Fic for hedda62 - In vain the am'rous flute and soft guitar - Part 1
Recipient: hedda62
Author: garonne
Title: In vain the am'rous flute and soft guitar
Characters: Lewis, Hathaway, Hobson
Pairing: Lewis/Hathaway
Rating: mild R
Wordcount: 11700
Warnings: None
Summary: That evening they'd ended up in Lewis' bed, for one glorious night they'd never forgotten, and never repeated. Dr Hobson persuades Lewis and Hathaway to attend the annual Oxford Baroque Orchestra's Christmas concert, with unforeseen results. Casefic.
Author's note: Many thanks to [redacted], for beta-reading and for getting the ball rolling on the casefic side of things.
.. .. ..
Hathaway was caught completely unawares by what happened that Friday evening.
He had been drying up and putting away Lewis' Ikea dishes, and thinking about a flyer that had come through the door for an Edward Lear exhibition at the Ashmolean. He'd already been once when the exhibition was in London, but he wanted to see it again, if he could persuade Lewis to come. He scrubbed at a dried-on spot of sweet'n'sour sauce, wondering whether Lewis was free tomorrow night. Over the years he had developed an unexpected and peculiarly strong need to share the best things in his life with Lewis. Lewis always made him see things differently, and through a better angle.
Lewis' mind was on a lower plane at the moment. Hathaway could hear him swearing under his breath and rummaging around in a drawer, trying to find a new bin bag to replace the one he'd just pierced with the sharp corner of a Chinese takeaway container.
Hathaway turned around just as Lewis stepped up behind him, and suddenly they were face to face, inches apart. Lewis' hand rested on the worktop, within touching distance of Hathaway's hip. Lewis' arm and the worktop formed the boundaries of a little space in which they were cornered. Hathaway felt trapped and cocooned at the same time, far too close to Lewis and not nearly close enough. He found he was holding his breath.
Memories were pouring back into his head -- memories of the evening, three years before, when they'd found themselves standing exactly like this in a corner of the kitchen, inches apart. That evening they'd ended up in Lewis' bed, for one glorious night they'd never forgotten, and never repeated.
Hathaway was close enough to see the pulse in Lewis' neck, in phase with his own racing heart. He let out the breath he was holding, knowing it would tickle Lewis' cheek the way Lewis' breath was caressing his.
This is it, he thought. Tonight -- surely we've waiting long enough. Tonight -- or another three years of skirting round the issue.
He didn't move, however, and neither did Lewis.
A mobile phone buzzed, and they both jumped.
"Yours," said Hathaway, spotting Lewis' phone on the table.
Lewis stepped away, leaving Hathaway leaning back against the worktop, his heart still pounding.
"Lewis." He listened for a while, and mouthed Hobson at Hathaway. "Yeah, I know. I haven't forgotten." He grimaced, but the expression quickly smoothed out into a grin. "No, he hasn't forgotten either. He's right here with me."
Lewis sounded perfectly normal, but he was swallowing hard between sentences, and the two spots of pink high up in his cheeks betrayed him. Hathaway was quite sure Lewis felt just as flustered as he did.
Lewis hung up, and turned back to Hathaway. "You got the gist of that, I suppose?"
Hathaway shoved the tea towel back onto its hook and slipped out past Lewis to fetch his coat. For a few minutes, he had completely forgotten about the concert they were supposed to be attending that evening. "Dr Hobson's fretting that we're chickening out on her?" He managed to sound as calm as Lewis.
"I don't know about you, but I wouldn't dare," said Lewis, picking up his car keys.
Hathaway gave him his best wide-eyed, what-are-you-talking-about-sir look. "I've been looking forward to Purcell's early court odes all week."
.. .. ..
Laura Hobson threaded her way through the crowd that thronged outside the door, stopping every few yards to greet a friend or be introduced to a new one. It took her several minutes to get as far as the entrance to the sports hall that was doubling as a concert auditorium for the evening.
There was a decent crowd for the first night. Almost all the cushioned seats were full, and even some of the nasty folding chairs, and there were still ten minutes to go before the first bars of music would fill the hall. She began to feel a little bad about bullying Lewis and Hathaway into coming, but she had promised Madge Masters she'd do her best to people the crowd with her friends and even the vaguest of acquaintances. Every single time Madge organised a concert or recital, she spent hours on the phone to Laura in the week before, worrying about the size of the crowd she'd get on the first night.
Laura scanned the crowd for Lewis and Hathaway, and spotted them sitting a few rows from the front. Hathaway had leant over to murmur something in Lewis' ear. Laura saw him straighten up, and saw Lewis glance at someone a few rows over, and then suppress a laugh. Laura craned her neck to try to catch a glimpse of the person in question, but she suspected she needed Hathaway's dry comment in order to get the joke.
She adored watching Lewis and Hathaway together, trying to puzzle them out. When Lewis first came back to Oxford, she hadn't expected him to get along with Hathaway at all. To her surprise, they'd fitted together like two very disparate jigsaw pieces that had somehow managed to distort themselves into matching shapes.
At one stage she had thought something was going on between them -- Going On with a capital G and O. One morning at work, over a stabbing victim -- three-inch blade between the third and fourth ribs -- she'd been quite sure something had happened between them. Happened with a capital H, that is to say. The same tension was still there, a tension she'd sometimes wondered whether they themselves even noticed. It had subtly changed, though, in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. Discreet observation over the following week had confirmed nothing, however. Weeks turned into years, and she'd been forced to conclude that she was mistaken, and that the facade of workmates and friends was in fact all there was to see.
Laura chose a seat from which she would be able to see just as well as she'd be able to hear. Tonight was a concert with a difference, after all: part concert, part historical re-enactment. It was the Oxford Amateur Baroque Orchestra's annual Christmas concert, in full 17th-century costume. Laura had been promised a programme of Purcell and Lully. She'd already sat in on a couple of rehearsals, but tonight she was looking forward to the treat of seeing friends and acquaintances looking half-impressive, half-ridiculous, bedecked in powdered wigs and puffy silk breeches.
Suddenly she caught sight of Madge Masters waving at her frantically from the far corner of the room. Madge started to beckon as soon as she had Laura's attention, and Laura began to wriggle her way through the crowd to join her.
Madge was second violin in Laura's chamber orchestra, and the instigator of this evening's entertainment, so it wouldn't have been surprising if she'd looked a little harried. At the moment, though, she looked positively frantic.
"What's the matter?" Laura demanded, suppressing a frown as she noted Madge's panicked, shallow breathing and glassy eyes.
It took a few minutes of masterfulness and patience to get any sense at all out of Madge, but eventually Laura found herself standing in the doorway of a small, cupboard-like space that had been rigged up as a dressing room. The only source of light was a halogen lamp fixed above the dressing-table mirror, and its harsh glare illuminated the man who lay crumpled in a heap on the floor. He was dressed in an embroidered silk jacket and matching breeches, his face heavily powdered. His elaborate wig was askew, half on and half off, revealing the nasty mix of skull fragments and blood that were the result of his having his head bashed in.
Hobson took a step back, pulling her phone from her pocket. She glanced at the screen, and noted the exact time.
"Madge, you remember Robbie Lewis, right? He was at my Christmas party last year. Go and fetch him for me, will you? He's sitting near the front." The desk sergeant finally answered the phone. "Laura Hobson here. I'm in Princess Margaret Community Centre on the Woodstock Road -- "
Lewis and Hathaway appeared two minutes later, all business now and all thoughts of flirting clearly banished from their minds.
Lewis grimaced when he saw the body. "Where's the blunt instrument?"
Hathaway craned his neck to see further into the room. "Isn't that a conductor's staff in the corner?" He was looking intrigued, for some reason.
"Hathaway," said Lewis.
"Yes, sir," said Hathaway, disappearing off to close the building's doors.
Laura filled Lewis in on what she'd managed to piece together from Madge's incoherent, hyperventilating ramblings.
"Ned Trent," she said, nodding at the dead man. "Conductor of the orchestra tonight. One of the main organisers of the concert too, along with Madge Masters, the woman who came to fetch you. She thinks she was probably the last person to see him alive besides the murderer -- scarcely five minutes before she came back and found him dead." She looked at her watch, impatient for the crime scene team's arrival. "Victim's in his early sixties, amateur musician of some renown in Oxford. He's choirmaster at one of the churches too, I think."
"You know him?"
"Only to see. He's a fireman by day, I think. Or maybe a retired fireman."
It was extremely frustrating having to wait like this, unable to touch the body. She had already put on the pair of latex gloves she carried around in her handbag, but that wasn't enough. She leaned up against the wall, watching Lewis frowning at the body. In the distance, she could still hear the strains of the orchestra tuning up, oblivious to what was going on twenty feet away.
"Not playing tonight yourself, then?" said Lewis, turning back to face her.
"The clarinet was invented in the mid-nineteenth century."
"Was it, now?" A tumult of echoing footsteps heralded SOCO's arrival. Lewis stepped aside to let them through. "That doesn't stop Hathaway playing mediaeval madrigals on the guitar."
"Your sergeant clearly doesn't have very high standards when it comes to historical accuracy," said Laura, and grabbed her kit from the technician holding it out to her.
"What's that?" said Hathaway, appearing at her shoulder.
Laura ducked into the dressing room, leaving Lewis to field the question.
She suited up, and crouched down to begin her work.
She was taking a second look at the head wound when the photographer finally left, leaving just enough room for Lewis and Hathaway to squeeze into the cupboard-like space.
"Killing blow to the head," she said. "No more than ten minutes before I got here, which was at 7:56. Another blow to the foot, administered after death. Other lesser bruises... The weapon's on the floor behind you."
