Page 54 of Method of Revenge
Andrew took slow steps back toward the desk. “What happened, David? Did Gabriela know what you did? That you bashed in Regina’s skull to keep her from going to your wife?”
David scuttled further behind his desk, stammering a denial. “No, she knew nothing because I had done nothing!”
“Stand down, Carter,” Jasper warned. Andrew raised his hands, as if to say he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
But he’d almost certainly come here to force a confession from his brother-in-law, then mete out his own punishment. Jasper would make sure that didn’t happen.
“You admit to the affair,” he said to David, who nodded. “Were you aware that Andrea Geary suspected the affair too?”
David closed his eyes, and exhaling, nodded again. “Regina and I, we were here late one evening. We thought everyone had gone for the night, but on her way out, Regina ran into Miss Geary and a man. A beau, Regina thought.”
Jasper wondered about this beau. Might it have been Mr. Nelson?
“Why would seeing Regina have been suspicious to Miss Geary?” Lewis asked.
Shamefaced, David answered, “She alerted Regina to the fact that her blouse’s buttons weren’t properly aligned.”
Observing that Regina had stayed late with her employer and afterward appeared rumpled, Miss Geary had made the correct assumption. However, Leo said Miss Geary confessed to seeing David refresh a vase of flowers every few days on Regina’s desk; she hadn’t made a peep about this much more obvious after-hours encounter.
“Two mornings later, Regina left her note,” David said with a helpless shrug. “I didn’t see her again.”
“And now, this other secretary’s turned up dead,” Andrew Carter said, his tone sharpening. “Bashed-in skull, just like Regina’s. And only one day after Scotland Yard came here asking questions. Admit it, Davy, you panicked.”
David slammed his hands flat onto the desk he hid behind. “No! I haven’t bashed in any skulls, and I didn’t poison my sister!”
Andrew made a whirling motion with his fingers, and the two hired men bristled to attention. “I don’t believe you.”
“Tell your brutes to stand down,” Jasper ordered, his palm going to his Webley again. “I’m investigating these murders, Carter, not you. I’m aware they’re connected, but I don’t believe your brother-in-law is behind them. Not anymore.”
He had, especially when David lied to Lewis about being at dinner with his father for a short while the previous evening.
“Mr. Henderson, what can you tell me about Terrence Nelson?”
David stared blankly at Jasper. “Who?”
“The father of the two tots who sucked on your company’s wallpaper and died,” Lewis said. “Arsenic poisoning.”
His expression soured. “My goodness. Why do you ask about that horrid business?”
“Because I have reason to believe Andrea Geary was, in fact, Mrs. Evelyn Nelson, the mother of the toddlers,” Jasper answered.
David’s squinting eyes grew round and large, while Andrew Carter whistled, as if amused. Jasper’s irritation with him only increased.
“Why would… No, that’s impossible. Miss Geary, she…she wasn’t married,” David said, tripping over his words.
“I’m betting Mr. Nelson was thebeauRegina Morris saw on the night she stayed late,” Lewis said as he caught on.
“He didn’t like being seen,” Jasper said, nodding. “Maybe he thought Regina had heard or discovered something she shouldn’t have.”
“Like their plan of revenge,” Lewis concluded solemnly. “He believed he had to get rid of her.”
David raised his hand. “Revenge for what? Father settled their claim. I was there. The man received one hundred pounds, a princely sum for a man of his class.”
Jasper nearly recoiled. David spoke as though the children of certain men were less valuable than others. As different to his father as David Henderson had seemed to be, he was still very much cut from the same cloth.
Andrew Carter scoffed. “Their tots were still dead though, weren’t they? I’d stuff my pockets full of your daddy’s money and still slit his throat.”
“No, it wasn’t enough for Jack Henderson to suffer his own death,” Jasper said. “The Nelsons wanted him to suffer what they had—the deaths of his children. David, I’m assuming you and your father dealt solely with Mr. Nelson, not his wife?”
