AFTER 54 days on the run, aristocrat Constance Marten and her rapist lover Mark Gordon have been arrested – with police now desperately hunting for their baby.
The couple, who have been missing since their car broke down and burst into flames on the M61 on January 5, were found in Brighton last night after a tip-off from a member of the public.
They were without their one-month-old, whose gender they have refused to reveal, and police fear they may have left their child out in the open.
Constance was once deemed an 'it girl' when she appeared on upmarket mag Tatler's babe of the month page while a student in 2008.
She comes from an aristocratic family, from which she is believed to have been estranged – but her parents have both made heartfelt pleas for her to return home.
Her Eton-educated dad Napier Martin, 63, a former page to the Queen who now works as a film producer according to his Instagram, previously urged her to turn herself in, and said today he's "relieved" she's been found, but is "alarmed" her baby remains missing.
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In an emotional appeal in January, he said: “I beseech you to find a way to turn yourself and your wee one in to the police as soon as possible, so you and he or she can be protected.
"Only then can a process of healing and recovery begin, however long it may take, however difficult it may be."
Constance – the granddaughter of Mary Anna Marten, whose godmother was the Queen Mother – had a privileged upbringing, living between an expensive private school and the family's stately home in Dorset.
She has reportedly led an isolated life since moving in with Gordon in 2016.
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7Constance's father previously hit the headlines when he did his own vanishing act in 1996.
Having grown up on the sprawling Crichel Estate in Dorset, he gave it up – along with the family's £115million fortune – due to a "voice inside of me saying daily and sometimes many times daily to shave my head and go to Australia".
He gave an interview, that appeared on YouTube channel Awakening TV in 2013 but has since been deleted, to psychotherapist Josephine Sellers – whom Napier claimed he'd met four centuries ago in Dorset in a previous life.
He explained how his privileged existence had brought him to a point "where everything in my life materially was a completely empty shell".
'Mid-life awakening'
Describing it as a "midlife awakening", Napier abandoned his inheritance, wife and young children – including nine-year-old Constance – and flew to Australia.
There, Napier claimed he had out-of-body experiences triggered after joining a group of Aborigines on a clifftop and seeing a whale.
He described the latter encounter as having made him cry “almost non-stop” for a week.
During one spiritual experience he found himself “looking down at my sleeping body”.
Napier recalled: “The next thing I know, I’m flying out into the ocean into the dark waters and swimming with the whales.
“I’m being pulled along by them and there is this conversation going on… It was a complete clearing out, a transmission of energy.
“These days of expansion, unfortunately, can’t be repeated, but when one’s in it, it is the most exciting part of your life.”
Napier, who claims not to know how long his spiritual trip lasted, eventually returned to the UK but not to his previous life.
At one point he lived in a lorry and worked as a chef, before training in craniosacral therapy – a form of head massage – and running a tree care firm with one of his sons.
Later he described his acts as a display of “courage” but acknowledged others likely thought it as “cowardice”.
Napier passed on Crichel House and estate on to his eldest son Max, then a student at Oxford Brookes University, who sold it for a reported £34million to American hedge fund billionaire Richard Chilton in 2013.
The home had been in the Marten family for 400 years, and featured in the 1996 Jane Austen film adaptation of Emma starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
The property was once described by a historian as having “the appearance of a mansion of a prince, more than that of a country gentleman” due to being “so immensely large”.
Among the 5,000 acres of parkland were 50 cottages, four villages, a cricket club and an ornamental lake.
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It's believed Napier and his wife Virginie, a psychotherapist, divorced, with him relocating to a home a few miles from Crichel.
Napier now lists himself as Chairman for the Mirthquake foundation, which offers grants to those helping cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises.
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