“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
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.
