Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs (14 page)

The threat was quickly removed. “After the main course we do a little revision of the seating plan, so that you all get a chance to speak to everyone.” That old thing, thought Carole, bet they used to do it at all their British Council dinners. “Now, with only eight of us, it does mean a few husbands and wives will end up sitting together, but I’m sure you can cope with that.”

“Ladies, you’ll be glad to hear you don’t have to move at all. But, gentlemen, I would ask you to pick up your glasses and take the seat four to your right. So, effectively, Harry and Freddie change places, and I change places with…”

Oh no. I get Barry, thought Carole.

She did. He sat ingratiatingly beside her, his mouth once again curled into a smile, and set about the serious business of making conversation.

“So…what are your leisure pursuits, Carole?”

“Oh, not a lot. Reading, crosswords, taking my dog for walks.”

“That’s interesting,” said Barry Stillwell.

“But I don’t like him,” Carole objected.

“You don’t know him. You might find he has likeable qualities when you know him better.”

“I doubt it, Jude.”

“Anyway, that’s not the point. Barry Stillwell’s invited you out. You’ve no reason to say no. You’re not attached to anyone. You’re not holding a candle for some unrequited love.”

Carole blushed.

“Are you?”

“No, of course I’m not.”

“Then why not go out with him? It’s only a dinner, after all.”

“Yes, but it’s a…” Carole hesitated before she brought out the word ‘date’.

“You’ve been on dates before.”

“Not for a long time.”

Carole tried to think how long. She supposed the last date she had been on was with David, at the stage when they were…What were they doing? “Courting’ didn’t sound the right word. ‘Circling each other warily and both contemplating the possibility of getting married’? Yes, that was about it.

“Well, you’ve been in restaurants before, Carole. It’s not as if you won’t be able to understand the menu or will start setting fire to the tablecloth.”

“No, I think I can probably avoid those pitfalls.”

“Then where’s your problem?”

Before Carole could begin the catalogue of problems she had about the very thought of going on a date with the solicitor, Jude went on, “You’ve got to do it, because Barry Stillwell probably has a lot of information about the case. And you can pump it out of him.”

“How? Using my ‘feminine wiles’?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid, when it came to the handing out ‘feminine wiles’ stage of creation, God was a bit mean to me. Anyway, you talk of a ‘case’. I’m moving round to Ted’s view that there isn’t a ‘case’.”

“Of course there is. There’s still an unidentified pile of female bones.”

“Yes, but that’s a case for the police and their forensic pathologists. I meant there isn’t a case that has anything to do with you and me.”

“You mean you’re not interested?”

“Of course I’m interested. But I don’t see that it’s our business.”

“Oh, come on, Carole, if people only concerned themselves with things that were their business, what a very dull world it would be. I want to find out who those bones belonged to. And I want to find out what happened to her.” She fixed Carole with her big brown eyes, less dreamy than usual and more powerful. “As do you.”

“Yes, all right. I do.”

“So ring Barry Stillwell back and say yes, you’d love to go out to dinner with him on Thursday.”

“Very well.” Carole jutted out a rueful lower lip. “Against my better judgement.”

§

Early on the Wednesday morning, Carole took Gulliver for his first walk on Fethering Beach since his injury. The dressing had been removed, and he scampered over the shingle and sand like a thing possessed. He snuffled frantically at every piece of flotsam and jetsam, as though determined to find another rusty can on which to cut his paw.

§

The tryst was at an Italian restaurant in Worthing, where clearly Barry was known. “Signer Stillwell,” fawned the owner, a helpful visual aid to language students who didn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘oleaginous’.

“I used to come here a lot,” said Barry, once they were seated, “in happier times…”

Oh no, thought Carole. Am I going to be treated to the fully grieving widower routine all evening until he finally makes a pounce at the end?

His next remark did not bode well. “But I haven’t been here much in the last couple of years.” Then, seeming with an effort to pull himself out of introspection, he went on, “You’re looking extremely elegant this evening, Carole.”

