Read Online Finders and Keepers by Catrin Collier - Free Book Online Page A

was rubbing his hands together to keep his circulation flowing when the blonde girl returned.
    â€˜Doctor Adams is extremely busy, but he is prepared to offer you five minutes.’
    Harry followed her up a second short flight of steps, across a corridor and into an office-cum-drawing room. A desk and filing cabinets had been placed in front of the window but there were also paintings on the walls and chintz-covered easy chairs and sofas grouped around a fireplace filled with a summer arrangement of dried flowers.
    â€˜Mr Evans?’ A thin, balding man left the chair behind the desk and approached him, but didn’t offer his hand.
    â€˜Doctor Adams?’ Harry dropped the hand he had extended when the doctor made no effort to shake it.
    â€˜I spend my days caring for highly infectious patients, Mr Evans. We have many rules; the one most strictly enforced is to keep all physical contact to an absolute minimum, especially with those who are healthy, yet reckless enough to visit here. Take a seat.’ Dr Adams indicated a chair set in front of his desk before returning to his own. ‘I have spoken to Doctor Williams. He said you’d be bringing Mr William Evans’s clinical notes?’
    â€˜I have them here.’ Harry handed over the envelope he had picked up from Dr Williams’s surgery that morning. He sat in silence while Dr Adams studied them.
    â€˜You and your family do realize that Mr Evans’s condition is terminal?’ The doctor set the notes on his desk and looked Harry in the eye.
    Harry felt as though he were condemning his grandfather to death. ‘Yes.’
    â€˜Clinically we can do little for him.’
    â€˜Doctor Williams warned us of that,’ Harry said seriously. ‘But he also said that you might be able to make him more comfortable. We were all with him when he haemorrhaged so we know how ill he is. But we also know how over-crowded the isolation ward in the Graig Infirmary is and how over-worked the staff are there. They can do nothing for him. We had hoped to look after my grandfather ourselves. When Doctor Williams said that wasn’t possible, my uncle asked him to recommend a good hospital or sanatorium. He told us that Craig-y-Nos offered the best care in Britain for patients suffering from lung disease.’
    The doctor sat back and pressed his fingertips together. ‘If we can do anything for your grandfather, and I offer no promises, the best you can hope for is that we make his final days easier and possibly less painful than if he were in an isolation ward in a general hospital.’
    â€˜We understand that, Doctor Adams.’ Harry struggled to keep his emotions under control.
    â€˜Your father is Lloyd Evans the MP?’
    â€˜He is.’ Harry had learned from experience that the higher the social class, the less likely a person was to be well-disposed towards a Labour MP.
    â€˜Rank and privilege count for nothing here, Mr Evans. Death is a great leveller.’
    â€˜I don’t doubt it.’ Harry decided it was time to be assertive. After all, it wasn’t as though they weren’t prepared to pay – and pay handsomely – for the doctor’s expertise. ‘Please, will you take my grandfather as a patient?’ he asked directly.
    The doctor shouted, ‘Come’ at a timid knock on his door.
    The door inched open and a scrap of a girl, as dark-haired and dark-eyed as a gypsy, and dressed in a maid’s uniform that was far too large for her, crept in carrying a tray set with a teapot, single cup and saucer, milk jug, sugar bowl and a plate of rock cakes. The tray seemed almost as large as her and she was straining to hold it.
    â€˜Put it on the table in front of the fireplace, Martha.’
    The girl did as she was told, curtsied and backed out of the room.
    Both Harry’s school and his mother had employed twelve-year-old maidservants during the war when there had been an acute shortage of