Chapter 38 #2
“She’d have been a valuable asset,” Jamie said, “because she looked like what she was, up until then, a sweet, well-bred, freckle-faced lass. But that sweet-faced girl knew how to shoot—my granddad owned a country estate in the Cotswolds, so she was hunting rabbit, deer, and partridge before she was a teen. And her chemistry background was helpful too—for building bombs.”
Maeve was riveted by Jamie’s story. “So that’s how this Peggy became Starr?”
“In a nutshell. At some point, her lover, Dwyer, came back to Dublin, and she followed. Not long after she joined up, three members of their gang were sent to prison, charged with bombing a post office where two people, including a postal worker, were killed. The gang needed to do something quickly—because what if the jailed members decided to rat out the rest of them? They wanted them out of that prison.”
“So—an art heist?” Maeve asked. “Seems far-fetched.”
Jamie’s laugh was mirthless. “If brains were dynamite most of those mopes couldn’t even have blown their own noses.
Supposedly Danny Dwyer came up with the idea—to kidnap a wealthy family and demand a huge ransom, and the release of their pals.
Somehow, they latched onto the Rossingtons.
My mum was supposedly the one who suggested that the gang kidnap the family’s art collection instead. ”
Maeve wished Therese were with her right now, to take down notes and ask questions. “Go on,” she said.
“There were four of them: my mum, Starr; her boyfriend Dwyer; plus another man, Eddie Keane; and one more, a young guy who was to be the driver and lookout.”
“And your mother, she was the one who knocked at the door to the Tarrymore servants’ entrance?” Maeve asked.
He nodded. “The butler tried to resist and got a pistol-whipping from Dwyer as his thanks. His jaw was broken, but he did take them to the study, where the lord and his lady were watching the BBC. Keane, the other gang member, hit Lady Rossington in the face with his gun. Then they tied them up, stole the art, and made their getaway.”
Maeve was picturing the portrait gallery at Tarrymore, remembering the study, with its paneled walls and worn leather sofas, faded oriental carpet and rows and rows of leather-bound books.
Hard to believe that such a terrifying crime could occur in such a stately setting.
But then she remembered a more ghastly crime, a murder, had happened in that same mansion fifty years earlier, the night her great-grandmother had taken flight to emigrate to the States.
“That’s an incredible story. Like something out of a caper movie. The tour guide at Tarrymore said the thieves were apprehended pretty quickly. How did that happen?”
Jamie looked down toward the other end of the table, at his wife, who was busy filling plates with slices of cake. “Do they have schoolchildren memorize poetry in the States?”
“They did in Catholic schools. I can still recite almost all of ‘Song of Hiawatha,’ and bits and pieces of various Robert Frost poems,” Maeve said.
“Same in Ireland,” Jamie said. “I’m thinking of Sir Walter Scott, who said ‘oh what a tangled web we weave…’”
“‘When first we practice to deceive,’” Maeve said, finishing the verse. “I always got straight A’s in English.”
“My grades weren’t quite that stellar,” he said.
“But, to answer your question, the gang got caught because it turned out that there was a Mrs. Danny Dwyer back in Dublin, and she was fed up with being a single mum while the mister was off with a pretty young thing called Starr. The Rossingtons were offering a nice fat reward for information leading to the arrest of the miscreants who’d victimized them, and Mrs. Dwyer was pleased to let the Gardai know where they could catch up with her cheating husband. ”
“Which was where?” Maeve asked.
“Starr and Dwyer and Eddie Keane were holed up in a little rented cottage up in the Wicklow Mountains. The Gardai found the paintings in the boot of the car, hidden under the bed Starr and Dwyer were sleeping in, and in a shed.”
“What about the fourth member of the gang? The lookout?”
“He scarpered at the first sign of trouble but got stopped by the Gardai two days later in a stolen car. Got in a shoot-out and lost.”
“Let me guess. He didn’t have any paintings.”
“He did not.”
“And your mother went to prison?”
“Yes. Believe me, it was quite a scandal.”
Maeve did the math in her head. “When did your mother get out?”
“She was given early release in ’81, because she was pregnant with me. By a friendly prison guard, you might say.”
“Not Dwyer?”
“No. He was sent to the men’s prison. As far as I know, they never spoke again after their trial.”
Jamie recited the fact of his birth, and his parentage, with a perfectly flat affect, Maeve thought. He’d probably told that tale too many times over the years to be embarrassed by it.
“I was raised by my grandmum,” he explained. “They gave me her maiden name, Cooke, because of course the McGahee name was so notorious at the time. But Starr would come for visits on the weekend.”
“You called her Starr?”
“It’s what she preferred. She was more like an aunt, maybe, than a mother. I had what you might call an unusual childhood.”
Maddie was back now, placing a plate with slices of lemon sponge cake with berries and chocolate torte on the table between them. She’d overheard his last remark and leaned in. “But Jamie turned out splendidly, in my opinion, thanks to his gran.”
Her husband beamed. “Thanks, love.”
“His mother wanted to name him Sky, if you can believe it,” Maddie said. “Thank God his gran wasn’t having that for her only grandchild.”
“I’m named Jamie, after my granddad,” he said.
“How did you two meet?” Maeve asked Maddie.
