The House Of Silk (4 page)

‘My friend, Finch, and I heard the news with horror. At first we were led to believe that the paintings had been stolen and would have preferred it had this been the case, for at least the works would still have been appreciated by someone and there was always a chance that they might be recovered. But such an unhappy accident of timing, wanton vandalism in pursuit of a handful of cash! How bitterly we regretted the route we had chosen and blamed ourselves for what had occurred. There were also financial considerations. Mr Stillman had paid a large deposit for the paintings but, according to the contract, we were entirely responsible for them until they were delivered into his hands. It was fortunate that we were insured with Lloyd’s of London or else we would have been wiped out, as eventually I would have no choice but to repay the money. There was also the matter of James Devoy’s family. I now learned that he had a wife and a young child. Someone would have to take care of them.

‘It was for these reasons that I resolved to travel to America and I left England almost at once, arriving first in New York. I met Mrs Devoy and promised her that she would receive some compensation. Her son was nine years old and a sweeter, more good-looking child would be hard to imagine. I then travelled to Boston and from there to Providence, where Cornelius Stillman had built his summer house. I have to say that even the many hours I had spent in the company of the man had failed to prepare me for the spectacle that met my eyes. Shepherd’s Point was huge, constructed in the style of a French chateau by the celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt. The gardens alone stretched out for thirty acres and the interior displayed an opulence beyond anything I could have imagined. Stillman himself insisted on showing me round, and it is a journey I will never forget. The magnificent wooden staircase that dominated the Great Hall, the library with its five thousand volumes, the chess set that had once belonged to Frederick the Great, the chapel with its ancient organ once played by Purcell … by the time we reached the basement with its swimming pool and bowling alley, I was quite exhausted. And as for the art! Well, I counted works by Titian, Rembrandt and Velasquez, and this before I had even reached the drawing room. And it was while I was considering all this wealth, the limitless funds on which my host must be able to draw, that an idea formed in my mind.

‘Over dinner that night – we were sitting at a vast, medieval banqueting table and the food was carried in by negro servants dressed in what you might call colonial style – I raised the subject of Mrs Devoy and her child. Stillman assured me that even though they were not resident in Boston, he would alert the city fathers who would take care of them. Encouraged by this, I went on to the matter of the Flat Cap Gang and asked if there was any way he could help bring them to justice, the Boston police having so far signally failed to make any progress. Might it not be possible, I suggested, to offer a sizeable reward for information as to their whereabouts and, at the same time, to hire a private detective agency to apprehend them on our behalf. In this way we would avenge the death of James Devoy and simultaneously punish them for the loss of the Constable landscapes.

‘Stillman seized on my idea with enthusiasm. “You’re right, Carstairs!” he cried, bringing his fist crashing down. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. I’ll show these bums that it was a bad day that they chose to hornswoggle Cornelius T. Stillman!” This was not his usual manner of speech, but we had had between us finished a bottle of particularly fine claret and had moved on to the port and he was in a more than usually relaxed mood. He even insisted on funding the full cost of the detectives and the reward himself, although I had offered to make a contribution. We shook hands on it and he suggested that I stay with him while the arrangements were made, an invitation I was glad to accept. Art has been my life, both as a collector and as a dealer, and there was enough in Stillman’s summer home to keep me entranced for months.

‘But in fact, events took a swifter course than that. Mr Stillman contacted Pinkerton’s and engaged a man called Bill McParland. I was not invited to meet him myself – Stillman was the sort of person who must do everything alone and in his own way. But I knew enough of McParland’s reputation to be sure that he was a formidable investigator who would not give up until the Flat Cap Gang had been delivered into his hands. At the same time, advertisements were placed in the
Boston Daily Advertiser
offering a reward of $100 dollars – a considerable sum – for information leading to the arrests of Rourke and Keelan O’Donaghue and all those associated with them. I was glad to see that Mr Stillman had included my name along with his own beneath the announcement, even though the money was entirely his.

