Breaker

*10*

During the twenty minutes that he waited in the sitting room at Langton Cottage the following morning to speak to William Sumner, John Galbraith learned two things about the man's dead wife. The first was that Kate Sumner was vain. Every photograph on display was either of herself, or of herself and Hannah, and he searched without success for a likeness of William, or even of an elderly woman who might have been William's mother. In frustration he ended up counting the pictures that were there-thirteen-each of which showed the same prettily smiling face within its framework of golden curls. Was this the cult of the personality taken to its extreme, he wondered, or an indication of a deep-seated inferiority which needed constant reminders that to be photogenic was a talent like any other?

The second thing he learned was that he could never have lived with Kate. She delighted, it seemed, in applying frills to everything: lace curtains with frills, valances with frills, armchairs with frills-even the lampshades had tassels attached to them. Nothing, not even the walls, had escaped her taste for overembellishment. Langton Cottage was of nineteenth-century origin with beamed ceilings and brick fireplaces, and instead of the plain white plaster that would have shown these features off to their best advantage, she had covered the walls of the sitting room-probably at considerable expense-with mock Regency wallpaper, adorned with gilt stripes, white bows, and baskets of unnaturally colored fruit. Galbraith shuddered at the desecration of what could have been a charming room and unconsciously contrasted it with the timbered simplicity of Steven Harding's sloop, which was currently being put under a microscope by scene-of-crime officers while Harding, exercising his right to remain silent, cooled his heels in a police cell.

Rope Walk was a quiet tree-lined avenue to the west of the Royal Lymington and Town yacht clubs, and Langton Cottage had clearly not been cheap. As he knocked on the door at eight o'clock on Tuesday morning after two hours' sleep, Galbraith wondered how big a mortgage William had had to raise to buy it and how much he earned as a pharmaceutical chemist. He could see no logic behind the move from Chichester, particularly as neither Kate nor William appeared to have any links with Lymington.

He was let in by WPC Griffiths, who pulled a face when he told her he needed to talk to Sumner. "You'll be lucky," she whispered. "Hannah's been bawling her head off most of the night, so I doubt you'll get any sense out of him. He's had almost as little sleep as I've had."

"Join the club."

"You, too, eh?"

Galbraith smiled. "How's he holding up?"

She shrugged. "Not too well. Keeps bursting into tears and saying it's not supposed to be like this." She lowered her voice even further. "I'm really concerned about Hannah. She's obviously scared of him. She works herself into a tantrum the minute he enters the room, then calms down rapidly as soon as he leaves. I ordered him to bed in the end to try and get her to sleep."

Galbraith looked interested. "How does he react?"

"That's the odd thing. He doesn't react at all. He just ignores it as if it's something he's grown used to."

"Has he said why she does it?"

"Only that, being out at work so much, he's never had a chance to bond with her. It could be true, you know. I get the impression Kate swaddled her in cotton wool. There are so many safety features in this house that I can't see how Hannah was ever expected to learn anything. Every door has a child lock on it-even the wardrobe in her own bedroom-which means she can't explore, can't choose her own clothes, or even make a mess if she wants to. She's almost three, but she's still sleeping in a crib. That's pretty weird, you know. More like prison bars than a nursery. It's a damned odd way to bring up a child and, frankly, I'm not surprised she's a withdrawn little thing."

"I suppose it's occurred to you that she might be scared of him because she watched him kill her mother," murmured Galbraith.

Sandy Griffiths spread her hand and made a rocking motion. "Except I don't see how he can have done it. He's made a list of some colleagues who can alibi him for Saturday night in Liverpool, and if that holds good then there's no way he could have been shoving his wife in the water at one a.m. in Dorset."

"No," agreed Galbraith. "Still..." He pursed his lips in thought. "Do you realize the SOCOs found no drugs in this house at all, not even paracetamol? Which is odd, considering William's a pharmaceutical chemist."

"Maybe that's why there aren't any. He knows what goes into them."

"Mmm. Or they were deliberately cleared out before we got here." He glanced toward the stairs. "Do you like him?" he asked her.

