Alan Grant is an English police officer, and at the moment, he’s not a happy one. While chasing a suspect, he fell through a trap door, and he’s going to be in hospital for a very long time, flat on his back. His friends have sent him flowers and books, but he can’t concentrate on any of the novels because he’s so tired of staring at the ceiling. He badly wants to be up and around again.
One afternoon, a lady friend named Marta brought him something a little more interesting. She went round to the print shop and bought several pictures of famous persons who had a mystery associated with them. Filling an envelope with these pictures, she gave it to Grant and challenged him to find an unsolved mystery in the bunch, and to solve it from his bed. Intrigued by the idea, Grant starts sifting through the portraits. Always a student of faces, he finally was distracted from his absolute boredom.
Many of the pictures were of murderers, and there was something sinister about the faces. But one picture brought him up short. He would have judged the man to be a noble, virtuous sort, but when he turned the page over to read the caption, saw that it was a portrait of Richard the Third. Wasn’t he the man who murdered his two nephews in the Tower of London? How could a man so evil have such a noble face?
Unable to think of anything else, Grant asks his friends to bring him all the history books they could get their hands on, and he spends the remainder of his time in hospital researching the murder of the two little princes. What he eventually discovers is the exact opposite of the legend told for generations – Henry was a much more likely suspect in the murder, and historians have supposed for years that it wasn’t really Richard, although the books still claimed it. Shakespeare even believed Richard guilty, and wrote his play accordingly.
This novel contains quite a lot of history, as Grant reads through the accounts and draws his conclusions. I confess I was lost some of the time as all the different members of the royal family were mentioned. However, the writing was captivating, the interaction between Grant and his friends was clever, and I enjoyed the book very much. Whether you’re a history or a mystery buff, I think you’ll find something to appreciate in “The Daughter of Time” by Josephine Tey.
(This book was published in 1951 by Simon and Schuster.)
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