Death on the Downs

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 Still well.

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?”

He sat back with a complacent smile on his thin lips. “Up to you, Carole.”

“Tell me, Barry…what did happen to your conservatory during the Great Storm?”

She couldn’t have picked a better subject. He leaned forward with relish and began, “Well, this is extremely interesting…”

Carole’s mind was racing and she didn’t take in anything he said. She didn’t really notice the end of the meal. She was still distracted when Barry asked her if she’d like to meet up again, and dangerously vague in her answer.

And she hardly noticed as he leaned down to kiss her when she was safely ensconced in the Renault. All she was aware of was a sensation as if her cheek had been wiped by a soapy facecloth.