In the Frame

  ‘… handlers are beginning to load the runners into the starting stalls, and I see Vinery playing up…’

  Half of the files in the upper of the two drawers seemed to deal in varying ways with insurance. Letters, policies, revaluations and security. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, which made it all a bit difficult.

  ‘Jesus Almighty,’ Jik said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look at this.’

  ‘… more than a hundred thousand people here today to see the twenty-three runners fight it out over the three thousand two hundred metres…’

  Jik had reached the end of the row and was looking at the foremost of three unframed canvasses tied loosely together with string. I peered over his shoulder. The picture had Munnings written all over it. It had Alfred Munnings written large and clear in the right hand bottom corner. It was a picture of four horses with jockeys cantering on a racecourse: and the paint wasn’t dry.

  ‘What are the others?’ I said.

  Jik ripped off the string. The two other pictures were exactly the same.

  ‘God Almighty,’ Jik said in awe.

  ‘… Vinery carries only fifty-one kilograms and has a good barrier position so it’s not impossible…’

  ‘Keep looking,’ I said, and went back to the files.

  Names. Dates. Places. I shook my head impatiently. We needed more than those Munnings copies and I couldn’t find a thing.

  ‘Jesus!’ Jik said.

  He was looking inside the sort of large flat two-foot by three-foot folder which was used in galleries to store prints.

  ‘… only Derriby now to enter the stalls…’

  The print-folder had stood between the end of the desk and the nearby wall. Jik seemed transfixed.

  Overseas Customers. My eyes flicked over the heading and then went back. Overseas Customers. I opened the file. Lists of people, sorted into countries. Pages of them. Names and addresses.

  England.

  A long list. Not alphabetical. Too many to read through in the shortage of time.

  A good many of the names had been crossed out.

  ‘… They’re running! This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, and Special Bet is out in front…’

  ‘Look at this,’ Jik said.

  Donald Stuart. Donald Stuart, crossed out. Shropshire, England. Crossed out.

  I practically stopped breathing.

  ‘… as they pass the stands for the first time it’s Special Bet, Foursquare, Newshound, Derriby, Wonderbug, Vinery…’

  ‘Look at this,’ Jik said again, insistently.

  ‘Bring it,’ I said. ‘We’ve got less than three minutes before the race ends and Melbourne comes back to life.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Bring it,’ I said. ‘And also those three copies.’

  ‘… Special Bet still making it, from Newshound close second, then Wonderbug…’

  I shoved the filing-drawer shut.

  ‘Put this file in the print-folder and let’s get out.’

  I picked up the radio and Jik’s tools, as he himself had enough trouble managing all three of the untied paintings and the large-print folder.

  ‘… down the backstretch by the Maribyrnong River it’s still Special Bet with Vinery second now…’

  We went up the stairs. Switched off the lights. Eased round into a view of the car.

  It stood there, quiet and unattended, just as we’d left it. No policeman. Everyone elsewhere, listening to the race.

  Jik was calling on the Deity under his breath.

  ‘… rounding the turn towards home Special Bet is droppng back now and its Derriby with Newshound…’

  We walked steadily down the gallery.

  The commentator’s voice rose in excitement against a background of shouting crowds.

  ‘… Vinery in third with Wonderbug, and here comes Ring-wood very fast on the stands side…’

  Nothing stirred out on the street. I went first through our hole in the glass and stood once more, with a great feeling of relief, on the outside of the beehive. Jik carried out the plundered honey and stacked it in the boot. He took the tools from my hands and stored them also.

  ‘Right?’

  I nodded with a dry mouth. We climbed normally into the car. The commentator was yelling to be heard.

  ‘… Coming to the line it’s Ringwood by a length from Wonderbug, with Newshound third, then Derriby, then Vinery…’

  The cheers echoed inside the car as Jik started the engine and drove away.

