The Big Steal (23 page)

Dear Antiques Expert: I have found the perfect mirror to go in my entrance hall, but the glass needs replacing. When I asked the dealer if he could have a new one put in, he said that since it was an 18th-century mirror with its original glass that I'd be hurting its value. How could this be since the glass that's in it is so dark and crackled you can hardly see your own reflection
?

In the 18th century it was difficult to cut a large piece of glass without breaking it. Thus, mirrors, especially ones with beautiful frames, were expensive. Over the years, when the “looking glass” (as the mirror was called) broke, cracked, or became cloudy, it was replaced. American-made all-original mirrors are rare. A record $242,000 was paid for a labeled, museum-quality Philadelphia mirror some years back. So, should you find a genuine early mirror retaining its old glass, it is wise to place a new glass in front of the old (separated by mylar), thereby keeping the original mirror intact.

 

I
SLIPPED INTO
the bathroom to wash my hands before dinner. How different it was from Wynderly's powder room with
its bejeweled mirror and gold-plated faucets. Terena's simple fixtures dated from the 1920s, about the time the room was added to the house, I figured. Above the lavatory hung an eighteenth-century Chippendale mirror still fitted with its original glass. I peered around its cloudy and flaked portions to find a spot where I could see my reflection well enough to apply a fresh coat of lipstick.

I recalled that oft-quoted biblical verse, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” If only it were
then
, not
now
, and I
could
see the truth face to face, for everywhere I turned, everywhere I looked, all—Hoyt, Mazie, Wynderly itself—was becoming darker by the moment, especially after Tracy's most recent comments.

Truth never hurts the teller
, Mother had drilled into me. Thing was, the truth was becoming as fuzzy and distorted as my own image in the mirror.

My only comfort was that I had
not
come across any dead bodies up in the priest hole or its adjoining room. The strange, and apparently unfulfilled, false obituary note I had found there had been unsettling enough. Thinking back, it struck me as funny how I'd been so disturbed by it at the time, only to have it slip to the back of my mind until now.

I stood, staring in the mirror. What
was
the date of that handwritten obituary—1954, '55? If it was 1955, and I thought it was, that was the same year the Kirklander appraisal had been made. And Hoyt's notes indicating that he had begun selling replicas dated back to, when was it … The earliest date I recalled was 1951.

Tracy had more than hinted about things at Wynderly being amiss, but my fears were beginning to run much deeper.
Something more cruel than the faking of a few antiques had surely happened those many years ago.

My thoughts went back to Tracy's recollection of her father's comments. She had left me with little doubt that Hoyt had been up to no good. But would the proof of his notations in the appraisal be sufficient? And would it be possible to track down the people he had sold the fakes to? He hadn't mentioned names that I had noticed. And the companies that had made them: surely they were out of business, or, like the one in Kyoto, out of reach. I didn't want to think what was going to happen when Babson and Michael, the bank, and the Wynderly Foundation board got hold of the information only Michelle and I held. As I'd learned long ago, money invariably brings out the worst in everyone.

Y
VES HAD PREPARED
a scrumptious supper of traditional Virginia foods—creamy peanut soup accompanied by ham biscuits made the way they're supposed to be, with country ham piled half an inch thick on hot buttered biscuits no larger than a fifty-cent piece.

“Have antiques always been your passion?” I asked. “Everywhere I look, another treasure. This is a real treat for me.”

Tracy put her soup spoon down and laughed. “I was born with the gene. Some are born scientists or mathematicians. My father loved antiques, as did his father, and on and on … though of course these things weren't
always
antique.” She gestured with her wineglass. “That huntboard over there goes back to Orange's halcyon days. I remember the day my father decided to bring it in from the outbuilding where it had been stored for years and put it right there under that picture.”

Above the huntboard hung a handsome oil painting of blue-blooded, red-coated huntsmen, thoroughbred horses, and kennel-bred dogs. In the background stood Terena. I couldn't help wondering who had painted it and what sort of money it would bring in these parts where people vie with horses for the title “thoroughbred.”