"Not much," she admitted, "but you don't want to go by what I say. I've always been a lousy judge of character where men are concerned. He could have done with a good smacking thirty years ago, in my opinion, just to teach him some manners but as things are, he seems to view women as serving wenches."

He laughed. "Are you going to be able to stick it out?"

She rubbed her tired eyes. "God knows! Your chap left about half an hour ago, and there's supposed to be some relief coming when William's taken away to identify the body and talk to the doctor who examined Hannah. The trouble is, I can't see Hannah letting me go that easily. She clings to me like a limpet. I'm using the spare room to grab kip when I can, and I thought I'd try to organize some temporary cover while she's asleep so I can stay on the premises. But I'll need to get hold of my governor to organize someone locally." She sighed. "I suppose you want me to wake William for you."

He patted her shoulder. "No. Just point me toward his room. I'm happy to do the business."

She was sorely tempted, but shook her head. "You'll disturb Hannah," she said, baring her teeth in a threatening grimace, "and I swear to God I'll kill you if she starts howling again before I've had a fag and some black coffee. I'm bushed. I can't take any more of her screaming without mega-fixes of caffeine and nicotine."

"Is it putting you off babies?"

"It's putting me off husbands," she said. "I'd have coped better if he hadn't kept hovering like a dark cloud over my shoulder." She eased open the sitting-room door. "You can wait in here till he comes. You'll love it. It has all the makings of a shrine."

Galbraith heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to face the door as it opened. Sumner was in his early forties, but he looked a great deal older than that today, and Galbraith suspected Harding would have been a lot harsher in his description if he could have seen Kate's husband like this. He was unshaven and disheveled, and his face was inexpressibly weary, but whether from grief or lack of sleep, it was impossible to say. Nevertheless, his eyes shone brightly enough, and Galbraith took note of the fact. Lack of sleep did not lead automatically to blunted intelligence.

"Good morning, sir," he said. "I'm sorry to bother you again so early but I've more questions to ask, and I'm afraid they won't wait."

"That's all right. Sit down. I feel I was less than helpful last night, but I was so whacked I couldn't think properly." He took an armchair and left Galbraith to the sofa. "I've made those lists you wanted. They're on the table in the kitchen."

"Thanks." He gave the man a searching look. "Did you get any sleep?"

"Not really. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's all so illogical. I could understand if they'd both drowned, but it doesn't make sense that Kate's dead and Hannah's alive."

Galbraith agreed. He and Carpenter had been puzzling over that very fact most of the night. Why had Kate had to swim for her life while the toddler was allowed to live? The neat explanation-that the boat was Crazy Daze, that Hannah had been on board but had managed to release herself while Harding was walking to Chapman's Pool-failed to address the questions of why the child hadn't been pushed into the sea along with her mother, why Harding was so unconcerned about her wails being heard by other boat users in the marina that he'd left her on her own, and who had fed, watered, and changed her nappy in the hours before she was found.

"Have you had time to go through your wife's wardrobe, Mr. Sumner? Do you know if any of her clothes are missing?"

"Not that I can tell ... but it doesn't mean much," he added as an afterthought. "I don't really notice what people wear, you see."

"Suitcases?"

"I don't think so."

"All right." He opened his briefcase on the sofa beside him. "I've some articles of clothing to show you, Mr. Sumner. Please tell me if you recognize any of them." He removed a plastic bag containing the flimsy blouse found on board Crazy Daze, which he held out for the other man to look at.

Sumner shook his head, without taking it. "It's not Kate's," he said.

"Why so positive," Galbraith asked curiously, "if you didn't notice what she wore?"

"It's yellow. She hated yellow. She said it didn't suit people with fair hair." He gestured vaguely toward the door. "There's no yellow anywhere in the house."

"Fair enough." He took out the bags containing the bra and panties. "Do you recognize either of these as belonging to your wife?"

Sumner reached out a reluctant hand and took both bags, examining the contents closely through the clear plastic. "I'd be surprised if they were hers," he said, handing them back. "She liked lace and frills, and these are very plain. You can compare them with the other things in her drawers, if you like. You'll see what I mean."

