“The field physiologist,” Jean said. “Studies into human blood with a view to proving parent and child relationships.”
“Only he couldn’t,” Tayte said. Not in his time.”
“Nullius in verba,” Jean added. “They had to stand by their own motto. They couldn’t expect anyone to take their word for it. They needed scientific proof that the child was Queen Anne’s legitimate heir.”
“Exactly,” Tayte said. “And when it seemed unlikely they would be able to prove that in their lifetime, possibly because of betrayal or discovery, they divided the ahnentafel and engraved the digits onto the scientific instruments they would each have owned at the time. Then they set up a society to protect it, handing the ahnentafel down through the generations piece by piece as family heirlooms.”
“It explains why they called themselves Quo Veritas,” Jean said. “They knew the truth and when they felt the time was right they could bring the heirlooms together again to prove it.”
“But the time wasn’t right for almost three hundred years. Not until the discovery of DNA. The first conclusive paternity test using DNA profiling wasn’t until 1988, which was around the time of the Sherwood Forest murders.”
Tayte recalled then what Robert Cornell had said at the Star Café: it ends with me. The father started it and the son planned to finish it.
“What about the astronomer and the soldier turned architect?” Jean said.
Tayte shook his head. “Maybe they were just like-minded friends. Silent partners.”
They both sat back in their chairs together and exhaled thoughtfully.
“So in terms of cracking the ahnentafel,” Jean said, “what does all this tell us?”
The ensuing silence spoke volumes.
DI Jack Fable didn’t hold out much hope of getting any sleep either that night. Not since the call came in from DCI Graham Tanner, requesting his urgent attendance at Thames House. Their progress on the case had reached all kinds of people in high places and they wanted immediate answers. Tanner wasn’t going along and that came as no surprise to Fable given the late hour.
In a high level clearance room inside the building that was home to the British Security Service, Fable was sitting at a table looking at an intense group of people: four men and one woman whose expressions suggested they had half the world’s problems resting on their shoulders. The other half, Fable supposed, was everything they didn’t yet know about.
He’d been there a while. Everyone was up to date on the royal conspiracy theory Tayte and Jean had come up with, and they were aware of the idea that somewhere out there Queen Anne’s heir might exist, three hundred years after she was supposed to have died without issue.
“So this thing could be real?” one of the men said. He sounded sceptical.
Fable knew him as Deputy Director General, Sir Anthony Harcourt. He was ex-military and looked like he still pushed weights to keep himself in shape.
“We’re unable to confirm it as yet, sir,” Fable said, wondering why his palms were suddenly sweating. “But Robert Cornell certainly appears to have believed it, yes.”
“Why can’t we confirm it?”
The question came from the only female among them. Her name was Dame Celia Grice, Director General of the British Security Service. Fable had first met her when they brought Tayte and Jean in to look at Marcus Brown’s genealogy files. The dogtooth suit she was wearing then was replaced now with casual attire that Fable supposed she must have thrown on when she’d been called in. He thought her complexion seemed all the more drained for the lack of makeup and it made her jet black hair look stark by comparison, her character all the more formidable.
“We can’t confirm it, ma’am,” Fable said, “because to our knowledge there’s no one alive now who can tell us, except perhaps Joseph Cornell. I believe we’ll only know for sure when Tayte and Summer find what they’re looking for.”
“And there’s no other way to prove this thing?” Harcourt said.
“No, sir. I don’t see how there is?”
Fable heard whispers from around the table, too low to make anything out. Then Grice spoke again.
“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “What you’re saying is that around the time of Queen Anne, politicians plotted to manipulate the line of succession to the throne - possibly in collusion with the House of Hanover - so they could gain control of the nation. To achieve that they had to ensure that no heir survived Queen Mary or Queen Anne. Have I got that right?”
“As I understand it, ma’am, yes,” Fable said.
Grice eyed him seriously. “We’re talking about the murder of royal children,” she said. “Mere babies in most cases. And you’re suggesting that King William III’s riding accident was no accident at all?”
“When you put it all together, ma’am, I’d have to say that it looks suspicious.”
“And this heir... Do we have any idea what the Cornells proposed to do once they found them?”
“Not at this time, ma’am. But while Joseph Cornell’s at large the implied threat to the Royal Family has to be taken seriously. Why else would he spend years of his life setting himself up in Royalty Protection Branch? It can’t be a coincidence.”
“The Royal Family must be relocated,” Harcourt said.
“Already in hand, sir. And as Joseph Cornell knows the protocol we couldn’t use any of the regular residences. Those locations are being checked and confirmed safe, and as I’m sure you already know, the entire SO14 branch is being vetted for any association with the Cornells, military or civilian.”
“We can’t be too careful,” Grice said. She sat back and stared at the ceiling. A moment later she added, “If this heir proves to be real, wouldn’t their existence corroborate the theory?”
“I think it would add considerable weight to it,” Fable said.
Harcourt stood up, his knuckles pressing into the table as he leant over it. “Who knows where something like this could lead?”
Grice agreed. “We need to contain it. Bring the information in and control it until we’ve had time to assess the potential damage. As I see it, if we get there first all threats are neutralised.”