  ‘… Might be a record time. Just listen to the cheers. The result again. The result of the Melbourne Cup. In the frame… first Ringwood, owned by Mr. Robert Khami… second Wonderbug…’

  ‘Phew,’ Jik said, his beard jaunty and a smile stretching to show an expanse of gum. ‘That wasn’t a bad effort. We might hire ourselves out some time for stealing politicians’ papers.’ He chuckled fiercely.

  ‘It’s an overcrowded field,’ I said, smiling broadly myself.

  We were both feeling the euphoria which follows the safe deliverance from danger. ‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’

  He drove to the Hilton, parked, and carried the folder and pictures up to my room. He moved with his sailing speed, economically and fast, losing as little time as possible before returning to Sarah on the racecourse and acting as if he’d never been away.

  ‘We’ll be back here as soon as we can,’ he promised, sketching a farewell.

  Two seconds after he’d shut my door there was a knock on it.

  I opened it. Jik stood there.

  ‘I’d better know,’ he said, ‘What won the Cup?’

  12

  When he’d gone I looked closely at the spoils.

  The more I saw, the more certain it became that we had hit the absolute jackpot. I began to wish most insistently that we hadn’t wasted time in establishing that Jik and Sarah were at the races. It made me nervous, waiting for them in the Hilton with so much dynamite in my hands. Every instinct urged immediate departure.

  The list of Overseas Customers would to any other eyes have seemed the most harmless of documents. Wexford would not have needed to keep it in better security than a locked filing-cabinet, for the chances of anyone seeing its significance in ordinary circumstances were millions to one against.

  Donald Stuart, Wrenstone House, Shropshire.

  Crossed out.

  Each page had three columns, a narrow one at each side with a broad one in the centre. The narrow left-hand column was for dates and the centre for names and addresses. In the narrow right-hand column, against each name, was a short line of apparently random letters and numbers. Those against Donald’s entry, for instance, were MM3109T: and these figures had not been crossed out with his name. Maybe a sort of stock list, I thought, identifying the picture he’d bought.

  I searched rapidly down all the other crossed-out names in the England sector. Maisie Matthews’ name was not among them.

  Damn, I thought. Why wasn’t it?

  I turned all the papers over rapidly. As far as I could see all the overseas customers came from basically English-speaking countries, and the proportion of crossed-out names was about one in three. If every crossing-out represented a robbery, there had been literally hundreds since the scheme began.

  At the back of the file I found there was a second and separate section, again divided into pages for each country. The lists in this section were much shorter.

  England.

  Half way down. My eyes positively leapt at it.

  Mrs M. Matthews, Treasure Holme, Worthing, Sussex.

  Crossed out.

  I almost trembled. The date in the left-hand column looked like the date on which Maisie had bought her picture. The uncrossed-out numbers in the right hand column were SMC29R.

  I put down the file and sat for five minutes staring unseeingly at the wall, thinking.

  My first and last conclusions were that I had a great dea
l to do before Jik and Sarah came back from the races, and that instincts were not always right.

  The large print-folder, which had so excited Jik, lay on my bed. I opened it flat and inspected the contents.

  I daresay I looked completely loony standing there with my mouth open. The folder contained a number of simplified line drawings like the one the boy-artist had been colouring in the Arts Centre. Full-sized outline drawings, on flat white canvas, as neat and accurate as tracings.

  There were seven of them, all basically of horses. As they were only black and white line drawings I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed that three were Munnings, two Raoul Millais, and the other two… I stared at the old-fashioned shapes of the horses… They couldn’t be Stubbs, he was too well documented… How about Herring? Herring, I thought, nodding. The last two had a look of Herring.

  Attached to one of these two canvases by an ordinary paper clip was a small handwritten memo on a piece of scrap paper.

  ‘Don’t forget to send the original. Also find out what palette he used, if different from usual.’

  I looked again at the three identical finished paintings which we had also brought away. These canvases, tacked on to wooden stretchers, looked very much as if they might have started out themselves as the same sort of outlines. The canvas used was of the same weave and finish.

