The Napoleon of Crime (20 page)

Now as to terms. We must look at this as a commercial transaction. It represents to you a money value of 10,000 pounds sterling. The extraordinary advertisement has certainly added to its value. If it was again exhibited in London, thousands would go to see it that never would have thought of going before the elopement of the Duchess. If we come to terms you can exhibit it here (New York) and you will certainly clear two thirds of the money you pay for the recovery of it.

We want 3,000 pounds or $15,000 in gold. No other money will be taken but English sovereigns. Insert an advertisement in the London
Times
if you will treat on these terms, viz., “
NEW YORK, letter received etc. etc.” or whatever you have to say, as we have
The Times
by every mail. The rest is simply a matter of detail, and can be arranged by letter hereafter. It lays entirely with you whether you have it back or not.

If this letter is shown to the police, we will know that you are not inclined to keep faith with us, and will act accordingly. For obvious reasons you will be careful in wording the advertisement.

Worth signed the letter NEW YORK, and added that all further correspondence would be sent under that name.

The letter was vintage Worth: methodical, organized, imperious, and remarkably impertinent. The legal tone suggests that it may even have been drafted by his brother-in-law, the lawyer Lefens. Agnew hardly needed to be told that the thief had been good enough to increase the value of his painting by stealing it, nor how to word a careful reply, and it is fascinating that Worth, ever the snob, wanted it understood that even on the other side of the world he still read
The
London
Times
, the newspaper of the British elite.

The letter was also partly a bluff. Worth had no intention of destroying the painting; indeed, the piece of canvas sent as proof of theft had been carefully cut from the portion of the picture beneath the frame, so as not to damage the work: Worth was no Mrs. Maginnis. This letter contains Worth’s first reference to the “elopement of the Duchess”—a humorous remark, but also an indication that the portrait had come to mean more to him than a mere “commercial” property. While Agnew might find his tone distinctly galling, the fragment matched with the remnant on the stretcher and proved the writer was no hoaxer. In contrast to his earlier nonchalance, Worth now gave no clues to his whereabouts.

Agnew’s, after conferring with their solicitors, Lewis & Lewis, and with Scotland Yard, placed an advertisement in the personal columns of
The Times:
“New York, Letter received. On further proof are prepared to treat.”

William Agnew knew he was compounding a felony, whatever Worth’s reassurances, but he wanted his picture back. Worth promptly sent “
a longer piece of the upper part of the picture, to match the piece now in your possession,” adding that “from time to time in our negotiations we desire to send a small piece to prevent any mistake or your wasting your time on bogus possessors.” It was a considerate, if ironic remark, for Agnew’s was still being deluged by hoaxers, amateur detectives, crooks, and crackpots. This letter concluded by recommending that Agnew’s place another notice in
The Times
immediately if he was satisfied and wished to proceed, since “it is certainly in the interest of both parties to bring the affair to a close as soon as possible.”

Agnew complied, and on March 6, 1877, Worth sent yet another letter, on the elegant stationery of the Grand Hotel, announcing that “
in order to facilitate matters” he had dispatched a man to London who “has our confidence” to negotiate the return of the painting and avoid the delays caused by the transatlantic postal system. “
The Picture is over here in our possession. You will hear further from the bearer of this letter in a day or two,” Worth wrote, enclosing another fragment of canvas “which will be found to fit the last piece you received.” But Agnew’s did not hear from the mysterious messenger and after three weeks the art dealer placed another advertisement: “
New York. Am waiting to hear from you further. Have received your letter and wait appointment.”

Suddenly the thief was getting cold feet, perhaps fearing some sort of an ambush by Scotland Yard. After several more tense weeks, Worth reestablished contact, but the terms had now changed. He was no longer willing to send someone to London to haggle on his behalf, given “
the penalties for the crime of compounding a felony in England.” If Agnew’s wanted the picture back, then someone would have to come to New York and get it. “It is out of the question to get anybody to come to you about negotiating for it, as it might get the party so doing into trouble.” Worth was not prepared to put his subordinates in the way of unnecessary danger, but he was also unwilling, as ever, to relinquish control of events. “The only way that I know of is by you sending a trustworthy man over to N.Y. with a draft for the amount, and paying it, on the picture being shown to him … Please answer as usual.”

