In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,4

as “contents”.’

We started on the diningroom and made reasonable progress, with him putting the empty drawers back in the sideboard while trying to remember what each had once contained, and me writing down to his dictation. There had been a good deal of solid silver tableware, acquired by Donald’s family in its affluent past and handed down routinely. Donald, with his warmth for antiques, had enjoyed using it, but his pleasure in owning it seemed to have vanished with the goods. Instead of being indignant over its loss, he sounded impersonal, and by the time we had finished the sideboard, decidedly bored.

Faced by the ranks of empty shelves where once had stood a fine collection of early nineteenth century porcelain, he baulked entirely.

‘What does it matter?’ he said drearily, turning away. ‘I simply can’t be bothered…’

‘How about the paintings, then?’

He looked vaguely round the bare walls. The site of each missing frame showed unmistakably in lighter oblong patches of palest olive. In this room they had mostly been works of modern British painters: a Hockney, a Bratby, two Lowrys, and a Spear for openers, all painted on what one might call the artists’ less exuberant days. Donald didn’t like paintings which he said ‘jumped off the wall and made a fuss’.

‘You probably remember them better than I do,’ he said. ‘You do it.’

‘I’d miss some.’

‘Is there anything to drink?’

‘Only the cooking brandy,’ I said.

‘We could have some of the wine.’

‘What wine?’

‘In the cellar.’ His eyes suddenly opened wide. ‘Good God, I’d forgotten about the cellar.’

‘I didn’t even know you had one.’

He nodded. ‘Reason I bought the house. Perfect humidity and temperature for long-term storage. There’s a small fortune down there in claret and port.’

There wasn’t, of course. There were three floor-to-ceiling rows of empty racks, and a single cardboard box on a plain wooden table.

Donald merely shrugged. ‘Oh well… that’s that.’

I opened the top of the cardboard box and saw the elegant corked shapes of the tops of wine bottles.

‘They’ve left these, anyway,’ I said. ‘In their rush.’

‘Probably on purpose,’ Don smiled twistedly. ‘That’s Australian wine. We brought it back with us.’

‘Better than nothing,’ I said disparagingly, pulling out a bottle and reading the label.

‘Better than most, you know. A lot of Australian wine is superb.’

I carried the whole case up to the kitchen and dumped it on the table. The stairs from the cellar led up into the utility room among the washing machines and other domesticities, and I had always had an unclear impression that its door was just another cupboard. I looked at it thoughtfully, an unremarkable white painted panel merging inconspicuously into the general scenery.

‘Do you think the burglars knew the wine was there?’ I asked.

‘God knows.’

‘I would never have found it.’

‘You’re not a burglar, though.’

He searched for a corkscrew, opened one of the bottles, and poured the deep red liquid into two kitchen tumblers. I tasted it and it was indeed a marvellous wine, even to my untrained palate. Wynn’s Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. You could wrap the name round the tongue as lovingly as the product. Donald drank his share absentmindedly as if it were water, the glass clattering once or twice against his teeth. There was still an uncertainty about many of his movements, as if he could not quite remember how to do things, and I knew it was because with half his mind he thought all the time of Regina, and the thoughts were literally paralysing.

The old Donald had been a man of confidence, capably running a middle-sized inherited business and adding his share to the passed-on goodies. He had a blunt uncompromising face lightened by amber eyes which smiled easily, and he had considered his money well-spent on shapely hair-cuts.

The new Donald was a tentative man shattered with shock, a man trying to behave decently but unsure where his feet were when he walked upstairs.

We spent the evening in the kitchen, talking desultorily, eating a scratch meal, and tidying all the stores back on to the shelves. Donald made a good show of being busy but put half the tins back upside down.

The front door bell rang three times during the evening but never in the code pre-arranged with the police. The telephone, with its receiver lying loose beside it, rang not at all. Donald had turned down several offers of refuge with local friends and visibly shook at the prospect of talking to anyone but Frost and me.

‘Why don’t they go away?’ he said despairingly, after the third attempt on