Dick Francis: In the Frame

My thanks to two professional artists MICHAEL JEFFERY of Australia and JOSEF JIRA of Czechoslovakia who generously showed me their studios, their methods, their minds and their lives.

Also to the many art galleries whose experts gave me information and help, and particularly to Peter Johnson of Oscar and Peter Johnson, London, SW1, and to the Stud and Stable gallery, Ascot.

I stood on the outside of disaster, looking in.

There were three police cars outside my cousin’s house, and an ambulance with its blue turret light revolving ominously, and people bustling in seriously through his open front door. The chill wind of early autumn blew dead brown leaves sadly on to the driveway, and harsh scurrying clouds threatened worse to come. Six o’clock, Friday evening, Shropshire, England.

Intermittent bright white flashes from the windows spoke of photography in progress within. I slid my satchel from my shoulder and dumped both it and my suitcase on the grass verge, and with justifiable foreboding completed my journey to the house.

I had travelled by train to stay for the week-end. No cousin with car to meet me as promised, so I had started to walk the mile and a half of country road, sure he would come tearing along soon in his muddy Peugeot, full of jokes and apologies and plans.

No jokes.

He stood in the hall, dazed and grey. His body inside his neat business suit looked limp, and his arms hung straight down from the shoulders as if his brain had forgotten they were there. His head was turned slightly towards the sittingroom, the source of the flashes, and his eyes were stark with shock.

‘Don?’ I said. I walked towards him. ‘Donald!’

He didn’t hear me. A policeman, however, did. He came swiftly from the sittingroom in his dark blue uniform, took me by the arm and swung me strongly and unceremoniously back towards the door.

‘Out of here, sir,’ he said. ‘If you please.’

The strained eyes slid uncertainly our way.

‘Charles...’ His voice was hoarse.

The policeman’s grip loosened very slightly. ‘Do you know this man, sir?’ he asked Donald.

‘I’m his cousin,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ He took his hand off, told me to stay where I was and look after Mr Stuart, and returned to the sittingroom to consult.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

Don was past answering. His head turned again towards the sittingroom door, drawn to a horror he could no longer see. I disobeyed the police instructions, took ten quiet steps, and looked in.

The familiar room was unfamiliarly bare. No pictures, no ornaments, no edge-to-edge floor covering of oriental rugs. Just bare grey walls, chintz-covered sofas, heavy furniture pushed awry, and a great expanse of dusty wood-block flooring.

And on the floor, my cousin’s young wife, bloody and dead.

The big room was scattered with busy police, measuring, photographing, dusting for fingerprints. I knew they were there; didn’t see them. All I saw was Regina lying on her back, her face the colour of cream.

Her eyes were half open, still faintly bright, and her lower jaw had fallen loose, outlining brutally the shape of the skull. A pool of urine lay wetly on the parquet around her sprawled legs, and one arm was flung out sideways with the dead white fingers curling upwards as if in supplication.

There had been no mercy.

I looked at the scarlet mess of her head and felt the blood draining from my own.

The policeman who had grabbed me before turned round from his consultation with another, saw me swaying in the doorway, and took quick annoyed strides back to my side.

‘I told you to wait outside, sir,’ he said with exasperation, stating clearly that my faintness was my own fault.

I nodded dumbly and went back into the hall. Donald was sitting on the stairs, looking at nothing. I sat abruptly on the floor near him and put my head between my knees.

‘I... f... found... her,’ he said.

I swallowed. What could one say? It was bad enough for me, but he had lived with her, and loved her. The faintness passed away slowly, leaving a sour feeling of sickness. I leaned back against the wall behind me and wished I knew how to help him.

‘She’s... never... home... on F... Fridays,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘S... six. S... six o’clock... she comes b... back. Always.’

‘I’ll get you some brandy,’ I said.

‘She shouldn’t... have been... here...’

I pushed myself off the floor and went into the dining-room, and it was there that the significance of the bare sittingroom forced itself into consciousness. In the dining-room too there were bare walls, bare shelves, and empty drawers pulled out and dumped on the floor. No silver ornaments. No silver spoons or forks. No collection of antique china. Just a jumble of table mats and napkins and broken glass.

My cousin’s house had been burgled. And Regina... Regina, who was never home on Fridays... had walked in...

I went over to the plundered sideboard, flooding with anger and wanting to smash in the heads of all greedy, callous, vicious people who cynically devastated the lives of total strangers. Compassion was all right for saints. What I felt was plain hatred, fierce and basic.

I found two intact glasses, but all the drink had gone. Furiously I stalked through the swing door into the kitchen and filled the electric kettle.

In that room too, the destruction had continued, with stores swept wholesale off the shelves. What valuables, I wondered, did thieves expect to find in kitchens? I jerkily made two mugs of tea and rummaged in Regina’s spice cupboard for the cooking brandy, and felt unreasonably triumphant when it proved to be still there. The sods had missed that, at least.

Donald still sat unmoving on the stairs. I pressed the cup of strong sweet liquid into his hands and told him to drink, and he did, mechanically.

‘She’s never home... on Fridays,’ he said.

‘No,’ I agreed, and wondered just how many people knew there was no one home on Fridays.

We both slowly finished the tea. I took his mug and put it with mine on the floor, and sat near him as before. Most of the hall furniture had gone. The small Sheraton desk... the studded leather chair... the nineteenth century carriage clock...

‘Christ, Charles,’ he said.

I glanced at his face. There were tears, and dreadful pain. I could do nothing, nothing, to help him.

The impossible evening lengthened to midnight, and beyond. The police, I suppose, were efficient, polite, and not unsympathetic, but they left a distinct impression that they felt their job was to catch criminals, not to succour the victims. It seemed to me that there was also, in many of their questions, a faint hovering doubt, as if it were not unknown for householders to arrange their own well-insured burglaries, and for smooth-seeming swindles to go horrifically wrong.

Donald didn’t seem to notice. He answered wearily, automatically, with long pauses sometimes between question and answer.

Yes, the missing goods were well-insured.

Yes, they had been insured for years.

Yes, he had been to his office all day as usual.

Yes, he had been out to lunch. A sandwich in a pub.

He was a wine shipper.

His office was in Shrewsbury.

He was thirty-seven years old.

Yes, his wife was much younger. Twenty-two.

He couldn’t speak of Regina without stuttering, as if his tongue and lips were beyond his control. She always s... spends F... Fridays... working... in a f... friend’s... f... flower... shop.

‘Why?’

Donald looked vaguely at the Detective Inspector, sitting opposite him across the diningroom table. The matched antique dining chairs had gone. Donald sat in a garden armchair brought from the sunroom. The Inspector, a constable and I sat on kitchen stools.