‘I spent the next few weeks at Shepherd’s Point and in Boston itself, a remarkably handsome and fast-growing city. I travelled back to New York a few times and took the opportunity to spend several hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a poorly designed building, though containing a superb collection. I also visited Mrs Devoy and her son. It was while I was in New York that I received a telegram from Stillman, urging me to return. The size of the reward had achieved its aim. McParland had been given a tip-off. The net was closing in on the Flat Cap Gang.

‘I returned at once, taking a room at a hotel on School Street. And it was there, in the evening, that I heard from Cornelius Stillman what had occurred.

‘The tip-off had come from the owner of a dramshop – which is what the Americans call a saloon – in the South End, a less than salubrious part of Boston and one that was already home to a large number of Irish immigrants. The O’Donaghue twins were holed-up in a narrow tenement house close to the Charles River, a dark, squalid building on three storeys with dozens of rooms clustered together, no hallways and just one privy serving each floor. Raw sewage ran through the corridors and the stench was only kept at bay by the fumes of charcoal, burning in a hundred tiny stoves. This hell-hole was filled with screaming babies, drunken men and mumbling, half-crazed women, but a rough construction, mainly of timber with a few pressed bricks, had been added separately at the back and this the twins had managed to make their own. Keelan had one room to himself. Rourke shared another with two of his men. A third room was occupied by the rest of the gang.

‘The money they had stolen from the train was already gone, frittered away on alcohol and gambling. As the sun set that evening, they were crouched around the stove, drinking gin and playing cards. They had no look-out. None of the families would have dared to peach on them and they were sure that the Boston police had long ago lost any interest in the theft of two thousand dollars. And so they were oblivious to the approach of McParland who was closing in on the tenement, accompanied by a dozen armed men.

‘The Pinkerton’s agents had been instructed to take them alive if they could for it was very much Stillman’s hope that he would see them in a court of law, besides which there were many innocent people in close proximity making an all-out gunfight something to be avoided if at all possible. When his men were in position, McParland took up the bullhorn he had brought with him and called out a warning. But if he had hoped that the Flat Cap Gang would surrender quietly, he was disillusioned a moment later by a volley of shots. The twins had allowed themselves to be taken by surprise, but they were not going to give up without a fight, and a cascade of lead poured out into the street, fired not just out of windows but through holes punched in the very walls. Two of the Pinkerton men were gunned down and McParland himself was wounded, but the others gave as good as they got, emptying their six-shooters directly into the structure. It is impossible to imagine what it must have been like as hundreds of bullets tore through the flimsy wood. There was no protection. There was nowhere to hide.

‘When it was all over, they found five men lying together in the smoke-filled interior, their bodies shot to pieces. One had escaped. At first it seemed impossible, but McParland’s informant had assured him that the entire gang would be assembled in that place and during the gunfight it had seemed to him that six men had returned their fire. The room was examined and at last the mystery was solved. One of the floorboards was loose. It was pulled aside to reveal a narrow gulley, a drainage ditch which sank below the surface of the ground and continued all the way to the river. Keelan O’Donaghue had escaped by this means, although it must have been the devil of a tight squeeze for the pipe was barely large enough to contain a child, and certainly none of the Pinkerton’s agents was willing to give it a try. McParland led some of his men down to the river but by now it was pitch-dark and he knew any search would be fruitless. The Flat Cap Gang was destroyed but one of its ringleaders had got away.

‘This was the outcome that Cornelius Stillman described to me in my hotel that night, but it is not by any means the end of the story.

