Foyle’s War S01E03 - A Lesson in Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Foyle’s War   S01E02 - The White Feather by Anthony Horowitz

Thank you for this lovely prompt! Have 500 words of shameless fluff.

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Sam Wainwright Foyle (née Stewart) reflects, as she walks up Arthur’s Seat, that she has become a rather absurdly hyphenated person. She smiles at the thought. She thinks of voicing it to Andrew, and decides against it, in case he might worry that his surname was one too many. She squeezes his arm instead, and is rewarded by his return of the pressure. Her son, meanwhile, is scampering ahead of them and intermittently loping back, with adolescent politeness, to ascertain the degree of their progress. Sam sighs slightly, and does not say aloud that he might twist his ankle. She turns her mind to other things.

Tea. Tea, now, would be lovely. Edinburgh she loved, as Andrew had predicted she would: she loved its closes and its cobblestones, its cathedral, which almost seemed to sit like a cat in its square. But the same bridges and hills which added so much to the city’s picturesqueness also added to one’s fatigue. And the pleasant woman who had let them rooms was sure to have a good tea: plenty of strong Indian, and scones and oatcakes, and homemade jam, and sandwiches without a pretense to excessive delicacy.

“Thinking of your next meal?” asks her husband’s warm voice.

“Andrew!” She is half-indignant at this reading of her thoughts. “However did you know?”

His mouth quirks. “It’s your expression: there’s a dreamy, faraway look you get. Absolutely rapt. Not another man: scones.”

“Andrew!” She shoves at his shoulder. “That’s a dreadful thing to say.” But there is laughter in her voice, and in her face as she looks up at him. And his expression stops, briefly, both her laughter and her breath. Sam looks away, and leans a little into his side. It is a little frightening, she thinks, to be loved so much. Perhaps all holy things, she thinks, are a little bit frightening.

“Sam?” says Andrew. “What is it? I don’t mind, you know, I was only…”

“I know,” says Sam quickly. “I know, darling.” It still feels unfamiliar, almost unnatural, to take such endearments on her lips. She had never, somehow, gotten into the habit of using them during the War — neither of them had — and then they had belonged to Adam. Sam tells herself firmly not to persuade herself out of her own happiness.

“You’re miles away,” says Andrew.

“No I’m not,” returns Sam stoutly. “I’m right here. With you. Witness: my calves and approximately an inch of mud on my shoes.” She stops, forcing him to do so. She raises a hand to his lapel. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be, Andrew.”

He gives a small, shaken smile; his eyes are very grave. And he raises one hand to her chin, and kisses her. Sam is pleasurably, distinctly conscious of his fingertips — warm, calloused — against the line of her jaw, of his mouth on hers, of the familiar scent of him.

“Mum!” calls Christopher, mercifully distant, “we’re almost at the top!”

Foyle’s War: The German Woman (2002)

France, 1916

London, 1925

Oxford, 1937

Hastings, 1933

“Relations are a blasted nuisance, Bunter,” said Lord Peter Wimsey, as he eased his Daimler between an omnibus and a heavily-loaded Morris.

“I have observed some very pleasant scenes of family life, my lord, though without doubt domestic tensions do account in some way for a large proportion of our cases.”

“My mother’s marvelous, of course, and no bright-eyed biologist has yet found the germ that will permit doing away with mothers if we wish the species to continue. But that my provoking brother’s provoking wife should have a sister seems a positive absurdity, even without her contrivin’ to lose a hideous geegaw in the Sussex wilderness. What time is it?”

“Half-past four, my lord.”

“The police station first, then, I think. The temper of officialdom is not apt to sweeten with the waning of the day.” 

The sergeant who greeted them at the desk was dour about the possibility of seeing the superintendent that afternoon, and, when Lord Peter explained his business, condescending about the division of police labor. “It’s the Detective Chief Inspector you’ll be needing for that, my lord, not the Superintendent of the uniformed men.”

“Ah, if there’s a Detective Chief Inspector I have no doubt the matter’s well in hand, but I’d be most obliged if he could spare me ten minutes.”

“If you’d leave your card, my lord, I can ask if he could…”

“Looking for me, Rivers?” A compact man in a tidy but slightly too large gray suit emerged from the shadows behind the desk.

“Well, sir, it’s about that business at the Royal Victoria Hotel.”

“Ah.”  The detective nodded. “Well, best come back to my office, then, I think.” 

“That’s terribly good of you,” Peter said. “My name’s…”

This is really lovely, and I am sorry that it has taken me so long to get to it!

Christopher Foyle does not touch his tools. Rod and tackle sit neglected on the bank, and the chestnut tree rustles above him. It has always seemed to him a grace and a graceful thing to him, the silence of the fisherman’s waiting. The contemplative man’s recreation, worthy of both love and practice. 

Sometimes, he feels that it is an art almost entirely passive, when it comes to the river. All battles with the trout have been fought beforehand, in the evenings, by a crackling fire, with the use of fine thread and feathers. He sometimes thinks that the hours by the riverside only prove the worth of the hours at a scarred table, mind and eyes and fingertips together binding a fly that will touch the surface of the water and seem instantly a part of the nature that surrounds it.

Sometimes, he feels that it is a craft that demands his entire focus, his entire body, his entire mind. Even before the moment when the surface ripples, and the line tugs at the rod, he must hold himself in readiness. Sometimes he feels that this is what binds him to the earth: the awareness of his feet against the earth, his hands on the rod becoming an awareness also of the chestnut tree, of the river itself.