The Daughter of Time

‘He is the author of the most revolting crime in history, and he has the face of a great judge; a great administrator. Moreover he was by all accounts an abnormally civilised and well-living creature. He actually was a good administrator, by the way. He governed the North of England and did it excellently. He was a good staff officer and a good soldier. And nothing is known against his private life. His brother, perhaps you know, was – bar Charles II – our most wench-ridden royal product.’

‘Richard IV. Yes, I know. A six-foot hunk of male beauty. Perhaps Richard suffered from a resentment at the contrast. And that accounts for his willingness to blot out his brother’s seed.’

This was something that Grant had not thought of.

‘You’re suggesting that Richard had a suppressed hate for his brother?’

‘Why suppressed?’

‘Because even his worst detractors admit that he was devoted to Edward. They were together in everything from the time that Richard was twelve or thirteen. The other brother was no good to anyone. George.’

‘Who was George?’

‘The Duke of Clarence.’

‘Oh. Him! Butt-of-malmsey Clarence.’

‘That’s the one. So there were just the two of them Edward and Richard I mean. And there was a ten-year gap in their ages. Just the right difference for hero-worship.’

‘If I were a hunchback,’ young Carradine said musingly, ‘I sure would hate a brother who took my credit and my women and my place in the sun.’

‘It’s possible,’ Grant said after an interval. ‘It’s the best explanation I’ve come on so far.’

‘It mightn’t have been an overt thing at all, you know. It mightn’t have even been a conscious thing. It may just have all boiled up in him when he saw the chance of a crown. He may have said – I mean his blood may have said: “Here’s my chance! All those years of fetching and carrying and standing one pace in the rear, and no thanks for them. Here’s where I take my pay. Here’s where I settle accounts”.’

Grant noticed that by sheer chance Carradine had used the same imagined description of Richard as Miss Payne-Ellis. Standing one pace in the rear. That is how the novelist had seen him, standing with the fair, solid Margaret and George, on the steps of Baynard’s Castle watching their father go away to war. One pace in the rear, ‘as usual’.

‘That’s very interesting, though, what you say about Richard being apparently a good sort up to the time of the crime,’ Carradine said, propping one leg of his horn-rims with a long forefinger in his characteristic gesture. ‘Makes him more of a person. That Shakespeare version of him, you know, that’s just a caricature. Not a man at all. I’ll be very pleased to do any investigating you want, Mr Grant. It’ll make a nice change from the peasants.’

‘The Cat and the Rat instead of John Ball and Wat Tyler.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Well, it’s very nice of you. I’d be glad of anything you can rake up. But at the moment all I pine for is a contemporary account of events. They must have been country-rocking events. I want to read a contemporary’s account of them. Not what someone heard-tell about events that happened when he was five, and under another régime altogether.’

‘I’ll find out who the contemporary historian is. Fabyan, perhaps. Or is he Henry VII? Anyway, I’ll find out. And meanwhile perhaps you’d like a look at Oliphant. He’s the modern authority on the period, or so I understand.’

Grant said that he would be delighted to take a look at Sir Cuthbert.

‘I’ll drop him in when I’m passing tomorrow – I suppose it’ll be all right if I leave him in the office for you? and as soon as I find out about the contemporary writers I’ll be in with the news. That suit you?’

Grant said that that was perfect.

Young Carradine went suddenly shy, reminding Grant of the woolly lamb which he had quite forgotten in the interest of this new approach to Richard. He said good night in a quiet smothered way, and ambled out of the room followed by the sweeping skirts of his topcoat.

Grant thought that, the Carradine fortune apart, Atlanta Shergold looked like being on a good thing.

8

‘Well,’ said Marta when she came again, ‘what did you think of my woolly lamb?’

‘It was very kind of you to find him for me.’

‘I didn’t have to find him. He’s continually underfoot. He practically lives at the theatre. He must have seen To Sea in a Bowl five hundred times; when he isn’t in Atlanta’s dressing-room he’s in front. I wish they’d get married, and then we might see less of him. (They’re not even living together, you know. It’s all pure idyll.’) She dropped her ‘actress’ voice for a moment and said: ‘They’re rather sweet together. In some ways they are more like twins than lovers. They have that utter trust in each other; that dependence on the other half to make a proper whole. And they never have rows or even quarrels, that I can see. An idyll, as I said. Was it Brent who brought you this?’

She poked the solid bulk of Oliphant with a doubtful finger.

‘Yes, he left it with the porter for me.’

‘It looks very indigestible.’