Dick Francis - In the Frame

I daresay I looked completely loony standing there with my mouth open. The folder contained a number of simplified line drawings like the one the boy-artist had been colouring in the Arts Centre. Full-sized outline drawings, on flat white canvas, as neat and accurate as tracings.

There were seven of them, all basically of horses. As they were only black and white line drawings I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed that three were Munnings, two Raoul Millais, and the other two... I stared at the old-fashioned shapes of the horses... They couldn’t be Stubbs, he was too well documented... How about Herring? Herring, I thought, nodding. The last two had a look of Herring.

Attached to one of these two canvases by an ordinary paper clip was a small handwritten memo on a piece of scrap paper.

‘Don’t forget to send the original. Also find out what palette he used, if different from usual.’

I looked again at the three identical finished paintings which we had also brought away. These canvases, tacked on to wooden stretchers, looked very much as if they might have started out themselves as the same sort of outlines. The canvas used was of the same weave and finish.

The technical standard of the work couldn’t be faulted. The paintings did look very much like Munnings’ own, and would do much more so after they had dried and been varnished. Different coloured paints dried at different speeds, and also the drying time of paints depended very much on the amount of oil or turps used to thin them, but at a rough guess all three pictures had been completed between three and six days earlier. The paint was at the same stage on all of them. They must, I thought, have all been painted at once, in a row, like a production line. Red hat, red hat, red hat... It would have saved time and paint.

The brushwork throughout was painstaking and controlled. Nothing slapdash. No time skimped. The quality of care was the same as in the Millais copy at Alice.

I was looking, I knew, at the true worth of Harley Renbo.

All three paintings were perfectly legal. It was never illegal to copy: only to attempt to sell the copy as real.

I thought it all over for a bit longer, and then set rapidly to work.

The Hilton, when I went downstairs an hour later, were most amiable and helpful.

Certainly, they could do what I asked. Certainly, I could use the photo-copying machine, come this way. Certainly, I could pay my bill now, and leave later.

I thanked them for their many excellent services.

‘Our pleasure,’ they said: and, incredibly, they meant it.

Upstairs again, waiting for Jik and Sarah, I packed all my things. That done, I took off my jacket and shirt and did my best at rigging the spare bandages and clips back into something like the Alice shape, with my hand inside across my chest. No use pretending that it wasn’t a good deal more comfortable that way than the dragging soreness of letting it all swing free. I buttoned my shirt over the top and calculated that if the traffic was bad Jik might still be struggling out of the racecourse.

A little anxiously, and still faintly feeling unwell, I settled to wait.

I waited precisely five minutes. Then the telephone by the bed rang, and I picked up the receiver.

Jik’s voice, sounding hard and dictatorial.

‘Charles, will you please come down to our room at once.’

‘Well...’ I said hesitantly. ‘Is it important?’

‘Bloody chromic oxide!’ he said explosively. ‘Can’t you do anything without arguing?’

Christ , I thought.

I took a breath. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ I said. ‘I need ten minutes. I’m... er... I’ve just had a shower. I’m in my underpants.’

‘Thank you, Charles,’ he said. The telephone clicked as he disconnected.

A lot of Jik’s great oaths galloped across my mind, wasting precious time. If ever we needed divine help, it was now.

Stifling a gut-twisting lurch of plain fear I picked up the telephone and made a series of internal calls.

‘Please could you send a porter up right away to room seventeen eighteen to collect Mr Cassavetes’ bags?’

‘Housekeeper..? Please will you send someone along urgently to seventeen eighteen to clean the room as Mr Cassavetes has been sick...’

‘Please will you send the nurse along to seventeen eighteen at once as Mr Cassavetes has a severe pain...’

‘Please will you send four bottles of your best champagne and ten glasses up to seventeen eighteen immediately...’

‘Please bring coffee for three to seventeen eighteen at once...’

‘Electrician? All the electrics have fused in room seventeen eighteen, please come at once.’

‘... the water is overflowing in the bathroom, please send the plumber urgently.’

Who else was there? I ran my eye down the list of possible services. One wouldn’t be able to summon chiropodists, masseuses, secretaries, barbers or clothes-pressers in a hurry... but television, why not?

‘... Please would you see to the television in room seventeen eighteen. There is smoke coming from the back and it smells like burning...’

That should do it, I thought. I made one final call for myself, asking for a porter to collect my bags. Right on, they said. Ten dollar tip I said if the bags could be down in the hall within five minutes. No sweat, an Australian voice assured me happily. Coming right that second.

I left my door ajar for the porter and rode down two storeys in the lift to floor seventeen. The corridor outside Jik and Sarah’s room was still a broad empty expanse of no one doing anything in a hurry.

The ten minutes had gone.

I fretted.

The first to arrive was the waiter with the champagne, and he came not with a tray but a trolley, complete with ice buckets and spotless white cloths. It couldn’t possibly have been better.

As he slowed to a stop outside Jik’s door, two other figures turned into the corridor, hurrying, and behind them, distantly, came a cleaner slowly pushing another trolley of linen and buckets and brooms.

I said to the waiter, ‘Thank you so much for coming so quickly.’ I gave him a ten dollar note, which surprised him. ‘Please go and serve the champagne straight away.’

He grinned, and knocked on Jik’s door.

After a pause, Jik opened it. He looked tense and strained.

‘Your champagne, sir,’ said the waiter.

‘But I didn’t...’ Jik began. He caught sight of me suddenly, where I stood a little back from his door. I made waving-in motions with my hand, and a faint grin appeared to lighten the anxiety.

Jik retreated into the room followed by trolley and waiter.

At a rush, after that, came the electrician, the plumber and the television man. I gave them each ten dollars and thanked them for coming so promptly. ‘I had a winner,’ I said. They took the money with more grins and Jik opened the door to their knock.

‘Electrics... plumbing... television...’ His eyebrows rose. He looked across to me in rising comprehension. He flung wide his door and invited them in with all his heart.

‘Give them some champagne,’ I said.

‘God Almighty.’

After that, in quick succession, came the porter, the man with the coffee, and the nurse. I gave them all ten dollars from my mythical winnings and invited them to join the party. Finally came the cleaner, pushing her top-heavy-looking load. She took the ten dollars, congratulated me on my good fortune, and entered the crowded and noisy fray.

It was up to Jik, I thought. I couldn’t do any more.

He and Sarah suddenly popped out like the corks from the gold-topped bottles, and stood undecided in the corridor. I gripped Sarah’s wrist and tugged her towards me.

‘Push the cleaning trolley through the door, and turn it over,’ I said to Jik.