“Surely it would be better to destroy this ahnentafel.” Harcourt said. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“And worry about whether it might jump up and bite us again someday?” Grice said. “No, thank you.” She eyed Harcourt seriously. “We bring it in. Control it. Do I make myself clear?”
Harcourt poured himself a glass of water, drank it back and sat down again. “Who else knows about this?” he asked Fable.
Fable thought about Michel Levant and concluded that he didn’t know what the Frenchman knew. “To my knowledge, no one. We’ve only just put the ahnentafel together and we know that someone else out there has it - probably Joseph Cornell. I’ve told Mr Tayte that I’m to be his only point of contact.”
“That’s good, Fable,” Harcourt said. “And we need to keep it that way. If this is real we won’t know how big an impact it’s likely to have until it’s too late and that’s a risk we can’t afford to take. Do you understand?”
“Explicitly, sir.”
Celia Grice stood up. “Very well then. But as far as any point of contact is concerned, I’m assigning two more officers to our experts in the field. They’ll be at their hotel at first light and they’ll stay in their shadows until this thing is over.” She walked around the table until she was standing over Fable. “In other words, Inspector, as far as Tayte and Summer are concerned, we’ll take it from here.”
Harcourt rose, gathering his things. “Chief Inspector Tanner will no doubt brief you in the morning,” he said, indicating to Fable that everything had been prearranged and authorised before he got there.
“And Inspector...” Grice said, her tone cold and flat. “I must remind you that your silence is mandatory in accordance with the Act of Secrecy you signed when you joined the police service.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
When Fable left Thames House for his flat in Blackfriars, driving east alongside the river, he almost punched a hole in the dashboard. The Security Service had shut him out and DCI Graham Tanner had supported them all the way.
The sycophant.
Fable knew it was just like Tanner to leave it to someone else to break news like that to him. He couldn’t do it to his face, not Tanner. But there it was. The police investigation, with the exception of Joseph Cornell who had yet to be found, was over. Their ‘heirloom’ killer was dead. The press were happy. It was another tick in the box for the good guys and it would look great on Tanner’s statistics sheet.
But what next?
Whatever it was, Fable knew it would happen off stage. Any mess would be covered up. All threats to national security, to the realm and to the monarchy, dealt with.
All threats...
Fable had a badge and a signature on a piece of paper to ensure his silence - to protect him, he hoped - but what did Tayte and Summer have?
“Not a damn thing,” he mused.
If they found what they were looking for - what he had asked them to look for - his cynical side couldn’t discount the idea that Jean would go missing like her son and Jefferson Tayte would be repatriated in a metal casket.
In Tayte’s hotel room, he and Jean sat and drank coffee and threw ideas around for the best part of an hour, getting nowhere. Tayte eventually stood up and began to pace the room, scrunching his toes into the carpet, talking as he walked.
“It doesn’t really help that we know the possible dates on which the subject of the ahnentafel was born unless we know whose family tree it belongs to. What about the Ouroboros? Let’s look at that again.”
Jean took off her glasses and pinched her eyes. “We keep looking at it,” she said. “I’m becoming an authority but it’s not helping.”
“It has to be the key,” Tayte said. “Harper would have known we’d need one. We just need to work out how to apply it to the ahnentafel.”
Jean sighed and went back to the BlackBerry. She started reading out much of what she’d already said, constantly flicking her thumb over the scroller. When she went quiet, Tayte returned to his chair and began to think aloud.
“Look at it logically,” he told himself. “It’s an ahnentafel. A genealogist put it together soon after 1700. You’re a genealogist, JT. Think like one. It’s family history. The past. It had to exist in his lifetime.”
The room fell quiet again - just the sound of Jean working the BlackBerry.
“It goes back twenty-three generations from the subject,” Tayte said, not to himself this time but to Jean. He sounded brighter.
“Do you have something?”
“I think I do. You see, even with today’s technology and all the improvements in record keeping over the years, I’d find it next to impossible to trace just any old family history through twenty-three generations. We’re talking several hundred years. Back then, unless the family history had been meticulously recorded through the centuries, Naismith couldn’t have compiled such an ahnentafel.”
“So it has to be a famous family history?”
Tayte’s face split into a cheesy grin. “How about the Royal Family itself? That’s where I was going wrong before. The chicken and egg scenario. I was thinking that to find the heir, we first had to work out their family tree. But that’s precisely what we needed in order to find the heir. Like the Ouroboros, it comes back to itself and that’s the thing.” Tayte rocked back on his chair, the satisfaction of discovery flushing his cheeks. “This puzzle starts where it ends.”
“It self-references?” Jean said.
“Exactly. To find Queen Anne’s heir we have to start with the heir as though the child had lived. Which is exactly what your royal conspiracy theory proposes. The ahnentafel is only part of the puzzle. If we follow it, it should lead us to the real heir and the family they became a part of when the babies were switched. We can confirm it easily enough.”
Tayte found the sheet of paper onto which he’d written the ahnentafel. “So the first digit represents Queen Anne’s supposed stillborn child or her heir if we’re right. The second digit, also a number one in this case, represents Queen Anne. A zero takes the male line.”
