In the Frame (7 page)

Alternate disbelief and anger kept Maisie going through two more double gins. Disbelief, eventually, won.

‘You got it wrong, dear,’ she said finally.

‘I hope so.’

‘Inexperience of youth, of course.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Because of course everything was in its place, dear, when I went off last Friday week to stay with Betty, and I only went to Betty’s with not having seen her for so long while I’d been away, which is ironic when you think of it, but of course you can’t stay at home for ever on the off-chance your house is going to catch fire and you can save it, can you dear, or you’d never go anywhere and I would have missed my trip to Australia.’

She paused for breath. Coincidence, I thought.

‘All I can say, dear, is that it’s a miracle I took most of my jewellery with me to Betty’s, because I don’t always, except that Archie always said it was safer and of course he was always so sensible and thoughtful and sweet.’

‘Australia?’ I said.

‘Well, yes, dear, wasn’t that nice? I went out there for a visit to Archie’s sister who’s lived there since Heaven knows when and was feeling lonely since she’d been widowed, poor dear, and I went out for a bit of fun, dear, because of course I’d never really met her, only exchanged postcards of course, and I was out there for six weeks with her. She wanted me to stay, and of course we got on
together like a house on fire… oh dear, I didn’t mean that exactly… well, anyway, I said I wanted to come back to my little house by the sea and think it over, and of course I took my jewellery with me on that trip too, dear.’

I said idly, ‘I don’t suppose you bought a Munnings while you were there.’

I didn’t know why I’d said it, apart from thinking of Donald in Australia. I was totally unprepared for her reaction.

Astounded she had been before: this time, pole-axed. Before, she had been incredulous and angry. This time, incredulous and frightened.

She knocked over her gin, slid off her bar stool, and covered her open mouth with four trembling red-nailed fingers.

‘You didn’t!’ I said disbelievingly.

‘How do you know?’

‘I don’t…’

‘Are you from Customs and Excise?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh dear. Oh dear…’ She was shaking, almost as shattered as Donald.

I took her arm and led her over to an armchair beside a small bar table.

‘Sit down,’ I said coaxingly, ‘and tell me.’

It took ten minutes and a refill double gin.

‘Well, dear, I’m not an art expert, as you can probably guess, but there was this picture by Sir Alfred Munnings, signed and everything, dear, and it was such a bargain really, and I thought how tickled Archie would have been to have a real Munnings on the wall, what with us both liking the races, of course, and, well, Archie’s sister egged me on a bit, and I felt quite… I suppose you might call it
high
, dear, so I bought it.’

She stopped.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Well, dear, I suppose you’ve guessed from what I said just now.’

‘You brought it into this country without declaring it?’

She sighed. ‘Yes, dear, I did. Of course it was silly of me but I never gave customs duty a thought when I bought the painting, not until just before I came home, a week later, that was, and Archie’s sister asked if I was going to declare it, and well, dear, I really
resent
having to pay duty on things, don’t you? So anyway I thought I’d better find out just how much the duty would be, and I found it wasn’t duty at all in the ordinary way, dear, there isn’t duty on second-hand pictures being brought in from Australia, but would you believe it they said I would have to pay Value Added Tax, sort of tax on buying things, you know, dear, and I would have to pay eight per cent on whatever I had bought the picture for. Well, I ask you! I was that mad, dear, I can tell you. So Archie’s sister said why didn’t I leave the painting with her, because then if I went back to Australia I would have paid the tax for nothing, but I wasn’t sure I’d go back and anyway I did want to see Sir Alfred Munnings on the wall where Archie would have loved it, so, well, dear, it was all done up nicely in boards and brown paper so I just camouflaged it a bit with my best nightie and popped it in my suitcase, and pushed it through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ lane at Heathrow when I got back, and nobody stopped me.’

‘How much would you have had to pay?’ I said.

‘Well, dear, to be precise, just over seven hundred pounds. And I know that’s not a fortune, dear, but it made me so mad to have to pay tax here because I’d bought something nice in Australia.’

I did some mental arithmetic. ‘So the painting cost about nine thousand?’

‘That’s right, dear. Nine thousand.’ She looked anxious. ‘I wasn’t done, was I? I’ve asked one or two people since I got back and they say lots of Munningses cost fifteen or more.’

‘So they do,’ I said absently. And some could be got for fifteen hundred, and others, I dared say, for less.

‘Well, anyway, dear, it was only when I began to think about insurance that I wondered if I would be found out, if say, the insurance people wanted a
receipt
or anything, which they probably would, of course, so I didn’t do anything about it, because of course if I
did
go back to Australia I could just take the picture with me and no harm done.’

