The Jane Austen Society(77)

“Actually, Mrs. Berwick, it’s you I came to see. May I come in?”

She pulled her shawl about her shoulders tightly and stepped back to let him in. The house had only four rooms: the parlour that they were standing in, the back kitchen, and the two upstairs bedrooms. Dr. Gray remembered the acres-wide former Berwick farmstead a few miles out of town, now occupied by the struggling Stone family, and all the hardship that had been visited upon both families over the years. For the first time it struck him how ironic it all was—how Evie Stone and Adam Berwick had each grown up in that same old farmhouse, perhaps even slept in the same bedroom, then both ended up part of the Austen Society, despite such vast differences in temperament and ambition and age. He wondered what a less logical, more mystical man would have made of that.

Adam’s mother pointed to a seat by the inglenook fireplace, which stretched the entire width of the room. Dr. Gray sat down and spied several stacks of books on the floor next to him.

“Adam’s been quite distracted ever since you lot started on all that Jane Austen nonsense.”

Dr. Gray gave her an indulgent smile. He had learned well enough over the years never to unnecessarily contradict a woman like Edith Berwick—he was saving his energy for a very different battle ahead.

“I wonder if you know why I have come.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing. She was not going to give him an inch, he could tell.

“Edith—Mrs. Berwick—I think it is time. To tell Adam. Things have changed for you both very dramatically and very suddenly this past week. You heard, of course, about Mr. Knight’s will?”

He saw her take a nervous gulp while she continued to stare. “Yes, of course. What business does any of that have to do with me and Adam?”

“Adam’s the closest heir,” Dr. Gray said as quickly and forcefully as he could.

“He is no such thing.”

“Edith, please—you can’t deprive him of all that, without his knowledge.” Dr. Gray looked about the small dark room. “He would own the old Berwick fields again, and the house and stables, and he could keep things or change them up as he saw fit—but knowing Adam, he would keep that old place going, keep it the centre of our village as in old times. God knows what will happen to it with anyone else.”

“There is someone else then?”

So she did know more than she was letting on.

“Yes, a Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen of Greater Birmingham. He’s up at the house as we speak, being shown around by Miss Frances. Miss Frances, who we both know truly does not deserve any of what has happened. Not that the old man surprised anyone in his vindictiveness.”

Dr. Gray wondered if his cause would be helped or hindered by criticizing her former employer Mr. Knight.

She shook her head forcefully. “I’m not telling him. You can’t make me. You swore an oath.”

Dr. Gray sighed audibly. “Yes, I did. That’s why this has been our secret now for well over twenty years. January 1919, correct? I won’t forget. Not ever. I was back here to help old Dr. Simpson, coping all on his own with the outbreak.”

“I’m not telling him,” she repeated, as if she hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

“Who are you more worried about, you or Adam? Because as his doctor, I believe he is well enough to handle the news, if it means inheriting all that. I am not sure I would have said that in years past. But he is among friends now, good friends, and we will take care of him, just as you have done all these years alone.”

“He loved his father more than anything. He won’t be able to abide it. I know.”

Dr. Gray was watching her carefully. He knew her propensity for selfish gain, her overweening interest and delight in the failures of others. Her cynicism. Her self-loathing that manifested itself in all these other ways. He did not like her—he never had. She would not have known that—his steady gracious smile in the street, the respectful tip of the hat, the patient nodding while she spewed her venom against the other villagers, had always kept him in her good graces as he knew he needed to be. That was how she exerted the minimal control over village life that she had, through terror tactics aided by a sharp and unforgiving tongue. No one ever wanted to get on the bad side of Edith Berwick, and he could only wonder at what toll this had over the years taken on poor Adam’s health.

It was one reason why, ever since he had learned of the new will, he had been torn about saying anything. But his scruples had started many years earlier, during the Spanish flu epidemic that had ravaged Chawton and the world just as the Great War was ending, when Dr. Gray was still just an intern. After only a few days of fever, Mr. Berwick was starting to inexplicably haemorrhage and was rushed to the Alton Hospital. Here Dr. Howard Westlake, recently returned from the war as a medic and local hero, had suggested immediate blood transfusion using techniques he had learned on the Western Front. Adam had eagerly donated blood, having been deemed the most likely to match his father’s blood type, but still Mr. Berwick could not be saved. Only Mrs. Berwick would eventually be told the truth by Dr. Gray: that based on cross-matching of their blood types, Adam could not possibly be his father’s son.

Dr. Gray had had to guess at the real story, for the old widow Berwick had been shell-shocked with grief at the time. Then years later, long after he had moved back to Chawton to take over Dr. Simpson’s practice, she had one day told Dr. Gray everything, in a rare moment of trust and candour. He could not quite remember why—all he knew was that in the years since, instead of acting as if he had something on her, Mrs. Berwick had acted as if she now had something to lord over him, such was the conniving brilliance of her power tactics. As if she was just waiting for him to betray his oath to her and crack.