Back Bay (15 page)

“In the evenings, I read the
Los Angeles Times
.”

“But the news is three hours old when it gets out there.”

“I spent a year in Hollywood between college and law school. I was vaguely interested in the movie business, and Pratt Industries owns a piece of American Center Films. I was able to take a close look at the madness and decide I preferred law. However, I still have a few friends out there, and I like to know what’s happening. They say that everything starts in Los Angeles, then moves east. If we’re forewarned, we can build a wall along Route 495 and protect the city from the next cultural onslaught.”

They both laughed, then Carrington’s expression turned serious. “And right now, I’m protecting my family from an unwarranted intrusion. As you have already learned, we are most protective of our privacy. We always have been. I hope that you weren’t terribly inconvenienced the other day, but my grandmother is sometimes more trusting than the rest of us. The loneliness of old age, I guess. But she should not have allowed you into the attic without consulting me.”

“It’s her house,” said Fallon. “And when you shroud a place in secrecy, you only succeed in making people like me more curious.”

“I don’t care whether you’re curious or not.” Carrington felt his anger. He was glad the waitress appeared just then to take their orders. He didn’t like to get angry in a discussion like this. When she left, he continued, “The attic is also the repository for most of the documents of our family history, and we always prefer to know something about the historians who poke through our papers. We’re willing to support your work if you’re a serious researcher, but we’re always getting requests from people who want to snoop through our diaries and letters just to see what sort of dirt they can find to publish about us.”

Fallon thought Carrington’s reasoning a little faulty. He had been declaring his serious intent for months, and the Pratts had not responded. “I don’t want to shatter any illusions for you, Mr. Carrington, but very few people outside the Pratts really care about the Pratts. You may be an important New England family, but you’re not the Kennedys. Any dirt that I may dig out of two-hundred-year-old letters and ledger books isn’t exactly what you’d call fan-magazine material.”

Carrington realized that he was sounding rather arch. “Agreed.
But the later records also cover the lives of people still living or only recently dead. We want to protect their privacy.”

Fallon recalled nothing later than 1920, but he didn’t argue. He sensed that Carrington was hiding something from him. “My interest is in Horace Taylor Pratt and his immediate descendants.”

Carrington smiled. “Then I’ll tell you whatever you’d like to know.”

“And give me access to his papers?”

“Whatever I can do.”

Fallon was surprised and a little disappointed by Carrington’s sudden willingness to cooperate. For the next half hour, they discussed the life of Horace Taylor Pratt, and their mutual suspicions fell away. Fallon decided that Carrington was hiding nothing; Carrington decided that Fallon was exactly what he appeared to be. They talked about Pratt’s business, his wife, and his relationship to his sons—one a martyr to the cause of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile, the other an apparent idler whose ideas were usually five years ahead of their time. Fallon asked about Pratt’s daughter, Abigail Pratt Bentley, and Carrington promised that he would let Fallon see her diaries, a few of which existed from a lifetime of writing.

“When you come right down to it,” Carrington concluded at the end of their second cup of coffee, “Horace Taylor Pratt was a smart, tough, grasping son of a bitch. And I’m glad he was.” He picked up the check. “I’ll call Searidge and instruct Mr. Harrison to take down all the papers I feel are pertinent to your dissertation.”

Fallon realized that Carrington was going to get away without discussing the Golden Eagle, which was the whole point of the meeting. He thought of no subtle way to introduce it. “There’s one period of Pratt’s life in which I’m very interested, and I didn’t find any papers covering it.”

Carrington glanced impatiently at his watch. “Then they probably don’t exist.”

“But it was a rather important event in Pratt’s life. When George Washington visited Boston in 1789, they gave him a tea set….”

Carrington’s body stiffened involuntarily. “Yes, I’m familiar with it. The Golden Eagle Tea Set.”

Fallon was surprised that Carrington knew that much. He wasn’t sure what else to reveal. “Do you know anything about it?”

“As much as anyone knows about it.”