Extremely schoolmistressy, she thought. She’d considered the new Marks & Spencer jumper, but thought the Cambridge Blue might present a misleadingly racy image, so she’d dressed in an almost black navy-blue suit over a white blouse. No, probably she didn’t look like a schoolmistress these days. They all tended to dress down. A personal banking manager, perhaps?

Barry was wearing another pinstriped suit. For a second Carole entertained the fantasy that every garment he possessed was pinstriped. Maybe he even had pinstriped underwear. She hoped it was not something he was expecting her to check out.

“You said you used to work in the Home Office…” But, before he could get further into his ‘so tell me about yourself routine, a waiter presented them with menus the size of billboards and Barry Stillwell assumed the mantle of a suave and sophisticated habitue of Worthing’s restaurants.

“Now, I’m sure we’ll have a drink, Mario. What’s it to be, Carole?”

“Oh, a dry white wine, thanks.”

She’d planned to make two glasses last the whole evening, because she had the car with her. Resisting Barry’s offer to pick her up at home, she’d said instinctively that they’d meet at the restaurant. Only after she’d put the phone down did she realize what a snub this had been. So out of practice was she with going on dates that she’d forgotten that picking up the quarry and—more importantly—driving her back home and then maybe ‘coming in for a coffee’ were part of the accepted ritual.

Still, she didn’t really care about any offence she might have caused. For someone so rusty in courtship procedures, hurrying things would be a bad idea. And the chances of her ever wanting to see Barry Stillwell again after that evening were extremely slender.

Carole reminded herself of the rationalization for the dinner. She was there simply to get information out of him for the ‘case’ that she and Jude were pursuing. And, in that cause, she might be required to use some ‘feminine wiles’. The idea gave her a charge of guilty excitement. It was like being an undercover agent—certainly not a situation she had been in before.

Barry made a big deal of the ordering, weighing the virtues of the
vitello alia marsala
against the
saltimbocca alia romana
, and constantly telling Carole how good Giorgio the cook was and how eating at this restaurant ‘transports me back to being in Italy, where I spent so many happy times’. Since she’d decided after one glance at the menu to order
zuppa di frutti di mare and lasagne con funghi e prosciutto
, all this recommendation was a bit superfluous.

When she gave her order, he tried to persuade her that she really wanted meat or fish as a main course, as though her selecting one of the cheaper items on the menu was in some way an aspersion on his masculinity. Carole, who from an early age had known her own mind, did not change it.

She concurred with his choice of a Chianti Classico, though warned him that he would have to drink most of it. Barry seemed unworried about going over the limit for driving. When Carole raised the matter, he said, “One of the advantages of being attached to the legal profession is that one does have a lot of dealings with the local police.”

“Are you saying they’d turn a blind eye if you failed a breathalyser test?”

She had asked the question in a way that invited staunch denial, but that was not how Barry Stillwell took it. With a smug smile and a tap to his nose, he said, “Ooh, I don’t think it’d get as far as the breathalyser…once they knew who I was.”

“Really?”

This time he interpreted her reaction of contempt as one of being impressed. “Oh yes, I’ve got some very useful local contacts, Carole. When you’ve been in Rotary as long as I have, you tend to know everyone.”

If he’s capable of misinterpreting my signals so totally, thought Carole, thank God I’m travelling home in my own car.

“I’m a past president,” he confided modestly.

“Of what?”

“Rotary. In Worthing.”

He left a pause for her awestruck response to this revelation.

“Goodness,” said Carole. “Really?”

Then, before he could interrogate her about work at the Home Office and tell her how interesting that sounded, she pitched in. “Charming couple, the Forbeses.”

“Oh yes. Charming.”

“Have you known them long?”

“Quite a while. I’ve acted professionally for Graham since he first moved to the area. I did the conveyancing when he bought the house in Weldisham.”

Wow, that must have been exciting, thought Carole, because it was the reaction Barry Stillwell’s tone of voice demanded.

“It’s very gratifying,” he went on, “when clients become friends.”

“Yes, it must be. So have you continued to do all Graham’s legal work since then?”

“Oh yes. When you’ve got a good relationship with a client…” Barry Stillwell let out a thin chuckle. “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.”

“Broke,” Carole couldn’t help saying.

“Sorry?”

