Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  The tryst was at an Italian restaurant in Worthing, where clearly Barry was known. ‘Signor 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 habitué 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 alla marsala against the saltimbocca alla 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.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘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 . . .’

  He was about to get on to Vivienne again. Carole was now convinced that these references were part of Barry’s seduction technique, though she wondered how well advised they were. A woman, though possibly impressed by the tenderness implied in these constant mentions of his late wife, would surely be warned off the possibility of a relationship with someone over whom the memory of Vivienne loomed so powerfully. The Rebecca syndrome.

  Not, of course, that any of this concerned Carole. The evening had only confirmed her first adverse impressions. She’d rather have a relationship with Bill Sykes than with Barry Stillwell.

  Before the sainted Vivienne had the chance to re-enter the conversation, Carole demanded, ‘So when did his first marriage end?’

  Barry gave a prim smile. ‘Well, as it happens, I can give you an exact answer to that. Not that I was present when they did split up. Might have been difficult to engineer, because that happened when they were in Kuala Lumpur.’ He snickered at his rather amusing remark. ‘But I did see them the weekend before they went off on that fateful trip.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Graham wanted me to draw up a new lease for the house, because they were letting it again. So . . . always ready to mix business with pleasure . . .’ He grinned an arch, man-of-the-world grin. ‘ . . . I suggested we meet in the Hare and Hounds to thrash things out. The Hare and Hounds in those days, by the way, was rather primitive. Rough wooden floors, only a couple of beers to choose from and a menu of ploughman’s lunch or sandwiches. Not sophisticated like it is since Will Maples has been in charge. It’s so much better now.’

  The evening was becoming a challenge to Carole. Was Barry Stillwell going to express one single opinion with which she didn’t disagree?

  ‘Anyway, I saw Sheila when I arrived to pick up Graham. She wasn’t coming to the pub with us – too busy packing. Big undertaking when you’re going to have tenants in for the best part of a year. Sheila was ordering the cleaning woman around like nobody’s business. But I chatted to her while I waited for Graham . . . Very important in my line of business to get on with everyone, you know.’

  ‘And at that stage you weren’t aware of any cracks in the marriage?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. They behaved together exactly as they always had done. They were always very polite, you know, very correct, very good at entertaining people . . .’

  ‘Part of the job they had to do abroad.’

  ‘I imagine so. Graham was brought up to that, of course – the right schools, universities and so on, moneyed background, you know.’

  ‘At their dinner party, Harry Grant implied Graham had lost a lot of money.’

  ‘Well, I believe he caught a bit of a cold at Lloyd’s, but, you know, he’s not the sort to talk about that kind of thing. Anyway, as I say, Graham was from a very privileged family, and Sheila must have caught up very quickly after they got married.’

  ‘You mean she didn’t come from his kind of family?’

  ‘No, local girl, in spite of her posh schools. Lots of relatives in Weldisham and all round here. There are some families that never seem to move from this area, however much—’

  But Carole wasn’t interested in Barry Stillwell’s views on the demographics of West Sussex. ‘And was that the last time you saw them together, Graham and Sheila?’

  ‘Yes,’ Barry replied a little sourly. He didn’t like being hurried in his story-telling. ‘Anyway, the reason I have cause to remember – and this is interesting – is that I had lunch with Graham in the Hare and Hounds on the Thursday.’ He paused portentously. ‘Thursday 15 October 1987. And that weekend was the weekend of the Great Storm. You remember the Great Storm, do you, Carole?’

  She assured him she did. It was the weekend when the south of England had been devastated by a most un-English hurricane. Thousands of trees had been uprooted, roofs lifted, greenhouses smashed. A BBC weatherman by the name of Michael Fish had become famous overnight for pooh-poohing the warning from a viewer that such an event was likely to happen. And cosmic conspiracy theorists were rewarded on the following Monday when the Great Storm’s climatic augury produced the biggest London Stock Market crash of recent years.

  Although she hadn’t lived in the area at the time, Carole Seddon certainly knew all about it. There wasn’t a man or woman in West Sussex who hadn’t got their own story to tell about the Great Storm.

  And she had a horrible feeling she was about to hear Barry Stillwell’s.

  ‘Have you any idea what the storm did to my conservatory?’ he began.

  ‘No,’ said Carole. ‘Tell me about Graham and Sheila Forbes first. Then tell me about your conservatory.’

  Barry was so surprised by her bossiness that he did exactly what he had been told. ‘Well, there’s not much to say, really. They were due off to Kuala Lumpur on the Monday, the 19th, and though the village was briefly cut off by trees across the lane, they’d been cleared by then, so presumably they got to the airport all right. It was six months before they were next due back in Weldisham, and when they did arrive . . . Graham was on his own.’

  ‘Sheila had left him?’

  ‘Yes. It came out slowly, but obviously, as soon as he’d told one person, everyone in the village knew.’

  ‘Do you know who she went off with?’

  ‘Apparently some academic from a university
in Kuala Lumpur.’

  ‘Had they been having an affair before?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ The solicitor shrugged his shoulders testily. He was getting increasingly irritated by her interest in Graham and Sheila Forbes. He was her host, after all; she ought to be showing interest in him. Carole knew she hadn’t got much longer to continue her grilling.

  ‘Do you know where they are now?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ There was petulance in his voice. ‘I gather after a time the man got a job at a university in Singapore. Whether they’re still there or not, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Sheila was the same sort of age as Graham?’ Barry Stillwell nodded. ‘So she could be dead by now.’

  ‘I don’t think so. There would be legal implications if she were. Graham would have told me.’

  ‘If he knew.’

  ‘Yes. Look, I didn’t come here this evening to talk about Graham Forbes. I’m much more interested in you, Carole.’ He leered across the table.

  ‘Yes, and I’m much more interested in you, Barry,’ she lied. ‘But, just before we leave the subject . . . can you tell me when you first met Irene?’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Her saying she was interested in him had bought Carole a little more goodwill. ‘It was when Graham retired. After 1987, he came back to Weldisham for a few weeks each year, always on his own, always very lonely and miserable. Then in 1989 he told me he was retiring from the British Council the next year and all lettings of the house would cease, because he was going to live in it all the time. Well, he must have got lucky during that last tour in Kuala Lumpur, because when he did come back, he had a new bride in tow. The lovely Irene.’

  Carole really didn’t think she could push it any further. She tried to justify her unusual conversational approach. ‘Thank you so much, Barry. I’m a nosy old thing, but I do love knowing all the details about people.’

  ‘There are lots of interesting details you don’t know about me yet,’ he said coyly.

  ‘I know.’ She gave him a smile which she hoped would qualify as a ‘feminine wile’. Jude should be proud of her. ‘So many interesting details I don’t know about you . . . Where to begin?’