Galbraith nodded. "I'll do that. Thank you." He took out the bag with the child's shoes and laid them on his right palm. "What about these?"

Sumner shook his head again. "I'm sorry. All children's shoes look alike to me."

'They have H. Sumner printed inside the strap."

He shrugged. "Then they must be Hannah's."

"Not necessarily," said Galbraith. "They're very small, more suited to a one-year-old than a three-year-old, and anyone can write a name into some shoes."

"Why would they want to do that?"

"Pretense, perhaps."

The other man frowned. "Where did you find them?"

But Galbraith shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't reveal that at this stage." He held the shoes up again. "Would Hannah recognize them, do you think? They may be a pair of cast-offs."

"She might if the policewoman showed them to her," said Sumner. "There's no point in my trying. She screams her head off every time she sees me." He swept imaginary dirt from the arm of the chair. "The trouble is I spend so much time at work that she's never had the chance to get to know me properly."

Galbraith gave him a sympathetic smile while wondering if there was any truth in the statement. Who could contradict him, after all? Kate was dead; Hannah was tongue-tied; and the various neighbors who'd already been interviewed claimed to know little about William. Or indeed, Kate herself.

"To be honest I've only met him a couple of times and he didn't exactly impress me. He works very hard, of course, but they were never ones for entertaining. She was quite sweet, but we were hardly what I'd call friends. You know how it is. You don't choose your neighbors; they get thrust upon you..."

"He's not what you'd call sociable. Kate told me once that he spent his evenings and weekends working out formulas on his computer while she watched soaps on the telly. I feel awful about her dying like that. I wish I'd had more time to talk to her. I think she must have been quite lonely, you know. The rest of us all work, of course, so she was a bit of a rarity, staying at home and doing the housework..."

"He's a bully. He took my wife to task about one of the fencing panels between our gardens, said it needed replacing, and when she told him it was his ivy that was pulling it down, he threatened her with court proceedings. No, that's the only contact we've had with him. It was enough. I don't like the man..."

"I saw more of Kate than I saw of him. It was an odd marriage. They never did anything together. I sometimes wondered if they even liked each other very much. Kate was very sweet, but she hardly ever talked about William. To be honest, I don't think they had much in common..."

"I understand Hannah cried most of the night. Does she usually do that?"

"No," Sumner answered without hesitation, "but then Kate always cuddled her when she was upset. She's crying for her mother, poor little thing."

"So you haven't noticed any difference in her behavior?"

"Not really."

"The doctor who examined her after she was taken to the Poole police station was very concerned about her, described her as unnaturally withdrawn, backward in her development, and possibly suffering from some sort of psychological trauma." Galbraith smiled slightly. "Yet you're saying that's quite normal for Hannah?"

Sumner colored slightly as if he'd been caught out in a lie. "She's always been a little bit"-he hesitated-"well, odd. I thought she was either autistic or deaf so we had her tested, but the GP said there was nothing wrong and just advised us to be patient. He said children were manipulative, and if Kate did less for her she'd be forced to ask for what she wanted and the problem would go away."

"When was this?"

"About six months ago."

"What's your GP's name?"

"Dr. Attwater."

"Did Kate take his advice?"

He shook his head. "Her heart wasn't in it. Hannah could always make her understand what she wanted, and she couldn't see the point of forcing her to talk before she was ready."

Galbraith made a note of the GP's name. "You're a clever man, Mr. Sumner," he said next, "so I'm sure you know why I'm asking you these questions."

A ghost of a smile flickered across the man's tired face. "I prefer William," he said, "and yes, of course I do. My daughter screams every time she sees me; my wife had ample opportunity to cheat on me because I'm hardly ever at home; I'm angry because I didn't want to move to Lymington; the mortgage on this place is way too high and I'd like to get shot of it; she was lonely because she hadn't made many friends; and wives are more usually murdered by their partners out of fury than by strangers out of lust." He gave a hollow laugh. "About the only thing in my favor is a cast-iron alibi, and believe me, I've spent most of the night thanking God for it."