The affair was now coming to a head. William Agnew refused to come to New York and Worth was not about to put himself at the mercy of Scotland Yard by coming back to London, although he made it appear that he had already done so. In his next letter he stated unequivocally:

I have vainly endeavored to think of some safe way of negotiating the return of the Lady on this side of the water [i.e., England] according to your desire (although it would be considerable expense to bring it over again). But I cannot see my way clear to doing so without putting myself in your power, and that I will not do.

Consequently we must fall back in our original position—namely that it must be arranged in America. If your desire be to recover the Lady only, on the terms mentioned before, and not the punishment of the abstracters, it can make very little difference to you where the negotiation takes place. If you persist in your determination to deal only on this side I shall be compelled to drop the matter.

Agnew was equally adamant: “
NEW YORK, No danger to you whatever. There can be no necessity for voyage, which, indeed, I cannot make.”

From May to August there was silence. Then on August 8 a letter postmarked London arrived at Agnew’s office. “
Finding that it was impossible, as you said, for you to go to America, the parties have gone to the expense of sending the ‘Duchess’ back to this country … too much time has already been wasted on the affair, and the parties wish it settled at once.” Worth had returned to London with the painting, but his attitude had clearly changed. His next letter, dated August 21, was abrupt to the point of rudeness:

I really cannot suggest any way of returning the Noble Lady, and if you cannot, I am afraid we shall have to drop the affair entirely … We have been trying to think of some plan in which we can safely do it on this side of the water, but can think of no way with safety to ourselves. As I said before, if you cannot find some means of doing it, why then we will not trouble ourselves any more about it. If you really mean to act squarely with us and want the missing lady back, you have only to suggest some safe method and we will adopt it.

Agnew, realizing he had been presented with an ultimatum, put another coded advertisement in
The Times
, on August 23, agreeing to do whatever the elusive NEW YORK wanted. But it was too late. Worth had changed his mind. He never again contacted the art dealer, and all William Agnew had to show for his months of delay tactics were a few carefully clipped fragments of canvas and a handful of peremptory letters.

Agnew had certainly been in contact with Inspector Shore of Scotland Yard, and Worth may have got wind of the danger thanks to his spies in the force. One newspaper, noting his wavering tone many years later, concluded he had been toying with Agnew all along. “
It seemed evident that he was not really anxious to surrender the masterpiece or make any revelations. He wished merely to excite curiosity.”

Kitty Flynn was undoubtedly part of the key to Worth’s change of heart and his sudden decision to keep the portrait. The former Irish barmaid and the late Duchess of Devonshire, whose piquant history was now enjoying a second lease on life after the theft, had many of the same character traits: an extraordinary zest for life, a healthy disrespect for the opinions of others, and thus a freedom of spirit that would always be denied the bitter and complex Worth. The physical resemblance between the two women was equally striking. The best portrait of Kitty shows her with a teasing, pouting expression which might have been borrowed directly from Georgiana. The
Duchess
’s golden tresses, flashing eyes, her curvaceous figure and vivid determination to enjoy herself, and others, were all echoed by Kitty in her prime, and the former hostess of the American Bar had long and rightly considered herself one of nature’s aristocrats.

Like some criminal Pygmalion, Worth had sought to mold Kitty into a flawless replica of his ideal woman—elegant, pliant, and socially acceptable—and he had succeeded. Yet there was a part of Kitty he could not touch—her very vitality—and thus his creation had betrayed and abandoned him. Worth’s “Fair Lady,” as in every version of that enduring myth, had shown she did not need him. Galatea had taken flight. He had sought to control and hold Kitty, and for the first time in his life he had failed. Gainsborough’s
Duchess
, by contrast, was docile and maneuverable, a perfect painted captive in a way Kitty had declined to be. In the Greek myth, Pygmalion found love when his beautiful statue came to life; Worth perhaps found some remnant of love by transferring his affections from flesh, blood, and spirit to canvas, oil paint, and artifice.