“Daddy told me how
his
grandfather and his friends used to ride around to the back of the house after the hunt,” she said. “The servants would have laid out a whole spread of food and drink on that very huntboard so the men didn't have to dismount, wash up, and go inside to eat. They'd just lean over and grab a biscuit.”

She picked up her own ham biscuit and tipped it as if saluting toward the picture, the huntboard, and, of course, her ancestors. “Why, it was nothing more than an outdoor picnic table to them then. Now it's a prized antique worth tens of thousands. How times
do
change. But not the biscuits.”

“You just made me think of something my mother used to say,” I said. “Mother would see a fine antique and say, ‘Time's been a friend to you, you're an antique.' Then she'd say, ‘Too bad time can't be that kind to people.'”

“I'm with your mom,” Tracy said. “Time's a lot nicer to things than it is to most people. Sounds like you had a good mother,” she added. “I never had any children. Wasn't about to burden any poor child with having
me
for a mother. Never have regretted it either. I guess I never really loved any of my husbands deeply enough to want them to be my child's father.” She paused. “You know, if Mazie and Hoyt had had children, this whole mess over at Wynderly probably wouldn't have come to be.”

“Actually,” I said, “I've wondered who—which one of them, Mazie or Hoyt—decided to turn the house over to the foundation and make it a museum. I know Mazie outlived Hoyt by years, but was it
his
idea, or was it she who—”

“Miss Mary Sophie would be the one to know that,” Tracy said. “She's much older and knew the Wyndfields fairly well. Yes, quite well. There might have even been some distant kinship between Hoyt and her father. I'm not sure, though that would certainly explain why she's been so generous in her gifts to Wynderly in the past, especially considering that Miss Mary Sophie is quite shrewd and sees right through things. But to your question—I would think that Hoyt and Mazie both would have agreed to it, then again, I really don't know.

“Like I said, my father never had much time for Hoyt Wyndfield. Back when Hoyt was alive, I was a young girl and much more interested in horses and boys than I was hearing about stuffy old neighbors who lived miles away. Anyway I got shipped off to school pretty young—eighth grade—and before that it was camp every summer or trips to Europe. My mother died when I was seven. I just wasn't around a lot, plus … Well, truth is, I didn't much like it here—not then. It was hard for me to fit in. There weren't many other kids, and the ones there were, well, they weren't like me. The families that owned the big houses tended to be older. Sometimes their grandchildren visited, but I never really got to know them. Most of the kids my age were from families that worked the farms or had businesses in town or clerked in the stores around here. Back in those days, we didn't associate that much with people who weren't like us. It's a better world these days. Soccer. Science camps. All those activities kids have now. They can get
together and play and learn about each other. We didn't do it back in the fifties, especially when we lived such distances apart. Wasn't like you could run over to your neighbor's house.”

Tracy's eyes, usually feisty or lively or both, took on a melancholy gaze. She looked her age. “Funny how the hurts of our youth stay with us, and they cut so much deeper than later hurts. It's like they become embedded within us, grow, and harden our hearts. Who knows? Maybe that's why the later hurts aren't as bad. They haven't lived as long.”

It was easy to envision Tracy as a solitary little rich girl longing for what she couldn't have at any price—a childhood.

“Of course, I eventually put that all behind me,” she said, much brighter. “Still, for many years I stayed away, coming back to Virginia only when I had to. But I guess the land and this house had a strong pull after all.” She shook her head in disgust. “Listen to me. I sound like Scarlett don't I?”

“Speaking of Tara,” I said, laughing along with her, “where did the name Terena come from? It's not exactly a Virginia or English name.”

“Hardly.”

“Italian, maybe?”

