Sight Unseen

THIRTY-ONE

Umber's use of the indefinite article proved prescient. He had found a Mr Griffin, not the Mr Griffin. But nonetheless he had found more than he could ever have hoped. The irony was that back in 1981 he would have approached the problem more systematically. He would never have ambled through Kew expecting the answer to leap out at him. And consequently he might never have found his way to the cottage with the griffin lampholder.

He sat in the small bachelor-spruce drawing room and explained himself as best he could. He had got no further than the bizarre truth that he had come in search of someone he had been due to meet twenty-three years previously, when his host, who had introduced himself as Philip Griffin, interrupted.

'Sounds as if you're talking about my brother Henry, Mr Umber. Before we go any further, I ought to tell you that 1981 was the last year anyone ever saw or heard of him. I was out of the country at the time. I didn't find out Henry had gone missing till I got back here thirteen years later. So, when and where did you have this appointment with him? And what was it about?'

'Avebury. Twenty-seventh of July, 1981.'

'Avebury? 1981?' Griffin's brow furrowed. 'Haven't I read something recently about a murder at Avebury in 1981?' He snapped his fingers. 'That's right. The bloke they got for it was murdered in prison a couple of weeks ago. And somebody connected to the case committed -'

'Suicide. I know. You could say that's what brought me here.'

'I don't understand. What's Henry got to do with all this?'

Umber answered the question as fully as he could allow himself to. He summarized the events of 27 July 1981 accurately enough and emphasized that his theory about what had happened to Henry Griffin was just that: a theory. He said nothing about Chantelle, however. He did not even suggest he subscribed to Sally's belief in Tamsin's survival. Not that Tamsin – or Sally – much interested Philip Griffin. His attention was focused on the fate of his long-missing brother.

'I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Mr Griffin. I suppose you must have hoped he was still alive somewhere. And that is possible, of course. I -'

'It's OK. I wrote Henry off a long time ago. He and I didn't really see eye to eye. That was one of the reasons I left Father and him to it after Mother died and took myself off round the world. I lost touch with them completely. And I didn't come back for nearly twenty years. When I did, I found Father going gaga with this house collapsing around his ears – and no trace of Henry. They'd fallen out long since, according to the old man, though he was too far gone to remember why – or so he pretended. Henry had left on account of their disagreement, whatever it was about, and good riddance was the gist of his ramblings. Not a warm-hearted man, my father. He's dead and gone himself now. The neighbours said it was the summer of 'eighty-one when Henry vanished from the radar. So, it sounds as if your theory fits the facts, doesn't it?'

'Yes. I suppose it does.'

'And it also sounds as if Henry died trying to be a good citizen, which is some consolation. But there's one thing you still haven't mentioned, Mr Umber. The reason for your appointment with Henry.'

'Ah. Well, I was at Oxford in 1981, studying for a Ph.D. Your brother phoned me out of the blue, saying he had a book – technically, a pair of books – relevant to the subject of my thesis which he was sure would interest me. We agreed to meet at the pub in Avebury – the Red Lion – that Monday, the twenty-seventh of July, so that I could take a look at them.'

'What books were these?'

'A special edition of the letters of Junius.'

'Junius?' Griffin's expression suggested surprise rather than incomprehension. 'Well, well, well.'

'You've heard of him?'

'Oh yes. Growing up in this house, you could hardly fail to, even if you were a duffer at history. Which I was. Unlike Henry.'

'Is there some connection, then, between your family… and Junius?'

'You could say so. The Griffin family legend, we'd better call it. Junius… and our claim to the throne.'

'What?'

'Laughable, isn't it? But Henry believed it. So did Father. And his father before him.'

'Your… claim to the throne?'

Griffin smiled ruefully. 'Don't worry. I'm not about to serve a writ on the Queen and demand the keys to Buckingham Palace. But it's entertaining stuff in its way. Want me to fill you in on it?'

'Yes, please.'

'Well, before I do, let's get back to these books. How special were they?'

'Very. A uniquely bound copy of the letters printed for Junius's own use.'

'I see.'

'Which means -'

'No need to spell it out, Mr Umber. I know what it means and it ties in with something Father said a couple of times, now I think back. He called Henry a thief. But he never said what he was supposed to have stolen. I think I understand now. Father must have kept the books hidden away. And Henry must have found them.' Griffin rose to his feet. 'Wait here, would you? There's something I want to show you. But it might take me a few minutes to lay my hands on it.'

Umber was happy to wait. He needed a few minutes alone to settle in his mind the limits of what he could or should tell Philip Griffin. He had learnt nothing so far that amounted to the proof he needed of Marilyn's complicity in Henry Griffin's murder. And the crackpot details of the Griffins' claim to the throne, however entertaining, were unlikely to supply it.

