Malice at the Palace (The Royal Spyness Series Book 9)

 

He didn’t look at me but stared straight ahead into the night. “Gretna Green,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

Historical Note

 

 

To those of you who think I have besmirched the good name of the royal family, I have to tell you that this story is based on truth.

 

Prince George, the Duke of Kent, was known for his profligate behavior, both before and after his marriage. He had both male and female lovers, including Noel Coward, singer Jessie Matthews and reputedly even novelist Barbara Cartland.

 

In the Roaring Twenties he was introduced to Alice “Kiki” Preston, a London party girl who was known as the “girl with the silver syringe” because of her drug habit. Kiki and George were lovers for years.

 

It was known that Prince George produced a love child. Was Kiki the mother, or was it another of his mistresses, called Violet Evans? Biographers disagree. However, arrangements were made to have the child adopted by an American publishing magnate and taken back to America. His name became Michael Canfield and he achieved celebrity when he married Lee Bouvier (Jackie Kennedy’s sister). But he had a troubled life marred by alcohol and pills and died on a plane flight from New York.

 

All the participants in this drama came to a sad end. Prince George was killed during World War II, when his plane hit a Scottish hillside. It is not known whether this was pilot error.

 

Kiki Preston threw herself from a fifth-floor window in New York in 1946. Violet Evans gassed herself.

 

Prince George’s behavior was so scandalous that his papers were sealed on his death and have not been made available to the public.

 

In contrast his older brother Albert—later King George VI—lived an exemplary life and brought England through the dark days of World War II.