Hathaway bent to look at the long, heavy staff in the corner. One end -- the ornate, gilded end -- was covered in blood, and the whole thing now had a chalk outline round it.
"It's a conductor's staff, isn't he?" he said, sounding thoughtful. "What they used to use, way back when, to conduct an orchestra. Beating the ground to keep time." He looked up at Laura. "Which our victim here was planning to do tonight too, I imagine, in the spirit of an accurate reproduction?"
Laura had been to dress rehearsals, and could confirm that.
"And Lully was on the programme tonight, wasn't he? Did you know that, as well as being a composer, he was also a conductor -- "
"Like the victim?" said Lewis.
Laura nodded.
Hathaway went on " -- and how do you think he died? As a result of an injury to his foot: he hit it with his staff while conducting."
Lewis raised his eyebrows, shooting him a look of amusement. "I'm not sure what you're suggesting, but it sounds a little far-fetched."
"I'm not suggesting anything, sir."
Laura straightened up. "Excuse me, boys," she said, squeezing her way out of the room and shedding her suit at the same time. "Why don't you tell him how Purcell died too, Hathaway? That could make for an interesting autopsy."
.. .. ..
Hathaway's head was a blur of names by now. Jeanine Arch, harpsichord, thought Ned Trent had been far too harsh a critic of her fingering, and she wasn't surprised someone had offed him. Luke Campbell, violin, thought Ned Trent had been a lovely man, if a bit too full of boring anecdotes about famous pianists he'd once seen from a distance. Fatima Powell, recorder, thought Trent had certainly been killed by someone with conductorial ambitions, and she could name names if necessary.
Hathaway raised his eyebrows at that one.
"What? The recorder is a very respectable baroque instrument, with a wide range of -- "
Hathaway had been surprised more by her vindictive tone than her choice of instrument. He cleared his throat. "Thank you, Ms Powell. Please send in the next person."
When he was finally finished, he found Lewis standing in the middle of the empty stage, offloading a pile of case notes onto a uniformed sergeant for transport back to the station.
"Learnt anything?" said Lewis.
"Just that I've been wise to steer clear of Oxford's classical music circles."
Lewis put a hand on Hathaway's back, guiding him down off the stage. "So tell me about Purcell's bizarre death."
"Oh, I think he actually died of something quite banal. There was a rumour concerning a cup of poisoned hot chocolate, though."
Lewis stifled a laugh.
"Possibly the 17th-century equivalent of an urban legend," Hathaway admitted.
He was disappointed when the pressure of Lewis' hand disappeared from his back as soon as they reached the hall.
Once out in the chilly December night air, they hurried to the car, where Lewis turned on the heating. Ten minutes later, they were pulling up outside Hathaway's front door.
Hathaway turned to face Lewis, and suddenly work and murder were forgotten again, and they were back where they had been earlier that evening, when they'd been inches apart in the kitchen. Hathaway found he was holding his breath again. He forced himself to relax, and meet Lewis' gaze.
It was instantly obvious that Lewis was having precisely the same thoughts he was - obvious from the look in his eyes, and the half-embarrassed, half-regretful smile that twisted his lips for a second before vanishing.
"Here we are then," said Lewis.
Hathaway nodded. He wished suddenly that Lewis were coming in with him, and he was quite sure some part of Lewis did too.
"Pick me up at eight?" said Lewis.
Hathaway nodded again, busying himself pulling on his gloves and tightening his scarf in a way that was entirely unnecessary for the short trip between the car and his front door. "All right."
"Good night then."
"Good night, sir."
.. .. ..
Saturday morning dawned grey and dreary, and the drizzle was turning to sleet as Hathaway pulled up outside Ned Trent's house. It was a small semi-detached in Cowley, not far from the by-pass. The curtains were drawn, as they must have been before Trent left for the final rehearsal on Friday evening.
Hathaway crowded into the tiny front porch with Lewis, trying to shelter from the rain. Lewis was fumbling with the keys, and Hathaway allowed himself to enjoy their proximity, the feel of Lewis pressed up against him. He suspected Lewis did too, because he took longer than he really needed to getting the door open.
The sitting room was full of musical scores and back copies of The Field. Hathaway pulled on a pair of gloves and began to go through the pad by the phone in the corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lewis frowning at the crucifix over the writing table.
The drawer in the corner table was stuffed full of bills and receipts. Hathaway sighed and piled it all into an evidence bag for inspection at the station. Sometimes he wished that murder victims would be more considerate and shred their old paperwork, thus saving him several hours going through it.
He turned, and saw that Lewis had bent to examine a picture of St Francis of Assisi, in a particularly hideous technicolour depiction and surrounded by small birds and frolicking lambs.
Hathaway stepped up behind him. "Patron saint of animals, obviously, though he also guards against a solitary death."
"Doesn't seem to have worked very well, does it?" said Lewis sourly.
Hathaway kept his mouth shut. He had remembered, moments too late, that the nineteenth of December was only a few days away. It had been stupid to refer to solitary death, stupid to refer to divine intervention, stupid to -- He shook himself, and turned away, still watching Lewis out of the corner of his eye.
Hathaway had known loss, but not sorrow. He remained frozen in the presence of Lewis' grief.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain, he thought. If it were Lewis -- God forbid, but if it were Lewis he didn't think he could. He stood with the filled evidence bags in hand, watching Lewis scowling at an innocuous brass ashtray, his gaze decades away.
Leave to thy God to order and provide -- but he would never say that to Lewis. Even inside his own head the words were hollow.
"You take the bedroom," said Lewis, heading for the kitchen.
Hathaway wondered whether there was anyone to miss Ned Trent. There were no photos of family or friends in the sitting room. Besides Saint Francis and his entourage, and a reproduction of Monet's Poppy Field, the walls bore only one other adornment: a group photograph of what looked like a choir, or an orchestra without its instruments, all smartly dressed in black and standing on the steps of a church.
He climbed the stairs, and found that there were in fact two bedrooms, though one of them appeared much more lived-in than the other. Hathaway had barely begun to poke around before he came across something that brought him up short. He stood frowning at the collection of shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe, recalling to mind the details of the forensics report. Then he raced back down the stairs two at a time, calling out to Lewis as he went, "Someone else lives here. A man with size nine feet."
Hathaway heard the sound of a key in the door just as he reached the foot of the stairs. He stopped short, feeling oddly like he'd been caught misbehaving, like a child. Lewis appeared from the sitting room just before the front door opened. A middle-aged man stepped into the hallway, carrying a suitcase and well muffled against the cold.
For a moment the three of them stood there, frozen. Then Lewis cleared his throat.
"Oxfordshire Police," he said, holding up his warrant card. "DI Lewis. This is DS Hathaway."
The man relaxed a little. "Yes, I should have expected to find you here." He stepped inside, closing the front door behind him. "Do you mind if I - " He put down his suitcase and started pulling at his scarf in a distracted way. "What am I saying? It should be I who -- I would say make yourself at home, but I imagine you already have."
Lewis was frowning. "And you are -- ?"
"Yes, sorry." He pulled off his gloves, and held out his hand. "Martin Walters."
Lewis cleared his throat. "I gathered you already know the reason for our presence, Mr Walters?"
"Because of Ned -- yes. When he didn't call me after his concert last night I got in touch with some friends, and -- " He broke off, the muscles in his jaw suddenly clenching. "I'm going to sit down, if you don't mind."
They followed him into the living room. He sat staring at his hands, his mouth set in a thin line.
After a moment Lewis cleared his throat. "What was your relationship with Mr Trent, Mr Walters?"
Walters didn't look up. "We shared a house."
Lewis and Hathaway exchanged glances.
"And how do you know him?"
Walters' face was transformed by a sudden smile of reminiscence. "We met at Mass -- or after Mass, I should say. Over tea and biscuits. He's choir-master at St Michael's, you know."
Was choir-master, Hathaway thought.
"Was this a recent meeting, Mr Walters?"
"Oh no. It was in 1979."
Hathaway saw Lewis' eyebrows twitch a little, but then he changed track. "I take it you're returning from a trip?"
"Yes." He seemed to be paying only partial attention to their conversation. The major part of mind was off in some other, painful place. "Yes, I've been in Manchester for the past three days -- visiting family."
"We'll have to verify that. Just routine, you understand. Could you give us your ticket, please? Or did you drive?"
Walters seemed to collect himself, and gave himself a little shake. He sat there frowning for a second, then said apologetically, "I'm afraid I bought my ticket on the internet. It doesn't have a hole punched in it or anything." He produced a piece of paper from his coat pocket, and unfolded it to show an A4 page with National Express written across the top. "Someone did scan the bar-code, though, if I remember correctly."
Hathaway took the ticket and made out a receipt, thinking that Manchester was not that far away -- certainly within easy driving distance, if someone wanted to pop back on Friday night to commit a murder, say.
Lewis was questioning Walters on known friends and enemies of Trent's: apparently he had had many of the former and none of the latter.
"He knew a lot of people through the choir, you know, and through the orchestra. Other things too... benevolent funds, charity drives... I could make you a list. I don't really know half the people, though. I don't have time -- I'm a gas safety inspector. Ned wants -- wanted me to take early retirement, but -- " He swallowed. "I said we'd have all the time in the world for that."
Lewis said again, surprisingly gently. "What was the nature of your relationship with Mr Trent?"
"He was a good friend of mine," Walters said, sounding suddenly too tired to be defensive. "We've been -- I've known him a long time," and suddenly his mouth went all strange and thin, and he was staring at his hands again.
Lewis got to his feet. "Thank you for your time, Mr Walters. We're sorry to have troubled you. We'll show ourselves out."
