The House Of Silk Read Online Free PDF

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