Under the rules governing police detention, there is a limit to how long a person may be held without charge, and the pressure to find evidence against Steven Harding mounted as the hours ticked by. It was notable more for its absence. The stains on the floor of the cabin, which had looked so promising the night before, turned out to be whisky-induced vomit-blood group A, matching Harding's-and a microscopic examination of his boat failed to produce any evidence that an act of violence had occurred on board.

If the pathologist's findings were right-"bruising and abrasions to back (pronounced on shoulder blades and buttocks) and inside of thighs, indicative of forced intercourse on a hard surface such as a deck or an uncarpeted floor-some blood loss from abrasions in vagina"-the wooden planking of the deck and/or saloon and/or cabin should have had traces of blood, skin tissue, and even semen trapped between the grooved joints or under rogue splinters of wood. But no such traces were found. Dried salt was scraped in profusion from the deck planking, but while this might suggest he had scrubbed the topsides down with sea water to remove evidence, it was axiomatic that dried salt would be found on a sailing boat.

On the more likely probability that a blanket or rug had been spread on the hard surface before Kate Sumner had been forced onto it, every item of cloth on board was examined with similarly negative results, although it was all too obvious that any such item would have been thrown overboard along with Kate's clothes and anything else connecting her to the boat. Kate's body was re-examined inch by inch, in the hope that splinters of wood, linking her to Crazy Daze, had become embedded under her skin, but either the flaying action of the sea on open wounds had washed the evidence away or it had never been there in the first place. It was a similar story with her broken fingernails. If anything had ever been underneath them, it had long since vanished.

Only the sheets in the cabin showed evidence of semen staining, but as the bedclothes hadn't been washed for a very long time it was impossible to say whether the stains were the product of recent intercourse. Indeed, as only two alien hairs were discovered on the pillows and bedclothes-neither of which was Kate's although both were blond-the conclusion was that, far from being the promiscuous stallion portrayed by the harbormaster, Steven Harding was in fact a lonely masturbator.

A small quantity of cannabis and a collection of unopened condoms were discovered in the bedside locker, together with three torn Mates wrappers minus their contents. No used condoms were found. Every container was examined for benzodiazepine, Rohypnol and/or any hypnotic. No indications were found. Despite a comprehensive search for pornographic photographs and magazines, none were found. Subsequent searches of Harding's car and flat in London were equally disappointing, although the flat contained thirty-five adult movies. All were on general release, however. A warrant was issued to search Tony Bridges' house in Lymington, but there was nothing to incriminate Steven Harding or to connect him or anyone else there with Kate Sumner. Despite extensive inquiries, police could come up with no other premises used or owned by Harding, and bar a single sighting of him talking to Kate outside Tesco's on Saturday morning, no one reported seeing them together.

There was fingerprint and palm evidence that Kate and Hannah Sumner had been on board Crazy Daze, but too many of the prints were overlaid with other prints, few of which were Steven Harding's, for the SOCOs to be confident that the visit had been a recent one. Considerable interest was raised by the fact that twenty-five different sets of fingerprints, excluding Carpenter's, Galbraith's, Kate's, Hannah's, and Steven's-at least five of the sets being small enough to be children's-were lifted from the saloon, some of which matched prints lifted from Bridges' house, but few of which were replicated in the cabin. Demonstrably, therefore, Harding had entertained people on board, although the nature of the entertainment remained a mystery. He explained it by saying he always invited fellow sailors into the saloon whenever he took a berth in a marina, and in the absence of proof to the contrary, the police accepted his explanation. Nevertheless, they remained curious about it.

In view of the cheese and apples in the galley, Kate Sumner's last meal looked like something the police could run with until the pathologist pointed out that it was impossible to link semidigested food with a particular purchase. A Tesco's Golden Delicious, minced with gastric acids, showed the same chemical printout as a Sainsbury's Golden Delicious. Even the child's bib proved inconclusive when the fingerprint evidence on the plastic surface demonstrated that, while Steven Harding and two unidentified others had certainly touched it, Kate Sumner had not.

