In the Frame

4

Monday came up with a bright breezy day and an echo of summer’s warmth. I went to Worthing by train and to the house by taxi, and to the interest of the neighbours set up my easel at about the place where the front gates would have been, had they not been unhinged and transplanted by the firemen. The gates themselves lay flat on the lawn, one of them still pathetically bearing a neat painted nameboard.

‘Treasure Holme.’

Poor Archie. Poor Maisie.

I worked over the whole canvas with an unobtrusive coffee-coloured underpainting of raw umber much thinned with turpentine and linseed oil, and while it was still wet drew in, with a paintbrushful of a darker shade of the same colour, the shape of the ruined house against the horizontals of hedges, shingle, sea and sky. It was easy with a tissue to wipe out mistakes of composition at that stage, and try again: to get the proportions right, and the perspective, and the balance of the main masses.

That done and drying, I strolled right round the whole garden, looking at the house from different angles, and staring out over the blackened stumps of the tamarisk hedge which had marked the end of the grass and the beginning of the shingle. The sea sparkled in the morning sunshine, with the small hurrying cumulus clouds scattering patches of dark slate-grey shadow. All the waves had white frills: distant, because the tide again had receded to the far side of a deserted stretch of wet-looking, wave-rippled sand.

The sea wind chilled my ears. I turned to get back to my task and saw two men in overcoats emerge from a large station wagon and show definite signs of interest in what was left of Treasure Holme.

I walked back towards them, reaching them where they stood by the easel appraising my handiwork.

One, heavy and fiftyish. One lean, in the twenties. Both with firm self-confident faces and an air of purpose.

The elder raised his eyes as I approached.

‘Do you have permission to be here?’ he asked. An enquiry; no belligerence in sight.

‘The owner wants her house painted,’ I said obligingly.

‘I see.’ His lips twitched a fraction.

‘And you?’ I enquired.

He raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Insurance,’ he said, as if surprised that anyone should ask.

‘Same company as Mr Greene?’ I said.

‘Mr Who?’

‘Greene. With an “e”.’

‘I don’t know who you mean,’ he said. ‘We are here by arrangement with Mrs Matthews to inspect the damage to her house, which is insured with us.’ He looked with some depression at the extent of the so-called damage, glancing about as if expecting Maisie to materialise Phoenix-like from the ashes.

‘No Greene?’ I repeated.

‘Neither with nor without an “e”.’

I warmed to him. Half an ounce of a sense of humour, as far as I was concerned, achieved results where thumbscrews wouldn’t.

‘Well... Mrs Matthews is no longer expecting you, because the aforesaid Mr Greene, who said he was in insurance, told her she could roll in the demolition squad as soon as she liked.’

His attention sharpened like a tightened violin string.

‘Are you serious?’

‘I was here, with her. I saw him and heard him, and that’s what he said.’

‘Did he show you a card?’

‘No, he didn’t.’ I paused. ‘And... er... nor have you.’

He reached into an inner pocket and did so, with the speed of a conjuror. Producing cards from pockets was a reflex action, no doubt.

‘Isn’t it illegal to insure the same property with two companies?’ I asked idly, reading the card.

‘Fraud.’ He nodded.

‘Unless of course Mr Greene with an “e” had nothing to do with insurance.’

‘Much more likely.’

I put the card in my trouser pocket, Arran sweaters not having been designed noticeably for business transactions. He looked at me thoughtfully, his eyes observant but judgement suspended. He was the same sort of man my father had been, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road, expert at his chosen job but unlikely to set the world on fire.

Or Treasure Holme, for that matter.

‘Gary,’ he said to his younger side-kick, ‘go and find a telephone and ring the Beach Hotel. Tell Mrs Matthews we’re here.’

‘Will do,’ Gary said. He was that sort of man.

While he was away on the errand, D.J. Lagland turned his attention to the ruin, and I, as he seemed not to object, tagged along at his side.

‘What do you look for?’ I asked.

He shot me a sideways look. ‘Evidence of arson. Evidence of the presence of the goods reported destroyed.’

‘I didn’t expect you to be so frank.’

‘I indulge myself, occasionally.’

I grinned. ‘Mrs Matthews seems pretty genuine.’

‘I’ve never met the lady.’

Treat in store, I thought. ‘Don’t the firemen,’ I said, ‘look for signs of arson?’

‘Yes, and also the police, and we ask them for guidance.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘None of your business, I shouldn’t think.’

‘Even for a wooden house,’ I said, ‘it is pretty thoroughly burnt.’

‘Expert, are you?’ he said with irony.

‘I’ve built a lot of Guy Fawkes bonfires, in my time.’

He turned his head.

‘They burn a lot better,’ I said, ‘if you soak them in paraffin. Especially round the edges.’

‘I’ve been looking at fires since before you were born,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go over there and paint?’

‘What I’ve done is still wet.’

‘Then if you stay with me, shut up.’

I stayed with him, silent, and without offence. He was making what appeared to be a preliminary reconnaissance, lifting small solid pieces of debris, inspecting them closely, and carefully returning them to their former positions. None of the things he chose in that way were identifiable to me from a distance of six feet, and as far as I could see none of them gave him much of a thrill.