Lewis drove, and Hathaway wrote, scribbling down his observations and Lewis' while they were still fresh in their minds.
"Read me that list again," said Lewis.
"Walters' description of Trent's many and varied retirement activities, you mean?" Hathaway dug it out and went over it again.
Lewis was frowning. "Of course, what he left off may be even more important than what he put on."
"Why, did you get the feeling he was holding something back?"
Lewis grunted. "Maybe he's a damn good actor." He negotiated a roundabout, and they joined the main road back to the station. "How many bedrooms did they have?"
"Two," said Hathaway, not looking up from the papers on his lap.
"Both used?"
Hathaway stiffened. "Unclear, sir."
"A good friend, eh?" said Lewis. "I wonder how that went down with their friends in the parish."
Hathaway frowned. "It's none of our business."
"Of course it's our business. He's one of our prime suspects, man!"
Hathaway had been thinking the same thing, but he really did not want to discuss the precise nature of the two men's relationship with Lewis just now. He didn't want to talk about anything that even vaguely touched on love and loss, not when his mind was full of thoughts of how he'd feel if he woke up one morning and Lewis was gone. He knew Lewis was going to misinterpret his silence. Lewis was almost certainly thinking that he was uncomfortable with this, uncomfortable with the idea of two men together. He wanted to protest that he wasn't, that he was glad Lewis wasn't either, and glad Lewis never had been. Instead he said, "Manchester's not so far that he couldn't have easily hired a car and driven back down, and back up again in time for his bus this morning."
"Let's see whether he has a driving licence, then."
Hathaway made a note of it.
.. .. ..
Hathaway was woken by the sound of Catch-22 hitting the ground. He struggled upright, groaning at the stiff muscles caused by hours asleep on the sofa. He sat there for a moment, blinking, his mind still fogged by strange dreams of trying to rescue Lewis from certain death in an aeroplane.
The clock in the kitchenette told him it was one in the morning. Lewis had dropped him off around nine, after an evening working late at the station. They'd spent hours there, following up on everything they'd turned up since their visit to Trent's house that morning.
Hathaway sank back into the sofa, thinking with regret of what he had originally planned for Saturday evening: a drink at the Crown with Lewis, after their weekly game of lawn bowling, with which they'd replaced the squash on medical orders. That was before someone had decided to kill Ned Trent and disturb their plans. Perhaps even more significantly, that was before they had come this close to falling into one another's arms again, and disturbed the status quo they had so carefully preserved for the last three years.
Hathaway allowed his memories of that night to float slowly to the surface of his brain, an indulgence he rarely permitted himself.
He'd been tidying something away in one of Lewis' kitchen cupboards -- he hardly remembered what exactly now. Then he'd turned just as Lewis came up behind him, and they were standing mere inches apart, and instead of stepping away and saying 'oops, sorry', Lewis hadn't moved.
Hathaway's memory of the exact order of events over the next few minutes was rather fuzzy, but he remembered Lewis tasting of the Bakewell tarts they'd just eaten for desert, and Lewis' shirt being soft and warm to the touch. He remembered Lewis' hands roaming cautiously over his back, never dipping below the belt, until Hathaway worked up the nerve to take matters into his own hands, grabbing Lewis' arse and yanking them together. He remembered Lewis' gasp of surprise turning into a moan of appreciation.
He also remembered it only took them ten minutes of kissing in the kitchen to come to a wordless agreement that the bedroom would be much more comfortable, and not necessarily significant or symbolic at all.
Lewis had been incredible, wonderful, everything Hathaway had spend three years dreaming of. Hathaway's memories at this point usually diverged into a doxology in honour of Lewis, of his thoughtfulness, his surprisingly playful smile, his warm, strong touch. They had drifted off to sleep with Lewis' arm tucked around Hathaway, and Hathaway's face buried in Lewis' pillow.
The next morning they sat facing one another over the breakfast table. They busied themselves buttering toast and blowing on coffee until they couldn't put the conversation off any longer.
Lewis began, "We can't go on -- "
"Yeah, I know," said Hathaway.
"I wish -- "
"It wouldn't work, and it wouldn't be wise."
"No." Lewis looked down into his coffee cup, and then back up into Hathaway's eyes. He looked tired, and sorrowful. "It wouldn't, would it?"
Hathaway knew that ostensibly they were talking about work, and that underneath they were talking about something very different indeed. It was easy to come to the tacit agreement to lie to themselves and each other, to pretend it was work that was the insurmountable hurdle here. As if either of them wouldn't have resigned in an instant if necessary.
Hathaway wondered whether Lewis would ever be able to let go of Val, ever be able to mourn and yet live. He knew that it was something he should never ask of him. He wondered what other, unknown things might be holding Lewis back too. He was a complicated man, after all, and Hathaway wasn't sure he would ever plumb the depths of him.
He wondered how much Lewis understood of what was going on in Hathaway's own head. Wondered if Lewis would ever understand the constant berating voice that was so difficult to ignore, the automatic examination of conscience, the feeling of constantly being torn in different directions. Hathaway didn't really understand it himself.
Last night he had been sure that nothing so beautiful and wondrous could be wrong. By the cold light of day, the weight of his own stupid, hidebound mind came crashing down on him. Last night he had felt unique, like he and Lewis were the only two people in the world. Today, he just felt miserable and confused.
Intrinsically disordered, he thought, staring down at a jam stain on the kitchen table.
"We'll be late," said Lewis, getting to his feet.
Over the weeks and months that followed, they'd slowly relaxed into a new state of affairs, which on the surface was almost identical to the old one. They'd gone on having dinner together, playing squash, sitting in companionable silence over pints of beer. Hathaway never slept on Lewis' sofa any more, however.
It was torture, at first, being so much in Lewis' company. Surprisingly quickly, it dulled to a bearable ache. Three years later, it was a wound that seemed almost to have healed.
Sometimes he watched Lewis with Dr Hobson, or some other woman, and thought Lewis had finally moved on, from Val, from him, from whomever -- just like Hathaway was pushing him to do. Most of the time it seemed more like gallantry. And sometimes, just occasionally, something flashed in Lewis' eyes, when Hathaway touched him unexpectedly or smiled in a certain way, and it was like an echo of Hathaway's own soul.
.. .. ..
Lewis balanced a biscuit on the edge of his saucer, and summoned an expression of polite interest for Gordon Johnson, organist at St Michael's church.
"Such a shock," the man was saying. "Poor Ned, not an enemy in the world. To think of such a thing happening -- "
"Horrible, horrible," another woman chipped in.
At Lewis' side, Hathaway was a silent presence, leaving Lewis to make the small talk.
They were standing in the church hall at St Michael's, a large echoing room, the walls lined with stacks of chairs, sports equipment, and children's illustrations of Bible stories. Parishioners were still streaming into the room for their weekly cup of tea and a biscuit. Lewis and Hathaway had timed their arrival to coincide with the end of Mass.
They were surrounded by the hum of voices, and the clatter of metal teaspoons on ceramic. Lewis watched Hathaway out of the corner of his eye, wondering whether he felt at home here, watched over by the crucifix hanging above the tea urns.
Lewis himself felt vaguely uncomfortable -- defensive too. It was the reaction religion always provoked in him, nowadays. He'd had enough of cold comfort and lies in the face of death, of too many people giving him hollow words of consolation.
"Good morning, inspector," a voice said, recalling him back from the depths of his memories.
Lewis turned, and saw two members of Trent's baroque orchestra. The one who had spoken was a middle-aged woman by the name of... Sarah Beckett or something along those lines. The man, slightly younger and better dressed, was almost certainly called Luke Campbell.
"Good morning, sergeant," the latter added, nodding to Hathaway. "You also work on Sundays, I see."
Lewis wasn't sure whether this was in approval or disapproval. "Crime doesn't respect holidays."
"I'm sure we all wish you the very best of luck in your investigations," said Beckett, earnestly.
Lewis stiffened, waiting to be told she'd be praying for them, but it was Campbell who spoke next.
"While you're here, can I interest you in some raffle tickets? It's for a very good cause."
Lewis noticed that he was holding a zip-lock bag full of fivers, and a book of cloakroom tickets. Lewis couldn't keep an exasperated note out of his voice. He hadn't come here to be browbeaten into paying for the church roof. "And what cause is that?"
"The Oxfordshire Fire Brigade Benevolent Fund Christmas Tombola. The draw will be at Oakhill Primary School Christmas fete next Saturday evening - to which of course I heartily invite you to come."
Lewis relaxed, and reached for his wallet.
While he and Hathaway tucked away their raffle tickets, Lewis said, "I understood Martin Walters was a parishioner here?"
Beckett looked blank, but Campbell said, "That's right. I saw him earlier on this morning, I'm sure." He was looking surprised. "Is he part of your investigation? I didn't know he was at the concert on Friday."
Lewis opened his mouth, and then shut it again. No need to put an end to thirty years of discretion on the part of Trent and Walters.
A young woman with a toddler in tow appeared at that moment, clutching a fiver and demanding raffle tickets. Lewis took the opportunity to excuse himself and leave, Hathaway following, still as silent as he had been since they arrived.
The car park was already more than half empty, and cars were queuing to get out through the gates. The cold air burnt Lewis' skin after the warmth of the church hall. As he pulled on his gloves, he watched Hathaway out of the corner of his eye, wondering at this persistent silence.
Hathaway saw him watching, and gave him an odd look. When he spoke, though, it was only to say, "Did you actually want to speak to Walters?"
Lewis shook his head. He noticed Hathaway's hand twitching, fiddling with the button on his coat cuff.
"Go on then," he said, nodding at the pocket where he knew Hathaway kept his cigarettes. "I'll wait two minutes."
