Crazy Like A Fox

CHAPTER 11

“How do you like it?” Yvonne asked Tootie as they walked through her rental.

“I really like the stone fireplace. You’ll be glad you have it when the cold comes.”

“Why? This place has central heat.” Yvonne smiled, pleased with herself. “I inspected the heat pump and it’s five years old so it ought to be good.”

“I’m sure it is, but, Mom, these old places don’t have insulation. They might have horsehair in the walls, hair from the tails, but not what you’re used to, plus the windows will get ice cold.” Tootie walked to a window putting her hand on the single pane. “Wavy, see?”

“Yes.”

“That means it’s original. Beveridge Hundred was built in the 1790s. Least that’s what Sister says. She likes historical research, especially old buildings.”

“You live in a new old building.” Yvonne put her hand on the wavy glass, which, even though the temperature that Friday was 64°F, felt cool.

“The foundation was dug in 1787, the stone foundation under the front part of my cabin. It was one of the first settlements that far west.”

“Really?”

“Most people didn’t come out this far until after the Revolutionary War. Anyway, so many of those homes still stand. Like this one.”

“I love the old names. Sister gave me one of last year’s fixture cards and I never heard of such names: Mousehold Heath, Close Shave, Mud Fence. They’re fanciful.”

Tootie smiled. “Usually the name involves some feature, like Mud Fence. They didn’t have enough money in the beginning for fences so they made them out of mud. Mill Ruins you saw. Was the first big mill this far west. Tattenhall Station used to be a stop for Norfolk and Southern railroad. Uh—” She thought a minute. “After All Farm was named by Edward Bancroft’s grandfather after 1865. They came down from New York City, made a fortune during the war. After All. Sister teases the Bancrofts and says it’s just beginning, no after all at all.”

“People know one another well here, don’t they?”

“Pretty much.”

“When you finish vet school I assume you’ll return here.”

Tootie looked out the window. “I have to get into vet school first. Mom, there’s a UPS truck coming down the drive.”

Yvonne walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside to greet the driver, who introduced herself and handed over a UPS envelope. Tootie, outside now, too, waved at the driver.

“You know the UPS driver?” Yvonne was surprised.

“Karen Allison. She covers our territory.”

“I see.”

What Yvonne was beginning to see was that people did know one another. It wasn’t like Chicago, too huge for that to be possible, but a city, like most American cities, where one could stay in one’s glitter ghetto. You need not see or speak to anyone terribly different from yourself, especially different economically. You might know some people in your city block or blocks.

Yvonne opened the large cardboard UPS envelope and pulled out papers, a legal firm’s address at the top center.

Scanning the papers, she laughed. “According to your father’s legal firm, I’m not entitled to half. If I press this, I will be attacked by killer zombies.” She threw the papers on the little table by the front door, laughing as she did. “If he pushes this into court, he will regret it for every day that he lives thereafter. You’d think he’d know by now that my IQ is above a good golf score.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I guess there is no such thing as a good divorce.”

Well, she thought, out of the mouths of babes. Then she answered, “No, but some are better than others. I haven’t provided much maternal advice but I can tell you when you marry get your name on everything. Absolutely everything. That way when you divorce, your husband’s lawyers can’t play Starve the Wife.” Tootie remained silent so Yvonne continued. “You aren’t seeing anyone?”

“No.”

“Ah. Someone will come along.”

“Mother, I am never getting married.”

Yvonne laughed. “Every young woman says that, I swear. Granted, your father and I haven’t left you with much of an example.”

Tootie shrugged, then offered, “I’ll stack wood for you. Sister has a lot of downed trees. Gray and I can cut them up. You’ll need wood. It will really help, plus a fire in the fireplace is, I don’t know, kind of perfect.”

“All right. I will pay you and I’ll pay Sister.”

“She wouldn’t take anything and neither will he.” Tootie paused. “How did UPS know how to find you?”

“I hopped online, gave them my address the minute I signed the rental contract. Otherwise, you would have been inundated by things like that.” She pointed to the papers on the table.

Tootie nodded, then smiled. “I like your place. It’s cozy, and better yet, it’s in the middle of our hunt country. We call all this out here the Chapel Cross fixtures ’cause where the roads cross is the old chapel. Still in use.”

“I’m beginning to understand that everything is still in use. I expect to see Robert E. Lee walk around the corner.”

Tootie considered this, then countered, “Mr. Jefferson.”

“But of course,” Yvonne agreed.

—

Sister, over at After All, showed Edward the video. As Daniella had mentioned Edward’s late sister, she thought it worth a try.

He looked at it. “Mother and Father were upset with Evie but I didn’t really know the scope of it. I was in my junior year at Dartmouth. Evangeline was not a student by any means. My sister was a party girl. She was intelligent but like most girls at that time, her job was to marry well, produce children.”

“She never said anything?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Again, I was in college. We weren’t that close. All I knew was that she infuriated our parents and they packed her off to London for the season. And there she stayed because she met Nigel.”

“Ah.” Sister took the phone back. “I don’t know why I’m determined to find that cowhorn. Find out what this is really about. It can’t be that much, really, and it was a long time ago.”