“I think the idiom is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.””

“But that’s not correct English. The past participle of ‘break’ is ‘broken’.”

“Yes,” Carole agreed, wishing she hadn’t set off up this particular cul-de-sac.

“I’m very interested in grammar,” said Barry.

You bloody would be.

“It’s very interesting.”

“Yes.” She pressed on. “So did you do Graham’s divorce?”

“Sorry?”

“As a lawyer, did you act for Graham when he got divorced from his first wife?”

“Ah, see what you mean.”

Was she being hyper-sensitive to detect a slight hesitation in his manner? Maybe the abruptness of her questioning had thrown him.

“I’ve managed all the legal side of Graham’s life,” Barry concluded smugly.

Mario arrived with their starters. The restaurant owner himself oozed over with the Chianti Classico. There was much elaborate ceremonial with the corkscrew and with a peppermill like the bell-tower of a minor Italian cathedral. Barry Stillwell sniffed and sipped the wine as if it were the elixir of eternal life.

After a long, lip-licking pause, he pronounced himself satisfied.

Carole had to put up with an extensive questionnaire about the Home Office and how she liked living in Fethering, before she could get back to the subject that interested her: Weldisham, its inhabitants and their history. Common politeness meant her interrogation was unavoidable, but she got a bit sick of the way Barry kept punctuating the conversation with references to his late wife.

Carole didn’t lack respect for bereavement, but Barry Stillwell’s deployment of it seemed calculated. As if he was trying to prove what a caring man he was, as if the late wife (her name, it soon became apparent, had been Vivienne) had become part of an elaborate chat-up routine. Carole had a nasty feeling that, if he ever met someone he was really interested in, Barry would very quickly be into the patter of, “After Vivienne died, I never thought I could feel anything for another woman, but you’re bringing to life feelings I feared were long dead and buried.”

She hoped to God she was never cast in the role of the woman who had to hear that manifesto.

When Barry reached the end—or maybe it wasn’t the end—of a recollection about how lonely he’d been when he went on a Rotary Club exchange visit to Cologne just after Vivenne died, Carole seized the opportunity and leapt back in.

“Does Graham Forbes have any children?”

“What?” Barry was thrown by the sudden change of direction.

“From either marriage? I just wondered.”

“No, no, he doesn’t.” He still looked bewildered. “What about you, Carole? I know you said you were divorced, but do you have any children?”

“A son. Stephen.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t see him that often.”

“But surely you must? Surely he’s still living at home?”

It was Carole’s turn to look bewildered. Barry had a strange expectant expression on his face and she tried to work out what on earth it was meant to communicate. Not easy. She didn’t think she’d ever met anyone with whom she’d had less mental connection. In conversation with Barry Stillwell, everything needed to be interpreted and explained.

Suddenly she realized. What he’d said had been a compliment. Cumbersome, contrived and lateral, but nonetheless a compliment. Barry was suggesting that no one of her age could possibly have a child old enough to have left home. It was in the same vein as the ‘early retirement’ compliment.

“Stephen’s nearly thirty,” she said brusquely.

Barry looked thoughtfully pained. “Sadly, Vivienne and I were not blessed.”

“Sorry?”

“With the gift of offspring.” A melancholy sigh. “I’d like to have had children,” he simpered. “Still live in hope.”

Well, don’t look at me, Carole wanted to say. I’m well past my impregnate-by date.

“Still thinking about Graham Forbes,” she went on.

“You seem to keep thinking about him,” Barry Stillwell observed, with a winsome chuckle. “Should I be worried? Should I start thinking you’re more interested in him than you are in me?”

If only you knew…Carole couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so she came up with a chuckle of her own. Barry continued his. Oh no, she thought, he imagines we’re sharing a joke. He thinks we’re getting on well together.

She pressed on. “Did you know his first wife?”

“Yes, I did. Not well, because they didn’t spend a lot of time in Sussex while they were working abroad, but I did meet Sheila.” His face took on a pious expression. “Tragic, isn’t it, the way some bad marriages break up and the partners both survive…and then a marriage that does work can be suddenly ended by the cruel hand of fate…”