In the Frame by Dick Francis

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 retreatingfrom 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