In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,21

proper trouper.’

She looked pleased and almost kittenish, and I had a vivid impression of what she had been like with Archie.

‘There’s one thing, though, dear,’ she said awkwardly. ‘After today, and all that’s been said, I don’t think I want that picture you’re doing. I don’t any more want to remember the house as it is now, only like it used to be. So if I give you just the fifty pounds, do you mind?’

5

We went to Shropshire in Maisie’s Jaguar, sharing the driving.

Donald on the telephone had sounded unenthusiastic at my suggested return, but also too lethargic to raise objections. When he opened his front door to us, I was shocked.

It was two weeks since I’d left him to go to Yorkshire. In that time he had shed at least fourteen pounds and aged ten years. His skin was tinged with blue-ish shadows, the bones in his face showed starkly, and even his hair seemed speckled with grey.

The ghost of the old Donald put an obvious effort into receiving us with good manners.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’m in the diningroom now. I expect you’d like a drink.’

‘That would be very nice, dear,’ Maisie said.

He looked at her with dull eyes, seeing, as I saw, a large good-natured lady with glossy hair and expensive clothes, her smart appearance walking a tightrope between vulgarity and elegance and just making it to the safer side.

He waved to me to pour the drinks, as if it would be too much for him, and invited Maisie to sit down. The diningroom had been roughly refurnished, containing now a large rug, all the sunroom armchairs, and a couple of small tables from the bedrooms. We sat in a fairly close group round one of the tables, because I had come to ask questions, and I wanted to write down the answers. My cousin watched the production of notebook and ballpoint with no show of interest.

‘Don,’ I said, ‘I want you to listen to a story.’

‘All right.’

Maisie, for once, kept it short. When she came to the bit about buying a Munnings in Australia, Donald’s head lifted a couple of inches and he looked from her to me with the first stirring of attention. When she stopped, there was a small silence.

‘So,’ I said finally, ‘you both went to Australia, you both bought a Munnings, and soon after your return you both had your houses burgled.’

‘Extraordinary coincidence,’ Donald said: but he meant simply that, nothing more. ‘Did you come all this way just to tell me that?’

‘I wanted to see how you were.’

‘Oh. I’m all right. Kind of you, Charles, but I’m all right.’

Even Maisie, who hadn’t known him before, could see that he wasn’t.

‘Where did you buy your picture, Don? Where exactly, I mean.’

‘I suppose… Melbourne. In the Hilton Hotel. Opposite the cricket ground.’

I looked doubtful. Although hotels quite often sold pictures by local artists, they seldom sold Munnings.

‘Fellow met us there,’ Don added. ‘Brought it up to our room. From the gallery where we saw it first.’

‘Which gallery?’

He made a slight attempt to remember. ‘Might have been something like Fine Arts.’

‘Would you have it on a cheque stub, or anything?’

He shook his head. ‘The wine firm I was dealing with paid for it for me, and I sent a cheque to their British office when I got back.’

‘Which wine firm?’

‘Monga Vineyards Proprietary Limited of Adelaide and Melbourne.’

I wrote it all down.

‘And what was the picture like? I mean, could you describe it?’

Donald looked tired. ‘One of those “Going Down to the Start” things. Typical Munnings.’

‘So was mine,’ said Maisie, surprised. ‘A nice long row of jockeys in their colours against a darker sort of sky.’

‘Mine had only three horses,’ Donald said.

‘The biggest, I suppose you might say the nearest jockey in my picture had a purple shirt and green cap,’ Maisie said, ‘and I expect you’ll think I was silly but that was one of the reasons I bought it, because when Archie and I were thinking what fun it would be to buy a horse and go to the races as owners, we decided we’d like purple with a green cap for our colours, if no one else already had that, of course.’

‘Don?’ I said.

‘Mm? Oh… three bay horses cantering… in profile… one in front, two slightly overlapping behind. Bright colours on the jockeys. I don’t remember exactly. White racetrack rails and a lot of sunny sky.’

‘What size?’

He frowned slightly. ‘Not very big. About twenty-four inches by eighteen, inside the frame.’

‘And yours, Maisie?’

‘A