Dick Francis - In the Frame

‘Jesus Almighty,’ Jik said.

‘What is it?’

‘Look at this.’

‘... more than a hundred thousand people here today to see the twenty-three runners fight it out over the three thousand two hundred metres ...’

Jik had reached the end of the row and was looking at the foremost of three unframed canvasses tied loosely together with string. I peered over his shoulder. The picture had Munnings written all over it. It had Alfred Munnings written large and clear in the right hand bottom corner. It was a picture of four horses with jockeys cantering on a racecourse: and the paint wasn’t dry.

‘What are the others?’ I said.

Jik ripped off the string. The two other pictures were exactly the same.

‘God Almighty,’ Jik said in awe.

‘... Vinery carries only fifty-one kilograms and has a good barrier position so it’s not impossible ...’

‘Keep looking,’ I said, and went back to the files.

Names. Dates. Places. I shook my head impatiently. We needed more than those Munnings copies and I couldn’t find a thing.

‘Jesus!’ Jik said.

He was looking inside the sort of large flat two-foot by three-foot folder which was used in galleries to store prints.

‘... only Derriby now to enter the stalls ...’

The print-folder had stood between the end of the desk and the nearby wall. Jik seemed transfixed.

Overseas Customers. My eyes flicked over the heading and then went back. Overseas Customers. I opened the file. Lists of people, sorted into countries. Pages of them. Names and addresses.

England.

A long list. Not alphabetical. Too many to read through in the shortage of time.

A good many of the names had been crossed out.

‘... They’re running! This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, and Special Bet is out in front ...’

‘Look at this,’ Jik said.

Donald Stuart. Donald Stuart, crossed out. Shropshire, England. Crossed out.

I practically stopped breathing.

‘... as they pass the stands for the first time it’s Special Bet, Foursquare, Newshound, Derriby, Wonderbug, Vinery ...’

‘Look at this,’ Jik said again, insistently.

‘Bring it,’ I said. ‘We’ve got less than three minutes before the race ends and Melbourne comes back to life.’

‘But—’

‘Bring it,’ I said. ‘And also those three copies.’

‘... Special Bet still making it, from Newshound close second, then Wonderbug ...’

I shoved the filing-drawer shut.

‘Put this file in the print-folder and let’s get out.’

I picked up the radio and Jik’s tools, as he himself had enough trouble managing all three of the untied paintings and the large-print folder.

‘... down the backstretch by the Maribyrnong River it’s still Special Bet with Vinery second now ...’

We went up the stairs. Switched off the lights. Eased round into a view of the car.

It stood there, quiet and unattended, just as we’d left it. No policeman. Everyone elsewhere, listening to the race.

Jik was calling on the Deity under his breath.

‘... rounding the turn towards home Special Bet is droppng back now and its Derriby with Newshound ...’

We walked steadily down the gallery.

The commentator’s voice rose in excitement against a background of shouting crowds.

‘... Vinery in third with Wonderbug, and here comes Ring-wood very fast on the stands side ...’

Nothing stirred out on the street. I went first through our hole in the glass and stood once more, with a great feeling of relief, on the outside of the beehive. Jik carried out the plundered honey and stacked it in the boot. He took the tools from my hands and stored them also.

‘Right?’

I nodded with a dry mouth. We climbed normally into the car. The commentator was yelling to be heard.

‘... Coming to the line it’s Ringwood by a length from Wonderbug, with Newshound third, then Derriby, then Vinery ...’

The cheers echoed inside the car as Jik started the engine and drove away.

‘... Might be a record time. Just listen to the cheers. The result again. The result of the Melbourne Cup. In the frame ... first Ringwood, owned by Mr. Robert Khami ... second Wonderbug ...’

‘Phew,’ Jik said, his beard jaunty and a smile stretching to show an expanse of gum. ‘That wasn’t a bad effort. We might hire ourselves out some time for stealing politicians’ papers.’ He chuckled fiercely.

‘It’s an overcrowded field,’ I said, smiling broadly myself.

We were both feeling the euphoria which follows the safe deliverance from danger. ‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’

He drove to the Hilton, parked, and carried the folder and pictures up to my room. He moved with his sailing speed, economically and fast, losing as little time as possible before returning to Sarah on the racecourse and acting as if he’d never been away.

‘We’ll be back here as soon as we can,’ he promised, sketching a farewell.

Two seconds after he’d shut my door there was a knock on it.

I opened it. Jik stood there.

‘I’d better know,’ he said, ‘What won the Cup?’

When he’d gone I looked closely at the spoils.

The more I saw, the more certain it became that we had hit the absolute jackpot. I began to wish most insistently that we hadn’t wasted time in establishing that Jik and Sarah were at the races. It made me nervous, waiting for them in the Hilton with so much dynamite in my hands. Every instinct urged immediate departure.

The list of Overseas Customers would to any other eyes have seemed the most harmless of documents. Wexford would not have needed to keep it in better security than a locked filing-cabinet, for the chances of anyone seeing its significance in ordinary circumstances were millions to one against.

Donald Stuart, Wrenstone House, Shropshire.

Crossed out.

Each page had three columns, a narrow one at each side with a broad one in the centre. The narrow left-hand column was for dates and the centre for names and addresses. In the narrow right-hand column, against each name, was a short line of apparently random letters and numbers. Those against Donald’s entry, for instance, were MM3109T: and these figures had not been crossed out with his name. Maybe a sort of stock list, I thought, identifying the picture he’d bought.

I searched rapidly down all the other crossed-out names in the England sector. Maisie Matthews’ name was not among them.

Damn, I thought. Why wasn’t it?

I turned all the papers over rapidly. As far as I could see all the overseas customers came from basically English-speaking countries, and the proportion of crossed-out names was about one in three. If every crossing-out represented a robbery, there had been literally hundreds since the scheme began.

At the back of the file I found there was a second and separate section, again divided into pages for each country. The lists in this section were much shorter.

England.

Half way down. My eyes positively leapt at it.

Mrs M. Matthews, Treasure Holme, Worthing, Sussex.

Crossed out.

I almost trembled. The date in the left-hand column looked like the date on which Maisie had bought her picture. The uncrossed-out numbers in the right hand column were SMC29R.

I put down the file and sat for five minutes staring unseeingly at the wall, thinking.

My first and last conclusions were that I had a great deal to do before Jik and Sarah came back from the races, and that instincts were not always right.

The large print-folder, which had so excited Jik, lay on my bed. I opened it flat and inspected the contents.