heard them on the day he had learned of his inheritance.
“Do you know a Mrs. Wakeham?” asked the lawyer.
Fell wondered whether to deny any knowledge of her but settled for a cautious “I met her once.”
“And that was your only connection?”
“Yes.”
“Amazing. You know she is dead?”
“No,” said Fell bleakly. He had nursed one last rosy dream of getting together with his grandmother at last, having one family blood tie. “When did she die?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“I didn’t know. I’m not long back from an extended honeymoon.”
“So you did not know her very well?”
“What is this about?” snapped Fell, terrified that something had happened to reveal the secret of his birth.
“Mrs. Mary Wakeham of Fellworth Manor…” He stopped and looked curiously at Fell. “Of course, how silly of me. Fell-worth Manor and your name is Fellworth.”
Fell suddenly remembered that sunny day when he and Maggie had gone to see Mrs. Wakeham and how she had recognized Maggie’s merit before he had become aware of it himself.
He said, “As a lawyer, anything I say to you must be in confidence?”
“Of course.”
So Fell, relaxed by that thought of Maggie, and by the awareness that being a bastard no longer carried the stigma it would have done twenty years ago, told the lawyer the secret of his birth.
“Ah, that explains it,” beamed Mr. Jamieson.
“Explains what?”
“I will let you have a copy of her will. But the long and the short of it is that after she left the house and grounds to the National Trust and various other bequests, the bulk of her fortune, which is seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, goes to you.”
There was a silence broken only by the sounds of the market. Fell stared at the lawyer. Mr. Jamieson took out a sealed envelope. “This is addressed to you, to be given to you after her death.”
Fell opened it and began to read.
“Dear Fellworth,” Mrs. Wakeham had written, “I have developed terminal cancer and do not expect to be alive for your wedding. You have had an unnecessarily hard life and I hope things in the future will be better for you. To facilitate this, I am leaving you a sum in my will. All my best wishes for the future. Mary Wakeham.”
Fell read the short letter over and over. Then he looked up at the lawyer. “I would rather have had her alive and well and willing to see me than this money.”
“Money’s money,” said the lawyer briskly.
“And they do throw it at you,” murmured Fell, “when they can’t give love.”
¦
Fell’s bookshop opened on the day Melissa’s health shop closed down. It was stacked with bright new books. They had a coffee shop at the back with a few tables. Maggie had baked a large supply of scones and little sponge cakes.
Curious customers wandered in. Some went through to the coffee shop. By the afternoon, the coffee shop seemed full of chattering customers. Fell heard one woman exclaim, “Ethel came in here by chance this morning and phoned me and said, ‘You must try their sponge cakes. Never tasted anything so light and delicious’.”
Maggie might find out they would be better off running a cafe instead, thought Fell.
He sat behind the desk in the front of the shop and opened a new detective story and read the first line. “Bert Jensen, six feet of muscle, cut down his assailant with a single karate chop.” Fell smiled. He felt suddenly amazingly happy. From now on life would be full of love and interest – but no adventures. All the blood and mayhem was now neatly tucked away in all the shiny covers of the books surrounding him.
But he would never forget that dandelion summer.