Briefed by Nick Ingram, attention was paid to the only rucksack found on the boat, a triangular black one with a handful of sweet wrappers in the bottom. Neither Paul nor Danny Spender had been able to give an accurate description of it-Danny: "It was a big black one..."; Paul: "It was quite big ... I think it might have been green..."- but it told them nothing about what it might have contained on Sunday morning or indeed identified it as the one the boys had seen. Steven Harding, who seemed baffled by police interest in his rucksack, claimed it was certainly the one he had been using that day and explained he had left it on the hillside because it had a liter bottle of water in it, and he couldn't be bothered to lug it down to the boat sheds simply to lug it all the way up again. He further said that PC Ingram had never asked him about a rucksack, which is why he hadn't mentioned it at the time. The nail in the coffin of police suspicion was supplied by a cashier at Tesco's in Lymington High Street who had been on duty the previous Saturday.

" 'Course I know Steve," she said, identifying his photograph. "He comes in every Saturday for provisions. Did I see him talking to a blond woman and child last week? Sure I did. He spotted them as he was about to leave and he said, 'Damn!' so I said, 'What's the problem?' and he said, 'I know that woman and she's going to talk to me because she always does,' so I said, jealous-like, 'She's very pretty,' and he said, 'Forget it, Dawn, she's married, and anyway I'm in a hurry.' And he was right. She did talk to him, but he didn't hang around, just tapped his watch and scarpered. You want my opinion? He had something good lined up, and he didn't want delaying. She looked mighty miffed when he left, but I didn't blame her for it. Steve's a bit of a hunk. I'd go for him myself if I wasn't a grandmother three times over."

William Sumner claimed to know little about the management of Langton Cottage or his wife's regular movements. "I'm away from the house for twelve hours a day, from seven in the morning till seven at night," he told Galbraith as if it were something to be proud of. "I was much more au fait with her routine in Chichester, probably because I knew the people and the shops she was talking about. Things register better when you recognize names. It's all so different here."

"Did Steven Harding feature in her conversation?" asked Galbraith.

"Is he the bastard who had Hannah's shoes?" demanded Sumner angrily.

Galbraith shook his head. "We'll get on a lot faster if you don't keep second-guessing me, William. Let me remind you that we still don't know if the shoes belonged to Hannah." He held the other man's gaze. "And, while I'm about it, let me warn you that if you start speculating on anything to do with this case, you could prejudice any prosecution we try to bring. And that could mean Kate's killer going free."

"I'm sorry." He raised his hands in apology. "Go on."

"Did Steven Harding feature in her conversation?" Galbraith asked again.

"No."

Galbraith referred to the lists of names he had produced. "Are any of the men on here ex-boyfriends? The ones in Portsmouth, for example. Did she go out with any of them before she went out with you?"

Another shake of the head. "They're all married."

Galbraith wondered about the naivete of that statement, but didn't pursue the issue. Instead, he went on to try to build a picture of Kate's early life. It was about as easy as building houses out of straw. The potted history that William gave him was notable more for its gaps than its inclusions. Her maiden name had been Hill, but whether that was her mother's or her father's surname, he didn't know.

"I don't think they were married," he said.

"And Kate never knew him?"

"No. He left when she was a baby."

She and her mother had lived in a council flat in Birmingham, although he had no idea where it was, which school Kate had gone to, where she had trained as a secretary, or even where she had worked before joining Pharmatec UK. Galbraith asked him if she had any friends from that time with whom she had kept in contact, but William shook his head and said he didn't think so. He produced an address book from a drawer in a small bureau in the corner of the room and said Galbraith could check for himself. "But you won't find anyone from Birmingham in there."

"When did she move?"

"When her mother died. She told me once that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and where she grew up as she could, so she moved to Portsmouth and rented a flat over a shop in one of the back streets."

"Did she say why distance was important?"

"I think she felt she'd have less of a chance to get on if she stayed put. She was quite ambitious."

"For a career?" asked Galbraith in surprise, recalling Sumner's assertion the day before that Kate's one ambition had been to have a family of her own. "I thought you said she was happy to give up working when she got pregnant."

There was a short silence. "I suppose you're planning to talk to my mother?"

