"Isn't it?" Sumner straightened abruptly and let his head flop onto the chair back so that he was looking at the ceiling. A long sigh whispered from his chest. "My imagination tells me you're working on the theory that Kate was having an affair, and that the man she went with was her lover."
Galbraith saw no point in pretending. The idea of an affair that had turned sour was the first they'd considered, particularly as Hannah had apparently accompanied her mother on whatever journey she had made. "We can't ignore the possibility," he said honestly. "It would certainly explain why she agreed to go on board somebody's boat and take Hannah with her." He studied the man's profile. "Does the name Steven Harding mean anything to you?"
Sumner frowned. "What's he got to do with it?"
"Probably nothing, but he was one of the people on the spot when Kate's body was found, and we're questioning everyone connected with her death, however remotely." He waited a moment. "Do you know him?"
"The actor?"
"Yes."
"I've met him a couple of times." He steepled his hands in front of his mouth. "He carried Hannah's buggy over the cobbles at the bottom of the High Street one day when Kate was struggling with some heavy shopping, and she asked me to thank him when we bumped into him about a week later. After that he started popping up all over the place. You know what it's like. You meet someone, and then you see them wherever you go. He's got a sloop on the Lymington River, and we used to talk sailing from time to time. I invited him back to the house once, and he chewed my ear off for hours about some blasted play he was auditioning for. He didn't get the part, of course, but I wasn't surprised. He couldn't act his way out of a paper bag if his life depended on it." His eyes narrowed. "Do you think he did it?"
Galbraith gave a small shake of his head. "At the moment, we're just trying to eliminate him from the inquiry. Were he and Kate friends?"
Sumner's lips twisted. "Do you mean, were they having an affair?"
"If you like."
"No," he said adamantly. "He's a galloping poof. He poses for pornographic gay magazines. In any case she can't ... couldn't stand him. She was furious when I took him back to the house that time ... said I should have asked her first."
Galbraith watched him for a moment. The denial was overdone, he thought. "How do you know about the gay magazines? Did Harding tell you?"
Sumner nodded. "He even showed me one of them. He was proud of it. But then he loves all that. Loves being in the limelight."
"Okay. Tell me about Kate. How long have you and she been married?"
He had to think about it. "Getting on for four years. We met at work and married six months later."
"Where's work?"
"Pharmatec UK in Portsmouth. I'm a research chemist there, and Kate was one of the secretaries."
Galbraith lowered his eyes to cloak his sudden interest. "The drug company?"
"Yes."
"What sort of drugs do you research?"
"Me personally?" He gave an indifferent shrug. "Anything to do with the stomach."
Galbraith made a note. "Did Kate go on working after you married?"
"For a few months until she fell pregnant with Hannah."
"Was she happy about the pregnancy?"
"Oh, yes. Her one ambition was to have a family of her own."
"And she didn't mind giving up work?"
Sumner shook his head. "She wouldn't have it any other way. She didn't want her children to be brought up the way she was. She didn't have a father, and her mother was out all day, so she was left to fend on her own."
"Do you still work at Pharmatec?"
He nodded. "I'm their top scientist." He spoke the words matter-of-factly.
"So you live in Lymington and work in Portsmouth?"
"Yes."
"Do you drive to work?"
"Yes."
"That's a difficult journey," said Galbraith sympathetically, doing a rough calculation in his head. "It must take you-what?-an hour and a half of traveling each way. Have you ever thought of moving?"
"We didn't just think about it," said Sumner with a hint of irony. "We did it a year ago when we moved to Lymington. And, yes, you're right, it's an awful journey, particularly in the summer when the New Forest's packed with tourists." He sounded unhappy about it.
"Where did you move from?"
"Chichester."
Galbraith remembered the notes Griffiths had shown him after Sumner's telephone call. "That's where your mother lives, isn't it?"
"Yes. She's been there all her life."
"You too? A born-and-bred Chichester man?"
Sumner nodded.
"Moving must have been a bit of a wrench, particularly if it meant adding an hour to your journey each way?"
He ignored the question to stare despondently out of the window. "You know what I keep thinking?" he said then. "If I'd stuck to my guns and refused to budge, Kate wouldn't be dead. We never had any trouble when we lived in Chichester." He seemed to realize immediately that his remarks could be interpreted in a number of ways and added what was presumably intended as an explanation: "I mean, Lymington's full of strangers. Half the people you meet don't even live there."
Galbraith had a quick word with Griffiths before she left to accompany William and Hannah Sumner home. She had been given time, while the scene-of-crime officers finished their search of Langton Cottage, to go home in order to change and pack a bag, and was dressed now in a baggy yellow sweater and black leggings. She looked very different from the severe young woman in the police uniform, and Galbraith wondered wryly if the father and daughter would feel more or less comfortable with the Sloppy Joe. Less, he fancied. Police uniforms inspired confidence.
"I'll be with you early tomorrow morning," he told her, "and I need you to prod him a bit before I get there. I want lists of their friends in Lymington, a second list of friends in Chichester, and a third list of work friends in Portsmouth." He ran a tired hand around his jaw, while he tried to organize his memory. "It would be helpful if he splits those with boats, or with access to boats, from those without, and even more helpful if he separates Kate's personal friends from their joint friends."
"Okey-doke," she said.
He smiled. "And try to get him to talk about Kate," he went on. "We need to know what her routine was, how she managed her day, which shops she used, that kind of thing."
"No problem."
"And his mother," he said. "I get the impression Kate forced him to move away from her, which may have caused some friction within the family."
Griffiths looked amused. "I don't blame her," she said. "He's ten years older than she was, and he'd been living at home with Mummy for thirty-seven years before they got married."
"How do you know?"
"I had a chat with him when I asked him for his previous address. His mother gave him the family home as a wedding present in return for him taking a small mortgage to help her buy a flat in some sheltered accommodation across the road."
"A bit too close for comfort, eh?"
She chuckled. "Bloody stifling, I should think."
"What about his father?"
"Died ten years ago. Up until then it was a menage a trois. Afterward, a menage a deux. William was the only child."
Galbraith shook his head. "How come you're so well informed? It can only have been a very little chat."
She tapped the side of her nose. "Sensible questions and a woman's intuition," she said. "He's been waited on all his life, which is why he's so convinced he won't be able to cope."
"Good luck then," he said, meaning it. "I can't say I envy you."
"Someone has to look after Hannah." She sighed. "Poor little kid. Do you ever wonder what would have happened to you if you'd been abandoned the way most of the kids we arrest are abandoned?"