Hathaway shot him a grateful look, and reached for the packet.
Lewis wandered away, stepping carefully on the icy path and trying to keep to the places where someone had thrown down salt. When he got level with the front of the church, he stopped and turned to look back at Hathaway.
Hathaway was a solitary figure slouched against the pebbledash wall, gazing up into the cold grey sky. He had one hand stuck in his coat pocket, and the other held the cigarette away from his body. Lewis swallowed, thinking suddenly that he was willing to wait forever for Hathaway, but he hoped desperately he didn't have to. Years he'd known the man now, and he'd never been closer to anyone he'd worked with -- and yet there was still so much left to discover. Sometimes he was afraid there were facets of Hathaway he'd never be allowed to explore.
It was freezing cold outside, and Lewis didn't have a smoker's immunity to the elements. He was about to make for the car when he remembered that Hathaway had the keys. The front porch of the church, though, was only a few yards away, and he felt a good ten degrees warmer once he'd stepped inside.
The church was slightly less ugly and modern on the inside than the outside. It was empty, and rather dark now that half the lights were switched out: someone was clearly thinking about the electricity bill.
Lewis stood in the lobby -- narthex, said Hathaway's voice in his head -- and read the posters and papers on the notice board while he waited for Hathaway. Youth groups, sports groups, bicycles and school textbooks for sale...
A little way farther in was a sort of metal stand covered in candles. Lewis looked at the rows of tiny flickering flames -- each one for an intention, Hathaway had told him once. Prayers for dead souls and the like. Except what the bloody hell was the point? Val was gone, and that was all there was to it. He felt suddenly hollow and cold inside, a desolation that was the opposite of comfort.
Then he heard the church door open. Footsteps approached him, and he heard Hathaway say softly, "Coming, sir?"
Even just the sound of his voice was enough to warm Lewis. He turned to smile at Hathaway and Hathaway flashed a little smile back at him.
.. .. ..
Usually, Laura adored her busy schedule: lunch with former medical students, an after-work drink with friends from the orchestra, lunch the following day with more musical friends... In the week following Ned Trent's death, however, every event was more a chore than anything else. Everyone knew Ned Trent, at least by name, and those of her friends who had not been present on Friday night were avid for any sort of gossip or news. Those who had been present wanted to alternately complain about being interviewed by the police, or be reassured that they weren't suspects themselves.
On Wednesday evening, after a particularly thorough grilling over lunch by Betty Smith and Luke Campbell, she decided to go and grill Lewis and Hathaway in turn.
Lewis was glowering at Hathaway when she poked her head around the door of their office, and Hathaway was looking smug. Lewis' shirt-front was covered in printer toner.
"Don't you dare say I told you so," he was growling at Hathaway.
Hathaway leant back in his chair, putting his arms behind his head. "Now you know what happens when you ignore the words of the wise and their mysterious sayings."
Lewis groaned. "Shakespeare again?"
Hathaway smirked back at him. "Better than that." He got to his feet, pulling a packet of paper napkins out of a drawer and coming to help Lewis.
Lewis took a napkin and started brushing at his tie, while Hathaway attacked the shirt. Now Laura could see the printer behind them, one side of it opened up and the toner cartridge lying on the desk beside it.
She couldn't help smiling. "You shook that, didn't you?"
"You used to be able to get a new lease of life out of the old ones by shaking them." Lewis lifted his tie to let Hathaway dab underneath. "It worked the last time I did it, anyway." He waved Hathaway away. "That'll do, I think. My shirt's had it, anyway."
"Wait a minute, don't move," said Hathaway, picking up a fresh napkin and taking a swipe at Lewis' chin.
Laura watched, thinking surely no two people could be that comfortable with each other and not be sleeping together. She took a deep breath. "I'm here to harass you on the Ned Trent case, after spending the week being harassed about it myself."
Lewis sat back down, still brushing at his tie. "Not a lot I can give you. Hundreds of people with opportunity -- including the three of us, for God's sake. If anyone had a motive for murder, though, they're not telling us about it. Everyone seems to have thought highly of the man. What else... No family except for a sister in New Zealand. Housemate with a rather poor alibi, but without any clear motive either."
Laura raised her eyebrows. "I didn't know he had a housemate."
Hathaway had been putting the printer back together. Now he sat down behind his desk. "Martin Walters, 55, gas safety engineer. He wasn't known to Trent's friends from the orchestra, then?"
"Not to me, anyway."
"He's been on the electoral register at that address since 1982," said Hathaway. He paused. "I can understand why he might want to keep the fact he was living there quiet."
Lewis shot him a funny look. Hathaway was looking down at his desk, seemingly studying phone records. Hobson frowned, wondering what she was missing.
Lewis turned back to Laura. "Then there's the murder MO. The use of the conductor's staff. Could be that the murderer just took the first thing that came to hand, could be that it means something."
"Not to Trent," said Laura. "He was hit on the head from behind and the other wounds were inflicted after death."
"Maybe to Walters?"
"Unless he was the one doing the deed," said Lewis. He thought for a moment. "Nah, he seems to be more the arsenic-in-the-teacup kind of man."
"I leave you boys to it, then," said Laura. "Let me know as soon as you have something I can throw to the ravaging hounds."
.. .. ..
Lewis spent Friday afternoon in court, giving evidence for a case that had taken place so long ago he'd almost forgotten the details. He arrived back at the station to find C.I.D. dark and quiet, and everyone gone home for the weekend. One light burned, at Hathaway's desk.
Hathaway was bent over a pile of papers and receipts, surrounded by evidence bags. The light from his desk lamp turned his face into a landscape of shadows and valleys. The back of his head was golden in the light, and his tie was half-undone, swinging down onto the desk in front of him.
Lewis stood there for a moment, simply enjoying the sight.
Hathaway put down his pen with a grimace, and looked up. "Do people still even use cheques?" he said in greeting.
"I have a chequebook," said Lewis. He didn't bother to take off his coat. He'd only come here in the hopes of finding Hathaway and luring him away from his desk. "What's that you've got there?"
"A pile of rubbish I took from Trent's dresser drawer last Saturday. All of his debit card receipts for the past five years, and the same again for Walters. Takeaway flyers, gas bills, electricity bills... I've only got halfway through, but there is one thing that's a bit odd."
Lewis came to sit on Hathaway's desk, leaning over his shoulder, not caring that he was sitting closer than he normally did.
Hathaway held up a brown cardboard folder. "It's a pile of photocopies of chequebook stubs and bank statements, that sort of thing. Notes, write-up. It's like a dossier I'd prepare myself for a prosecution."
"Any names?"
"Lots of them. Half the time I can't read his writing... Ned Trent's own name isn't anywhere in there, though."
Lewis took the folder out of Hathaway's hand, and dropped it into a cardboard box with the rest of the evidence. "Come on, we'll finish this after dinner. My place?"
Hathaway drove, and Lewis sat and watched him, feeling free to do so now as he hadn't in the past three years. He remembered Hathaway brushing at his toner-covered shirt on Wednesday. It had been stepping over the line they'd drawn between them three years ago, but Hathaway had done it anyway, and Lewis had let him. He closed his eyes for a second, remembering the warmth of Hathaway's hand through the thin material of his shirt.
They stopped off at Sainsbury's for microwave Indian, and two bottles of Speckled Hen. They worked on the evidence from Trent's house while dinner was reheating, but as soon as they'd finished eating, Lewis pushed the paperwork aside, and Hathaway didn't object.
"There's a film on Two," Lewis said, stifling a yawn. "Something with Michael Caine."
"Sounds okay to me," said Hathaway, settling himself into the corner of the sofa with what remained of his ale.
Michael Caine was running around with a shotgun on the rooftops of London. Lewis had a feeling he'd seen the film before, and ought to know what was going to happen next, but the screen was blurring, and his eyelids were sinking closed.
When he woke up, his back ached and his eyes were gummed up with sleep. He sat there feeling groggy for a few moments, slowly coming to the realisation that he was in the sitting room, and had dozed off on the sofa. The telly was still on, showing some sort of documentary about stained glass windows, and the clock on the mantelpiece said twenty minutes past midnight.
He stifled a yawn, trying to get his brain together enough to issue some kind of apology to Hathaway for nodding off. That was when he realised that Hathaway was sprawled on the sofa beside him, dead to the world.
Hathaway lay with his head tipped back over the top of the sofa, his mouth slightly open and his long limbs thrown down in ways that looked decidedly uncomfortable, but mustn't have been.
Lewis sat there, looking at Hathaway and suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that the world was a better place with Hathaway asleep in his living room.
At one point, Hathaway had been spending rather a lot of nights sleeping on Lewis' sofa: in the months leading up to the night he'd spent in Lewis' bed. He'd never done so since.
Lewis tried to get silently to his feet, but Hathaway woke with a start anyway, and sat straight up.
"Mmpf... time is it?"
"Late," said Lewis. He went to switch off the telly, and turned to find Hathaway on his feet, frowning and tugging down on his shirt.
"Sorry, I..."
"Long week," said Lewis. "Maybe I should confess that I dozed off too."
"Right," said Hathaway, still looking distracted. "Er... I should..."
"Why don't you sleep on the sofa?" Lewis interrupted, knowing he was breaking another of their unwritten rules, and not caring.
Hathaway looked like he knew it too, and didn't care either. He said nothing, though, just stood there looking at Lewis, biting his lip.
Lewis said, "You still have your clean shirt here."
Hathaway blinked. "So I do." He sat back down on the sofa.
"Now I just hope I have some clean blankets." Lewis went off to rummage around in the back of his airing cupboard.
.. .. ..
