Free A Going Concern by Catherine Aird Page A

“Let not poor Nellie starve”?’ said Amelia.
    â€˜Just like King Charles, Miss Kennerley, except,’ he said drily, ‘that you may wish to take more note of what your great-aunt wanted than the King’s friends and relations did. I understand that, in fact, King Charles’ poor Nellie did starve.’
    â€˜And if I don’t?’ asked Amelia curiously.
    â€˜That,’ said the solicitor, ‘is a matter entirely between you and your conscience.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜I must also advise you that you can, of course, decline to act at all if you so wish.’
    â€˜It being a free country.’ Amelia looked James Puckle straight in the eye and said: ‘Do we know why Great-Aunt Octavia left her money in this way to a woman whose name she didn’t know and I mustn’t mention?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, Miss Kennerley,’ responded the solicitor. ‘That’s no problem. You see, she was her daughter.’
    â€˜But her daughter Perpetua died …’
    â€˜Not Perpetua,’ James Puckle said. ‘She had had another baby before she married your mother’s uncle …’

EIGHT
    Weaving her tail like a plume in the air
    â€˜And Phoebe,’ Amelia gulped, laying a copy of the birth certificate which James Puckle had given her on the kitchen table for her stepmother to see, ‘do you know, Great-Aunt Octavia’s left a pathetic message for me to give to her daughter when – if – I find her. And in her Will she’s left a candle – that’s all – for someone called Kate. Isn’t it all so sad?’
    Dr Plantin nodded.
    â€˜To think she’s wanted to see her so badly all those years …’ said Amelia.
    Phoebe Plantin plonked her large lady doctor’s handbag firmly on the kitchen floor, pulled up a chair to the table, and examined the document. ‘A female child,’ she read aloud, ‘born December 15th, 1940. Mother’s surname Harquil-Grasset …’
    â€˜Go on,’ urged Amelia.
    â€˜Father unknown,’ said Phoebe.
    â€˜When I find her,’ said Amelia a little unsteadily, ‘I’m to tell her how sorry she was to have inflicted the tache – James Puckle says that’s an old Scots word meaning mark – the tache of bastardy on her but she only did what she thought was right at the time.’
    â€˜Nobody can do more,’ commented Phoebe Plantin sagely. ‘I don’t know about her surname but she gave her enough Christian names, didn’t she?’
    â€˜Erica Hester Goudy,’ quoted Amelia. ‘I know, but James Puckle says she might not have kept them when she was adopted She’s just as likely to be called something like Mary Smith now.’
    â€˜Born in a nursing home in London,’ observed Dr Plantin, still regarding the birth certificate minutely, ‘and while there was a war on.’
    â€˜She probably told them she was a war widow,’ said Amelia.
    â€˜Shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Phoebe Plantin, who had ceased to be surprised long ago. ‘And arranged for flowers to be sent to herself, I expect. It’s been done before. Not that that sort of nursing home would ask questions, anyway.’
    â€˜But, look,’ Amelia pointed at a line on the birth certificate, ‘she did put her own occupation down.’
    â€˜Biological chemist …’ said the older woman thoughtfully. ‘She must have been pretty bright to go in for that before the last war.’
    â€˜She’s left some money to her old college,’ said Amelia. ‘It’s in the Will.’
    â€˜Thought of everything, hasn’t she?’
    â€˜Anyway,’ said Amelia, turning to give something on the stove her attention, ‘it’s all different now – having a baby adopted, I mean. Wasn’t there an Act of Parliament or something whereby an adopted child can now find out about its real