One writer who speculated on the motives of the man who stole the Gainsborough wondered if he might be “
a
fin de siècle
scoundrel … a mad enthusiast [who] had stolen the portrait to worship its grace and tender beauty in the still watches of the night, when pale moonbeams lit up the rounded form and revealed fresh depths in those lustrous eyes. Folly and crime there might have been—let there also be love.” The writing was pure Victorian schmaltz, the effect somewhat emetic, but the suggestion was entirely apt.

Half a lifetime later, Worth remarked that the portrait had been “
a white elephant on his hands for years that he could not get rid of.” This claim was manifestly false. Over the next twenty years, he could have reopened negotiations with Agnew’s for the return of the portrait at any stage, but he did not.

In time, the rumor that Worth was the thief gained currency in the underworld and many a dubious character offered to help arrange its return, for a consideration. He turned them all down, preferring to face disgrace, penury, and imprisonment rather than part with the
Duchess
. The painting became his permanent companion, as constant and demure as Kitty had proved fickle and independent. When he traveled, she came, too, in his false-bottomed trunk; in London he slept with her, literally, the
Duchess
pinned beneath his mattress.

Still, there was more to this strange relationship between a master thief and his stolen Old Master. As Worth’s obsession grew, the painting came to exert a hold over him, a symbol and reflection of his own artificial existence. In Georgiana’s powerful image, he found a voyeur’s keyhole through which he could spy on the privileged society to which he aspired but of which he could never truly be a part, any more than Georgiana could return to life. She was a fetish, representing the pinnacle of his dreams and the evidence of his exclusion. The most desirable object a man of wealth could own, here was a prize he could never display—unlike his racehorses, yachts, and luxurious homes—an icon of his power and powerlessness. When Worth remarked that he could not “get rid of” the painting, he was betraying his own impotence. Like a murderer preserving body parts, he clung to this ultimate testament to his crimes, for the arrogant gaze of the
Duchess
crystallized all his strength and frailty. She was his captured enemy standard, tangible evidence of his hatred for and power to undermine respectable society, an object of overwhelming beauty to crown Worth’s ugly trade, a focus of longing and loathing. But when he looked on that lovely, scornful face, did he not see a pitiful reflection of his own con trick, a tawdry, superficial creation that was not even skin-deep? As the years rolled on and the painting slowly merged with his own conception of himself, Worth perhaps came to realize that his fabricated world was founded on the
Duchess
and her symbolism. “
Feasting his eyes on the coveted object in secret,” in the words of a contemporary, he clung to the great painting as if his life depended on it, because it did.

Worth’s relationship with his stolen
Duchess
altered and deepened over time—from affectionate pride and admiration to dependence and fixation—but we can trace its genesis with some precision. He had hit on the plan to steal the painting while brooding on Kitty’s departure from London, but it was in the summer of 1877, more than a year later, that he abruptly and permanently broke off all negotiations for its return—the exact moment when Kitty’s life took a new and, for Worth, a freshly devastating turn.

Just as he seemed to be closing on a deal with Agnew’s, word reached Worth that his onetime lover, the “canker” in his breast and probably the mother of his children, had found a new suitor in New York and planned to marry him. This final rejection also pushed Worth into matrimony, but of a very different sort: his elopement with the
Duchess
was now transformed into a full-fledged marriage that would last a quarter of a century.

FOURTEEN

Kitty Flynn, Society Queen

T
hat delightfully salacious newspaper, the
New York World
, now sadly defunct, would later conclude with a sly wink that, while playing the role of hostess to a gang of villains at the American Bar in Paris, Kitty “
perfected herself in the arts and graces that enabled her to make her second and most brilliant matrimonial coup.” She was only twenty-eight and exceptionally beautiful when, as the newspapers reported, she “captured a matrimonial prize which many of New York’s proudest society women would not have disdained.” With two children to support, and her ambition for fame and fortune burning as bright as ever, Kitty was plainly on the lookout for a new husband, so when Juan Pedro Terry sauntered elegantly into her life, she summoned up every art and grace in her portfolio. Juan Terry could hardly have been more ideal: he had handsome blue eyes, Irish blood, the beard of a sprightly conquistador, a taste for luxury, and a courtly demeanor. He was, moreover, staggeringly rich.