Chapter Text
Dr. Elizabeth MacMillan was extremely irritated. She was glad this corpse happened to be part of a case that was entirely open-and-shut, because something was definitely wrong with the two visitors to her morgue.
Her old friend Phryne Fisher, who usually started spinning scenarios on the spot, was distracted; the normally perspicacious Detective Inspector who accompanied her was fighting tooth and nail to train his attention on the proceedings. To make things worse, both of her visitors had a tendency to burst into smiles whenever their eyes met. Phryne’s smiles were direct and self-assured, but the Inspector’s could only be described as loopy—not a look Mac was accustomed to seeing on his face.
“That’s all there is to it,” Mac concluded her findings, regarding the corpse and the cause of death. “No mystery about this one.”
She waited.
And waited.
“Inspector?”
“Hm? Oh—yes, I think I’ll let Collins handle this one,” he said, shaking himself briefly and dragging his attention to the subject at hand. He looked at Phryne for what Mac estimated to be the 327th time since the two of them had arrived ten minutes earlier. “Shall we go, then?”
Phryne appeared to be ready to agree when Mac interrupted them. “Inspector, if you don’t mind, I’d like a word with Phryne alone.”
“Oh—fine,” he said vaguely. With yet another loopy smile, he said to Phryne, “I’ll wait at the car.”
Phryne smiled back fondly and said, “I won’t be long.” The Inspector nodded and wandered out the door, putting on his hat as he went.
Mac thought it was a miracle that he could remember where he was meant to put it.
Once he was gone, Mac rounded on Phryne. “What the hell have you done to him now?” she snarled. “He’s one of very few men I like to work with. I really wish you wouldn’t ruin him.” The faraway look in Phryne’s eyes only made things worse.
Mac knew the two had been lovers for some time now, so that couldn’t be it. When they had come to the morgue the day after the first time, she had come close to throwing them both out, they were that hard to bear.
A shocking thought came to her. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“What?!” The faraway smile disappeared in a flash. “Mac! We’d hardly be happy about that—well, he might be, he’s a man, after all—but no, we’re taking every precaution. It’s not that.”
“Then suppose you explain it to me. What has turned our intrepid Inspector’s brain to mush?”
When Phryne came clean about it, Mac could hardly have been more amazed, so Phryne told her the whole story—at least, as much as Mac needed to know.