Close to ten minutes passed, during which the sounds of drawers being opened and closed in an upper room reached Umber's ears intermittently. Then Griffin returned, clutching a stapled sheaf of papers.

'There was a lot of Henry's stuff left here when Father died. I chucked most of it out. But I kept this, if only because it's as handy an account of the family legend as you could ask for. As you'll see, Henry hoped to get it published. But it wasn't to be.' He passed the papers to Umber. 'Take your time. I'll make some tea.'

So, almost immediately, Umber was alone again. He looked at the papers in his hand. The top sheet was a letter to Henry from the editor of History Today, dated 16 April 1980. It was a rejection letter for an article Henry had submitted, entitled Junius, the Royal Family and the Griffins of Kew. The editor described the piece as 'diverting', but crushingly added, 'I am sorry to say that you provide no supporting evidence for any of your extraordinary assertions.' He returned the article therewith. And it was still attached, typed out by Henry on double spaced, generously margined pages. The poor chap could not be faulted for presentation, however unsubstantiated the contents. Umber settled down to read it.

My family has lived in Kew for nearly two hundred years. Strangely, the founder of our family was a man none of us is related to. This man, Frederick Lewis Griffin, is historically very important, though history has nothing to say about him. The time has come to put that right.

Frederick Griffin was born in Covent Garden, London, on 29 June 1732. He was an illegitimate son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, by the actress Sarah Webster. His mother gave him the surname Griffin because the Prince had been known in his childhood in Hanover as 'Der Grief – the Griffin, a beast he was supposed to resemble.

By the time of the boy's birth, Sarah Webster had already been supplanted as the Prince's mistress, but the Prince paid her a generous allowance for his son's upbringing. He continued to do so after his marriage to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha in 1736. When Sarah Webster died, in 1740, the Prince arranged for his friend the Earl of Chesterfield to look after the boy, who was given an excellent education.

Frederick Griffin was an undergraduate at Oxford when the Prince died suddenly on 20 March 1751, aged 44. Some said his death was caused by the after-effects of a blow from a cricket ball. Others said he had caught a fatal chill while working in his beloved gardens at Kew in wet weather. Still others whispered that he had been poisoned by his wife because he had discovered her long-standing affair with his Lord of the Bedchamber, the Earl of Bute.

Princess Augusta immediately cancelled the allowance paid to Frederick Griffin, who was forced to leave Oxford. Lord Chesterfield obtained a position for him in the East India Company and he spent the next ten or twelve years in India. He returned to England at some point in the mid-1760s a moderately wealthy man. He bought a small house at Strand-under-Green (now Strand-on-the-Green) on the north bank of the Thames, opposite Kew, and lived there for the rest of his life.

It has always been believed in my family that he chose to live at Strand-under-Green because of its proximity to the royal residences of Kew Palace and Richmond Lodge. He had heard the rumour that Princess Augusta had murdered his father. He had heard another rumour concerning his half-brother, King George III, who had succeeded to the throne in 1760. This was that George, while still Prince of Wales, had secretly married Hannah Lightfoot, a Quaker, and had a son by her, known as George Rex. Once on the throne, George had put Hannah aside and contracted a politically more expedient though technically bigamous marriage to Princess Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Frederick Griffin was appalled by such conduct and the deleterious effect he believed it to be having on the moral fibre of the nation. Thus he began his letter-writing campaign under the name of Junius, protesting at corruption in the high offices of government. Princess Augusta, the 'odious hypocrite', as Junius called her, came in for particularly harsh criticism. The King, a 'consummate hypocrite', fared little better. The letters appeared in the pages of the Public Advertiser for a little over three years. They came to an abrupt end early in 1772, when Princess Augusta's death deprived Junius of his principal target.

Frederick Griffin lived on at Strand-under-Green and at some point befriended the young George Rex. Very little seems to be widely known of the life of George Rex prior to the year 1797, when he was appointed Notary Public to the Governor of Cape Colony in South Africa. This lucrative appointment was subject to two unusual conditions: firstly that he should never return to England; secondly that he should never marry. The intention was obviously to ensure that his legally irrefutable claim to the throne died with him. He abided by these conditions to the extent that he remained in South Africa until his death in 1839 and left no legitimate issue there.

We must now move forward to the famous theft of the parish records from the robing room of St Anne's Church, Kew, during the night of 22/23 February 1845. This has never been satisfactorily explained, although it has often been alleged that the Royal Family required the removal of the record of a marriage or baptism which they found embarrassing. George Ill's marriage to Hannah Lightfoot and the birth of George Rex predate the records stolen (marriages after 1783, burials after 1785, baptisms after 1791) by many years and cannot have been the reason.