  The technical standard of the work couldn’t be faulted. The paintings did look very much like Munnings’ own, and would do much more so after they had dried and been varnished. Different coloured paints dried at different speeds, and also the drying time of paints depended very much on the amount of oil or turps used to thin them, but at a rough guess all three pictures had been completed between three and six days earlier. The paint was at the same stage on all of them. They must, I thought, have all been painted at once, in a row, like a production line. Red hat, red hat, red hat… It would have saved time and paint.

  The brushwork throughout was painstaking and controlled. Nothing slapdash. No time skimped. The quality of care was the same as in the Millais copy at Alice.

  I was looking, I knew, at the true worth of Harley Renbo.

  All three paintings were perfectly legal. It was never illegal to copy: only to attempt to sell the copy as real.

  I thought it all over for a bit longer, and then set rapidly to work.

  The Hilton, when I went downstairs an hour later, were most amiable and helpful.

  Certainly, they could do what I asked. Certainly, I could use the photo-copying machine, come this way. Certainly, I could pay my bill now, and leave later.

  I thanked them for their many excellent services.

  ‘Our pleasure,’ they said: and, incredibly, they meant it.

  Upstairs again, waiting for Jik and Sarah, I packed all my things. That done, I took off my jacket and shirt and did my best at rigging the spare bandages and clips back into something like the Alice shape, with my hand inside across my chest. No use pretending that it wasn’t a good deal more comfortable that way than the dragging soreness of letting it all swing free. I buttoned my shirt over the top and calculated that if the traffic was bad Jik might still be struggling out of the racecourse.

  A little anxiously, and still faintly feeling unwell, I settled to wait.

  I waited precisely five minutes. Then the telephone by the bed rang, and I picked up the receiver.

  Jik’s voice, sounding hard and dictatorial.

  ‘Charles, will you please come down to our room at once.’

  ‘Well…’ I said hesitantly. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Bloody chromic oxide!’ he said explosively. ‘Can’t you do anything without arguing?’

  Christ, I thought.

  I took a breath. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ I said. ‘I need ten minutes. I’m… er… I’ve just had a shower. I’m in my underpants.’

  ‘Thank you, Charles,’ he said. The telephone clicked as he disconnected.

  A lot of Jik’s great oaths galloped across my mind, wasting precious time. If ever we needed divine help, it was now.

  Stifling a gut-twisting lurch of plain fear I picked up the telephone and made a series of internal calls.

  ‘Please could you send a porter up right away to room seventeen eighteen to collect Mr Cassavetes’ bags?’

  ‘Housekeeper . . ? Please will you send someone along urgently to seventeen eighteen to clean the room as Mr Cassavetes has been sick…’

  ‘Please will you send the nurse along to seventeen eighteen at once as Mr Cassavetes has a severe pain…’

  ‘Please will you send four bottles of your best champagne and ten glasses up to seventeen eighteen immediately…’

  ‘Please bring coffee for three to seventeen eighteen at once…’

  ‘Electrician? All the electrics have fused in room seventeen eighteen, please come at once.’

  ‘… the water is overflowing in the bathroom, please send the plumber urgently.’

  Who else was there? I ran my eye down the list of possible services. One wouldn’t be able to summon chiropodists, masseuses, secretaries, barbers or clothes-pressers in a hurry… but television, why not?

  ‘… Please would you see to the television in room seventeen eighteen. There is smoke coming from the back and it smells like burning…’

  That should do it, I thought. I made one final call for myself, asking for a porter to collect my bags. Right on, they said. Ten dollar tip I said if the bags could be down in the hall within five minutes. No sweat, an Australian voice assured me happily. Coming right that second.

  I left my door ajar for the porter and rode down two storeys in the lift to floor seventeen. The corridor outside Jik and Sarah’s room was still a broad empty expanse of no one doing anything in a hurry.

  The ten minutes had gone.

