“He seduced Esther and left her with child,” Helen said, earning Nicholas’ gratitude because he could not form the words himself.
Mrs Russell merely nodded.
Mabel arrived with the tray, and Sykes assembled the trestle table and helped the young girl serve cake and tea.
Once the servants had left, Mrs Russell sat staring into her teacup. “Esther was the sort of friend any woman would want. She was kind, caring, the belle of the ball. Life can be cruel sometimes.”
A bout of nausea played havoc with his stomach. In his world, the woman Mrs Russell spoke of did not exist. “My mother spent most days in bed, consumed with morbid thoughts, convinced the world was against her.”
“When you’ve been touched by the devil, everything appears black. I hadn’t seen Esther for many years, though she wrote almost every month until she died.”
Helen sipped her tea, then asked, “Esther paid you thirty pounds a month for over twenty years. We have a theory but do not wish to cause offence by suggesting anything unlawful.”
They could not accuse her of blackmail, not without proof.
Mrs Russell’s teacup rattled on the saucer. “Some things are best left unsaid. I’ve learnt that the hard way. The past is best left where it is, buried like a corpse six feet under. It can do no harm there.”
“What if it comes back to haunt you?” Nicholas told the woman about Charles Holland’s blackmail plot and his subsequent murder at Grayswood. “So, you see why we are here asking these questions now?”
The china cup slipped from Mrs Russell’s fingers, and though it didn’t smash, tea spilled over the plush rug. She stared at a portrait on the wall as if it were a ghost sent to torment the living.
“Are you all right?” Helen jumped from her chair and used her napkin to dab the liquid. Then she took hold of the woman’s hand and patted it gently. “The midwife confirmed Esther had twins, yet Robert Holland thought she had given birth to one babe. Do you know what happened to the other child?”
The lady continued to look blankly.
“Our lives are in danger,” Helen pressed. “Someone ran our carriage off the road. We might have been killed. And now Charles Holland is dead. Was your husband blackmailing Esther? Is that why she made the monthly payments at Hatton & Sons?”
Tears sprang from the woman’s eyes and rolled rapidly down her cheeks. “It’s all his fault.” She pointed to the portrait of a military man on the far wall. “He was too hard on the boy. Insisted on buying him a commission in the same regiment when it was evident he wasn’t suited to army life.”
Nicholas moved to observe the painting of a man proudly gripping a rifle and dressed in full military regalia, a man he assumed was Captain Russell. Something caught his eye, an odd-shaped ring on his middle finger. Upon closer inspection, he noted the cross embedded into onyx.
Cursed saints!
“Whenever Laurence did something wrong, Percy blamed it on his illegitimacy,” Mrs Russell sobbed, then her face twisted into a scowl. “If he had been his true son, he would have risen through the ranks. The blood of that libertine is like poison in the boy’s veins. Oh, that’s just an example of the terrible things he said.”
Words hit harder than barbed arrows.
Helen glanced at him and raised a brow.
“Where is Laurence now?” Nicholas said, suspecting he was out there hatching another murder plot. Still, he knew two things for certain. He wasn’t pretending to be Lord Bowden or Mr Thorndyke.
“I don’t know. He absconded while with his battalion in France. That was three years ago. Percy wrote to him a week before he died.” She gestured to the likeness of her husband. “He told him about his birthright, about Robert Holland, and sent him the gold ring he received for service to king and country. Percy said a man is the sum of his failings. That Laurence was to take the ring in the hope it might give him courage.”
“Courage?” Helen said.
“Courage to be a man, to stop whining and get on with life.”
Nicholas’ shoulders sagged. He thought his parents’ marriage had tainted his life. By all accounts, his half-brothers had led miserable lives, too.
“Do you happen to have a likeness of your son?” Helen asked.
Mrs Russell dashed tears from her eyes and nodded. “Yes, in the drawer.” She stood, though was a little shaky on her feet when she retrieved a miniature from the oak dresser.
Helen was keen to retrieve the picture and examine the man’s features, but Mrs Russell kept a tight grip on the oval case.
“Do you think he did it?” The poor woman spoke as if she’d watched her life’s work crumble to dust. “Do you think Laurence killed Mr Holland?” Tears fell in torrents. “Laurence sent a few letters over the years, but with no return address. His last was so full of anger and hatred I couldn’t bear to read past the third line and threw it into the fire. But that was a year ago. Why hasn’t he come home?”
“We don’t know if Laurence is to blame.” He did not want to raise the woman’s hopes. “But I can think of no one else with a good enough motive.”