Jean pointed to the next digit along. It was a zero. “So that’s Queen Anne’s father, James II, and the next is a zero, so that’s his father, Charles I.”
“You’ve got it,” Tayte said. “Think you can keep going? “It’s the last person on the ahnentafel we’re interested in. Something about them should give us our next direction.”
Jean took a deep breath. “I’ll try.”
She grabbed a pen and pulled the ahnentafel towards her so she could write the names in. Then she rattled through nine of the twenty-three generations - the ahnentafel following the kings and queens that were so familiar to her - before arriving at James I of Scotland, where the ahnentafel steered away from the well known monarchs through James’s wife, whom she knew to be Joan Beaufort.
“Thank God for the Internet,” she said, turning to the BlackBerry again to follow the less familiar line.
It took her through three more generations before arriving back on familiar ground with Edward I and the House of Plantagenet. Then to Henry III and to John Lackland, brother of Richard the Lionheart. She continued in this way, using her knowledge and the Web for reference until all the names were written against their respective digits on the ahnentafel. When she’d finished she set the pen down and sat back.
“So who does it point to?” Tayte asked, eager to hear the answer.
Jean turned the ahnentafel around so Tayte could read it.
“Ethelred II?” Tayte said. “The Unready?”
“The very same. Although, etymologists would tell you that the word ‘unready’ has taken on a different meaning over the years. In Ethelred’s day it was ‘unraed’, which meant ‘without counsel’ or to have poor counsel.”
“Oh,” Tayte said, not really paying attention. He was wondering where this discovery had left them and he thought that Naismith’s ahnentafel could have pointed to anyone in the British Royal Family tree, so why Ethelred II? “What else do we know about him?”
“I can tell you the basics. He reigned between 978 and 1016. Became King at the age of about ten when his stepmother supposedly murdered his half-brother, who was later known as King Edward the Martyr. He was an unpopular ruler. Had a lot of trouble with Vikings and ordered the St Brice’s Day massacre to kill all the Danes in England. He was defeated by the Danish Leader, Canute, at the Battle of Ashingdon in 1016 and was buried at St Paul’s.”
“Need to look anything up?” Tayte asked, smiling.
“I don’t think so,” Jean said. “It’s hard to be specific when you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
Tayte was still smiling. “I think we’ve found it. You’re referring to St Paul’s Cathedral, right?”
“Not as it stands today, but yes. There’s been a cathedral dedicated to St Paul on the same site since the beginning of the seventh century. The present cathedral is the fifth generation, built after the previous building was destroyed by the Great Fire.”
“1666,” Tayte said.
“Designed by Royal Society Fellow, Sir Christopher Wren,” Jean added.
“I knew that. Now you’ve spoiled it.”
“Spoiled what?”
“I wanted to say it - thought it might impress you.”
Jean threw the pen at him. “I don’t want to get you too excited before bedtime,” she said, “but there’s a large statue of Queen Anne outside the West portico of St Paul’s. The same St Paul’s that was being built during the time of our five Royal Society Fellows.”
Tayte arched his brow. “What was it that Rakesh Dattani said of Sir Stephen Henley? Probably trained under Christopher Wren at some point?”
“Words to that effect,” Jean said.
“St Paul’s it is then. First thing in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty
The banging on his hotel room door woke him. Jefferson Tayte got out of bed in his stars-and-stripes boxers, rubbed his gritty eyes as he slipped on his dressing gown and checked the time. It was just after seven a.m. and the banging was getting louder.
“Just a minute!”
He checked the peephole and saw that it was Jean, also in her gown. When he opened the door he could see that she’d been crying.
“What is it? What’s wrong?
Jean stomped into the room and sat on the bed. She had a folded slip of paper in her hand.
“I came straight round,” she said. She sniffed, removed her glasses and wiped her eyes. “I just found this under my door.”
She handed Tayte the slip of paper and he unfolded it as he sat beside her. He read it aloud.
“Find the heir - find your son.”
“Someone must have put it there during the night,” Jean added.
The note reaffirmed Tayte’s belief that they had been set up for this all along. He read the words again, knowing that the police would have no hope of tracing the source. It wasn’t handwritten. It was printed on a sheet of white A4 paper in a Times New Roman font - as common to any word processor today as Courier was in the days of the typewriter.
Jean took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions. “Elliot hasn’t just gone off somewhere, has he? Somewhere inside me I was hoping that was all it was. But it’s not, is it? They’ve got him.”
Tayte wondered who ‘they’ were and as usual he thought about Michel Levant. He’d been at the hotel last night. He had every opportunity to slip the note under Jean’s door. Maybe he’d tried to work the ahnentafel out for himself but couldn’t. Now he wanted them to do it for him. Tayte knew he couldn’t rule out Joseph Cornell either given what they knew about him, and he certainly didn’t believe Cornell was equipped to solve the puzzle by himself. He heaved a sigh, thinking that it didn’t matter who had Elliot just now. What did matter was that they now had another very personal reason to find whoever or whatever the ahnentafel ultimately pointed to.
The Last Queen of England Page 20