In vain the am'rous flute and soft guitar - Part 2
Author: garonne
Title: In vain the am'rous flute and soft guitar
Characters: Lewis, Hathaway, Hobson
Pairing: Lewis/Hathaway
Rating: mild R
Wordcount: 11700
Warnings: None
Summary: That evening they'd ended up in Lewis' bed, for one glorious night they'd never forgotten, and never repeated. Dr Hobson persuades Lewis and Hathaway to attend the annual Oxford Baroque Orchestra's Christmas concert, with unforeseen results. Casefic.
Author's note: Many thanks to [redacted], for beta-reading and for getting the ball rolling on the casefic side of things.
.. .. ..
Hathaway was caught completely unawares by what happened that Friday evening.
He had been drying up and putting away Lewis' Ikea dishes, and thinking about a flyer that had come through the door for an Edward Lear exhibition at the Ashmolean. He'd already been once when the exhibition was in London, but he wanted to see it again, if he could persuade Lewis to come. He scrubbed at a dried-on spot of sweet'n'sour sauce, wondering whether Lewis was free tomorrow night. Over the years he had developed an unexpected and peculiarly strong need to share the best things in his life with Lewis. Lewis always made him see things differently, and through a better angle.
Lewis' mind was on a lower plane at the moment. Hathaway could hear him swearing under his breath and rummaging around in a drawer, trying to find a new bin bag to replace the one he'd just pierced with the sharp corner of a Chinese takeaway container.
Hathaway turned around just as Lewis stepped up behind him, and suddenly they were face to face, inches apart. Lewis' hand rested on the worktop, within touching distance of Hathaway's hip. Lewis' arm and the worktop formed the boundaries of a little space in which they were cornered. Hathaway felt trapped and cocooned at the same time, far too close to Lewis and not nearly close enough. He found he was holding his breath.
Memories were pouring back into his head -- memories of the evening, three years before, when they'd found themselves standing exactly like this in a corner of the kitchen, inches apart. That evening they'd ended up in Lewis' bed, for one glorious night they'd never forgotten, and never repeated.
Hathaway was close enough to see the pulse in Lewis' neck, in phase with his own racing heart. He let out the breath he was holding, knowing it would tickle Lewis' cheek the way Lewis' breath was caressing his.
This is it, he thought. Tonight -- surely we've waiting long enough. Tonight -- or another three years of skirting round the issue.
He didn't move, however, and neither did Lewis.
A mobile phone buzzed, and they both jumped.
"Yours," said Hathaway, spotting Lewis' phone on the table.
Lewis stepped away, leaving Hathaway leaning back against the worktop, his heart still pounding.
"Lewis." He listened for a while, and mouthed Hobson at Hathaway. "Yeah, I know. I haven't forgotten." He grimaced, but the expression quickly smoothed out into a grin. "No, he hasn't forgotten either. He's right here with me."
Lewis sounded perfectly normal, but he was swallowing hard between sentences, and the two spots of pink high up in his cheeks betrayed him. Hathaway was quite sure Lewis felt just as flustered as he did.
Lewis hung up, and turned back to Hathaway. "You got the gist of that, I suppose?"
Hathaway shoved the tea towel back onto its hook and slipped out past Lewis to fetch his coat. For a few minutes, he had completely forgotten about the concert they were supposed to be attending that evening. "Dr Hobson's fretting that we're chickening out on her?" He managed to sound as calm as Lewis.
"I don't know about you, but I wouldn't dare," said Lewis, picking up his car keys.
Hathaway gave him his best wide-eyed, what-are-you-talking-about-sir look. "I've been looking forward to Purcell's early court odes all week."
.. .. ..
Laura Hobson threaded her way through the crowd that thronged outside the door, stopping every few yards to greet a friend or be introduced to a new one. It took her several minutes to get as far as the entrance to the sports hall that was doubling as a concert auditorium for the evening.
There was a decent crowd for the first night. Almost all the cushioned seats were full, and even some of the nasty folding chairs, and there were still ten minutes to go before the first bars of music would fill the hall. She began to feel a little bad about bullying Lewis and Hathaway into coming, but she had promised Madge Masters she'd do her best to people the crowd with her friends and even the vaguest of acquaintances. Every single time Madge organised a concert or recital, she spent hours on the phone to Laura in the week before, worrying about the size of the crowd she'd get on the first night.
Laura scanned the crowd for Lewis and Hathaway, and spotted them sitting a few rows from the front. Hathaway had leant over to murmur something in Lewis' ear. Laura saw him straighten up, and saw Lewis glance at someone a few rows over, and then suppress a laugh. Laura craned her neck to try to catch a glimpse of the person in question, but she suspected she needed Hathaway's dry comment in order to get the joke.
She adored watching Lewis and Hathaway together, trying to puzzle them out. When Lewis first came back to Oxford, she hadn't expected him to get along with Hathaway at all. To her surprise, they'd fitted together like two very disparate jigsaw pieces that had somehow managed to distort themselves into matching shapes.
At one stage she had thought something was going on between them -- Going On with a capital G and O. One morning at work, over a stabbing victim -- three-inch blade between the third and fourth ribs -- she'd been quite sure something had happened between them. Happened with a capital H, that is to say. The same tension was still there, a tension she'd sometimes wondered whether they themselves even noticed. It had subtly changed, though, in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. Discreet observation over the following week had confirmed nothing, however. Weeks turned into years, and she'd been forced to conclude that she was mistaken, and that the facade of workmates and friends was in fact all there was to see.
Laura chose a seat from which she would be able to see just as well as she'd be able to hear. Tonight was a concert with a difference, after all: part concert, part historical re-enactment. It was the Oxford Amateur Baroque Orchestra's annual Christmas concert, in full 17th-century costume. Laura had been promised a programme of Purcell and Lully. She'd already sat in on a couple of rehearsals, but tonight she was looking forward to the treat of seeing friends and acquaintances looking half-impressive, half-ridiculous, bedecked in powdered wigs and puffy silk breeches.
Suddenly she caught sight of Madge Masters waving at her frantically from the far corner of the room. Madge started to beckon as soon as she had Laura's attention, and Laura began to wriggle her way through the crowd to join her.
Madge was second violin in Laura's chamber orchestra, and the instigator of this evening's entertainment, so it wouldn't have been surprising if she'd looked a little harried. At the moment, though, she looked positively frantic.
"What's the matter?" Laura demanded, suppressing a frown as she noted Madge's panicked, shallow breathing and glassy eyes.
It took a few minutes of masterfulness and patience to get any sense at all out of Madge, but eventually Laura found herself standing in the doorway of a small, cupboard-like space that had been rigged up as a dressing room. The only source of light was a halogen lamp fixed above the dressing-table mirror, and its harsh glare illuminated the man who lay crumpled in a heap on the floor. He was dressed in an embroidered silk jacket and matching breeches, his face heavily powdered. His elaborate wig was askew, half on and half off, revealing the nasty mix of skull fragments and blood that were the result of his having his head bashed in.
Hobson took a step back, pulling her phone from her pocket. She glanced at the screen, and noted the exact time.
"Madge, you remember Robbie Lewis, right? He was at my Christmas party last year. Go and fetch him for me, will you? He's sitting near the front." The desk sergeant finally answered the phone. "Laura Hobson here. I'm in Princess Margaret Community Centre on the Woodstock Road -- "
Lewis and Hathaway appeared two minutes later, all business now and all thoughts of flirting clearly banished from their minds.
Lewis grimaced when he saw the body. "Where's the blunt instrument?"
Hathaway craned his neck to see further into the room. "Isn't that a conductor's staff in the corner?" He was looking intrigued, for some reason.
"Hathaway," said Lewis.
"Yes, sir," said Hathaway, disappearing off to close the building's doors.
Laura filled Lewis in on what she'd managed to piece together from Madge's incoherent, hyperventilating ramblings.
"Ned Trent," she said, nodding at the dead man. "Conductor of the orchestra tonight. One of the main organisers of the concert too, along with Madge Masters, the woman who came to fetch you. She thinks she was probably the last person to see him alive besides the murderer -- scarcely five minutes before she came back and found him dead." She looked at her watch, impatient for the crime scene team's arrival. "Victim's in his early sixties, amateur musician of some renown in Oxford. He's choirmaster at one of the churches too, I think."
"You know him?"
"Only to see. He's a fireman by day, I think. Or maybe a retired fireman."
It was extremely frustrating having to wait like this, unable to touch the body. She had already put on the pair of latex gloves she carried around in her handbag, but that wasn't enough. She leaned up against the wall, watching Lewis frowning at the body. In the distance, she could still hear the strains of the orchestra tuning up, oblivious to what was going on twenty feet away.
"Not playing tonight yourself, then?" said Lewis, turning back to face her.
"The clarinet was invented in the mid-nineteenth century."
"Was it, now?" A tumult of echoing footsteps heralded SOCO's arrival. Lewis stepped aside to let them through. "That doesn't stop Hathaway playing mediaeval madrigals on the guitar."
"Your sergeant clearly doesn't have very high standards when it comes to historical accuracy," said Laura, and grabbed her kit from the technician holding it out to her.
"What's that?" said Hathaway, appearing at her shoulder.
Laura ducked into the dressing room, leaving Lewis to field the question.
She suited up, and crouched down to begin her work.
She was taking a second look at the head wound when the photographer finally left, leaving just enough room for Lewis and Hathaway to squeeze into the cupboard-like space.
"Killing blow to the head," she said. "No more than ten minutes before I got here, which was at 7:56. Another blow to the foot, administered after death. Other lesser bruises... The weapon's on the floor behind you."
