Chapter 362: Slapping Old Mrs. Yeats’s Face, Admission

Chapter 362: Chapter 362: Slapping Old Mrs. Yeats’s Face, Admission

A loud BUZZ rang through Old Mrs. Yeats’s head.

"What? What are you talking about..."

The manager hurriedly opened Weibo, and Old Mrs. Yeats’s vision immediately went black.

That bitch, Estelle Lockwood! She had actually made the will and the paintings completely public!

[This is fake, right? These are Mr. Yeats’s works. He’s a renowned painter, why would he need to steal?]

[The Yeats family has already proven that Estelle’s parents were the thieves!]

[Mr. Yeats is so filial, and Mrs. Yeats is stunningly talented. Only Estelle’s shameless parents would resort to stealing. No wonder she wanted to snatch Ms. Claire’s place the moment she returned to the Yeats family!]

But soon, netizens noticed something was amiss.

[Look at this painting, "Plum Blossoms Falling in the Snow". If you connect the ends of the withered branches, doesn’t it look like a name?]

[Ah... it spells out "Silas".]

[And for "Four Seasons of the Year", if you arrange the paintings with Spring and Summer on top, and Autumn and Winter on the bottom, it seems to spell out a name too. Wow... it looks like "Eleanor".]

[I remember Estelle’s mother, the eldest daughter of the Yeats family whose whereabouts are unknown, is named Eleanor Yeats, right?]

[Wait! Look at these three paintings! Evan exhibited one of them, but you can’t tell much from just one. I think this is meant to be a series. You have to look at all three together. Connected, they form a galaxy, which corresponds to Estelle’s name, and if you trace a line through a few of the stars, they spell out "Estelle"!]

[There’s another point that everyone’s missing.]

[The photos Estelle posted have timestamps in the corners. If you sort them chronologically, you can see the painter’s skill gradually improving and maturing. These three starry sky paintings should be the painter’s later works.]

[If, and I mean *if*, we deduce that the painter is Silas Lockwood—Silas reportedly passed away twenty-five years ago, so if we assume this was his final set of works, Estelle would have just been born at the time.]

[Since she was born, her name must have been chosen, right? So Silas painted this starry sky with the knowledge that his daughter would be named Estelle, using the stars to spell out her name.]

[Doesn’t that make perfect sense?]

[Here’s another reason why the painter couldn’t possibly be Mrs. Yeats: The Yeats family claimed that Evan exhibited these paintings to fulfill Mrs. Yeats’s dream. However, one of the starry sky paintings was exhibited a long time ago, while the other two are nowhere to be found to this day.]

[But it’s obvious that the three paintings are a set. If Mrs. Yeats were the painter, and the exhibition was her and Evan’s idea, then as the original creator, Mrs. Yeats would never have separated the three paintings.]

[Not to mention, so many of these paintings bear the names of Silas, Eleanor, and Estelle.]

[Isn’t it glaringly obvious who the original artist is?]

[Exactly! If they still want to claim the painter is Mrs. Yeats—then I’d like to ask, why would Mrs. Yeats paint Silas Lockwood’s name on her work? Are you cheating on Old Mr. Yeats, or did you steal someone else’s paintings? Take your pick!]

Estelle put away her phone, thoroughly satisfied.

She had actually discovered the hidden details in the paintings a long time ago. Why hadn’t she exposed them right from the start? If she had, how would she have gotten to see Old Mrs. Yeats’s true colors? How would she have been able to flush Mrs. Yeats out into the open?

The Yeats family... They constantly paid lip service to how much they loved her mother, treating her as their only precious daughter, and Mrs. Yeats had even been her mother’s childhood friend and playmate. Yet underneath it all, it was a completely different story.

Estelle closed her eyes and waited for Nathaniel Sloan’s end of things to play out.

Back at the exhibition hall, Old Mrs. Yeats’s head was BUZZING, her vision darkening in waves.

Evan’s phone also began to ring. Seeing it was a call from Quentin Yeats, he let out a sharp yelp of panic and threw the phone far away. Anyone could tell at a glance that he was guilty.

Old Mrs. Yeats suddenly remembered something. She snapped her head up to look at Mr. Lynch, her eyes sharp as a falcon’s!

Nathaniel remained poised and composed. "It seems Mr. Silas Lockwood’s daughter is quite clever. But this is for the best, lest the true painter be slandered and the villains get their way.

"However, I still have a few questions. Why did Mr. Lockwood’s paintings end up in your hands? Why were they passed off as Evan’s works? Who is the real thief here?"

The phones belonging to Mrs. Yeats, Evan, the manager, the assistant, as well as Claire, Third Uncle Yeats, and Third Aunt Yeats, were all ringing incessantly. There were calls from the company, calls probing for information, and calls from people just wanting to watch the drama unfold.

Old Mrs. Yeats stumbled a step. Had Mrs. Yeats not been supporting her, she likely would have collapsed straight to the floor.

The members of the Yeats family were pale with panic and defeat. "This... this..."

"Mr. Lynch!" Mrs. Yeats suddenly stepped forward, an apologetic look on her face. "These are indeed Silas Lockwood’s paintings. I’m so sorry. We deceived everyone!"

Mrs. Yeats’s confession sent the entire crowd into an uproar.

She continued mournfully, "Back then... back when Eleanor went missing and Silas passed away, we simply couldn’t bear to see these works buried in obscurity. Later, due to certain circumstances, we learned that Silas hadn’t wanted to reveal his identity, so we thought...

"After all, Silas’s dying wish was for everyone to be able to see his paintings. Evan was only trying to fulfill his wish, but he went about it the wrong way. Afterwards, greed got the better of me, and I helped Evan cover it up.

"Mr. Lynch, this is all my fault. Please don’t make things difficult for Mom and Evan. If I had just admitted it straight away instead of lying to Estelle, things wouldn’t have escalated to this point."

Mrs. Yeats’s attitude took everyone aback. It was strange, though they couldn’t quite put their finger on why.

It was as if Mrs. Yeats had never wanted to claim to be the painter in the first place, but had been pushed forward by Old Mrs. Yeats to take the credit for the sake of Evan’s reputation. And now that the truth had been exposed, she was once again being pushed forward to take the blame. Looked at this way, she seemed like a coerced victim herself.

Because of this, whether online or at the venue, the public’s hostility towards Mrs. Yeats wasn’t actually that intense.

Nathaniel narrowed his eyes. Was this Mrs. Yeats really as innocent as she seemed?

By stepping forward to confess, she had instantly minimized the damage from public opinion and taken all the blame upon herself. Yet, whether it was claiming to be the artist earlier or confessing her sins now, her entire demeanor had been completely detached. She showed no pride in the identity of the artist, nor any sorrow over the crime of thievery.

It made people feel that she was being forced. That she was a marionette. Yes, that was the exact word for it. She was a marionette. It was as if someone unseen was pulling her strings, forcing her into these actions.

Following her confession, Evan immediately had people stabilize the situation. There was still a torrent of abuse online, but it was almost entirely focused on Old Mrs. Yeats and Evan. Whenever Mrs. Yeats was mentioned, people simply dismissed her as a mere scapegoat.

However, Nathaniel couldn’t shake the feeling that this Mrs. Yeats was far from innocent.

Reining in his thoughts and receiving a text from Estelle, Nathaniel’s lips curled into a faint smile. "Old Mrs. Yeats."