Anthony Horowitz: The House of Silk

‘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.