not mind taking the stairs, nope, not at all.

Henry knew the exact moment when Lucas's eyes landed on the doughnut by the forlorn rumbling of his stomach.

'We were...just...leaving.' Lucas nodded several times.

'Until tomorrow, then,' said Reece, stepping past them into the car.

'Bye,' mumbled Hanson, shaking his head. Maybe he was reconsidering his stance on letting Henry tag along onto crime scenes.

The two medical examiners hurried out, stopping only to give the keys to the receptionist, and met Jo, who was waiting very kindly by her car, as if she didn't slip outside seconds earlier.

'Need a lift?' Jo asked brightly.

'Yes,' they said together. 'Please,' added Henry.

'Your place first,' Jo informed him. 'And you're inviting us for tea.' She started the car. 'I will even have some milk.'

He was? Well...perhaps...

'I won't,' Lucas said at once.

'Nevermind,' said Henry, checking his seatbelt. 'How about a beer?'