It has always been believed in my family that the theft was actually organized at the behest of Prince Albert to nullify a potential threat to the legitimacy of Queen Victoria's claim to the throne. The threat was posed by the fact that George Rex married a local woman called Mary Ann Leavers at St Anne's Church on 30 December 1796. Frederick Griffin was one of the witnesses. The officiating priest was Dr James Wilmot, who had also officiated at George Ill's marriage to Hannah Lightfoot more than thirty years previously.

When George Rex's marriage became known to the King, he took steps to have the couple separated and banished his son to South Africa. What George Rex did not know when he took ship for Capetown in the summer of 1797, however, was that his wife was pregnant. A son, John, was born on 3 January 1798. His mother did not survive the birth. Honouring a promise given to her with such an eventuality in mind, Frederick Griffin became the boy's guardian and sought to protect his identity by conferring his own surname upon him.

Frederick Griffin died on 25 August 1815, aged 83. This information was recorded on his gravestone (now removed) in the churchyard of St Anne's, Kew. The written record of the burial was among those stolen from the church in 1845, along with the record of his ward's baptism and the marriage of his ward's parents.

John Griffin, rightful heir to the throne of England and, following his father's death in 1839, rightful King, led a quiet and private life. He died on 8 October 1870, aged 72.

John Griffin was my great-great-grandfather.

Philip Griffin had brought in the promised tea by the time Umber had finished reading the article. 'What do you think of it?' he asked. 'As a historian, I mean.'

'Like the editor said. There's no evidence.'

'Could any of it be true?'

'It could all be true. The Hannah Lightfoot-George Rex story is semi-official history these days. But it can't explain the theft of the registers, because George Rex was already dead by then, supposedly without an heir to take his place as a threat to Victoria. Your family legend, on the other hand, accounts for it perfectly. Unfortunately, without supporting evidence that's all it is: a legend.'

'Could the special edition Junius have changed that?'

'It depends on the inscription. "Illuminating and more than somewhat surprising". That's how your brother described it. I only wish I'd seen it for myself. I only wish I'd met your brother.'

'Me too.'

'I suppose he was hoping my work on Junius would beef up his case into something the likes of History Today would have to take seriously. And maybe it would have. The Chesterfield connection certainly ties in with some leads I was following.'

'Father always said something called the Royal Marriages Act meant the Griffins' claim to the throne failed on technical grounds.'

'It's a good point. Since the act was passed – in 1772, I think – members of the Royal Family have needed the monarch's consent before they can marry. Without such consent, their marriage isn't valid. George the Third obviously learned something from his youthful indiscretion. The effect is that either George Rex wasn't a member of the Royal Family, in which case his marriage to Mary Ann Leavers doesn't matter, or he was, in which case it doesn't count.'

'Something and nothing, then?'

'I wouldn't say that. It's a humdinger of a story. If I'd been able to dig up some hard evidence, it might have turned my file-and-forget thesis on Junius into a bestselling book. With your brother as co-author.'

Griffin smiled. 'Henry would have liked that.'

'So would I.' A thought suddenly struck Umber. 'What sort of car did your brother drive, Mr Griffin?'

'Sorry?'

'Your brother's car. The one he was travelling in to Avebury. What type was it?'

'I don't know. He used to run a…' Griffin struggled with his memory for a moment. 'Triumph Herald estate. Yes, that's right. Phenomenal lock – it could turn on a sixpence – but a bit of a rust-wagon. Whether it was still on the road in 'eighty-one…' He shrugged. 'Henry wouldn't have traded it in unless he had to, that's for sure.'

'What colour was it?' Umber asked, replaying in his mind's eye the glimpse he had had of the car that had followed the van out of Avebury that day in July 1981, past the small, broken body of Miranda Hall.

'Dark green.'

'Of course.' Dark green it was. Dark green it had to be.

Dusk was coming on when Umber left Strand-on-the-Green and wandered back towards Kew. He was more or less at the halfway point of the three days he had been given to find Chantelle and hand her over. But his search for her and for ammunition to use against those who wished her ill had so far yielded nothing.

That was not strictly true, of course. He had traced Henry Griffin. He had learned what Griffin had meant to tell him at Avebury. And he had established Griffin's murder by Tamsin Hall's abductors as a virtual certainty. But none of that made any difference. In a sense, it only made it worse. Twenty-three years ago, David Umber the budding historian had been cheated of an encounter that might have changed his life. Yet his life had changed anyway. It had taken the course leading to the evening of solitude and despair that was opening out before him. It had led inexorably to where he was. And where it would lead next he preferred not to imagine.

But imagine he had to. The strange tale of the Griffins of Kew, which would once have delighted and fascinated him, was no help in his predicament. It left him as powerless to obey as to defy those who required an answer of him by noon on Friday. Yet an answer of some kind he would have to give.