“The usual way. I was doing a graduate course in London, where he was working at the time. I spied him in a pub, sent my girlfriend over to check him out, and when she gave the okay, I flirted with him, relentlessly, until he finally asked for my number.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Jamie said. “I believe you asked me for my number.”
“Details,” Maddie said airily. “Go on now, and let Maeve ask her questions.”
“Thank you,” Maeve said. “This is all so helpful. Jamie, did your mother ever talk about … that time?”
“Starr referred to it as ‘the incident.’ As I got older, she talked to me about it a bit. I think she wanted me to understand why she did the things she did.”
Jamie took a forkful of the lemon cake and chewed slowly.
“Things had gotten bad over here by the late ’60s.
You’ve heard of Bloody Sunday? British soldiers fired on a demonstration in Derry, in Northern Ireland, killing a dozen or so unarmed protesters.
That was 1972. Starr always told me that was what radicalized her.
Eventually she dropped out of school, but she stayed on in Oxford, because she’d met Dwyer and his mates.
My granddad was furious. He cut off her funds, so she got a job and worked in coffee shops.
Very hand-to-mouth existence. She even went on the dole, which she proudly related to her parents.
I think after that my grandmum slipped her funds on the sly. ”
“Starr’s family was actually quite posh,” Maddie explained.
“They had a flat in Mayfair, and the country estate in the Cotswolds,” Jamie said.
“Of course, after the arrest and all the publicity, Granddad’s law firm politely requested that he resign from the firm.
My mum’s legal troubles broke him—financially and emotionally.
They sold the Mayfair flat and moved to their country place, and as I say, he died before Mum was released from prison. ”
“Starr was even a debutante, if you can believe it,” Maddie put in.
“My gran used to have a photo in a silver frame of my mum in her lovely white dress and long gloves, which of course, Starr hated. She told me she only agreed to do the deb thing after her father promised she could attend university. She was meant to get a degree in chemistry. Although, I don’t know how much studying she actually did there.
‘It was the ’60s, darling, lots of excitement, lots of lovely sex and LSD, lots of revolutionary ideas,’ that’s what Starr used to tell me. ”
Maddie placed a slice of chocolate torte on Maeve’s dessert plate. “Can you imagine saying such a thing to your teenaged son?”
“Good God, Jamie,” exclaimed Liam, who’d been listening in. “You did have an interesting childhood.”
“Did your mum ever explain how the idea for the robbery came about?” Maddie asked.
“She was living in a cold-water flat with three or four other people in Dublin,” Jamie said. “They were living hand-to-mouth and working on a plot to free their mates in prison. One of them got the idea to kidnap some filthy-rich nob for ransom money and it evolved from there.”
“But what was the connection to Wicklow? And Tarrymore?” Maeve asked.
“Who knows? Maybe a disaffected servant who’d worked for the Rossingtons and mentioned to one of the gang about the art collection?
Or possibly my mum had actually been a guest at Tarrymore in her earlier life?
She did mention once that she met up with someone from her old, posh life while she was working in that coffee shop in Dublin.
Starr didn’t mind owning up to her part in any of the gang’s criminal activities, including the robbery, because she believed in the cause.
But she had her loyalties and her secrets, which she kept right ’til the end. ”
“So fascinating,” Maeve said, turning to Maddie. “Did you know all this history surrounding the Tarrymore robbery?”
“Only in the broadest sense,” Maddie said. “This is the most Jamie’s ever talked about this stuff. And yes, I’m intrigued.”
“Let me ask you something now,” Jamie said. “Mads tells me you and your sister have a connection to one of the Tarrymore paintings?”
“Yes, and no.” Maeve explained her great-grandmother’s complicated connection to Lord Rossington, and in turn, the portrait of Lady Geraldine.
“Kathleen lived at Tarrymore until she was eighteen, and then, in 1926, emigrated to the US. She brought the portrait with her, and it’s been in our family ever since. ”
“Maeve’s great-grandmother was Kathleen Connor,” Maddie said quietly.
Jamie’s brow furrowed. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Lady Delia,” Maeve said. “She was Kathleen’s protector, and the one who gave her the portrait and arranged for her passage to the States. She was murdered back in 1926, the night Kathleen left. The Rossingtons blamed Kathleen. And it seems that story became local lore.”
“Which you don’t believe?” Jamie asked.
Maeve shook her head.
“How does the IRA raid tie into your interest in the portrait your great-grandmother brought to America, forty-eight years earlier?” he asked.
She glanced over at Liam, who gave her knee a gentle warning squeeze under the table. Maeve gave him a pleading look and after a moment, he shrugged.
“Recently, another portrait of Lady Geraldine, painted around the same time, by the same artist, was sold at auction, in New York City for over a million dollars.”
“Ohh,” Jamie said, exhaling the word. “And you think…”
“We now think the portrait that sold at auction was actually an early study the artist made before he produced the finished portrait, which had been commissioned by Lady Geraldine’s father as a wedding gift.
We believe that earlier painting was the one stolen from Tarrymore by your mother and her gang in 1974.
According to our research, it was the only painting that was never recovered after Starr and her friends were arrested. ”
“It’s all rather confusing, isn’t it?” Jamie asked.
“And mysterious,” Maddie put in. “Where has that portrait been all this time? And who sold it at auction?”
“Exactly,” Maeve said.