Lavinia conceals the discovery of living blood descendants of the Duquet family

Lavinia conceals the discovery of living blood descendants of the Duquet family when genealogist R. R. Tetrazinni reports that the only living bloodline descendants of Charles Duquet are the grandchildren of Josime Sel and Francis-Outger Sel. The disclosure challenges the Duke family’s inherited claim to its fortune: Lavinia descends from Nicolaus, an adopted son, while the Canadian descendants carry Duquet blood. She ends the investigation rather than pursue their identities, and her later will leaves a legal warning against any Canadian claimant. The episode turns genealogy into a question of inheritance, recordkeeping, and whose kinship the family is willing to recognize.

The genealogical discovery

Lavinia asks Tetrazinni directly whether he has found any Duke descendants. He explains that Charles Duquet adopted three boys: Nicolaus and Jan, taken from an Amsterdam orphanage, and Bernard, taken from the streets of La Rochelle. Although the adoptions were informal, Charles treated the boys as sons and divided his goods equally among them. Lavinia’s line descends from Nicolaus, who married Mercy; their children included Sedley, Lavinia’s grandfather. Tetrazinni makes the distinction explicit: she has no Duquet blood through that line.

Tetrazinni then sets out the other branch of the family. Charles’s Dutch wife, Cornelia Roos, bore him two biological children, Outger Duquet and Doortje Duquet. Doortje’s line ended with her only son, Lennart Vogel, who died unmarried. Outger lived for a time on Penobscot Bay and had a daughter, Beatrix Duquet, with a Mi’kmaq woman. Beatrix remained in Maine when her father moved to Leiden, and later married Kuntaw Sel, a métis descended from Mi’kmaq people and a French habitant.

According to Tetrazinni’s account, Beatrix and Kuntaw were legally married and had two sons, Josime Sel and Francis-Outger Sel. Their grandchildren, he says, constitute the only living bloodline descendants of Charles Duquet. He has not yet established their names or where they live; finding them would require travel to Canada and contact with Indigenous communities. The distinction is consequential: the adopted sons’ descendants hold the established Duke inheritance, while the living descendants by blood are Canadian and, at this point in the report, still unidentified.

Lavinia closes the inquiry

Tetrazinni makes clear that the Canadian descendants could claim the family fortune if blood relationship were treated as decisive. He personally favors the adopted sons’ lines, arguing that their claim is stronger, and invokes possession as a practical advantage. His report therefore presents both a genealogy and a challenge to the assumptions supporting Lavinia’s family’s position.

After listening in silence, Lavinia tells him not to disturb the Canadian situation and declares the investigation closed. Annag Duncan is present; Lavinia notices her frown at Tetrazinni and trusts her loyalty to keep the matter confidential. Once Tetrazinni has left, Lavinia throws the report into the wastebin. The apparent destruction is not final: Annag carries the bin to the front office, makes a show of opening the stove, and hides the report in a supply closet beneath her rain cape. The information is suppressed within the household, but preserved by the very assistant Lavinia expects to remain silent.

From suppressed report to legal warning

Lavinia’s will, read after her death, reveals that the discovery has not vanished from the family’s affairs. The estate is in diminished circumstances: several bequests concern properties and wealth that no longer exist, and the intended beneficiaries have little more than enough to live modestly. Lavinia leaves the largest share of what remains to eleven-year-old Charley, inaccessible to him until he turns forty, an age she regards as the age of reason.

An unusual addendum directs that if a Canadian claimant comes forward to seize a share of Duke-Breitsprecher assets, that person is to be resisted by every legal means. Those reading the will do not know what the clause refers to, but it trails an unexplained warning through the day. In light of Tetrazinni’s report, it points back to the living descendants whose identities Lavinia refused to investigate. The report’s concealment thus survives as a conflict built into the inheritance itself: the family’s formal claim is protected in writing, while the bloodline that might contest it remains unnamed in the will.

Kinship, records, and recognition

The episode sets two ways of establishing family against one another. Charles Duquet’s adopted sons were treated as sons and received equal shares, creating the line from which Lavinia inherits; Tetrazinni’s report nonetheless distinguishes their descendants from the biological line. Its account of the Sel family adds another layer, since Beatrix and Kuntaw’s marriage was legal, yet their descendants’ possible claim is framed as a threat to the existing fortune rather than an acknowledged branch of the family.

The report’s handling also matters. Tetrazinni delivers a written genealogy; Lavinia attempts to discard it; Annag secretly preserves it; and Lavinia’s will later carries forward the dispute in a cryptic defensive clause. Across these acts, documentation does not simply settle kinship. It records a lineage that the inheriting family chooses not to pursue, while the descendants themselves remain outside the account as living people with unconfirmed names and homes. The episode makes the gap between blood descent, legal standing, and practical possession central to the family’s inheritance story.