Page 89 of Road Trip
“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 andworking 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.
CHAPTER 39
It was dusk by the time the Grogans’ “Sunday lunch” wound down. The sunset bathed the pasture in striated shades of pink, orange, and persimmon, and bees hummed among the patches of clover.
