What Evil Lurks in Monet's Pond: A (2 page)

The next three husbands were all much, much
older. Arthur Winslow owned a horse farm in Virginia, Bob Peete was
a Texas oilman, and Horace Tillman was a tobacco farmer in
Maryland. Hermione became an enormously wealthy woman as her first
four husbands expired. She was known as a minor patron of the New
American Post-Impressionists, a woman who encouraged undiscovered
painters to join her at her castle estate, the very place my sister
Nora and brother-in-law bought. Unfortunately, post-impressionism
didn’t have the same romantic panache of impressionism. It tended
to leave art lovers cold, save for a few really good masters of the
genre.

And speaking of cold, her offer to give
starving artists a bed and meals at the castle found few takers
once the painters realized they were actually to be ensconced in
the chilly rooms at the top of the stone fortress. Who wants to
paint when your hands are so cold you can’t even feel your fingers?
Back then, the castle had no central heat, and Hermione relied on
the many fireplaces. As much as she wished to emulate her role
model, Florence Griswold did it better in Old Lyme. At least Childe
Hassam thought so, because he certainly did some wonderful
paintings while at his benefactor’s marsh front home.

“Who wants more gravy?” asked Nora, raising
the large gravy boat up for all to see. I demurred, interrupted in
mid-thought. If I’m to figure out who actually stole those
paintings and why, I’ve got to concentrate, I reminded myself. I
learned a long time ago that if I nod every once in awhile and I
look at the different faces in the crowd I’m with, I can actually
succeed in tuning out the conversation before me without giving
myself away.

“Maisie, more turkey?” my brother-in-law
asked.

“I’ll pass,” I decided. More room for
dessert.

The conversation turned to the kids. They
were out for the evening, so it was okay to discuss their accolades
openly. Broderick jumped on Finlay’s college aspirations, advising
Andrew and Nora to go slowly and consider the big picture for the
boy. He was up for a hockey scholarship, thanks to his role as a
captain on a team that was expected to play in the state
championships down at Yale. I tossed in a couple of encouraging
remarks before I tuned out again as the subject turned to Preston
and Ramsay. The twins were sophomores at the local high school,
involved in lacrosse and swimming, doing just fine. I gave myself
some time to consider the history of the museum and its
surroundings.

The grounds of Bothwell Castle were extensive
back then, consisting of 200 acres of woodlands, pastures, and
farmland along the Connecticut River. The more famous castle
belonged to William Gillette, an actor with a reputation for
playing Sherlock Holmes back when the earth cooled. It’s now a
landmark up the river in East Haddam. Hermione’s stone fortress, on
the other hand, was less known for a very good reason. She was just
not an important presence in the world, no matter how hard she
tried to be.

When Hermione married the Count and moved to
East Haddam, the year was 1925 and she had big plans.
Unfortunately, her husband didn’t share the dream. The Count had no
intention of living in the middle of nowhere. He was a much younger
man than his cougar bride, and despite all the pomp and
circumstance of their first two years at Bothwell Castle, things
were not all they seemed to be, as is often the case in these
May-September marriages. Hermione, it turns out, didn’t learn of
the truth about the Count until after he fled to Hungary. Hardly
royalty, the man was a complete fraud, just trying to do what she
had done so long ago and work his way up the social ladder. You
would have thought that if anyone could understand that kind of
behavior, it would be the daughter of the scullery maid and
groomsman, but no. Hermione was bitter, especially about the two
million dollars the Count took with him when he fled. She hired a
team of Brinks men to hunt him down and drag him back to face
charges. In the end, the best they could do was return $1.2 million
in gold coins to the widow. Oh, yes. Widow. Hermione lost another
husband when the phony count, Viktor Szabo, jumped into the Danube
and was presumed dead.

