Dick Francis: In the Frame

‘They said... no funeral.’

‘Donald...’

‘They said... she couldn’t be buried until they had finished their enquiries. They said... it might be months. They said... they will keep her... refrigerated...’

The distress was fearful.

‘They said...’ He swayed slightly. ‘They said... the body of a murdered person belongs to the State.’

I couldn’t hold him. He collapsed at my feet in a deep and total faint.

For two days Donald lay in bed, and I grew to understand what was meant by prostration.

Whether he liked it or not, this time he was heavily sedated, his doctor calling morning and evening with pills and injections. No matter that I was a hopeless nurse and a worse cook, I was appointed, for lack of anyone else, to look after him.

‘I want Charles,’ Donald in fact told the doctor. ‘He doesn’t fuss .’

I sat with him a good deal when he was awake, seeing him struggle dazedly to face and come to terms with the horrors in his mind. He lost weight visibly, the rounded muscles of his face slackening and the contours changing to the drawn shape of illness. The grey shadows round his eyes darkened to a permanent charcoal, and all normal strength seemed to have vanished from arms and legs.

I fed us both from tins and frozen packets, reading the instructions and doing what they said. Donald thanked me punctiliously and ate what he could, but I doubt if he tasted a thing.

In between times, while he slept, I made progress with both the paintings. The sad landscape was no longer sad but merely Octoberish, with three horses standing around in a field, one of them eating grass. Pictures of this sort, easy to live with and passably expert, were my bread and butter. They sold quite well, and I normally churned one off the production line every ten days or so, knowing that they were all technique and no soul.

The portrait of Regina, though, was the best work I’d done for months. She laughed out of the canvas, alive and glowing, and to me at least seemed vividly herself. Pictures often changed as one worked on them, and day by day the emphasis in my mind had shifted, so that the kitchen background was growing darker and less distinct and Regina herself more luminous. One could still see she was cooking, but it was the girl who was important, not the act. In the end I had painted the kitchen, which was still there, as an impression, and the girl, who was not, as the reality.

I hid that picture in my suitcase whenever I wasn’t working on it. I didn’t want Donald to come face to face with it unawares.

Early Wednesday evening he came shakily down to the kitchen in his dressing-gown, trying to smile and pick up the pieces. He sat at the table, drinking the Scotch I had that day imported, and watching while I cleaned my brushes and tidied the palette.

‘You’re always so neat,’ he said.

‘Paint’s expensive.’

He waved a limp hand at the horse picture which stood drying on the easel. ‘How much does it cost, to paint that?’

‘In raw materials, about ten quid. In heat, light, rates, rent, food, Scotch and general wear and tear on the nervous system, about the amount I’d earn in a week if I chucked it in and went back to selling houses.’

‘Quite a lot, then,’ he said seriously.

I grinned. ‘I don’t regret it.’

‘No. I see that.’

I finished the brushes by washing them in soap and water under the tap, pinching them into shape, and standing them upright in ajar to dry. Good brushes were at least as costly as paint.

‘After the digging into the company accounts,’ Donald said abruptly, ‘they took me along to the police station and tried to prove that I had actually killed her myself.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘They’d worked out that I could have got home at lunch time and done it. They said there was time.’

I picked up the Scotch from the table and poured a decent sized shot into a tumbler. Added ice.

‘They must be crazy,’ I said.

‘There was another man, besides Frost. A Superintendent. I think his name was Wall. A thin man, with fierce eyes. He never seemed to blink. Just stared and said over and over that I’d killed her because she’d come back and found me supervising the burglary.’

‘For God’s sake!’ I said disgustedly. ‘And anyway, she didn’t leave the flower shop until half past two.’

‘The girl in the flower shop now says she doesn’t know to the minute when Regina left. Only that it was soon after lunch. And I didn’t get back from the pub until nearly three. I went to lunch late. I was hung up with a client all morning...’ He stopped, gripping his tumbler as if it were a support to hold on to. ‘I can’t tell you... how awful it was.’

The mild understatement seemed somehow to make things worse.

‘They said,’ he added, ‘that eighty per cent of murdered married women are killed by their husbands.’

That statement had Frost stamped all over it.

‘They let me come home, in the end, but I don’t think...’ His voice shook. He swallowed, visibly trying to keep tight control on his hard-won calm. ‘I don’t think they’ve finished.’

It was five days since he’d walked in and found Regina dead. When I thought of the mental hammerings he’d taken on top, the punishing assault on his emotional reserves, where common humanity would have suggested kindness and consoling help, it seemed marvellous that he had remained as sane as he had.

‘Have they got anywhere with catching the thieves?’ I said.

He smiled wanly. ‘I don’t even know if they’re trying.’

‘They must be.’

‘I suppose so. They haven’t said.’ He drank some whisky slowly. ‘It’s ironic, you know. I’ve always had a regard for the police. I didn’t know they could be... the way they are.’

A quandary, I thought. Either they leaned on a suspect in the hope of breaking him down, or they asked a few polite questions and got nowhere: and under the only effective system the innocent suffered more than the guilty.

‘I see no end to it.’ Donald said. ‘No end at all.’

By mid-day Friday the police had called twice more at the house, but for my cousin the escalation of agony seemed to have slowed. He was still exhausted, apathetic, and as grey as smoke, but it was as if he were saturated with suffering and could absorb little more. Whatever Frost and his companion said to him, it rolled off without destroying him further.

‘You’re supposed to be painting someone’s horse, aren’t you?’ he said suddenly, as we shaped up to lunch.

‘I told them I’d come later.’

He shook his head. ‘I remember you saying, when I asked you to stay, that it would fit in fine before your next commission.’ He thought a bit. ‘Tuesday. You should have gone to Yorkshire on Tuesday.’

‘I telephoned and explained.’

‘All the same, you’d better go.’

He said he would be all right alone, now, and thanks for everything. He insisted I look up the times of trains, order a taxi, and alert the people at the other end. I could see in the end that the time had indeed come for him to be by himself, so I packed up my things to depart.

‘I suppose,’ he said diffidently, as we waited for the taxi to fetch me, ‘that you never paint portraits? People, that is, not horses.’

‘Sometimes,’ I said.

‘I just wondered... Gould you, one day... I mean, I’ve got quite a good photograph of Regina...’

I looked searchingly at his face. As far as I could see, it could do no harm. I unclipped the suitcase and took out the picture with its back towards him.

‘It’s still wet,’ I warned. ‘And not framed, and I can’t varnish it for at least six months. But you can have it, if you like.’