  I fretted.

  The first to arrive was the waiter with the champagne, and he came not with a tray but a trolley, complete with ice buckets and spotless white cloths. It couldn’t possibly have been better.

  As he slowed to a stop outside Jik’s door, two other figures turned into the corridor, hurrying, and behind them, distantly, came a cleaner slowly pushing another trolley of linen and buckets and brooms.

  I said to the waiter, ‘Thank you so much for coming so quickly.’ I gave him a ten dollar note, which surprised him. ‘Please go and serve the champagne straight away.’

  He grinned, and knocked on Jik’s door.

  After a pause, Jik opened it. He looked tense and strained.

  ‘Your champagne, sir,’ said the waiter.

  ‘But I didn’t…’ Jik began. He caught sight of me suddenly, where I stood a little back from his door. I made waving-in motions with my hand, and a faint grin appeared to lighten the anxiety.

  Jik retreated into the room followed by trolley and waiter.

  At a rush, after that, came the electrician, the plumber and the television man. I gave them each ten dollars and thanked them for coming so promptly. ‘I had a winner,’ I said. They took the money with more grins and Jik opened the door to their knock.

  ‘Electrics… plumbing… television…’ His eyebrows rose. He looked across to me in rising comprehension. He flung wide his door and invited them in with all his heart.

  ‘Give them some champagne,’ I said.

  ‘God Almighty.’

  After that, in quick succession, came the porter, the man with the coffee, and the nurse. I gave them all ten dollars from my mythical winnings and invited them to join the party. Finally came the cleaner, pushing her top-heavy-looking load. She took the ten dollars, congratulated me on my good fortune, and entered the crowded and noisy fray.

  It was up to Jik, I thought. I couldn’t do any more.

  He and Sarah suddenly popped out like the corks from the gold-topped bottles, and stood undecided in the corridor. I gripped Sarah’s wrist and tugged her towards me.

  ‘Push the cleaning trolley through the door, and turn it over,’ I said to Jik.

  He wasted no tim
e deliberating. The brooms crashed to the carpet inside the room, and Jik pulled the door shut after him.

  Sarah and I were already running on our way to the lifts. She looked extremely pale and wild-eyed, and I knew that whatever had happened in their room had been almost too much for her.

  Jik sprinted along after us. There were six lifts from the seventeenth floor, and one never had to wait more than a few seconds for one to arrive. The seconds this time seemed like hours but were actually very few indeed. The welcoming doors slid open, and we leapt inside and pushed the ‘doors closed’ button like maniacs.

  The doors closed.

  The lift descended, smooth and fast.

  ‘Where’s the car?’ I said.

  ‘Car park.’

  ‘Get it and come round to the side door.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sarah…’

  She stared at me in fright.

  ‘My satchel will be in the hall. Will you carry it for me?’

  She looked vaguely at my one-armed state, my jacket swinging loosely over my left shoulder.

  ‘Sarah!’

  ‘Yes… all right.’

  We erupted into the hall, which had filled with people returning from the Cup. Talkative groups mixed and mingled, and it was impossible to see easily from one side to the other. All to the good, I thought.

  My suitcase and satchel stood waiting near the front entrance, guarded by a young man in porter’s uniform.

  I parted with the ten dollars. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

  ‘No sweat,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Can I get you a taxi?’

  I shook my head. I picked up the suitcase and Sarah the satchel and we headed out of the door.

  Turned right. Hurried. Turned right again, round to the side where I’d told Jik we’d meet him.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Sarah said with rising panic.

  ‘He’ll come,’ I said encouragingly. ‘We’ll just go on walking to meet him.’

  We walked. I kept looking back nervously for signs of pursuit, but there were none. Jik came round the corner on two wheels and tore millimetres off the tyres stopping beside us. Sarah scrambled into the front and I and my suitcase filled the back. Jik made a hair-raising U turn and took us away from the Hilton at an illegal speed.