Chapter Two --

I give you the background on Hermione in
order to help you understand the situation that the Tattinger
Museum was in when she drew up plans for its formation in 1930.
Childless and humiliated, having been deceived by the wily Viktor,
Hermione was determined to leave a legacy that would continue to
place her in the public eye long after she was gone. She spent the
last twenty years of her life trying to become the next Isabella
Stewart Gardner or Florence Griswold. Alas, she never reached their
status in the art world, so when it came time to open the museum to
the world, Hermione was forced to purchase the paintings through
auction houses and private sales. Instead of finding the next Van
Gogh or Gauguin, Hermione contented herself in purchasing
affordable art, minor pieces by established masters, hanging them
in the halls of Bothwell Castle for the first ten years of the
museum’s existence. When she realized that the building itself was
not right for the works of art, she made plans. She needed
something different, something better, in which to display these
works of art, minor though they might be. That’s when she built
Bothwell Manor two miles up the road from the castle.

“I heard she was buried in a mausoleum inside
the museum,” said Annabelle. That caught my attention.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bowie
laughed.

“Afraid not,” Nora acknowledged. “It’s a
vault in the middle of the museum’s interior courtyard. You can’t
get to the galleries without passing it.”

“I guess that was Hermione’s way of making
sure everyone knew who was the boss,” Broderick added.

“What kind of an ego do you have to have to
do something that...ostentatious?” Cara wondered.

“Actually, if you think about it, she was
probably very lonely. She cut off her family when she started
marrying up, and by the time she was on her fourth husband, she was
so rich, she was invited to all the big parties,” I told them. “And
then, when the fake count took off with her money, she was probably
mortified, especially after the Depression hit and so much of her
wealth was wiped out. Maybe she thought of the museum as the child
she never had.”

“Speaking of which, isn’t your biological
clock ticking?” Alberta asked me from across the table.

“Meaning?”

“Well, dear, you don’t have that many years
left to get pregnant.”

“Oh, and you think I should?”

“If you want to be a mother.”

“I’m still deciding,” I replied, hoping we
could move on in the conversation. Alas, the A.S.S. whinnied and
took off for the races.

“Really, Margaret Dawson Carr,” she
tut-tutted me. “You have to plan these things out. You’re not
always going to have the looks and figure.”

Bite your tongue, Maisie. Just bite it. Don’t
say anything, because you know that if you do, you’ll say something
so over the top, Alberta will hold it against you for the next
twenty years.

Then again, I paused, is that really such a
bad deal -- comment that could shut up the opinionated meddler for
a couple of decades? Let me get out my American Express card and
run it through the new smartphone app. I’m willing to pay just
about anything for that priceless look on the face of Alberta Susan
Scott.

“It’s so kind of you to want to spare me that
pain,” I replied sweetly, letting my eyes fall on her ample girth.
“But you seem to have handled it all well.”

Wham!
I felt a size ten loafer
dislodge my right foot from its position under the table. Broderick
was warning me, big brother that he was. I ignored his glare.

“Excuse me?” For once in her long life,
Alberta was nonplussed. That had to be worth at least a grand. Even
as I maintained eye contact, I could see Bertie grinning as he sat
several chairs down the table from me. Cara was trying to hide her
amusement behind her red napkin.

“Well, if anyone understands my predicament,
surely it’s someone like you. You chose motherhood, didn’t
you?”

“I don’t see what the fuss is all about,”
Georgina cut in. “After all, when I had my Alison and my Gwyneth, I
only gained twenty pounds with each, and the daily trips to the gym
helped me get back in shape in less than two months. There’s no
reason why women should shy away from childbirth. It’s just a
matter of taking care of one’s self. Clearly, I have not lost my
looks to the ravages of time.”