Hathaway bent to look at the long, heavy staff in the corner. One end -- the ornate, gilded end -- was covered in blood, and the whole thing now had a chalk outline round it.
"It's a conductor's staff, isn't he?" he said, sounding thoughtful. "What they used to use, way back when, to conduct an orchestra. Beating the ground to keep time." He looked up at Laura. "Which our victim here was planning to do tonight too, I imagine, in the spirit of an accurate reproduction?"
Laura had been to dress rehearsals, and could confirm that.
"And Lully was on the programme tonight, wasn't he? Did you know that, as well as being a composer, he was also a conductor -- "
"Like the victim?" said Lewis.
Laura nodded.
Hathaway went on " -- and how do you think he died? As a result of an injury to his foot: he hit it with his staff while conducting."
Lewis raised his eyebrows, shooting him a look of amusement. "I'm not sure what you're suggesting, but it sounds a little far-fetched."
"I'm not suggesting anything, sir."
Laura straightened up. "Excuse me, boys," she said, squeezing her way out of the room and shedding her suit at the same time. "Why don't you tell him how Purcell died too, Hathaway? That could make for an interesting autopsy."
.. .. ..
Hathaway's head was a blur of names by now. Jeanine Arch, harpsichord, thought Ned Trent had been far too harsh a critic of her fingering, and she wasn't surprised someone had offed him. Luke Campbell, violin, thought Ned Trent had been a lovely man, if a bit too full of boring anecdotes about famous pianists he'd once seen from a distance. Fatima Powell, recorder, thought Trent had certainly been killed by someone with conductorial ambitions, and she could name names if necessary.
Hathaway raised his eyebrows at that one.
"What? The recorder is a very respectable baroque instrument, with a wide range of -- "
Hathaway had been surprised more by her vindictive tone than her choice of instrument. He cleared his throat. "Thank you, Ms Powell. Please send in the next person."
When he was finally finished, he found Lewis standing in the middle of the empty stage, offloading a pile of case notes onto a uniformed sergeant for transport back to the station.
"Learnt anything?" said Lewis.
"Just that I've been wise to steer clear of Oxford's classical music circles."
Lewis put a hand on Hathaway's back, guiding him down off the stage. "So tell me about Purcell's bizarre death."
"Oh, I think he actually died of something quite banal. There was a rumour concerning a cup of poisoned hot chocolate, though."
Lewis stifled a laugh.
"Possibly the 17th-century equivalent of an urban legend," Hathaway admitted.
He was disappointed when the pressure of Lewis' hand disappeared from his back as soon as they reached the hall.
Once out in the chilly December night air, they hurried to the car, where Lewis turned on the heating. Ten minutes later, they were pulling up outside Hathaway's front door.
Hathaway turned to face Lewis, and suddenly work and murder were forgotten again, and they were back where they had been earlier that evening, when they'd been inches apart in the kitchen. Hathaway found he was holding his breath again. He forced himself to relax, and meet Lewis' gaze.
It was instantly obvious that Lewis was having precisely the same thoughts he was - obvious from the look in his eyes, and the half-embarrassed, half-regretful smile that twisted his lips for a second before vanishing.
"Here we are then," said Lewis.
Hathaway nodded. He wished suddenly that Lewis were coming in with him, and he was quite sure some part of Lewis did too.
"Pick me up at eight?" said Lewis.
Hathaway nodded again, busying himself pulling on his gloves and tightening his scarf in a way that was entirely unnecessary for the short trip between the car and his front door. "All right."
"Good night then."
"Good night, sir."
.. .. ..
Saturday morning dawned grey and dreary, and the drizzle was turning to sleet as Hathaway pulled up outside Ned Trent's house. It was a small semi-detached in Cowley, not far from the by-pass. The curtains were drawn, as they must have been before Trent left for the final rehearsal on Friday evening.
Hathaway crowded into the tiny front porch with Lewis, trying to shelter from the rain. Lewis was fumbling with the keys, and Hathaway allowed himself to enjoy their proximity, the feel of Lewis pressed up against him. He suspected Lewis did too, because he took longer than he really needed to getting the door open.
The sitting room was full of musical scores and back copies of The Field. Hathaway pulled on a pair of gloves and began to go through the pad by the phone in the corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lewis frowning at the crucifix over the writing table.
The drawer in the corner table was stuffed full of bills and receipts. Hathaway sighed and piled it all into an evidence bag for inspection at the station. Sometimes he wished that murder victims would be more considerate and shred their old paperwork, thus saving him several hours going through it.
He turned, and saw that Lewis had bent to examine a picture of St Francis of Assisi, in a particularly hideous technicolour depiction and surrounded by small birds and frolicking lambs.
Hathaway stepped up behind him. "Patron saint of animals, obviously, though he also guards against a solitary death."
"Doesn't seem to have worked very well, does it?" said Lewis sourly.
Hathaway kept his mouth shut. He had remembered, moments too late, that the nineteenth of December was only a few days away. It had been stupid to refer to solitary death, stupid to refer to divine intervention, stupid to -- He shook himself, and turned away, still watching Lewis out of the corner of his eye.
Hathaway had known loss, but not sorrow. He remained frozen in the presence of Lewis' grief.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain, he thought. If it were Lewis -- God forbid, but if it were Lewis he didn't think he could. He stood with the filled evidence bags in hand, watching Lewis scowling at an innocuous brass ashtray, his gaze decades away.
Leave to thy God to order and provide -- but he would never say that to Lewis. Even inside his own head the words were hollow.
"You take the bedroom," said Lewis, heading for the kitchen.
Hathaway wondered whether there was anyone to miss Ned Trent. There were no photos of family or friends in the sitting room. Besides Saint Francis and his entourage, and a reproduction of Monet's Poppy Field, the walls bore only one other adornment: a group photograph of what looked like a choir, or an orchestra without its instruments, all smartly dressed in black and standing on the steps of a church.
He climbed the stairs, and found that there were in fact two bedrooms, though one of them appeared much more lived-in than the other. Hathaway had barely begun to poke around before he came across something that brought him up short. He stood frowning at the collection of shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe, recalling to mind the details of the forensics report. Then he raced back down the stairs two at a time, calling out to Lewis as he went, "Someone else lives here. A man with size nine feet."
Hathaway heard the sound of a key in the door just as he reached the foot of the stairs. He stopped short, feeling oddly like he'd been caught misbehaving, like a child. Lewis appeared from the sitting room just before the front door opened. A middle-aged man stepped into the hallway, carrying a suitcase and well muffled against the cold.
For a moment the three of them stood there, frozen. Then Lewis cleared his throat.
"Oxfordshire Police," he said, holding up his warrant card. "DI Lewis. This is DS Hathaway."
The man relaxed a little. "Yes, I should have expected to find you here." He stepped inside, closing the front door behind him. "Do you mind if I - " He put down his suitcase and started pulling at his scarf in a distracted way. "What am I saying? It should be I who -- I would say make yourself at home, but I imagine you already have."
Lewis was frowning. "And you are -- ?"
"Yes, sorry." He pulled off his gloves, and held out his hand. "Martin Walters."
Lewis cleared his throat. "I gathered you already know the reason for our presence, Mr Walters?"
"Because of Ned -- yes. When he didn't call me after his concert last night I got in touch with some friends, and -- " He broke off, the muscles in his jaw suddenly clenching. "I'm going to sit down, if you don't mind."
They followed him into the living room. He sat staring at his hands, his mouth set in a thin line.
After a moment Lewis cleared his throat. "What was your relationship with Mr Trent, Mr Walters?"
Walters didn't look up. "We shared a house."
Lewis and Hathaway exchanged glances.
"And how do you know him?"
Walters' face was transformed by a sudden smile of reminiscence. "We met at Mass -- or after Mass, I should say. Over tea and biscuits. He's choir-master at St Michael's, you know."
Was choir-master, Hathaway thought.
"Was this a recent meeting, Mr Walters?"
"Oh no. It was in 1979."
Hathaway saw Lewis' eyebrows twitch a little, but then he changed track. "I take it you're returning from a trip?"
"Yes." He seemed to be paying only partial attention to their conversation. The major part of mind was off in some other, painful place. "Yes, I've been in Manchester for the past three days -- visiting family."
"We'll have to verify that. Just routine, you understand. Could you give us your ticket, please? Or did you drive?"
Walters seemed to collect himself, and gave himself a little shake. He sat there frowning for a second, then said apologetically, "I'm afraid I bought my ticket on the internet. It doesn't have a hole punched in it or anything." He produced a piece of paper from his coat pocket, and unfolded it to show an A4 page with National Express written across the top. "Someone did scan the bar-code, though, if I remember correctly."
Hathaway took the ticket and made out a receipt, thinking that Manchester was not that far away -- certainly within easy driving distance, if someone wanted to pop back on Friday night to commit a murder, say.
Lewis was questioning Walters on known friends and enemies of Trent's: apparently he had had many of the former and none of the latter.
"He knew a lot of people through the choir, you know, and through the orchestra. Other things too... benevolent funds, charity drives... I could make you a list. I don't really know half the people, though. I don't have time -- I'm a gas safety inspector. Ned wants -- wanted me to take early retirement, but -- " He swallowed. "I said we'd have all the time in the world for that."
Lewis said again, surprisingly gently. "What was the nature of your relationship with Mr Trent?"
"He was a good friend of mine," Walters said, sounding suddenly too tired to be defensive. "We've been -- I've known him a long time," and suddenly his mouth went all strange and thin, and he was staring at his hands again.
Lewis got to his feet. "Thank you for your time, Mr Walters. We're sorry to have troubled you. We'll show ourselves out."
