The Last Queen of England (32 page)

“Now you’re asking,” Jean said.
 
She turned to the BlackBerry.
 
“The last was around 1700.”
 
She tapped at the small keyboard then flicked her thumb over the scroller.
 
“Here we are.
 
The first was on the 12th of May, 1684.
 
The last was on the 25th of January, 1700, when she gave birth to a stillborn daughter.”

“And she made no further attempt to have a child after that?”

“No.
 
None during the twelve years of her reign.”

“Okay then,” Tayte said.
 
“If there was an heir, they had to be born between those dates.
 
So how did they pull it off?”

“Dr Hutton,” Jean said.
 
“Rakesh Dattani told us he was Anne’s physician for a time.
 
He could have switched babies.”

“Of course,” Tayte said.
 
“A stillborn child in place of the royal heir.
 
When did Dattani say Hutton served Anne?
 
I’m lost without my notebook.”

“During the five years leading up to her coronation,” Jean said.
 
“So that would have been between 1697 and 1702.”

“Good.
 
That narrows it down.”
 
Tayte indicated the BlackBerry.
 
“That thing tell you the dates of Anne’s failed pregnancies between those years?”

Jean’s thumb started scrolling again.
 
“There were four.
 
A stillborn daughter on the 25th of March 1697.
 
A miscarriage in December that same year.
 
A son called Charles, who died the day he was born - that was on the 15th of December 1698 - and the last attempt I just mentioned on the 25th of January, 1700.”

Tayte tore off another sheet of paper and wrote the dates down.
 
“If it was Hutton’s plan to safeguard the Protestant Stuart bloodline, I think we can safely assume that the heir was born on one of those dates.
 
Discounting the miscarriage gives us a choice of three.
 
The substitute child had to come from another family that Dr Hutton was attending on one of those dates.”
 
He thought about the ahnentafel again.
 
“The big question is, whose family was it?”

“Do you think the mother knew?”

Tayte shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.
 
It would have been safer if she didn’t, and how could any mother consciously agree to such a proposal.
 
I suspect only the five Royal Society Fellows knew the identity of the heir so let’s look at them again.
 
Naismith, among other things, was also a genealogist.
 
We can take it then that the ahnentafel is his work, created to identify the heir when the time was right.
 
And for that we turn to William Daws.”

“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.