The Bloodline Will by A B Morgan

Author:A B Morgan [Morgan, A B]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-13T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Keeping it in the family

He stopped the maniacal prancing and raked fingers through spiky silver hair. ‘Are you absolutely sure? Because if this is right, then this is incest. The big secret is incest, Lorna. Incest, Ella!’ Konrad exploded, uncoiling his limbs and laughing like a fairground automaton. It was some time before he composed himself again. ‘Go on. Give me what you’ve got,’ he said to Ella, expelling a long breath.

‘I checked your other information about Betty Renfrew, and she was first cousin to Beulah Nithercott. So, the family ties are tighter than they first appeared to be. With some highly illegal shenanigans involving hacking into a database, Mal has provided the indisputable evidence that this is a surrogacy case. Oliver Renfrew provided the sperm and Beulah acted as surrogate mother before she married Dominic, we think because Betty, her cousin, couldn’t conceive. There is reference to polycystic ovaries in her medical record.’

Nodding like a demented bird, Konrad encouraged Ella to keep dishing up the facts. She happily complied.

‘When Beulah married Dominic, she promoted her cousin, gave her a job in charge of household management at the hall and a lodge house on the edge of the estate for the family to live in at a peppercorn rent. All very cosy.’

‘Which means what?’ Konrad asked her, still unable to sit down even in the confines of the small office.

‘Which means, as reported in the papers at the time of the murders, Guy and Abigail grew up on the same estate. She was two years older than him, but I suppose they became playmates, and he married her because the games of doctors and nurses went too far… I’m speculating.’ Ella threw back her head and sighed heavily. ‘They had to get married because she became pregnant and that’s when all hell broke loose.’

‘I’ve heard worse theories,’ Lorna said. ‘However, this doesn’t entirely stack up. Why on earth would Beulah keep her first child so close? It must have been painful to see someone else bringing up your own daughter and put a huge strain on everyone to keep it a secret.’

She and Ella had been over the records endlessly, back and forth, cross-referencing every last detail and there was no getting away from it. Guy Nithercott married the daughter of the family housekeeper who was also his half-sister and a distant cousin. If this dynamite were ever to be made public the repercussions would be unthinkable and catastrophic for an international billion-pound business such as Global Enterprises – not to mention Abigail or Guy himself and the Nithercott family name.

All at once, fearful of the tidal wave of sensationalism she had unleashed, Ella became very quiet. Inside her head, however, she was calm. She knew this wasn’t a flight of fancy, a wild guess. It was true. In St Cuthbert’s Hospital Abigail told a sad tale of childhood isolation and school bullying. She led Ella to believe that she and Guy became engaged soon after meeting each other again at a summer ball, and that she married in haste, not realising how controlling he could be.

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