In the Frame by Dick Francis

their faces. They were hooked.
    The rest of the spectators drifted away, and I, asking the others to wait a moment, started moving the jumbled painting stuff off the centre of the floor to a tidier wall-side heap.
    None of it was marked with its owner’s name. All regulation kit, obtainable from art shops. Artists’ quality, not students’ cheaper equivalents. None of it new, but not old, either. The picture itself was on a standard sized piece of commercially prepared hardboard, not on stretched canvas. I stacked everything together, added the empty jars which had held linseed and turps, and wiped my hands on a piece of rag.
    ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’
    They were all Americans, all rich, retired, and fond of racing. Mr and Mrs Howard K. Petrovitch of Ridgeville, New Jersey, and Mr and Mrs Wyatt L. Minchless from Carter, Illinois.
    Wyatt Minchless, the one who had shushed the others, called the meeting to order over four richly creamed icedcoffees and one plain black. The black was for himself. Heart condition, he murmured, patting the relevant area of suiting. A white-haired man, black-framed specs, pale indoor complexion, pompous manner.
    ‘Now, young fellow, let’s hear it from the top.’
    ‘Um,’ I said. Where exactly was the top? ‘The artist boy attacked my friend Jik because Jik called him a criminal.’
    ‘Yuh,’ Mrs Petrovitch nodded, ‘I heard him. Just as we were leaving the gallery. Now why would he do that?’
    ‘It isn’t criminal to copy good painting,’ Mrs Minchless said knowledgeably. ‘In the Louvre in Paris, France, you can’t get near the Mona Lisa for those irritating students.’
    She had blue-rinsed puffed-up hair, uncreasable navy and green clothes, and enough diamonds to attract a top-rank thief. Deep lines of automatic disapproval ran downwards from the corner of her mouth. Thin body. Thick mind.
    ‘It depends what you are copying
for
,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to try to pass your copy off as an original, then that definitely is a fraud.’
    Mrs Petrovitch began to say, ‘Do you think the young man was
forging
…’ but was interrupted by Wyatt Minchless, who smothered her question both by the damping hand and his louder voice.
    ‘Are you saying that this young artist boy was painting a Munnings he later intended to sell as the real thing?’
    ‘Er…’ I said.
    Wyatt Minchless swept on. ‘Are you saying that the Munnings picture he told us we might be able to buy is itself a forgery?’
    The others looked both horrified at the possibility and admiring of Wyatt L. for his perspicacity.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just thought I’d like to see it.’
    ‘You don’t want to buy a Munnings yourself? You are not acting as an agent for anyone else?’ Wyatt’s questions sounded severe and inquisitorial.
    ‘Absolutely not,’ I said.
    ‘Well, then.’ Wyatt looked round the other three, collected silent assents. ‘He told Ruthie and me there was a good Munnings racing picture at a very reasonable price in a little gallery not far away…’ He fished with forefinger and thumb into his outer breast pocket. ‘Yes, here we are.
Yarra River Fine Arts
. Third turning off Swanston Street, about twenty yards along.’
    Mr and Mrs Petrovitch looked resigned. ‘He told us, exactly the same.’
    ‘He seemed such a nice young man,’ Mrs Petrovitch added sadly. ‘So interested in our trip. Asked us what we’d be betting on in the Cup.’
    ‘He asked where we would be going after Melbourne,’ Mr Petrovitch nodded. ‘We told him Adelaide and Alice Springs, and he said Alice Springs was a Mecca for artists and to be sure to visit the Yarra River gallery there. The same firm, he said. Always had good pictures.’
    Mr Petrovitch would have misunderstood if I had leaned across and hugged him. I concentrated on my fancy coffee and kept my excitement to myself.
    ‘We’re going on to Sydney,’ pronounced Wyatt L. ‘He didn’t offer any suggestions for