(National Portrait Gallery, London), copied from an early 16th century one in the Royal Collections. A reproduction of this version is kept by Grant at his bedside. In this novel, as in her other works such as
The Franchise Affair and
Miss Pym Disposes, Josephine Tey relies partially on
physiognomy as a means of determining an initial assessment of a person's character. Grant's first impetus towards an intellectual investigation of whether Richard III really had the two main heirs to his dead brother's throne callously murdered in the
Tower of London is his early certainty that Richard's face could not possibly be that of someone who would perform such a base crime as the cold-blooded murder of his two young nephews. However, this is just an initial 'gut feel', the original spark that makes Grant want to know more about (and thus ultimately research and investigate) the true character and background of Richard III rather than any of the other historical personae of whom his friend Marta Hallard has provided him with images (in order to alleviate his bed-ridden boredom). The subsequent police-like investigation that Grant undertakes during the remainder of the novel in order to find some circumstantial evidence that Richard (or anyone else) disposed of the princes reveals that there never was a
bill of attainder, coroner's
inquest, or any other legal proceeding that contemporaneously accused – much less convicted – Richard III of any foul play against the Princes in the Tower. It also points out that the princes were not reported missing by anyone until after the
Battle of Bosworth Field, by which time Richard was dead and the princes were now in
Henry VII's custody in the Tower. Grant comes to the conclusion that Henry is a much more likely perpetrator of the dual
regicide than Richard when the question of "who instigated the killing of the princes?" is approached from the traditional crime detection perspective of means, motive and opportunity – particularly motive. Tey's pro-Richard arguments repeat some of those made in
Clements Markham's 1906 book
Richard III: his life & character, reviewed in the light of recent research. The main arguments presented in the book in defence of King Richard are as follows: • There was no political advantage for Richard III in killing the young princes. With
Titulus Regius enacted, the two princes represented no threat to Richard once he was crowned king. • The two princes were more of a threat to Henry VII as the foundation of his Tudor claim to the crown was significantly weaker than theirs. • Although a bill of attainder was brought by Henry VII against Richard after the battle of Bosworth it made no mention of the princes' disappearance from the Tower, suggesting that at the time the bill was presented to Parliament the princes were not yet missing. • The bill of attainder that Henry and his supportive magnates did subsequently introduce against the deceased Richard merely accuses him generically of "cruelty and tyranny" during his reign – there is no specific accusation, nor even a mention, in it of Richard's suspected complicity in the princes' disappearance or assumed deaths. • The mother of the princes,
Elizabeth Woodville, remained on genuinely good terms with Richard once he was king, and her daughters regularly took part in social events at his court. Grant observes that this was hardly the behaviour of a mother who believed, or even just suspected, that Richard had ordered the deaths of both her young sons (ignoring the fact that regardless of the fate of the princes, Richard certainly did execute one of her sons and her brother, and the brother and uncle of her daughters,
Sir Richard Grey and
Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers). • There is no contemporary recorded evidence that the princes were missing from the Tower before Henry VII took over custody of them. It is only at that juncture that the rumours and speculative accusations start to be recorded in historical documents. Grant and his American collaborator argue that there is little evidence of resistance to Richard's rule (ignoring
Buckingham's rebellion). They allow that there were rumours of his murdering the princes during his lifetime, but they decide that the rumours had little circulation, and attribute them to the
Croyland Chronicle and to the
Lord Chancellor of France, and ultimately to Tudor sympathiser
John Morton. They also propose that Morton was the actual author of
Thomas More's biography of Richard, suggesting that the incomplete manuscript found after More's death was an unfinished copy by More of Morton's lost original. They conclude that the princes probably remained alive throughout Richard's reign and were later killed by Henry. ==Literary significance and criticism==