Out Of Hounds

CHAPTER 33

March 12, 2020 Thursday

Brilliant sunshine flooded pastures, trees almost blooming. Sister, Betty, Weevil, and Tootie walked hounds across the large field between her farm and the Bancroft’s After All. The temperature, in the low fifties, promised spring.

Hounds knew they were not hunting, as no one was on horseback. But the humans, far apart from one another, walked briskly. A human brisk pace was a hound’s fast walk sneaking into a slow trot.

Sister and Betty, in their hound-walking shoes, began to trot. Weevil and Tootie, up front, kept pace with the hounds. Sister and Betty brought up the rear.

“I’m going to have to work up to this.” Betty slowed.

“Me, too.” Sister smiled, watching the two young people and the hounds move away.

“I never was much of a runner.” Betty looked down at her breasts. “No support bras in my youth.”

Sister laughed. “Those protuberances can get in the way. I used to wrap mine with the tape used to wrap ankles. You know, that stretchy fabric. At least it was soft, but then again I am not as generously endowed as yourself.”

“You’re a C. That’s enough to hurt when you run or take a big jump.”

“Well, when you’re young, or at least for me, I noticed, but it wasn’t awful. Tell you what, when those first support bras came out for athletes, I bought one. Helps. Originally the material didn’t breathe, so you sweated like a horse. Then things improved.”

“Has. Look at the knee braces we can wear that don’t interfere with riding. Those are made out of elastic cloth. My left knee has gotten to the point where I hate to climb the stairs.”

“Operation?”

Betty groaned. “I guess. Maybe this summer. I lack enthusiasm but I hate losing mobility.”

“Honey, sooner or later age humbles you.”

Betty rejoined, “I was born humble.”

“I’d better duck before one hits me.”

As Tootie and Weevil turned to come back across the meadow, a few shoots peeking up, they beheld two women laughing at each other; they couldn’t hear what was being said, but more laughter.

“They never stop,” Tootie remarked.

“Good to have a friend like that. Do you think women make friends easier than men? Deeper friendships?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the way we go about it is different. Men like to do things together. Women sit around and talk. I’m not much of a talker.”

“I’ve noticed.”

She dropped her head and smiled. “But when Val and some of my classmates from Custis Hall and I get together, usually over their college vacations, I’ll talk. ’Course, no one can outtalk Val. I hope she runs for public office someday. She has that gift, you know?”

“I’ve never met her.”

“If Princeton lets people out early maybe she’ll stop by. She’s as tall as Sister. Maybe a little taller, a terrific athlete, blonde, blue-eyed, the American dream. She really is beautiful.”

“Tootie, she couldn’t be more beautiful than you.” He worked up his courage and it wasn’t a false compliment.

“I, well, thank you. I’ve always been in Mom’s shadow. I’m happiest in hunt clothes, that’s my idea of getting dressed up. The rest of the time, you can see.”

“A turtleneck sweater, jeans, and cowboy boots. Very sensible.” He smiled.

She laughed. “From the rear people will call me ‘Sir.’ ”

“Tootie, all you have to do is turn around. I bet they’re speechless.”

She laughed again. “They’re embarrassed.”

“I love you, Tootie.” Trident slid his head under her hand and the pack moved up a tiny bit to be close to the humans they all loved.

“I feel better with animals.”

“I do, too,” Weevil replied. “They’re honest and they try so hard for you. And I thank you because you try so hard as a whipper-in. You can ride like the devil.” He grinned a lopsided grin.

“You think?”

“I do. I don’t say much when we’re out there because my focus is on the quarry and the hound. I do try to thank you all after a hunt. That’s only proper for a huntsman. And Sister thanks us.”

“Sister’s hunting manners are impeccable. No matter what, even something right out of the blue, she’s calm, cool, collected, and diplomatic. I have to bite my tongue,” Tootie confessed.

“Me, too. Can you believe some of the dumb stuff people do and say, and this is a pretty wonderful hunt club? Still, every now and then I’ll look back or someone will yell out and I just want to paste them.”

They reached the two friends.

“Paste who? Wait, I mean whom. I’m standing next to a grammar queen.” Betty gave Sister a look.

“I am not.”

“You always correct me with lie and lay.”

“I never argue when you say you got laid.” Sister burst out laughing, as did everyone, most of all Betty.

“There are children present.” Betty blushed.

“Betty, they know more than we do. Think what Weevil and Tootie have been exposed to? I mean stuff we didn’t even know existed until our forties, and my forties precede yours.”

“It’s the Internet.” Weevil stopped and hounds stopped, sitting down, loving being out and being with staff.

“Our idea of racy was to smoke a cigarette.” Sister reached down to pet Diana.

“Not anymore. Everyone would jump down your throat,” Tootie said.