‘Awkward,’ I agreed.

‘So now it’s burnt, and I dare say you’ll think it serves me right, because the nine thousand’s gone up in smoke and I won’t see a penny of it back.’

She finished the gin and I bought her another.

‘I know it’s not my business, Maisie, but how did you happen to have nine thousand handy in Australia? Aren’t there rules about exporting that much cash?’

She giggled. ‘You don’t know much about the world, do you, dear? But anyway, this time it was all hunky dory. I just toddled along with Archie’s sister to a jewellers and sold him a brooch I had, a nasty sort of
toad
, dear, with a socking big diamond in the middle of its forehead, something to do with Shakespeare, I think, though I never got it clear, anyway I never wore it, it was so ugly, but of course I’d taken it with me because of it being worth so much, and I sold it for nine thousand five, though in Australian dollars of course, so there was no problem, was there?’

Maisie took it for granted I would be eating with her, so we drifted in to dinner. Her appetite seemed healthy, but her spirits were damp.

‘You won’t
tell
anyone, will you, dear, about the picture?’

‘Of course not, Maisie.’

‘I could get into such trouble, dear.’

‘I know.’

‘A fine, of course,’ she said. ‘And I suppose that might be the least of it. People can be so beastly about a perfectly innocent little bit of smuggling.’

‘No one will find out, if you keep quiet.’ A thought struck me. ‘Unless, that is, you’ve told anyone already that you’d bought it?’

‘No, dear, I didn’t, because of thinking I’d better pretend I’d had it for years, and of course I hadn’t even hung it on the wall yet because one of the rings was loose in the frame and I thought it might fall down and be damaged, and I couldn’t decide who to ask to fix it.’ She paused for a mouthful of prawn cocktail. ‘I expect you’ll think me silly, dear, but I suppose I was feeling a bit scared of being found out, not guilty exactly because I really don’t see why we
should
pay that irritating tax but anyway I didn’t not only not hang it up, I hid it.

‘You hid it? Still wrapped up?’

‘Well, yes, dear, more or less wrapped up. Of course I’d opened it when I got home, and that’s when I found the ring coming loose with the cord through it, so I wrapped it up again until I’d decided what to do.’

I was fascinated. ‘Where did you hide it?’

She laughed. ‘Nowhere very much, dear. I mean, I was only keeping it out of sight to stop people asking about it, of course, so I slipped it behind one of the
radiators in the lounge, and don’t look so horrified dear, the central heating was turned off.’

I painted at the house all the next day, but neither D.J. nor anyone else turned up.

In between stints at the easel I poked around a good deal on my own account, searching for Maisie’s treasures. I found a good many recognisable remains, durables like bed-frames, kitchen machines and radiators, all of them twisted and buckled not merely by heat but by the weight of the whole edifice from roof downwards having collapsed inwards. Occasional remains of heavy rafters lay blackly in the thick ash, but apart from these, everything combustible had totally, as one might say, combusted.

Of all the things Maisie had described, and of all the dozens she hadn’t, I found only the wrought iron gate from Lady Tythe’s old home, which had divided the hall from the sittingroom. Lady Tythe would never have recognised it.

No copper warming pans, which after all had been designed to withstand red-hot coals. No metal fire screen. No marble table. No antique spears.

Naturally, no Munnings.

When I took my paint-stained fingers back to the Beach at five o’clock I found Maisie waiting for me in the hall. Not the kindly, basically cheerful Maisie I had come to know, but a belligerent woman in a full-blown state of rage.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said, fixing me with a furious eye.

I couldn’t think how I could have offended her.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

‘The bar’s shut,’ she said. ‘So come upstairs to my room.
Bring all your stuff with you.’ She gestured to the suitcase. ‘I’m so
mad
I think I’ll absolutely
burst
.’

She did indeed, in the lift, look in danger of it. Her cheeks were bright red with hard outlines of colour against the pale surrounding skin. Her blonde-rinsed hair, normally lacquered into sophistication, stuck out in wispy spikes, and for the first time since I’d met her her mouth was not glistening with lipstick.

She threw open the door of her room and stalked in. I followed, closing it after me.

‘You’ll never believe it,’ she said forcefully, turning to face me and letting go with all guns blazing. ‘I’ve had the police here half the day, and those insurance men here the other half, and
do you know what they’re saying?
’

‘Oh Maisie.’ I sighed inwardly. It had been inevitable.

‘What do you think I am, I asked them,’ she said. ‘I was so
mad
. There they were, having the 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.’