Tedi poured Sister more tea. “People are still fascinated by the bizarre affair and that was what, the beginning of the nineteenth century?” Tedi named a scandal of illicit love, the possibility of infanticide. Still no one knew what happened but, despite the accused man—a Randolph, no less—being cleared in the court, the scandal greatly reduced the power of the Randolph family. The name still held cachet but the political and economic power had faded over the ensuing two centuries.

“Who can resist a good mystery?” Sister smiled at her old friend.

“Did Louis the Fourteenth have a twin?” Edward added. “And for decades people believed the Czar, the Empress, and the children still lived. The bones weren’t found until fairly recently. God, what an awful story.”

“That it is.” It flashed in Sister’s mind that perhaps old bones would be found again. She kept this to herself.

“The pack’s doing so well.” Tedi beamed. “You know the day we elected you Master of the Hunt was a good day and what, over forty years ago?”

Sister groaned. “I’ve lost count but thank you.”

“Foxglove.” Edward named the place they would hunt tomorrow. “Aren’t you glad you don’t need to print up a fixture card for cubbing?”

“Am.” She put down her cup. “Just gives me fits. You never know what’s going to happen with weather, with a landowner. Well, there isn’t a Master in the United States or Canada that doesn’t deal with this.”

“England, Australia, New Zealand, and are they still hunting in Scotland?” Tedi inquired.

“I should know and I don’t. What’s so funny is that banning hunting in England now means more people are hunting than ever before. Can you imagine Congress in the middle of the Iraq War spending so much time on foxhunting? It just makes one wonder, especially as I have always looked up to England.”

“Let’s not congratulate ourselves.” Tedi laughed. “I’m sure we can descend into irresponsibility and silliness as easily as Parliament. We pick different issues, or better yet, we make them up to cover the real issues.”

“Tedi, you cynic.” Sister laughed.

“Old age.” Tedi laughed back.

The Bancrofts had about ten years on Sister, Edward being a bit older than his wife. Perhaps there’s a point at which one has seen it all.

Driving home, Sister called Ben Sidell from her cellphone.

“Master.”

“Sheriff. Are you going to hunt tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Good. Give me a few minutes after the hunt. I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything.”

When Sister got home she parked, walked to the kennels, and opened the door to the office where Shaker was pouring over pedigree papers.

“Studious.”

“Trying.”

“Well, we do need to think about breeding. It looks as though we have a good number of hounds but, as you know, if you don’t keep up you soon lose out.”

He nodded, for any hunt loses about ten percent of its hounds a year. Usually this wasn’t due to death but to older fellows needing to be retired, and a few hounds that would be drafted to another hunt—especially if that hunt needed some of Jefferson Hunt’s bloodlines, which had remained, for more than a century, well-defined, well-documented, and proven in the field. This was no easy task. Then again, a hound might become injured, pull a ligament, and its hunting days were over; usually, the hound would be claimed by a hunt member, where the lucky girl or boy flopped on the couch in the house.

“Mind if I sit across from you?”

“No.”

The club, when it refurbished the kennel back in the seventies, had created a large storage room for past documents, photograph albums, even filing correspondence, some going back to 1887.

Flicking on the lights, Sister scanned the shelves, pulling down a leather-bound book, an expense the club still fielded. Each year’s hound list was documented, a pedigree per page, photographs of each hound and perhaps a comment or two concerning each. Each year also contained hunt staff photos. Some prior masters kept meticulous hunting diaries, also filed. Sister did not do that, much as she admired the practice. She just didn’t have time, plus she never felt she was a good writer, wouldn’t properly describe the hunts. So far she hadn’t been able to bribe anyone to do it for her, although some members maintained their own diaries.

Walking the shelves, the years embossed on the spines of the dark green Moroccan leather, shining in gold, she pulled out 1954 and joined Shaker.

She pored over the pedigrees, the notes written by Wesley Carruthers in a fine, masculine script, in black ink. People cared about such things then, and a man’s hand was usually different from a lady’s, hers having more flourishes; often she used a finer pen nib.

“H-m-m.”

“H-m-m, what?” Shaker smiled at her as he noticed it was an old book, although he didn’t know the year.

“The writing changes after February.” She read some more. “Now it’s Ralph Franklin, Bobby’s grandfather.”

“Did he hunt the hounds? I never heard that.”

“No. He was the first whipper-in. Maybe Weevil was training him.” Sister looked up at Shaker. “Not a bad idea to have more than one person who can keep records.”

“And then Weevil vanished?”

“1954. Anyway, I’ll check with Ben Sidell tomorrow and ask him to allow me to look at the county records. A date of disappearance has to have been recorded.”

“Boss, sounds like a good story.”

“I think it might be but it doesn’t have an end. He was never found. I’m just checking to see if he kept good records, which he did.” She read more, flipped more pages. “The only criticism I can level at Weevil, as he was known, is that he was a little loose about naming hounds.”

“How so?”

“Well, most hunts use the first initial of the mother to name the children. So we have Dasher, Dreamboat, and Dragon out of Delia, the father being Middleburg Why. He has named some of these hounds willy-nilly. Let’s say the mother was”—she looked down—“Rachel. The puppies are Roger, Regina, Christine. See what I mean?”

“H-m-m. Odd.”

Sister had before her a clue, but she didn’t know it.