“Isn’t it amazing how many people want to live your life for you?” Sister’s voice lifted up. “As we walk back let me ask you two a favor. I’ve been rereading Munnings’s autobiography. Nearing the end of the last volume, the third. Will you do me a favor, since you can do anything with a computer, and research Captain Gilbert Evans? He was a friend of Munnings. They became estranged over the woman that was Munnings’s first wife and she, unfortunately, killed herself in 1914. But root out anything you can, including descendants.”

“Okay.”

“She’s on a mission,” Betty filled them in.

“I am. What I’ll be doing as you all are doing that is digging up great art thefts in the last century. The theft of the Munnings and now the Pater are bad, bold. It’s not the Mona Lisa but it’s, well, it seems to me, well coordinated.”

“Was the Mona Lisa stolen?”

“In 1911,” Sister informed them.

“What a memory you have,” Betty teased her.

“Betty, I am not the Ancient of Days. Granted, I’m no longer young, but anyway, I’ve been researching. The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911. Took a full day for anyone to notice.”

“That’s impossible.” Betty couldn’t believe it.

“It doesn’t say much for the staff at the Louvre at the time, but those were different times. Anyway, Pablo Picasso was a suspect.”

Weevil looked over his shoulder. “Picasso?”

“He was living in poverty at the time and he was suspect because he had unwittingly purchased sculpture stolen from the museum. Obviously, this was prior to this major theft. He had no idea and he handed them over. Picasso had some major flaws as a human being but thievery wasn’t one of them.” Sister had indeed been doing research.

“Well, what happened?” Tootie’s curiosity rose up.

“The painting was missing for two years. The fellow who stole it was an Italian carpenter, Vincenzo Peruggia. He wore his work coveralls and walked in on August 21, stole the painting, and hid in a broom closet until late. He wrapped his coveralls around the painting, which he removed from its case. He walked right out. Actually, he thought the Mona Lisa belonged to Italy. After all, Leonardo da Vinci was Italian. He believed the painting was stolen by Napoleon and his troops. So it should be returned to Italy.”

“Incredible.” Tootie opened the draw pen and the hounds walked inside, as did the people.

“How did they catch him?” Weevil knelt down to check feet.

“He sold the painting to an Italian museum. The Italians celebrated for two weeks then returned the painting to the Louvre. Da Vinci had painted it for King Francis I so it was always French.”

“Did he go to jail?” Weevil wondered.

“He was given a one year and fifteen day sentence but released after seven months. Peruggia returned to France and worked as a house painter. The war broke out, he enlisted in the Italian army. Lived, married, had a daughter, and seems to have troubled no one.” Sister opened the door to the girls’ pen.

“That’s incredible,” Tootie exclaimed, again.

“Well, the truth is stranger than fiction.” Betty watched the girls prance into their quarters.

“There was another theory, which couldn’t really happen today. Some people thought this was a theft masterminded by Eduardo de Valfiermo, a crook. He was a well-known thief who had hired an art forger, Yves Chaudron, to make copies so he could sell them as the missing original,” Sister told them. “Today our media is relatively insistent, so if anyone wanted to see pictures of the stolen Munnings’s paintings, they would have that and if approached to buy the stolen painting, unless they, too, were a crook on some level, they’d know.”

“But how would they know what they were buying was a fake?” Tootie shrewdly asked.

“They wouldn’t. The longer the originals are not found, the easier it would be to sell a fake. But again, the nonstop media makes these things more difficult than in 1911. Still, it could be done.”

“But the originals would need to be stored somewhere.” Weevil then said, “It would really be crazy to destroy them, because in time they either could be discovered and the discoverer considered a hero or they could be sold back to the people who owned them.”

“Have to be pretty slick. To deliver the painting and get the money without being caught.” Betty thought it a clever plan.

“If whoever did this is smart enough to walk out of people’s houses with fabulous art, I’m sure he or she, but I think it’s a he, would have that figured out.”

“The drivers were killed,” Betty interjected. “Those were the original thieves.”

“Yes, I think so, too. And now they are safely out of the way. Although there is one not yet caught or found.”

“Sister, maybe two men have been killed…possibly Sabatini’s man, too, I mean, there is the forefinger and middle finger thing…I doubt our mastermind would take that chance.” Sister opened the door for the boys.

“Well, whoever this is will make a lot of money.” Weevil counted hounds even though all were there; it was a huntsman habit. “All on.” He smiled.

“How about we walk out tomorrow, ride Saturday, then take Sunday off. It’s good for them. Good for us,” Sister said.

“Sure. Nine? Seven?” Weevil gave her an impish look.

“Okay.” All agreed. “Nine.”

After hound walk, Sister returned to the library to research art thefts. Thefts differ not just in time but in countries. What they had in common that she could discern was some were only about money. Others seemed to be the work of unbalanced people.

She wasn’t sure which camp the Munnings and Pater fell into.

As Golly peeped around Gray’s big computer, Gray let Sister take over while he studied the pictures of Munnings’s paintings. It didn’t occur to Sister that finding out which camp these thefts fell into could be dangerous.