Galbraith nodded.

He sighed. "She didn't approve of Kate, so she'll tell you she was a golddigger. Not in so many words, perhaps, but the implication will be clear. She can be pretty vitriolic when she chooses." He stared at the floor.

"Is it true?" prompted Galbraith after a moment.

"Not in my opinion. The only thing Kate wanted was something better for her children than she had herself. I admired her for it."

"And your mother didn't?"

"It's not important," said Sumner. "She never approved of anyone I brought home, which probably explains why it took me so long to get married."

Galbraith glanced at one of the vacuously smiling photographs on the mantelpiece. "Was Kate a strong character?"

"Oh, yes. She was single-minded about what she wanted." He gave a lopsided smile as he made a gesture that encompassed the room. "This was it. The dream. A house of her own. Social acceptance. Respectability. It's why I know she'd never have had an affair. She wouldn't have risked this for anything."

Yet another display of naivete? Galbraith wondered. "Maybe she didn't realize there was a risk involved," he said dispassionately. "By your own admission, you're hardly ever here, so she could easily have been conducting an affair that you knew nothing about."

Sumner shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "It wasn't fear of me finding out that would have stopped her. She had me wound around her little finger from the first time I met her." A wry smile thinned his lips. "My wife was an old-fashioned puritan. It was fear of other people finding out that ruled her life. Respectability mattered."

It was on the tip of the DI's tongue to ask this man if he had ever loved his wife, but he decided against it. Whatever answer Sumner gave, he wouldn't believe him. He felt the same instinctive dislike of William that Sandy Griffiths felt, but he couldn't decide if it was a chemical antipathy or a natural revulsion that was inspired by his own unshakable hunch that William had killed his wife.

Galbraith's next port of call was The Old Convent, Osborne Crescent in Chichester, where Mrs. Sumner senior lived in sheltered accommodation at number two. It had obviously been a school once but was now converted into a dozen small flats with a resident warden. Before he went in, he stared across the road at the solidly rectangular 1930s semidetached houses on the other side, wondering idly which had been the Sumners' before it was sold to buy Langton Cottage. They were all so similar that it was impossible to say, and he had a sneaking sympathy for Kate's desire to move. Being respectable, he thought, wasn't necessarily synonymous with being boring.

Angela Sumner surprised him, because she wasn't what he was expecting. He had pictured an autocratic old snob with reactionary views, and found instead a tough, gutsy woman, wheelchair-bound by rheumatoid arthritis, but with eyes that brimmed with good humor. She told him to put his warrant card through her letter-slot before she'd allow him entrance, then made him follow her electrically operated chair down the corridor into the sitting room. "I suppose you've given William the third degree," she said, "and now you're expecting me to confirm or deny what he's told you."

"Have you spoken to him?" asked Galbraith with a smile.

She nodded, pointing to a chair. "He phoned me yesterday evening to tell me that Kate was dead."

He took the chair she indicated. "Did he tell you how she died?"

She nodded. "It shocked me, although to be honest I guessed something dreadful must have happened the minute I saw Hannah's picture on the television. Kate would never have abandoned the child. She doted on her."

"Why didn't you phone the police yourself when you recognized Hannah's photograph?" he asked curiously. "Why did you ask William to do it?"

She sighed. "Because I kept telling myself it couldn't possibly be Hannah-I mean, she's such an unlikely child to be wandering around a strange town on her own-and I didn't want to appear to be causing trouble if it wasn't. I phoned Langton Cottage over and over again, and it was only when it became clear yesterday morning that no one was going to answer that I phoned William's secretary and she told me where he was."

"What kind of trouble would you have been causing?"

She didn't answer immediately. "Let's just say Kate wouldn't have believed my motives were pure if I made a genuine error. You see, I haven't seen Hannah since they moved, twelve months ago, so I wasn't one hundred percent sure I was right anyway. Children change so quickly at that age."

It wasn't much of an answer, but Galbraith let it go for the moment. "So you didn't know William had gone to Liverpool?"