Oh, Georgie. Look at you go. You’re still
precious, aren’t you? You managed to slip that dig in at the same
time you built yourself up.
You know, for a scientist, Georgina
had a really snarky side. Looking at her now, two seats down to my
right, I could see the velvet skirt and the sparkling top. Her
blonde hair was pulled back in a clip at the base of her neck.
Large gold earrings and a matching necklace picked up the
reflection of the chandelier’s glow. Alberta, on the other hand,
was a good thirty pounds overweight, in keeping with her
overbearing nature and lack of restraint. Her short dark curls
framed a plain face that usually bore a tight expression. I always
chalked that up to the fact that she had no real sense of humor.
She looked like modern female version of Cotton Mather, dressed in
a dark, shapeless tunic and a crisp white cotton blouse. On her
feet were thick-soled, very sensible black shoes. The attire of a
Puritan. Suddenly I realized why she married the ever-bland Marty.
He was hardly a man to make demands in the sack. If anything, he
was a “Yes, Dear” kind of guy. For all her social recognition as a
harbinger of right living, Alberta really was repressed. Maybe if
she let down her tight curls once in awhile and unclenched her
buttocks, she might be a lot more fun to be around.

“You recommend motherhood, Georgie?” I took
the bull by the horns, now curious at where this could lead. After
all, my cousin had married at twenty, had the girls by
twenty-three, and still managed to get herself through college
after she dumped her husband, Russell, in favor of her physics
professor, Dr. Steinglitz. That relationship lasted until she left
for the California Institute of Technology’s Cell Polarity Lab.

“It has its pitfalls and plinths,” Georgina
admitted. “You have to take the good with the bad when it comes to
children. Still, I’d do it again.”

“What about you, Dad?” Annabelle poked her
father in the side. “Would you have kids again?”

“Short answer? No. I know now that I was
meant to be a wealthy sailor, trimming the sails on the ocean blue.
Kids get in the way of all that.”

“Dad!” The shocked daughter recoiled at her
father’s low blow.

“I’m teasing. Of course I would have children
again. You’re the light of my life.” He gave her a big grin, but
Annabelle wasn’t ready to buy it yet.

“It’s not like you’re ‘Father of the Year’,”
she shot back, still licking those wounds. Now that I was out of
the spotlight, I went back to musing on the museum.

It took five years to construct it out of
Portland brownstone, dug from the quarry just up the river towards
Hartford. Almost as impractical as Bothwell Castle, Bothwell Manor
was an imposing mansion with rooms designed to be spacious for the
crowds that Hermione imagined would one day walk through its doors.
I had studied the brochure carefully, in anticipation of a visit.
With galleries opening onto galleries around a center courtyard
that was filled with natural light from the glass roof, the museum
was all hard surfaces and tiny windows. It sat on a rise that
overlooked the Connecticut River in the distance, not a tree in
sight. But the foreboding impression one got from looking at the
ugly imposing structure wasn’t the biggest problem. Bothwell Manor
was in the middle of nowhere, far from the other tourist
attractions. Other than Gillette Castle, now attached to a state
park, there was nothing really around, unless you count the
Goodspeed Opera House across the river. There weren’t any local
restaurants to rave about on this side, or quaint little inns to
lure tourists.

Maybe that’s a big part of why it was the
site of a $2.1 million heist. Was it really all that surprising
that the thief got away with the crime? Think about it. No
witnesses to see the getaway car. That’s because the museum never
bothered to install motion activated lights or sensors of any kind
on the outside of the building. Sure, there were security cameras
poised over each gallery door inside the museum, and the monitors
were located in the security office, but nothing outside the
brownstone walls. In this day and age, that’s almost unheard of,
isn’t it?

“If you ask me, this place was ripe for the
picking,” Andrew said. “The museum is so antiquated in its approach
to security. Think about it. All that land for miles around, two
security guards on duty during the day, and one at night. On the
night of the big heist, the chump was sitting behind a bank of
monitors, watching the proverbial paint dry.”

“Maybe it was an inside job.” My younger
brother poured his wife some more chardonnay.

“Can we really believe the board of directors
never expected anyone to hit that museum?” Broderick had his legal
cap on. “Why, at the very least, would you not take the minimum
security precautions?”

“How much did they spend on their security
program?” Bertie wanted to know.

“Actually,” said Nora, “I heard from Denise
Atkins that they just cut it back. She’s a docent. She said the
board is going to meet to discuss the wisdom of their
decision.”

“I saw on one of the news reports that the
thief got the drop on the guy when he went to the fridge for his
meatball sub and diet Coke.”