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An early example of history as mystery, in which
It could be argued that The Daughter of Time is perhaps the first example of history as mystery, in which a bed-bound detective investigates an old crime. Perhaps the best known example of a later homage is The Wench Is Dead, Colin Dexter's Gold Dagger Award winning Inspector Morse mystery from 1992. Dexter's plot follows Tey's original faithfully, with both Tey's Grant and Morse bed-ridden, and out of boredom their friends (for Lewis is about Morse's only true friend) bring them old books and pictures to look through. Both decide that although they have nothing to gain, they will right an old injustice. Josephine Tey was the pen name of the Scottish writer Elizabeth MacKintosh, who also wrote acclaimed plays such as Richard of Bordeaux under the pen name Gordon Daviot. In 1929 MacKintosh entered a detective novel -- The Man In The Queue -- into a competition, but it was another seven years before she would publish a follow-up, A Shilling for Candles. Both featured the gentlemanly detective, Inspector Grant, who cropped up in all but one of her books (and the one in which he does not is linked by another character). But it was not until after the Second World War that Tey began to publish -- in all too brief flowering -- a half dozen of the finest crime novels of that period. Miss Pym Disposes, which was is set in a girl's school, and as outlined in Cat Among the Pigeons, almost certainly influenced Agatha Christie, was followed The Franchise Affair, the re-telling of an eigteenth century cause celebre, and was followed in turn by Brat Farrar, the story of a young man who takes part in a swindle, and suddenly finds himself the champion of the missing heir that he is impersonating against his victim's conceited twin brother. To Love and Be Wise, was followed by The Daughter of Time, and finally, The Singing Sands, published soon after her death in February 1952, sees Inspector Grant returning to Tey's beloved Scotland for a final mystery, and a romance. In The Daughter of Time, a bed-bound and rather grumpy Grant is visited by his friend Marta Hallard, who ,determined to entertain, brings him a set of pictures to study. Analyzing people's characters by their faces is a hobby of Grant's, and when he picks out as a man of good character none other than Richard III, he determines to find out more about the man, and establish how he could have been so wrong with his judgement. Tey's examination of the case from the viewpoint of a champion of Richard leads the reader to wonder whether Shakespeare's depiction of him, which has gone down in history as the dominant characterization, is really a Tudor propaganda ploy, done to legitimize their presence on the throne of England. While nothing can be proven, it is an interesting and entertaining premise.
The copyright of the article The Daughter of Time in Modern American Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish The Daughter of Time in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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