"There's no reason why I should. I don't expect him to tell me where he is all the time. He rings once a week and drops in occasionally on his way back to Lymington, but we don't live in each other's pockets."

"That's quite a change, though, isn't it?" suggested Galbraith. "Didn't you and he share a house before he was married?"

She gave a little laugh. "And you think that means I knew what he was doing? You obviously don't have grown-up children, Inspector. It makes no difference whether they live with you or not, you still can't keep tabs on them."

"I have a seven- and five-year-old who already have a more exciting social life than I've ever had. It gets worse, does it?"

"It depends on whether you approve of them spreading their wings. I think the more space you give them, the more likely they are to appreciate you as they get older. In any case, my husband converted the house into two self-contained flats about fifteen years ago. He and I lived downstairs, and William lived upstairs, and days could go by without our paths crossing. We lived quite separate lives, which didn't change much even after my husband died. I became more disabled, of course, but I hope I was never a burden to William."

Galbraith smiled. "I'm sure you weren't, but it must have been a bit of a worry, knowing he'd get married one day and all the arrangements would have to change."

She shook her head. "Quite the reverse. I was longing for him to settle down, but he never showed any inclination to do it. He adored sailing, of course, and spent most of his free time out on his Contessa. He had girlfriends, but none that he took seriously."

"Were you pleased when he married Kate?"

There was a short silence. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Galbraith shrugged. "No reason. I'm just interested."

Her eyes twinkled suddenly. "I suppose he's told you I thought his wife was a golddigger?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said. "I hate having to tell lies." She raised the back of a gnarled hand to her cheek to wipe away a stray hair. "In any case there's no point pretending I was happy about it when anyone around here will tell you I wasn't. She was a golddigger, but that wasn't why I thought he was mad to marry her. It was because they had so little in common. She was ten years younger than he was, virtually uneducated, and completely besotted by all the material things in life. She told me once that what she really enjoyed in life was shopping." She shook her head in bewilderment that anything so mundane could produce a height of sensation. "Frankly, I couldn't see what was going to keep them together. She wasn't remotely interested in sailing and refused point-blank to have anything to do with that side of William's life."

"Did he go on sailing after they married?"

"Oh, yes. She didn't have a problem with him doing it, she just wouldn't go herself."

"Did she get to know any of his sailing friends?"

"Not in the way you mean," she said bluntly.

"What way's that, Mrs. Sumner?"

"William said you think she was having an affair."

"We can't ignore the possibility."

"Oh, I think you can, you know." She gave him an old-fashioned look. "Kate knew the price of everything and the value of nothing, and she'd certainly have calculated the cost of adultery in terms of what she'd lose if William found out about it. In any case, she wouldn't have been having an affair with any of William's sailing friends in Chichester. They were all far more shocked by his choice of wife than I was. She made no effort to fit in, you see, plus there was a generation gap between her and most of them. Frankly, they were all completely bemused by her rather inane conversation. She had no opinions on anything except soap operas, pop music, and film stars."

"So what was her attraction for William? He's an intelligent man and certainly doesn't give the impression of someone who likes inane conversation."

A resigned smile. "Sex, of course. He'd had his fill of intelligent women. I remember him saying that the girlfriend before Kate"-she sighed-"her name was Wendy Plater, and she was such a nice girl ... so suitable ... that her idea of foreplay was to discuss the effects of sexual activity on the metabolism. I said, how interesting, and William laughed and said, given the choice, he preferred physical stimulation."

Galbraith kept a straight face. "I don't think he's alone, Mrs. Sumner."

"I'm not going to argue the point, Inspector. In any case, Kate was obviously far more experienced than he was, even though she was ten years younger. She knew William wanted a family, and she gave him a baby before you could say Jack Robinson." He heard the reservation in her voice and wondered about it. "Her approach to marriage was to spoil her husband rotten, and William reveled in it. He didn't have to do a damn thing except take himself to work every day. It was the most old-fashioned arrangement you can imagine, with the wife as chief admirer and bottle-washer, and the husband swanking around as breadwinner. I think it's what's known as a passive-aggressive relationship, where the woman controls the man by making him dependent on her while giving the impression she's dependent on him."

