Season 06 Episode 02

A baptism goes wrong. As Will is naming the baby James, a young man, Davy Connor, bursts in and says the child's name is Billy Connor and that he is the father. Marcus Asper, a solicitor, and his wife Penny are the couple presenting the child. Davy says the baby was taken from his former partner Molly Lowden through an adoption agency run by Joan Beaumont. Geordie and Larry Peters take Davy away. Marcus wants charges brought, and Will and Geordie want to talk to Joan first.

Joan runs the agency from an office where Will and Geordie overhear her persuading a pregnant young woman to give up her child. She defends her methods, says the mothers decide when the couples are unmarried, and says the families sometimes make donations. Will calls it emotional blackmail and Geordie tells him to leave it alone. Leonard receives a card quoting Leviticus 18:22 demanding fifty pounds, and lies that it is diocesan paperwork. Will recognises it as blackmail and suspects Bryan Stanford, the camp photographer, who is now back in Grantchester. Will asks his mother Amelia and stepfather St John Gurney-Clifford for money, pretending the church needs it. St John sees through the pretence and starts a cheque, and the arrival of Will's stepsister Tamara ends the conversation. Tamara later gives him the money anyway and a trick for getting more from St John.

Joan Beaumont is found dead at her office, apparently from a blow to the head. A young woman, Nicola Hart, says she returned and found the body. A neighbour reports a woman leaving at the time of the killing, and she was not pregnant, which rules out Nicola if Nicola is pregnant. The files for couples whose surnames begin with A are missing, and Geordie finds them at the Asper house. Marcus admits taking the file to hide details about James. Questioned separately, Molly Lowden says she was at home and Davy says he was with her, and Molly confirms it, though the police establish this is untrue. Penny Asper admits she never wanted a child and that the adoption was Marcus's idea because he wanted an heir, and Marcus admits Joan encouraged them. Marcus then reports that Billy has been taken. Will finds Davy in the church with the baby, and Davy says he did not kill Joan but would have done if it would have got his son back. Will talks him into returning. Molly and the Aspers settle into an uneasy shared arrangement, and Will christens the child William James Connor.

The solution turns on a detail Will notices at the end. Davy had complained about Joan, and Will presses Nicola's surname: Nicola Hart was adopted as a baby, and Joan was her birth mother. Nicola had been pretending to be pregnant because that was the only way to get Joan to agree to see her. In a flashback, Joan refuses to believe Nicola is her daughter and turns away, and Nicola goes backwards, falls, and strikes her head on the stair. Nicola says she did not mean to hurt her and came back to call the police. The pink carnations left on the desk were for a mother.

Meanwhile, Leonard meets Bryan, who demands the money and defends himself by saying he was only testing Leonard's claim about his own nature. Will arrives, pays Bryan, calls Leonard his friend and tells Bryan the matter will go to the diocese on their return. As the episode ends, Bryan is at the police station with Archdeacon Gabriel Atubo, being shown into Geordie's office.

The episode is the most detailed of Series 6 and the one that says most about the period, because the agency sells children to married couples and refuses unmarried mothers, and the woman running it is killed by the daughter she gave away. The fake pregnancy is what the whole solution rests on, and the neighbour seeing a woman who was not pregnant proves the account of the killing cannot be true. Will pressing a surname is the best piece of detection he is given, and the carnations turn a killing into a reunion.