Lewis drove, and Hathaway wrote, scribbling down his observations and Lewis' while they were still fresh in their minds.
"Read me that list again," said Lewis.
"Walters' description of Trent's many and varied retirement activities, you mean?" Hathaway dug it out and went over it again.
Lewis was frowning. "Of course, what he left off may be even more important than what he put on."
"Why, did you get the feeling he was holding something back?"
Lewis grunted. "Maybe he's a damn good actor." He negotiated a roundabout, and they joined the main road back to the station. "How many bedrooms did they have?"
"Two," said Hathaway, not looking up from the papers on his lap.
"Both used?"
Hathaway stiffened. "Unclear, sir."
"A good friend, eh?" said Lewis. "I wonder how that went down with their friends in the parish."
Hathaway frowned. "It's none of our business."
"Of course it's our business. He's one of our prime suspects, man!"
Hathaway had been thinking the same thing, but he really did not want to discuss the precise nature of the two men's relationship with Lewis just now. He didn't want to talk about anything that even vaguely touched on love and loss, not when his mind was full of thoughts of how he'd feel if he woke up one morning and Lewis was gone. He knew Lewis was going to misinterpret his silence. Lewis was almost certainly thinking that he was uncomfortable with this, uncomfortable with the idea of two men together. He wanted to protest that he wasn't, that he was glad Lewis wasn't either, and glad Lewis never had been. Instead he said, "Manchester's not so far that he couldn't have easily hired a car and driven back down, and back up again in time for his bus this morning."
"Let's see whether he has a driving licence, then."
Hathaway made a note of it.
.. .. ..
Hathaway was woken by the sound of Catch-22 hitting the ground. He struggled upright, groaning at the stiff muscles caused by hours asleep on the sofa. He sat there for a moment, blinking, his mind still fogged by strange dreams of trying to rescue Lewis from certain death in an aeroplane.
The clock in the kitchenette told him it was one in the morning. Lewis had dropped him off around nine, after an evening working late at the station. They'd spent hours there, following up on everything they'd turned up since their visit to Trent's house that morning.
Hathaway sank back into the sofa, thinking with regret of what he had originally planned for Saturday evening: a drink at the Crown with Lewis, after their weekly game of lawn bowling, with which they'd replaced the squash on medical orders. That was before someone had decided to kill Ned Trent and disturb their plans. Perhaps even more significantly, that was before they had come this close to falling into one another's arms again, and disturbed the status quo they had so carefully preserved for the last three years.
Hathaway allowed his memories of that night to float slowly to the surface of his brain, an indulgence he rarely permitted himself.
He'd been tidying something away in one of Lewis' kitchen cupboards -- he hardly remembered what exactly now. Then he'd turned just as Lewis came up behind him, and they were standing mere inches apart, and instead of stepping away and saying 'oops, sorry', Lewis hadn't moved.
Hathaway's memory of the exact order of events over the next few minutes was rather fuzzy, but he remembered Lewis tasting of the Bakewell tarts they'd just eaten for desert, and Lewis' shirt being soft and warm to the touch. He remembered Lewis' hands roaming cautiously over his back, never dipping below the belt, until Hathaway worked up the nerve to take matters into his own hands, grabbing Lewis' arse and yanking them together. He remembered Lewis' gasp of surprise turning into a moan of appreciation.
He also remembered it only took them ten minutes of kissing in the kitchen to come to a wordless agreement that the bedroom would be much more comfortable, and not necessarily significant or symbolic at all.
Lewis had been incredible, wonderful, everything Hathaway had spend three years dreaming of. Hathaway's memories at this point usually diverged into a doxology in honour of Lewis, of his thoughtfulness, his surprisingly playful smile, his warm, strong touch. They had drifted off to sleep with Lewis' arm tucked around Hathaway, and Hathaway's face buried in Lewis' pillow.
The next morning they sat facing one another over the breakfast table. They busied themselves buttering toast and blowing on coffee until they couldn't put the conversation off any longer.
Lewis began, "We can't go on -- "
"Yeah, I know," said Hathaway.
"I wish -- "
"It wouldn't work, and it wouldn't be wise."
"No." Lewis looked down into his coffee cup, and then back up into Hathaway's eyes. He looked tired, and sorrowful. "It wouldn't, would it?"
Hathaway knew that ostensibly they were talking about work, and that underneath they were talking about something very different indeed. It was easy to come to the tacit agreement to lie to themselves and each other, to pretend it was work that was the insurmountable hurdle here. As if either of them wouldn't have resigned in an instant if necessary.
Hathaway wondered whether Lewis would ever be able to let go of Val, ever be able to mourn and yet live. He knew that it was something he should never ask of him. He wondered what other, unknown things might be holding Lewis back too. He was a complicated man, after all, and Hathaway wasn't sure he would ever plumb the depths of him.
He wondered how much Lewis understood of what was going on in Hathaway's own head. Wondered if Lewis would ever understand the constant berating voice that was so difficult to ignore, the automatic examination of conscience, the feeling of constantly being torn in different directions. Hathaway didn't really understand it himself.
Last night he had been sure that nothing so beautiful and wondrous could be wrong. By the cold light of day, the weight of his own stupid, hidebound mind came crashing down on him. Last night he had felt unique, like he and Lewis were the only two people in the world. Today, he just felt miserable and confused.
Intrinsically disordered, he thought, staring down at a jam stain on the kitchen table.
"We'll be late," said Lewis, getting to his feet.
Over the weeks and months that followed, they'd slowly relaxed into a new state of affairs, which on the surface was almost identical to the old one. They'd gone on having dinner together, playing squash, sitting in companionable silence over pints of beer. Hathaway never slept on Lewis' sofa any more, however.
It was torture, at first, being so much in Lewis' company. Surprisingly quickly, it dulled to a bearable ache. Three years later, it was a wound that seemed almost to have healed.
Sometimes he watched Lewis with Dr Hobson, or some other woman, and thought Lewis had finally moved on, from Val, from him, from whomever -- just like Hathaway was pushing him to do. Most of the time it seemed more like gallantry. And sometimes, just occasionally, something flashed in Lewis' eyes, when Hathaway touched him unexpectedly or smiled in a certain way, and it was like an echo of Hathaway's own soul.
.. .. ..
Lewis balanced a biscuit on the edge of his saucer, and summoned an expression of polite interest for Gordon Johnson, organist at St Michael's church.
"Such a shock," the man was saying. "Poor Ned, not an enemy in the world. To think of such a thing happening -- "
"Horrible, horrible," another woman chipped in.
At Lewis' side, Hathaway was a silent presence, leaving Lewis to make the small talk.
They were standing in the church hall at St Michael's, a large echoing room, the walls lined with stacks of chairs, sports equipment, and children's illustrations of Bible stories. Parishioners were still streaming into the room for their weekly cup of tea and a biscuit. Lewis and Hathaway had timed their arrival to coincide with the end of Mass.
They were surrounded by the hum of voices, and the clatter of metal teaspoons on ceramic. Lewis watched Hathaway out of the corner of his eye, wondering whether he felt at home here, watched over by the crucifix hanging above the tea urns.
Lewis himself felt vaguely uncomfortable -- defensive too. It was the reaction religion always provoked in him, nowadays. He'd had enough of cold comfort and lies in the face of death, of too many people giving him hollow words of consolation.
"Good morning, inspector," a voice said, recalling him back from the depths of his memories.
Lewis turned, and saw two members of Trent's baroque orchestra. The one who had spoken was a middle-aged woman by the name of... Sarah Beckett or something along those lines. The man, slightly younger and better dressed, was almost certainly called Luke Campbell.
"Good morning, sergeant," the latter added, nodding to Hathaway. "You also work on Sundays, I see."
Lewis wasn't sure whether this was in approval or disapproval. "Crime doesn't respect holidays."
"I'm sure we all wish you the very best of luck in your investigations," said Beckett, earnestly.
Lewis stiffened, waiting to be told she'd be praying for them, but it was Campbell who spoke next.
"While you're here, can I interest you in some raffle tickets? It's for a very good cause."
Lewis noticed that he was holding a zip-lock bag full of fivers, and a book of cloakroom tickets. Lewis couldn't keep an exasperated note out of his voice. He hadn't come here to be browbeaten into paying for the church roof. "And what cause is that?"
"The Oxfordshire Fire Brigade Benevolent Fund Christmas Tombola. The draw will be at Oakhill Primary School Christmas fete next Saturday evening - to which of course I heartily invite you to come."
Lewis relaxed, and reached for his wallet.
While he and Hathaway tucked away their raffle tickets, Lewis said, "I understood Martin Walters was a parishioner here?"
Beckett looked blank, but Campbell said, "That's right. I saw him earlier on this morning, I'm sure." He was looking surprised. "Is he part of your investigation? I didn't know he was at the concert on Friday."
Lewis opened his mouth, and then shut it again. No need to put an end to thirty years of discretion on the part of Trent and Walters.
A young woman with a toddler in tow appeared at that moment, clutching a fiver and demanding raffle tickets. Lewis took the opportunity to excuse himself and leave, Hathaway following, still as silent as he had been since they arrived.
The car park was already more than half empty, and cars were queuing to get out through the gates. The cold air burnt Lewis' skin after the warmth of the church hall. As he pulled on his gloves, he watched Hathaway out of the corner of his eye, wondering at this persistent silence.
Hathaway saw him watching, and gave him an odd look. When he spoke, though, it was only to say, "Did you actually want to speak to Walters?"
Lewis shook his head. He noticed Hathaway's hand twitching, fiddling with the button on his coat cuff.
"Go on then," he said, nodding at the pocket where he knew Hathaway kept his cigarettes. "I'll wait two minutes."
