Slightly mischievously, she wondered how her son would react to the news that tomorrow his mother would be having an illicit lunch with a married would-be lover.
‘This is very soon after our last meeting,’ Carole pointed out, after Mario had oozed them into their seats. This time he’d put them at a table for two in a little alcove at the back of the restaurant. Was this maybe the table where he always put couples who shouldn’t be together? Indeed, had he put Barry here before with other female companions? The concept did not upset Carole; rather, it amused her. To imagine Barry Stilwell as a serial Lothario was so incongruous.
What was it with men? she reflected. Some of them seemed to be armoured in a self-esteem absolutely impermeable to logic, common sense or experience. Barry Stilwell’s previous encounters with her should have made it clear that, not only did she not have any mildly romantic feelings towards him, she did not even wish to spend time with him. She found his company irksome. And yet here he was, surreptitiously squiring her at Mario’s, apparently in the belief they would end up having an affair. Carole found herself baffled.
But his obtuseness did give her a kind of comfort. She would have felt bad stringing along someone less thick-skinned. Barry Stilwell, though, was fair game.
She indulged these thoughts while he went through his ordering and wine-tasting routines, and had to actually drag herself out of abstraction to concentrate on what he was saying.
Barry was talking about the success of his firm. Clearly things had been busy on the soliciting front. A booming housing market had meant an increase in people requiring conveyancing services; the cold snaps of the winter had satisfyingly decimated the geriatric population of the Worthing area, leading to more probate work; and of course the rise in the divorce rate could always be relied upon. It was, as ever, a good time to be working as a lawyer in a system devised by lawyers.
So good was business Carole gathered when she focused on Barry’s words, that he was about to set up a second office along the coast in Shoreham. There were some empty premises he was going to inspect that very afternoon. Maybe Carole would like to come and cast her expert eye over them?
‘In what way do I have an expert eye?’
‘Well, you spent all those years working for the Home Office.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Carole knew she should be more conciliatory, soften Barry up to extract information from him, but he got on her nerves so much she couldn’t help the occasional sharp retort.
‘You must have seen a good few offices in your time.’
‘Yes,’ she conceded.
‘So you do have an expert eye when it comes to the business of selecting an office.’ At this triumph of logic the thin lips curled into a smile.
‘But, Barry, I have no particular expertise in solicitor’s offices. You’d have a much better idea of what you need.’
‘Yes.’ he said cajolingly. ‘But it’s always good to have a second opinion, isn’t it?’
‘Surely it’d be better to get a second opinion from Pomme rather than from me?’
This had been the wrong thing to say. The thin lips straightened. ‘Pomme’s not a lawyer.’
‘Nor am I. That’s the point I was making.’
He moved off the subject of his new offices. ‘So what’s happening in your life, Carole?’
She didn’t want to talk about her life. What she really wanted to do was to get Barry’s conversation back to the night of Nigel Ackford’s death. But certain civilities had to be maintained. He had asked her a straight question. It was her duty to come up with an answer. She tried to think what, if anything, had been happening in her life.
‘Well, I’m meeting my son for lunch on Sunday.’
‘I’d forgotten you had a son.’
‘Yes. He’s going to introduce me to his fiancée.’
‘And I find it very hard to believe you have a son old enough to be contemplating marriage.’
She gave this arch automatic compliment a minimal smile, and moved on. She’d seen a useful way of redirecting the conversation.
‘In fact, they’re going to be staying at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. I’m going to have lunch with them there.’
‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Excellent food.’
‘Oh yes.’ She behaved as if a completely new idea had just come to her. ‘Of course you were there for that Pillars of Sussex dinner, weren’t you? We talked about it last time we met.’
‘That’s right.’
He didn’t sound suspicious yet, so she pressed on. ‘I get the impression those dinners are quite riotous occasions.’
‘Well . . . I like to think decorum is always maintained.’
‘Yes, but quite a lot of drinking goes on, doesn’t it?’
Barry Stilwell smiled a bit-of-a-lad smile, and went into the elaborate circumlocution with which his type of man usually speaks about alcohol. ‘Well, the occasional libation is certainly consumed. The odd noggin or tincture might pass the lips, yes.’
‘More than “occasional” or “odd”, from what I’ve heard. Drinks before dinner, copious wine during, sessions in the bar afterwards.’
The solicitor shrugged magnanimously, as if he were being complimented. ‘A certain amount of that goes on, I suppose, yes. But,’ he continued piously, ‘everyone stays overnight at the venue, so there’s no danger of drink-driving.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that. I gather, though, with some of the Pillars, the drinking doesn’t stop in the bar. It goes on up in their rooms.’
This prompted an indulgent smile of masculine complicity. ‘I dare say that happens with some of the chaps.’
‘Don’t be so coy, Barry. It happens with you too.’
He looked surprised at this and said primly, ‘I’m not one for excess, Carole. I know my limit. A couple of drinks in the bar, and then straight off to bed – that’s me.’
Coyness was not a mode that came naturally to Carole, but she tried it this time. ‘Ooh, Barry, you big fibber.’
He looked genuinely puzzled.
‘A friend of mine met Bob Hartson yesterday.’
‘Yes?’ A look of caution came into his eyes at the mention of the name.
‘He was telling her about the great night you all had at Hopwicke House last week.’
‘Oh right, we did have a good time,’ he agreed heartily, before a sober recollection. ‘Except, of course, for the tragic end to the event – which we didn’t know about till the following day.’
‘Anyway, according to Bob Hartson, you had quite a boozy session with him.’
This again was taken as a compliment. ‘I suppose a few sherberts did go down the old gargle-chute in the bar, yes.’
‘Not just in the bar,’ said Carole, with another stab at coyness.
She felt sure the bafflement with which he greeted this was genuine, but went on, ‘According to Bob Hartson, you were up in his room sharing a bottle of whisky with him.’ – Barry Stilwell was silent – ‘Which I thought was rather odd because you told me you never drank whisky.’
There was an almost imperceptible moment of thought before his smile became even more sheepish. ‘My little secret is out, I’m afraid. Not something I advertise, because Pomme doesn’t approve of my drinking whisky. She’s of the view it gets me too drunk too quickly. But yes, I can’t deny I do enjoy the odd snifter of the old Highland nectar.’
‘And that’s what you had with Bob Hartson that night in his room?’
He held his hands out, as if offering to be handcuffed. ‘Can’t deny it. If that’s what Bob Hartson says I was doing, then that’s what I was doing.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Oh yes.’