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.
He wondered how long she could resist doing the same when it came to her son. Wondered if the idea of the wealth waiting for Adam would triumph over her misgivings, for however faltering the estate was, it still yielded thousands of pounds in revenue a year. Dr. Gray would be lying if he did not acknowledge, at least to himself, that he was extremely keen to see the entirety of the estate go to a man like Adam, with his commitment to Austen’s legacy and to the village of Chawton in general, if it couldn’t go to Frances.
Dr. Gray shifted a bit in his seat. He had waited until today before saying anything because he had hoped all along that Frances would end up the heir.
“Why are you here now?” Mrs. Berwick asked, as if she could read his mind.
“I just thought it was time.”
“But you’ve known for weeks. Adam told me you were at the reading of the will.” She stared at Dr. Gray aggressively. “Longer, even, I suspect, with the likes of Harriet Peckham working for you.”
“I can’t speak to any