‘Permission to speak?’ I said.

‘Well?’

‘Mr Greene was doing much what you are, though in the area behind the chimney breast.’

He straightened from replacing yet another black lump. ‘Did he take anything?’ he said.

‘Not while we were watching, which was a very short time. No telling how long he’d been there.’

‘No.’ He considered. ‘Wouldn’t you think he was a casual sight-seer, poking around out of curiosity?’

‘He hadn’t the air.’

D.J. frowned. ‘Then what did he want?’

A rhetorical question. Gary rolled back, and soon after him, Maisie. In her Jaguar. In her scarlet coat. In a temper.

‘What do you mean,’ she said, advancing upon D.J. with eyes flashing fortissimo, ‘the question of arson isn’t yet settled? Don’t tell me you’re trying to wriggle out of paying my cheque, now. Your man said on Saturday that everything was all right and I could start clearing away and rebuilding, and anyway even if it had been arson you would still have to pay up because the insurance covered arson of course.’

D.J. opened and shut his mouth several times and finally found his voice.

‘Didn’t our Mr Robinson tell you that the man you saw here on Saturday wasn’t from us?’

Our Mr Robinson, in the shape of Gary, nodded vigorously.

‘He... Mr Greene... distinctly said he was,’ Maisie insisted.

‘Well... what did he look like?’

‘Smarmy,’ said Maisie without hesitation. ‘Not as young as Charles...’ she gestured towards me, ‘Or as old as you.’ She thought, then shrugged. ‘He looked like an insurance man, that’s all.’

D.J. swallowed the implied insult manfully.

‘About five feet ten,’ I said. ‘Suntanned skin with a sallow tinge, grey eyes with deep upper eyelids, widish nose, mouth straight under heavy drooping dark moustache, straight brown hair brushed back and retreating from the two top corners of his forehead, ordinary eyebrows, greeny-brown trilby of smooth felt, shirt, tie, fawn unbuttoned raincoat, gold signet ring on little finger of right hand, suntanned hands.’

I could see him in memory as clearly as if he still stood there in the ashes before me, taking off his hat and calling Maisie ‘madam’.

‘Good God,’ D.J. said.

‘An artist’s eye, dear,’ said Maisie admiringly. ‘Well I never.’

D.J. said he was certain they had no one like that in their poking-into-claims department, and Gary agreed.

‘Well,’ said Maisie, with a resurgence of crossness, ‘I suppose that still means you are looking for arson, though why you think that anyone in his right senses would want to burn down my lovely home and all my treasures is something I’ll never understand.’

Surely Maisie, worldly Maisie, could not be so naïve. I caught a deep glimmer of intelligence in the glance she gave me, and knew that she certainly wasn’t. D.J. however, who didn’t know, made frustrated little motions with his hands and voted against explaining. I smothered a few more laughs, and Maisie noticed.

‘Do you want your picture,’ I asked, ‘To be sunny like today, or cloudy and sad?’

She looked up at the bright sky.

‘A bit more dramatic, dear,’ she said.

D.J. and Gary inch-by-inched over the ruin all afternoon, and I tried to infuse it with a little Gothic romance. At five o’clock, on the dot, we all knocked off.

‘Union hours?’ said D.J. sarcastically, watching me pack my suitcase.

‘The light gets too yellow in the evenings.’

‘Will you be here tomorrow?’

I nodded. ‘And you?’

‘Perhaps.’

I went by foot and bus along to the Beach Hotel, cleaned my brushes, thought a bit, and at seven met Maisie downstairs in the bar, as arranged.

‘Well, dear,’ she said, as her first gin and tonic gravitated comfortably. ‘Did they find anything?’

‘Nothing at all, as far as I could see.’

‘Well, that’s good, dear.’

I tackled my pint of draught. Put the glass down carefully.

‘Not altogether, Maisie.’

‘Why not?’

‘What exactly were your treasures, which were burned?’

‘I dare say you wouldn’t think so much of them of course, but we had ever such fun buying them, and so have I since Archie’s gone, and well, dear, things like an antique spear collection that used to belong to old Lord Stequers whose niece I nursed once, and a whole wall of beautiful butterflies, which professors and such came to look at, and a wrought iron gate from Lady Tythe’s old home, which divided the hall from the sittingroom, and six warming pans from a castle in Ireland, and two tall vases with eagles on the lids signed by Angelica Kaufman, which once belonged to a cousin of Mata Hari, they really did, dear, and a copper firescreen with silver bosses which was a devil to polish, and a marble table from Greece, and a silver tea urn which was once used by Queen Victoria, and really, dear, that’s just the beginning, if I tell you them all I’ll go on all night.’

‘Did the Foundation insurance company have a full list?’

‘Yes, they did, dear, and why do you want to know?’

‘Because,’ I said regretfully, ‘I don’t think many of those things were inside the house when it burned down.’

‘What?’ Maisie, as far as I could tell, was genuinely astounded. ‘But they must have been.’

‘D.J. as good as told me they were looking for traces of them, and I don’t think they found any.’

‘DJ.?’

‘Mr Lagland. The elder one.’

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.’

‘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 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?’