In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,20
nerve to suggest I’d sold all my treasures and over-insured my house, and was trying to take the insurance people for a ride. I told them, I told them over and over, that everything was in its place when I went to Betty’s and if it was over-insured it was to allow for inflation and anyway the brokers had advised me to put up the amount pretty high, and I’m glad I took their advice, but that Mr Lagland says they won’t be paying out until they have investigated further and he was proper sniffy about it, and no sympathy at all for me having lost everything. They were absolutely beastly, and I hate them all.’
She paused to regather momentum, vibrating visibly with the strength of her feelings. ‘They made me feel so dirty, and maybe I was screaming at them a bit, I was so mad, but they’d no call to be so rude, and making out I was some sort of criminal, and just what right have they to tell me to pull myself together when it is because of them and their bullying that I am yelling at them at the top of my voice?’
It must, I reflected, have been quite an encounter. I wondered in what state the police and D.J. had retired from the field.
‘They say it was definitely arson and I said why did they think so now when they hadn’t thought so at first, and it turns out that it was because that Lagland couldn’t find any of my treasures in the ashes or any trace of them at all, and they said even if I hadn’t sold the things first I had arranged for them to be stolen and the house burnt to cinders while I was away at Betty’s, and they kept on and on asking me who I’d paid to do it, and I got more and more furious and if I’d had anything handy I would have hit them, I really would.’
‘What you need is a stiff gin,’ I said.
‘I told them they ought to be out looking for whoever had done it instead of hounding helpless women like me, and the more I thought of someone walking into my house and stealing my treasures and then callously setting fire to everything the madder I got, and somehow that made me even madder with those stupid men who couldn’t see any further than their stupid noses.’
It struck me after a good deal more of similar diatribe that genuine though Maisie’s anger undoubtedly was, she was stoking herself up again every time her temper looked in danger of relapsing to normal. For some reason, she seemed to need to be in the position of the righteous wronged.
I wondered why; and in a breath-catching gap in the flow of hot lava, I said, ‘I don’t suppose you told them about the Munnings.’
The red spots on her cheeks burned suddenly brighter.
‘I’m not crazy’ she said bitingly. ‘If they found out about that, there would have been a fat chance of convincing them I’m telling the truth about the rest.’
‘I’ve heard,’ I said tentatively, ‘That nothing infuriates a crook more than being had up for the one job he didn’t do.’
It looked for a moment as if I’d just elected myself as the new target for hatred, but suddenly as she glared at me in rage her sense of humour reared its battered head and nudged her in the ribs. The stiffness round her mouth relaxed, her eyes softened and glimmered, and after a second or two, she ruefully smiled.
‘I dare say you’re right, dear, when I come to think of it.’ The smile slowly grew into a giggle. ‘How about that gin?’
Little eruptions continued all evening through drinks and dinner, but the red-centred volcano had subsided to manageable heat.
‘You didn’t seem surprised, dear, when I told you what the police thought I’d done.’ She looked sideways at me over her coffee cup, eyes sharp and enquiring.
‘No.’ I paused. ‘You see, something very much the same has just happened to my cousin. Too much the same, in too many ways. I think, if you will come, and he agrees, that I’d hike to take you to meet him.’
‘But why, dear?’
I told her why. The anger she felt for herself burned up again fiercely for Donald.
‘How dreadful. How selfish you must think me, after all that that poor man has suffered.’
‘I don’t think you’re selfish at all. In fact, Maisie, I think you’re a