'How I learned my cousin was a real-life James Bond'

Staring at the personal effects of his eccentric cousin, spread out on a table in the office of a company which specialises in tracking lost beneficiaries of unclaimed estates, Robin Maudsley could not believe what he was seeing.

There, in front of him, sat an array of passports, all with pictures of his cousin and all with different aliases as well as piles of cash in different currencies. It goes without saying that Maudsley,from Preston, was more than a little confused.

He had always known his cousin had been quirky, but he had no idea that this would be the beginning of a 15-year journey that would eventually lead to the relative he knew as William Maxwell Nasmyth Wilcock - known as Max - was a real-life James Bond spy.

"I was shocked," Maudsley said, but recalled a time many years earlier when, during a family visit with his cousin, Maudsley's sons' unwittingly found a mini sword inside Max's walking cane.

"They waggled his walking stick and it clicked and Max is telling them not to touch it and the top came off and you could see a blade," recalled Maudsley.

The 74-year-old added: "I said, 'Max, that's so dangerous, you know, with kids, and he just looked at me, touched his nose, said, 'no, no, no, that's not dangerous' and lifted his lapel up and there was a gun sat in a holster.

"I said to him, 'Max, what on earth are you carrying something like that?' But pointing to his nose he said 'diplomatic immunity' which was his favourite phrase with the family."

Years later, sitting in the offices of Fraser and Fraser, a London-based probate research firm and stars of BBC One's Heir Hunters, Maudsley was informed that as the closet living relative to his 90-year-old cousin, who left no will, he was the trustee of the estate which included a huge collection of passports, documents, photos in locales such as Red Square in Moscow, wads of cash in pounds and US dollars and other possessions.

"In his first passport in the 1940s, he lists countries that most people in Britain wouldn't even have heard of at the time," Maudsley said.

Intrigued by the array of items left behind, Maudsley began his sleuthing journey to find out more about his imposing and mysterious six foot ten relative with size 19 feet who always seemed to be travelling to exotic locations.

Nobody knew where he lived and the polyglot Cambridge graduate seemed to have no visible means of support.

Maudsley recalled extraordinary stories from family members told by Max who that he could break a sweat in the freezing cold by employing a mind over matter a skill he allegedly had learned from monks in Tibet.

He also soon began to realise how difficult it was to get information about his relative from any official sources, further supporting his theory that his cousin had been some kind of spy.

"I hit a wall which seemed to happen too often not to be a coincidence," he said.

More evidence of a potential double life came from cash found at Max's home, including $2 dollar bills which had consecutive serial numbers.

"Only the Pentagon issues these in this way I was informed - I also found where his passport was stamped - it would be near a US military base."

Other clues have emerged in recent years such as an official government licence to own a Smith and Wesson revolver.

Said Maudsley: "That kind of licence isn't something an organisation just hands you – you have to obtain it directly from the government."

However help also came from unexpected places after the story of bequest was aired a few years ago on BBC TV's Heir Hunters and revealed even stranger leads to follow.

It came from a Chinese American Lily Dong who was one of the US's top entomologists and friend of his cousin who had contacted the TV show's producers and "told me things I never even thought of with Max", Maudsley said.

"One of the biggest shocks I had was where Max and Lily had met, and that was at the Lockerbie plane crash site. Instantly I thought, 'what the hell was Max doing in Lockerbie?'"

"It appears Max went to Lockerbie as a government agent because he knew the Middle East, like the back of his hand, because he knew everybody there," Maudsley said.

"And then Lily said to me, 'has anybody said anything about the egg'?"

He added: "I said, 'no, I don't know anything'. She said, 'well, in the 50s, Max bought a Faberge egg for £1,250."

"As far as she could remember, he put it in a vault in Preston."

One friend of his cousin revealed more of his colourful life - that he had allegedly been body double for 40s and 50s movie star Clark Gable and even knew Marilyn Monroe.

The friend also claimed Max was acquainted with people such as millionaire Aristotle Onassis and Soviet leader Josef Stalin personally.

The last time he saw Max was in 1997 and their farewell had echoes of a spy movie.

After a visit to Maudsley's home in Deepdale, Preston he recalled Max asking whether Maudsley could do him a favour and drop him off at Moor Park.

"This was like midnight, on Moor Park, which is absolutely pitch black, there's no lighting around there.

"And I got him in the car, took him and he slowly disappeared in the distance into the park.

"From that time I thought there's something different about Max. He's not a normal family member, he's not a normal human in that sense."

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