Dick Francis - In the Frame

D.J. swallowed the implied insult manfully.

‘About five feet ten,’ I said. ‘Suntanned skin with a sallow tinge, grey eyes with deep upper eyelids, widish nose, mouth straight under heavy drooping dark moustache, straight brown hair brushed back and retreating from the two top corners of his forehead, ordinary eyebrows, greeny-brown trilby of smooth felt, shirt, tie, fawn unbuttoned raincoat, gold signet ring on little finger of right hand, suntanned hands.’

I could see him in memory as clearly as if he still stood there in the ashes before me, taking off his hat and calling Maisie ‘madam’.

‘Good God,’ D.J. said.

‘An artist’s eye, dear,’ said Maisie admiringly. ‘Well I never.’

D.J. said he was certain they had no one like that in their poking-into-claims department, and Gary agreed.

‘Well,’ said Maisie, with a resurgence of crossness, ‘I suppose that still means you are looking for arson, though why you think that anyone in his right senses would want to burn down my lovely home and all my treasures is something I’ll never understand.’

Surely Maisie, worldly Maisie, could not be so naïve. I caught a deep glimmer of intelligence in the glance she gave me, and knew that she certainly wasn’t. D.J. however, who didn’t know, made frustrated little motions with his hands and voted against explaining. I smothered a few more laughs, and Maisie noticed.

‘Do you want your picture,’ I asked, ‘To be sunny like today, or cloudy and sad?’

She looked up at the bright sky.

‘A bit more dramatic, dear,’ she said.

D.J. and Gary inch-by-inched over the ruin all afternoon, and I tried to infuse it with a little Gothic romance. At five o’clock, on the dot, we all knocked off.

‘Union hours?’ said D.J. sarcastically, watching me pack my suitcase.

‘The light gets too yellow in the evenings.’

‘Will you be here tomorrow?’

I nodded. ‘And you?’

‘Perhaps.’

I went by foot and bus along to the Beach Hotel, cleaned my brushes, thought a bit, and at seven met Maisie downstairs in the bar, as arranged.

‘Well, dear,’ she said, as her first gin and tonic gravitated comfortably. ‘Did they find anything?’

‘Nothing at all, as far as I could see.’

‘Well, that’s good, dear.’

I tackled my pint of draught. Put the glass down carefully.

‘Not altogether, Maisie.’

‘Why not?’

‘What exactly were your treasures, which were burned?’

‘I dare say you wouldn’t think so much of them of course, but we had ever such fun buying them, and so have I since Archie’s gone, and well, dear, things like an antique spear collection that used to belong to old Lord Stequers whose niece I nursed once, and a whole wall of beautiful butterflies, which professors and such came to look at, and a wrought iron gate from Lady Tythe’s old home, which divided the hall from the sittingroom, and six warming pans from a castle in Ireland, and two tall vases with eagles on the lids signed by Angelica Kaufman, which once belonged to a cousin of Mata Hari, they really did, dear, and a copper firescreen with silver bosses which was a devil to polish, and a marble table from Greece, and a silver tea urn which was once used by Queen Victoria, and really, dear, that’s just the beginning, if I tell you them all I’ll go on all night.’

‘Did the Foundation insurance company have a full list?’

‘Yes, they did, dear, and why do you want to know?’

‘Because,’ I said regretfully, ‘I don’t think many of those things were inside the house when it burned down.’

‘ What ?’ Maisie, as far as I could tell, was genuinely astounded. ‘But they must have been.’

‘D.J. as good as told me they were looking for traces of them, and I don’t think they found any.’

‘DJ.?’

‘Mr Lagland. The elder one.’

Alternate disbelief and anger kept Maisie going through two more double gins. Disbelief, eventually, won.

‘You got it wrong, dear,’ she said finally.

‘I hope so.’

‘Inexperience of youth, of course.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Because of course everything was in its place, dear, when I went off last Friday week to stay with Betty, and I only went to Betty’s with not having seen her for so long while I’d been away, which is ironic when you think of it, but of course you can’t stay at home for ever on the off-chance your house is going to catch fire and you can save it, can you dear, or you’d never go anywhere and I would have missed my trip to Australia.’

She paused for breath. Coincidence, I thought.

‘All I can say, dear, is that it’s a miracle I took most of my jewellery with me to Betty’s, because I don’t always, except that Archie always said it was safer and of course he was always so sensible and thoughtful and sweet.’

‘Australia?’ I said.

‘Well, yes, dear, wasn’t that nice? I went out there for a visit to Archie’s sister who’s lived there since Heaven knows when and was feeling lonely since she’d been widowed, poor dear, and I went out for a bit of fun, dear, because of course I’d never really met her, only exchanged postcards of course, and I was out there for six weeks with her. She wanted me to stay, and of course we got on together like a house on fire... oh dear, I didn’t mean that exactly... well, anyway, I said I wanted to come back to my little house by the sea and think it over, and of course I took my jewellery with me on that trip too, dear.’

I said idly, ‘I don’t suppose you bought a Munnings while you were there.’

I didn’t know why I’d said it, apart from thinking of Donald in Australia. I was totally unprepared for her reaction.

Astounded she had been before: this time, pole-axed. Before, she had been incredulous and angry. This time, incredulous and frightened.

She knocked over her gin, slid off her bar stool, and covered her open mouth with four trembling red-nailed fingers.

‘You didn’t!’ I said disbelievingly.

‘How do you know?’

‘I don’t...’

‘Are you from Customs and Excise?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh dear. Oh dear...’ She was shaking, almost as shattered as Donald.

I took her arm and led her over to an armchair beside a small bar table.

‘Sit down,’ I said coaxingly, ‘and tell me.’

It took ten minutes and a refill double gin.

‘Well, dear, I’m not an art expert, as you can probably guess, but there was this picture by Sir Alfred Munnings, signed and everything, dear, and it was such a bargain really, and I thought how tickled Archie would have been to have a real Munnings on the wall, what with us both liking the races, of course, and, well, Archie’s sister egged me on a bit, and I felt quite... I suppose you might call it high , dear, so I bought it.’

She stopped.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Well, dear, I suppose you’ve guessed from what I said just now.’

‘You brought it into this country without declaring it?’

She sighed. ‘Yes, dear, I did. Of course it was silly of me but I never gave customs duty a thought when I bought the painting, not until just before I came home, a week later, that was, and Archie’s sister asked if I was going to declare it, and well, dear, I really resent having to pay duty on things, don’t you? So anyway I thought I’d better find out just how much the duty would be, and I found it wasn’t duty at all in the ordinary way, dear, there isn’t duty on second-hand pictures being brought in from Australia, but would you believe it they said I would have to pay Value Added Tax, sort of tax on buying things, you know, dear, and I would have to pay eight per cent on whatever I had bought the picture for. Well, I ask you! I was that mad, dear, I can tell you. So Archie’s sister said why didn’t I leave the painting with her, because then if I went back to Australia I would have paid the tax for nothing, but I wasn’t sure I’d go back and anyway I did want to see Sir Alfred Munnings on the wall where Archie would have loved it, so, well, dear, it was all done up nicely in boards and brown paper so I just camouflaged it a bit with my best nightie and popped it in my suitcase, and pushed it through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ lane at Heathrow when I got back, and nobody stopped me.’