In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,1

wanting to smash in the heads of all greedy, callous, vicious people who cynically devastated the lives of total strangers. Compassion was all right for saints. What I felt was plain hatred, fierce and basic.

I found two intact glasses, but all the drink had gone. Furiously I stalked through the swing door into the kitchen and filled the electric kettle.

In that room too, the destruction had continued, with stores swept wholesale off the shelves. What valuables, I wondered, did thieves expect to find in kitchens? I jerkily made two mugs of tea and rummaged in Regina’s spice cupboard for the cooking brandy, and felt unreasonably triumphant when it proved to be still there. The sods had missed that, at least.

Donald still sat unmoving on the stairs. I pressed the cup of strong sweet liquid into his hands and told him to drink, and he did, mechanically.

‘She’s never home… on Fridays,’ he said.

‘No,’ I agreed, and wondered just how many people knew there was no one home on Fridays.

We both slowly finished the tea. I took his mug and put it with mine on the floor, and sat near him as before. Most of the hall furniture had gone. The small Sheraton desk… the studded leather chair… the nineteenth century carriage clock…

‘Christ, Charles,’ he said.

I glanced at his face. There were tears, and dreadful pain. I could do nothing, nothing, to help him.

The impossible evening lengthened to midnight, and beyond. The police, I suppose, were efficient, polite, and not unsympathetic, but they left a distinct impression that they felt their job was to catch criminals, not to succour the victims. It seemed to me that there was also, in many of their questions, a faint hovering doubt, as if it were not unknown for householders to arrange their own well-insured burglaries, and for smooth-seeming swindles to go horrifically wrong.

Donald didn’t seem to notice. He answered wearily, automatically, with long pauses sometimes between question and answer.

Yes, the missing goods were well-insured.

Yes, they had been insured for years.

Yes, he had been to his office all day as usual.

Yes, he had been out to lunch. A sandwich in a pub.

He was a wine shipper.

His office was in Shrewsbury.

He was thirty-seven years old.

Yes, his wife was much younger. Twenty-two.

He couldn’t speak of Regina without stuttering, as if his tongue and lips were beyond his control. She always s… spends F… Fridays… working… in a f… friend’s… f… flower… shop.

‘Why?’

Donald looked vaguely at the Detective Inspector, sitting opposite him across the diningroom table. The matched antique dining chairs had gone. Donald sat in a garden armchair brought from the sunroom. The Inspector, a constable and I sat on kitchen stools.

‘What?’

‘Why did she work in a flower shop on Fridays?’

‘She… she… l… likes…’

I interrupted brusquely. ‘She was a florist before she married Donald. She liked to keep her hand in. She used to spend Fridays making those table arrangement things for dances and weddings and things like that…’ And wreaths, too, I thought, and couldn’t say it.

‘Thank you, sir, but I’m sure Mr Stuart can answer for himself.’

‘And I’m sure he can’t.’

The Detective Inspector diverted his attention my way.

‘He’s too shocked,’ I said.

‘Are you a doctor, sir?’ His voice held polite disbelief, which it was entitled to, no doubt. I shook my head impatiently. He glanced at Donald, pursed his lips, and turned back to me. His gaze wandered briefly over my jeans, faded denim jacket, fawn polo-neck, and desert boots, and returned to my face, unimpressed.

‘Very well, sir. Name?’

‘Charles Todd.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty-nine.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Painter.’

The constable unemotionally wrote down these scintillating details in his pocket-sized notebook.

‘Houses or pictures?’ asked the Inspector.

‘Pictures.’

‘And your movements today, sir?’

‘Caught the two-thirty from Paddington and walked from the local station.’

‘Purpose of visit?’

‘Nothing special. I come here once or twice a year.’

‘Good friends, then?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded non-committally. Turned his attention again to Donald and asked more questions, but patiently and without pressure.

‘And what time do you normally reach home on Fridays, sir?’

Don said tonelessly, ‘Five. About.’

‘And today?’

‘Same.’ A spasm twitched the muscles of his face. ‘I saw… the house had been broken into… I telephoned..’

‘Yes, sir. We received your call at six minutes past five. And after you had telephoned, you went into the sitting-room, to see what had been stolen?’

Donald didn’t answer.

‘Our sergeant found you there, sir, if you remember.’

‘Why?’ Don said in anguish. ‘Why did she come home?’

‘I expect we’ll find out, sir.’

The careful exploratory questions went on and on, and as far as I could see achieved nothing except to bring Donald ever closer to