"And you didn't approve?"

"Only because it wasn't my idea of a marriage. Marriage should be a meeting of minds as well as bodies, otherwise it becomes a wasteground where nothing grows. All she could talk about with any enthusiasm were her shopping expeditions and who she'd bumped into during the day, and it was quite clear William never listened to a word she said."

He wondered if she realized William had yet to be eliminated as a suspect. "So what are you saying? That he was bored with her?"

She gave his question long consideration. "No, I don't think he was bored," she said then, "I think he just realized he could take her for granted. That's why his working day got progressively longer and why he didn't object to the move to Lymington. She approved of whatever he did, you see, so he didn't have to bother spending time with her. There was no challenge in the relationship." She paused. "I hoped children would be something they could share, but Kate appropriated Hannah at birth as something that was the preserve of women, and if I'm honest the poor little thing created even more distance between them. She used to roar her head off every time William tried to pick her up, and he soon got bored with her. I took Kate to task about it, as a matter of fact, told her she wasn't doing the child any good by swamping her in mother love, but it only made her angry with me." She sighed. "I shouldn't have interfered. It's what drove them away, of course."

"From Chichester?"

"Yes. It was a mistake. They made too many changes in their lives too quickly. William had to pay off the mortgage on my flat when he sold the house across the road, then take out a much larger one to buy Langton Cottage. He sold his boat, gave up sailing. Not to mention flogging himself to death driving to and from work every day. And all for what? A house he didn't even like very much."

Galbraith was careful to keep the interest out of his voice. "Then why did they move?"

"Kate wanted it."

"But if they weren't getting on, why did William agree to it?"

"Regular sex," she said crossly. "In any case, I didn't say they weren't getting on."

"You said he was taking her for granted. Isn't it the same thing?"

"Not at all. From William's point of view she was the perfect wife. She kept house for him, provided him with children, and never pestered him once to put himself out." Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. 'They got on like a house on fire as long as he paid the mortgage and kept her in the manner to which she was rapidly becoming accustomed. I know you're not supposed to say these things anymore, but she was awfully common. The few friends she made were quite dreadful ... loud ... over-made-up..." She shuddered. "Dreadful!"

Galbraith pressed his fingertips together beneath his chin and studied her with open curiosity. "You really didn't like her, did you?"

Again Mrs. Sumner considered the question carefully. "No, I didn't," she said then. "Not because she was overtly unpleasant or unkind, but because she was the most self-centered woman I've ever met. If everything-and I do mean everything-in life wasn't revolving around her she maneuvered and manipulated until it did. Look at Hannah if you don't believe me. Why encourage the child to be so dependent on her unless she couldn't bear to compete for her affections?"

Galbraith thought of the photographs in Langton Cottage, and his own conclusion that Kate Sumner was vain. "If it wasn't an affair that went wrong, then what do you think happened? What persuaded her to take Hannah on board someone's boat when she hated sailing so much?"

"What a strange question," the woman said in surprise. "Nothing would have persuaded her. She was obviously forced on board. Why should you doubt that? Anyone who was prepared to rape and kill her, then leave her child to wander the streets alone, would obviously have no qualms about using threats to coerce her."

"Except marinas and harbors are busy places, and there have been no reports of anyone seeing a woman and child being put on board a boat against their will." Indeed, as far as the police had been able to establish so far, there had been no sightings of Kate and Hannah Sumner at all at any of the access points to boats along the Lymington River. They hoped for better luck on Saturday when the weekenders returned, but meanwhile, they were working in the dark.

"I don't suppose there would have been," said Angela Sumner stoutly, "not if the man was carrying Hannah and threatening to hurt her if Kate didn't do what he said. She loved that child to distraction. She'd have done anything to prevent her being harmed."

Galbraith was about to point out that such a scenario would have depended on Hannah's willingness to be carried by a man, which seemed unlikely in view of the psychiatric report and Angela Sumner's own admission that she screamed her head off every time her own father tried to pick her up, but he had second thoughts. The logic was sound even if the method had varied ... Hannah had obviously been sedated...