Fallon noted the change in Carrington’s attitude. Polite suspicion returned. There was something to this after all. “A book I was reading says that the tea set disappeared when the British burned Washington. It was never found. Do you think Pratt had anything to do with it?”

Carrington studied Fallon for a moment, then laughed softly. He tried not to sound derisive, but he couldn’t avoid it. If he had had any doubts about Fallon, they were gone now. Fallon had stumbled across something, but he knew nothing. “Do you know when that book was published?”

“Sometime in the late sixties.” Fallon sensed that he was about to feel very stupid.

“That explains it.” Carrington stood and buttoned his jacket. “When you have the time, take the Huntington Avenue trolley over to the Museum of Fine Arts. When you get inside, ask the first guard you see to direct you to the section on American Decorative Arts. Halfway down the gallery on the left, beneath the portrait of Paul Revere, you’ll find the Golden Eagle Tea Set. It’s worth the trip.”

Fallon managed to smile and thank Carrington. His treasure hunt was over.

“I must be running,” said Carrington. “Please stay and finish your coffee.” He headed for the door. “And update that library of yours. You should know that history is rewritten every ten years.”

Peter Fallon felt very stupid, and he hated feeling stupid.

The eyes were alert, intelligent. The face was serene and satisfied, without a trace of complacency. The hands were large and muscular, yet with a delicacy that befitted their craft. Paul Revere, painted by John Singleton Copley in 1770, hung in the American Decorative Arts gallery of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. To his left, a display case overflowed with his work. Directly in front of him, beneath two spotlights, the Golden Eagle Tea Set glistened in a Plexiglas bubble. The end of the story.

Peter Fallon knew the beginning, and he had convinced himself by afternoon that he no longer cared about the middle. His
fantasies of discovering buried treasure had burned away. If he stumbled across any interesting bits of information about the tea set, he would file them with the Lovell note, drag them out some day when he had nothing to do, and try to piece them together. He expected that he would have nothing to do the day after he defended his dissertation. Until then, he was forgetting about this tea set.

The American Decorative Arts gallery stretched down a corridor that was deserted, except for a guard fighting sleep at the far end. Its silence provided the medium for contemplation, and Fallon stared at the tea set for twenty minutes. He knew nothing about silver—otherwise he would have known all along that the Revere masterpiece was on display in the museum—but he was transfixed by the beauty of the Golden Eagle.

Teapot, creamer, sugar urn, coffee urn, wastebowl, tea tongs, spoons, serving tray. The expanses of silver seemed like satin. The engravings on each piece formed a gossamer pattern just imperfect enough to have been etched by Revere’s hand. The American eagle, in delicate gold relief, mesmerized Fallon with its gaze.

“And now, children, we arrive at our last stop.”

An army of sixth-graders and their teachers trampled over the silence. The children had reached the end of their tour, and their nervous energy was overflowing

Mrs. Jane Cooper, a museum administrator in her early forties, tried to finish her talk. Her crisp suit and short hair made her seem businesslike and efficient. She herded the children around Revere’s portrait and smiled at Fallon, who moved to the edge of the group.

“This is the American Decorative Arts gallery,” she explained. “That means silverware, furniture, and other things we use to brighten our home.”

“Only thing would brighten my home is a fire,” cracked one black kid, drawing laughter from his friends and angry stares from his teachers.

Unperturbed, Mrs. Cooper continued. “One of America’s greatest decorative artists and one of Boston’s most famous citizens is the man in the painting behind me. Does anybody know who he is?”

None of the children responded.

Mrs. Cooper tried to help them along with a clue “Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of…” She waited for an answer.

“Diarrhea,” whispered someone, just loudly enough to set off an epidemic of giggles. The rhyme worked best with a Boston accent.

“Out of bed and onto the floor/For the fifty-yard dash to the bathroom door.” Mrs. Cooper smiled. “I was in the sixth grade myself, once. Now if you’ll just listen for another minute or so, we’ll finish our talk and you can all go outside and play.”

The children cheered, and Fallon laughed to himself.