She shook her head. “That's what you'd expect. After all, Mr. Jefferson named his house Monticello. But Terena is Portuguese. Actually, I don't know exactly when the house became Terena. Years and years ago—sometime during the nineteenth century. Before that there are some old mentions of it being called Helmsley after the region in England where the family originated. But somewhere along the way, someone went to Portugal on the ‘grand tour,' fell in love with Terena,
came back and gave this very sedate Georgian house a totally inappropriate romantic name.” With her fingers she put quotes around
romantic
.

I must have looked puzzled.

“You know, Terena, the cork and wine country, near the Spanish border. Have you been there?”

I shook my head. No.

“Oh, It's lovely. It's the sort of off-the-beaten-track place that Hoyt and Mazie adored. The countryside is rolling and hilly, like around here. But there the similarities cease. Thank goodness
my
ancestors had enough sense to only change the name of the house and not bring back trunkloads of souvenirs and antiques to junk up the place. Can't you just see this house done over with terracotta floors and heavy dark furniture and hanging baskets of bougainvillea suspended from sky hooks?” Tracy's look said it all.

“Now don't get me wrong, it looks great in Portugal,” she said. “I love it. But bringing Portugal to Virginia makes about as much sense as taking New Mexico to Russia.” She shook her head in disgust. “Some people don't get it, though. Never will forget my friend who moved to Vegas for the climate. Trouble was, she got homesick so she built a Williamsburg-style house. It stuck out like tits on a bull.”

While Tracy refilled my wineglass I asked, “What about Hoyt's family's home. I'm assuming they had a fine place somewhere around here.”

“Well yes … and no. There were two branches of Wyndfields.”

“Oh yes, I know. Worth Merritt told me about them.”

“I will tell you this. Hoyt's family had what my father called
the gambler's curse. To Daddy, a Wyndfield moving down to Southside Virginia back when tobacco money changed hands under the table was like an alcoholic going to a bar. ‘Honest thieving' Daddy called the tobacco-growing business. He said that those Southside people didn't understand an honest day's pay for an honest day's work any more than a carnival man selling snake oil. My daddy said the tobacco field hands lived the whole year off of just half a year's work, and the ‘big men' lived off the poor men's sweat. He didn't think any of it was right. Daddy didn't trust anyone who made a living from cashing in on other's people's sins. Tobacco. Whiskey. Casinos. Daddy felt so strongly about such things he didn't even buy Coca-Cola stock cause of the cocaine that was in it way back in the early days. My father was a man of high ideals.”

Glancing away, she said, “I wish I had inherited more of his principles.” Then she met my eyes. “Anyway, as best I can tell, Daddy considered Hoyt unprincipled. Was he right? I don't know. I think I mentioned that my father was a lawyer. There was much that was never discussed, client confidentiality and all that. But I've often wondered what was really going on behind Wynderly's high towers and long shadows. Even back when I was a girl I could imagine all sorts of wild things going on in the pagoda and summerhouse. Once I got lost in Mazie's maze and it scared me to death. After that I didn't go over there for years. I hadn't been in the big house until recently, but I do know it changed over time.”

Tracy leaned back in her chair. I sensed she had something important to say from the look on her face. “When you asked about my passion for antiques I told you it was in my blood. I always loved going in the houses around here and seeing
what other people had. Ours were usually as fine, or finer,” she said as an aside. “Anyway, I do remember my father commenting on all the ‘new things' at Wynderly at some point in time. French and English things, the things there now. Apparently there had once been some very fine American pieces at Wynderly, back in the 1920s and '30s.”

Tracy drummed her fingers on the table and squinted as if trying to bring pictures in her mind into focus. “I do remember some conversation about those things though. It must have been when … when … Yes. It was either when Frank Horton was here from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, or someone from the National Trust came down to gather information about these houses and their furnishings.” Satisfied, she put her hand back in her lap.

“You know, I don't think I ever thought about the possibility of good things having been at Wynderly until this fiasco came up. But now I
do
wonder what happened to the other pieces. Hmm. I guess there's the chance they went into storage … and if things are going to be sold …”