‘I remained in Boston another week, partly in the hope that Keelan O’Donaghue might even now be found. For a slight concern had risen in my mind. Indeed, it might have been there from the very start, but it was only now that I became conscious of it. It referred to that blasted advertisement which I have already mentioned and which bore my name. Stillman had made public the fact that I had been party to the reward and to the posse which had been sent after the Flat Cap Gang. At the time I had been gratified, thinking only of my sense of public duty and, I suppose, the honour of being associated with the great man. It now occurred to me that to have killed one twin and to have left the other alive might make me a target for revenge, particularly in a place where the very worst criminals could count on the support of so many friends and admirers. It was with a sense of nervousness that I now walked in and out of my hotel. I did not stray into the rougher parts of the city. And I certainly didn’t go out at night.

‘Keelan O’Donaghue was not captured and there was even some doubt that he had actually survived. He could have been wounded and died of blood loss, like a rat, underground. He could have drowned. Stillman had certainly persuaded himself that this was the case by the time we met for the last time, but then, he was the sort of man who never liked to admit failure. I had booked passage back to England on the SS
Catalonia
, run by the Cunard line. I was sorry not to be able to bid farewell to Mrs Devoy and her son, but I did not have the time to return to New York. I left the hotel. And I remember that I had actually reached the gangplank and was about to board the ship when I heard the news. It was being shouted out by a newsboy and there it was, on the front page.

‘Cornelius Stillman had been shot dead whilst walking in the rose garden of his home in Providence. With a shaking hand, I purchased a copy of the newspaper and read that the attack had happened the day before; that a young man wearing a twill jacket, scarf and flat cap had been seen fleeing from the scene. A manhunt had already begun and would spread all over New England, for this was the murder of a Boston Brahmin and no effort could be spared in bringing the perpetrator to justice. According to the report, Bill McParland was assisting the police and there was a certain irony in this, as he and Stillman had fallen out in the days before Stillman’s death. Stillman had held back half the fee that he had agreed with the Pinkerton man, arguing that the job would not have been fully completed until the last body had been recovered. Well, that last body was up and walking, for there could be no doubt at all as to the identity of Stillman’s assailant.

‘I read the newspaper and then climbed the gangplank. I went directly to my cabin and remained there until six o’clock in the evening when there was a tremendous hoot and the
Catalonia
lifted its moorings and slipped out of port. Only then did I return to the deck and watch as Boston disappeared behind me. I was hugely relieved to be away.

‘That, gentlemen, is the story of the lost Constables and my visit to America. I of course told my partner, Mr Finch, what had occurred, and I have spoken of it with my wife. But I have never repeated it to anyone else. It happened more than a year ago. And until the man in the flat cap appeared outside my house in Wimbledon, I thought – I prayed – that I would never have to refer to it again.’

Holmes had finished his pipe long before the art dealer came to the end of his narration, and had been listening with his long fingers clasped in front of him and a look of intense concentration on his face. There was a lengthy silence. A coal tumbled and the fire sparked. The sound of it seemed to draw him out of his reverie.

‘What was the opera you intended to see tonight?’ he asked.

It was the last question I had expected. It seemed to be of such trivial importance in the light of everything we had just heard that I wondered if he was being deliberately rude.

Edmund Carstairs must have thought the same. He started back, turned to me, then back to Holmes. ‘I am going to a performance of Wagner – but has nothing I have said made any impression on you?’ he demanded.

‘On the contrary, I found it of exceedingly great interest and must compliment you on the clarity and attention to detail with which you told it.’

‘And the man in the flat cap …’

‘You evidently believe him to be this Keelan O’Donaghue. You think he has followed you to England in order to exact his revenge?’

‘What other possible explanation could there be?’

‘Offhand, I could perhaps suggest half a dozen. It has always struck me that any interpretation of a series of events is possible until all the evidence says otherwise and even then one should be wary before jumping to a conclusion. In this case, yes, it might be that this young man has crossed the Atlantic and found his way to your Wimbledon home. However, one might ask why it has taken him more than a year to make the journey and what purpose he had in inviting you to a meeting at the church of St Mary. Why not just shoot you down where you stood, if that was his intent? Even more strange is the fact that he failed to turn up.’