In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,39

two of expensive vermilion…

‘Charles Todd?’

‘Yes… Mr Taylor?’

‘Hudson. Glad to know you.’ He shook hands, his grip dry and firm. Late forties, medium height, comfortable build, with affable, slightly sad eyes sloping downwards at the outer corners. He was one of the minority of men in morning suits, and he wore it as comfortably as a sweater.

‘Let’s find somewhere dry,’ he said. ‘Come this way.’

He led me steadily up the bank of steps, in through an entrance door, down a wide interior corridor running the whole length of the stands, past a uniformed guard and a notice saying ‘Committee Only’, and into a large square comfortable room fitted out as a small-scale bar. The journey had been one long polite push through expensively dressed cohorts, but the bar was comparatively quiet and empty. A group of four, two men, two women, stood chatting with half-filled glasses held close to their chests, and two women in furs were complaining loudly of the cold.

‘They love to bring out the sables,’ Hudson Taylor chuckled, fetching two glasses of Scotch and gesturing to me to sit by a small table. ‘Spoils their fun, the years it’s hot for this meeting.’

‘Is it usually hot?’

‘Melbourne’s weather can change twenty degrees in an hour.’ He sounded proud of it. ‘Now then, this business of yours.’ He delved into an inner breast pocket and surfaced with a folded paper. ‘Here you are, typed out for Donald. The gallery was called Yarra River Fine Arts.’

I would have been astounded if it hadn’t been.

‘And the man we dealt with was someone called Ivor Wexford.’

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

‘I don’t remember very clearly. It was back in April, do you see?’

I thought briefly and pulled a small slim sketchbook out of my pocket.

‘If I draw him, might you know him?’

He looked amused. ‘You never know.’

I drew quickly in soft pencil a reasonable likeness of Greene, but without the moustache.

‘Was it him?’

Hudson Taylor looked doubtful. I drew in the moustache. He shook his head decisively. ‘No, that wasn’t him.’

‘How about this?’

I flipped over the page and started again. Hudson Taylor looked pensive as I did my best with the man from the basement office.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

I made the lower lip fuller, added heavy-framed spectacles, and a bow tie with spots.

‘That’s him,’ said Hudson in surprise. ‘I remember the bow tie, anyway. You don’t see many of those these days. How did you know? You must have met him.’

‘I walked round a couple of galleries yesterday afternoon.’

‘That’s quite a gift you have there,’ he said with interest, watching me put the notebook away.

‘Practice, that’s all.’ Years of seeing people’s faces as matters of shapes and proportions and planes, and remembering which way the lines slanted. I could already have drawn Hudson’s eyes from memory. It was a knack I’d had from childhood.

‘Sketching is your hobby?’ Hudson asked.

‘And my work. I mostly paint horses.’

‘Really?’ He glanced at the equine portraits decorating the wall. ‘Like these?’

I nodded, and we talked a little about painting for a living.

‘Maybe I can give you a commission, if my horse runs well in the Cup.’ He smiled, the outer edges of his eyes crinkling finely. ‘If he’s down the field, I’ ll feel more like shooting him.’

He stood up and gestured me still to follow. ‘Time for the next race. Care to watch it with me?’

We emerged into daylight in the prime part of the stands, overlooking the big square enclosure which served both for parading the runners before the race and unsaddling the winners after. I was amused to see that the front rows of seats were all for men: two couples walking in front of us split like amoebas, the husbands going down left, the women up right.

‘Down here,’ Hudson said, pointing.

‘May we only go up there if accompanied by a lady?’ I asked.

He glanced at me sideways, and smiled. ‘You find our ways odd? We’ll go up, by all means.’

He led the way and settled comfortably among the predominantly female company, greeting several people and introducing me companionably as his friend Charles from England. Instant first names, instant acceptance, Australian style.

‘Regina hated all this division of the sexes, poor lass,’ he said. ‘But it has interesting historical roots.’ He chuckled. ‘Australia was governed nearly all last century with the help of the British Army. The officers and gentlemen left their wives back in England, but such is nature, they all set up liaisons here with women of low repute. They didn’t want their fellow officers