“Paul Revere was a patriot and a silversmith. He also cast some of the cannon and made the spikes for
Old Ironsides
. As you all know from your history books, he led a very exciting life, and we at the museum are proud to have the Golden Eagle Tea Set, his most famous work, on display.”

His most famous work. Fallon felt like an ostrich just pulling his head out of the sand.

Mrs. Cooper lowered her voice for dramatic effect. “And there is a very exciting story connected with it.” In breathless tones, she recounted the presentation of the tea set to George Washington and its disappearance from the White House. “It was a real mystery. For a hundred and fifty years, no one knew where the tea set was. Then, in 1973, a young art dealer reintroduced it to the world, and we found out where it had been.”

Fallon was listening closely now. This was the middle of the story.

“The British Army had stolen the tea set and taken it to Europe. It passed through the hands of several soldiers, all of whom were killed because of it.”

Already, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, thought Fallon.

“Finally, it came to rest in the hands of a rich English art lover, Sir Henry Carrol. In 1870 when he was a very old man, someone sneaked into his house and murdered him. The tea set was stolen again.” She told the story well, and the children listened closely. “It turned up a hundred years later in the hands of a rich family in England. It had been passed down the generations until the family
decided to sell it. The art dealer brought it to America, where a rich businessman brought it for a great deal of money. When the businessman died, he left the tea set to the museum.”

She paused before her closing remarks. “Not all works of art have such exciting stories to tell, but remember, children, that all art is exciting, and it is always here for your enjoyment.”

At the urging of their teachers, the children sing-songed their thanks to Mrs. Cooper, then swarmed for the exits.

Mrs. Cooper turned to Fallon. “I’m sorry we interrupted your study of the tea set, but the sooner we start exposing our children to the drama in art, the sooner they’ll start appreciating it.”

“Well, it’s not
Kojak
, but an interesting story nonetheless.”

“Thank you.” She smiled and started to leave.

Fallon felt his resolve break down. He wasn’t going to pursue the story further, but he was following her down the corridor anyway. “Excuse me, ma’ am.” He told her a little about himself and his interest in the history of the tea set. He asked her if she would answer a few questions.

She invited him to her office, a cramped basement cubicle. Papers, art books, and manuscripts covered every available space, and an inexpensive print of Picasso’s
Blue Nude
was hanging on the wall behind her desk. She cleared a spot and offered Fallon a seat.

“They tell me that the good administrator has one piece of paper on her desk and no distractions in her office. I’m afraid I don’t quite fit the bill. This place is such a mess that my boss moved me downstairs out of embarrassment.” Jane Cooper was an assistant to the curator of the American Decorative Arts collection. “Still, when something needs to be done, it lands on my desk. Always give the work to the person who looks busy.” She poured two cups of coffee.

Fallon liked her. She seemed genuinely friendly, and much less orderly than her cotton suit. “I won’t take too much of your time.”

She smiled and sat at her desk. “That’s quite all right.”

“I’d be very interested in the name of the art dealer who brought the tea set into this country. Do you disclose such information?”

“Certainly, I’ll disclose anything that’s public record. Lawrence Hannaford is his name. He has a very successful gallery over on
Newbury Street. Handles a lot of younger artists and makes an occasional sale for someone big.”

“I assume that the tea set was his biggest sale.”

“Yes. He bought it in Europe from a private family which preferred to remain anonymous, and he has kept their confidence to this day. It’s a matter of ethics with art dealers, almost like reporters who won’t divulge their sources. Then he sold the tea set in this country to the late Henry Drucker, a well-known collector, for a million and a half dollars.”

Fallon whistled softly. “I’ve heard of a Rembrandt selling for a million and a half, but isn’t that a lot for a tea set?”

“Not by today’s standards. The sale was made in 1973, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Golden Eagle brought two and a half million today. Of course, we try not to attach dollar values to something that’s really priceless.”

“When you grow up in Boston, Paul Revere is the only silversmith you ever hear about. Was he that good?”

“Most people consider him the finest American silversmith of the eighteenth century, which is known as the golden age of American silver, although I personally have always felt that the Philadelphians, men like Richard Humphrey and Joseph Richardson, were technically more proficient.”