“For truth, is rightly named, the daughter of time,” — Francis Bacon
Many mystery novels, good and bad, follow a pattern. There is a crime, a sleuth enters the pictures, follows up on the clues, confronts the suspect. Modern mysteries often contain action and if not action, motion, with the detective moving from place to place and from witness to witness. Typically, there is a mortal threat to our hero.
I am a sucker for stories that turn history on its head. Gore Vidal’s Burr is a perfect example, where the infamous former vice-president tells his side of history and the sainted Jefferson comes out looking poorly.
In Josephine Tey’s novel, The Daughter of Time (1951), we get a upending of the mystery format as well as of history.
Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant is laid-up in a hospital while he recovers from a broken leg. He has a fascination with faces and a friend brings him a stack of portraits. He is struck by one face and when he asks the nurses and his visitors about the face he gets their opinions. Some say he looks like a judge, others say a criminal. It is a portrait of Richard III King of England and the titular villain of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.
Grants asks people about Richard III and most people recount a few facts from what they learned when younger: a hunchback, hated by the people, killed his nephews, those poor lambs in the Tower of London, to get the throne after his brother, King Edward died. All ‘facts’ that come from William Shakespeare’s play and other Tudor sources. Grant decides he will investigate one of the great mysteries of English history: Did Richard kill his two nephews, the unfortunate Princes in the Tower.
With the help of a young American researcher (a friend of a friend), Grant starts to collect information, reviews history books and, through the researcher, gains access to original, contemporaneous sources. All of this while confined to his hospital bed.
Through the original sources and the timeline, Tey lays out a fascinating case that Richard had nothing to gain and Henry Tudor (Henry VII) who defeated Richard at Bosworth Field, everything to gain by removing any Yorkist heirs to the throne.
One teaser as an example: Once on the throne, Henry VII brought a Bill of Attainder against Richard. It detailed all of Richard’s crimes. You name it, Henry threw it in that bill. Except, the murder of the princes. Was this because when the bill was passed it was common knowledge that the princes were still alive?
The novel does start out a bit slow. Once Grant digs into the mystery it becomes a quick and fascinating read. In an age where a good potboiler can run upwards of 400 pages, it was a relief to read a tight, well plotted story that was less than 200 pages long.
If the book has a theme its that people, mostly unwittingly, often base their knowledge of history on what they believe are agreed-upon facts, legend and popular culture. A little digging often proves this wrong. Tey references similar instances within the novel.
This is not a little-known gem of a story. It has been listed as one of the top 100 British mysteries. If historical mysteries are your thing this one will please. It could also spur an interest in this time period. I did get the chance to read a few historians that take a look at this issue, and while those works are less sure of Tey’s assessment, Richard emerges from history as a much more vivid a sympathetic figure than often portrayed.
The title of the novel, The Daughter of Time, comes from Francis Bacon. However, as usual, the Greeks got there first. Veritas, a minor figure from Greek Mythology, was the daughter of Chronos.
The book is still in print and available on the Nook and Kindle.