Hathaway shot him a grateful look, and reached for the packet.
Lewis wandered away, stepping carefully on the icy path and trying to keep to the places where someone had thrown down salt. When he got level with the front of the church, he stopped and turned to look back at Hathaway.
Hathaway was a solitary figure slouched against the pebbledash wall, gazing up into the cold grey sky. He had one hand stuck in his coat pocket, and the other held the cigarette away from his body. Lewis swallowed, thinking suddenly that he was willing to wait forever for Hathaway, but he hoped desperately he didn't have to. Years he'd known the man now, and he'd never been closer to anyone he'd worked with -- and yet there was still so much left to discover. Sometimes he was afraid there were facets of Hathaway he'd never be allowed to explore.
It was freezing cold outside, and Lewis didn't have a smoker's immunity to the elements. He was about to make for the car when he remembered that Hathaway had the keys. The front porch of the church, though, was only a few yards away, and he felt a good ten degrees warmer once he'd stepped inside.
The church was slightly less ugly and modern on the inside than the outside. It was empty, and rather dark now that half the lights were switched out: someone was clearly thinking about the electricity bill.
Lewis stood in the lobby -- narthex, said Hathaway's voice in his head -- and read the posters and papers on the notice board while he waited for Hathaway. Youth groups, sports groups, bicycles and school textbooks for sale...
A little way farther in was a sort of metal stand covered in candles. Lewis looked at the rows of tiny flickering flames -- each one for an intention, Hathaway had told him once. Prayers for dead souls and the like. Except what the bloody hell was the point? Val was gone, and that was all there was to it. He felt suddenly hollow and cold inside, a desolation that was the opposite of comfort.
Then he heard the church door open. Footsteps approached him, and he heard Hathaway say softly, "Coming, sir?"
Even just the sound of his voice was enough to warm Lewis. He turned to smile at Hathaway and Hathaway flashed a little smile back at him.
.. .. ..
Usually, Laura adored her busy schedule: lunch with former medical students, an after-work drink with friends from the orchestra, lunch the following day with more musical friends... In the week following Ned Trent's death, however, every event was more a chore than anything else. Everyone knew Ned Trent, at least by name, and those of her friends who had not been present on Friday night were avid for any sort of gossip or news. Those who had been present wanted to alternately complain about being interviewed by the police, or be reassured that they weren't suspects themselves.
On Wednesday evening, after a particularly thorough grilling over lunch by Betty Smith and Luke Campbell, she decided to go and grill Lewis and Hathaway in turn.
Lewis was glowering at Hathaway when she poked her head around the door of their office, and Hathaway was looking smug. Lewis' shirt-front was covered in printer toner.
"Don't you dare say I told you so," he was growling at Hathaway.
Hathaway leant back in his chair, putting his arms behind his head. "Now you know what happens when you ignore the words of the wise and their mysterious sayings."
Lewis groaned. "Shakespeare again?"
Hathaway smirked back at him. "Better than that." He got to his feet, pulling a packet of paper napkins out of a drawer and coming to help Lewis.
Lewis took a napkin and started brushing at his tie, while Hathaway attacked the shirt. Now Laura could see the printer behind them, one side of it opened up and the toner cartridge lying on the desk beside it.
She couldn't help smiling. "You shook that, didn't you?"
"You used to be able to get a new lease of life out of the old ones by shaking them." Lewis lifted his tie to let Hathaway dab underneath. "It worked the last time I did it, anyway." He waved Hathaway away. "That'll do, I think. My shirt's had it, anyway."
"Wait a minute, don't move," said Hathaway, picking up a fresh napkin and taking a swipe at Lewis' chin.
Laura watched, thinking surely no two people could be that comfortable with each other and not be sleeping together. She took a deep breath. "I'm here to harass you on the Ned Trent case, after spending the week being harassed about it myself."
Lewis sat back down, still brushing at his tie. "Not a lot I can give you. Hundreds of people with opportunity -- including the three of us, for God's sake. If anyone had a motive for murder, though, they're not telling us about it. Everyone seems to have thought highly of the man. What else... No family except for a sister in New Zealand. Housemate with a rather poor alibi, but without any clear motive either."
Laura raised her eyebrows. "I didn't know he had a housemate."
Hathaway had been putting the printer back together. Now he sat down behind his desk. "Martin Walters, 55, gas safety engineer. He wasn't known to Trent's friends from the orchestra, then?"
"Not to me, anyway."
"He's been on the electoral register at that address since 1982," said Hathaway. He paused. "I can understand why he might want to keep the fact he was living there quiet."
Lewis shot him a funny look. Hathaway was looking down at his desk, seemingly studying phone records. Hobson frowned, wondering what she was missing.
Lewis turned back to Laura. "Then there's the murder MO. The use of the conductor's staff. Could be that the murderer just took the first thing that came to hand, could be that it means something."
"Not to Trent," said Laura. "He was hit on the head from behind and the other wounds were inflicted after death."
"Maybe to Walters?"
"Unless he was the one doing the deed," said Lewis. He thought for a moment. "Nah, he seems to be more the arsenic-in-the-teacup kind of man."
"I leave you boys to it, then," said Laura. "Let me know as soon as you have something I can throw to the ravaging hounds."
.. .. ..
Lewis spent Friday afternoon in court, giving evidence for a case that had taken place so long ago he'd almost forgotten the details. He arrived back at the station to find C.I.D. dark and quiet, and everyone gone home for the weekend. One light burned, at Hathaway's desk.
Hathaway was bent over a pile of papers and receipts, surrounded by evidence bags. The light from his desk lamp turned his face into a landscape of shadows and valleys. The back of his head was golden in the light, and his tie was half-undone, swinging down onto the desk in front of him.
Lewis stood there for a moment, simply enjoying the sight.
Hathaway put down his pen with a grimace, and looked up. "Do people still even use cheques?" he said in greeting.
"I have a chequebook," said Lewis. He didn't bother to take off his coat. He'd only come here in the hopes of finding Hathaway and luring him away from his desk. "What's that you've got there?"
"A pile of rubbish I took from Trent's dresser drawer last Saturday. All of his debit card receipts for the past five years, and the same again for Walters. Takeaway flyers, gas bills, electricity bills... I've only got halfway through, but there is one thing that's a bit odd."
Lewis came to sit on Hathaway's desk, leaning over his shoulder, not caring that he was sitting closer than he normally did.
Hathaway held up a brown cardboard folder. "It's a pile of photocopies of chequebook stubs and bank statements, that sort of thing. Notes, write-up. It's like a dossier I'd prepare myself for a prosecution."
"Any names?"
"Lots of them. Half the time I can't read his writing... Ned Trent's own name isn't anywhere in there, though."
Lewis took the folder out of Hathaway's hand, and dropped it into a cardboard box with the rest of the evidence. "Come on, we'll finish this after dinner. My place?"
Hathaway drove, and Lewis sat and watched him, feeling free to do so now as he hadn't in the past three years. He remembered Hathaway brushing at his toner-covered shirt on Wednesday. It had been stepping over the line they'd drawn between them three years ago, but Hathaway had done it anyway, and Lewis had let him. He closed his eyes for a second, remembering the warmth of Hathaway's hand through the thin material of his shirt.
They stopped off at Sainsbury's for microwave Indian, and two bottles of Speckled Hen. They worked on the evidence from Trent's house while dinner was reheating, but as soon as they'd finished eating, Lewis pushed the paperwork aside, and Hathaway didn't object.
"There's a film on Two," Lewis said, stifling a yawn. "Something with Michael Caine."
"Sounds okay to me," said Hathaway, settling himself into the corner of the sofa with what remained of his ale.
Michael Caine was running around with a shotgun on the rooftops of London. Lewis had a feeling he'd seen the film before, and ought to know what was going to happen next, but the screen was blurring, and his eyelids were sinking closed.
When he woke up, his back ached and his eyes were gummed up with sleep. He sat there feeling groggy for a few moments, slowly coming to the realisation that he was in the sitting room, and had dozed off on the sofa. The telly was still on, showing some sort of documentary about stained glass windows, and the clock on the mantelpiece said twenty minutes past midnight.
He stifled a yawn, trying to get his brain together enough to issue some kind of apology to Hathaway for nodding off. That was when he realised that Hathaway was sprawled on the sofa beside him, dead to the world.
Hathaway lay with his head tipped back over the top of the sofa, his mouth slightly open and his long limbs thrown down in ways that looked decidedly uncomfortable, but mustn't have been.
Lewis sat there, looking at Hathaway and suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that the world was a better place with Hathaway asleep in his living room.
At one point, Hathaway had been spending rather a lot of nights sleeping on Lewis' sofa: in the months leading up to the night he'd spent in Lewis' bed. He'd never done so since.
Lewis tried to get silently to his feet, but Hathaway woke with a start anyway, and sat straight up.
"Mmpf... time is it?"
"Late," said Lewis. He went to switch off the telly, and turned to find Hathaway on his feet, frowning and tugging down on his shirt.
"Sorry, I..."
"Long week," said Lewis. "Maybe I should confess that I dozed off too."
"Right," said Hathaway, still looking distracted. "Er... I should..."
"Why don't you sleep on the sofa?" Lewis interrupted, knowing he was breaking another of their unwritten rules, and not caring.
Hathaway looked like he knew it too, and didn't care either. He said nothing, though, just stood there looking at Lewis, biting his lip.
Lewis said, "You still have your clean shirt here."
Hathaway blinked. "So I do." He sat back down on the sofa.
"Now I just hope I have some clean blankets." Lewis went off to rummage around in the back of his airing cupboard.
.. .. ..
In vain the am'rous flute and soft guitar - Part 2