"This one?" He handed her a copy of Kate's draft reply.
She glanced at it. "I guess so. That's what it said, more or less. It was on some fancy-headed notepaper, I remember that, but I was pissed that she couldn't be bothered to write a decent letter back. The truth is, I don't think she wanted me to go. I expect she was afraid I'd embarrass her in front of her Lymington friends. Which I probably would have done," she added in fairness.
Galbraith smiled. "Did you visit the house when they first moved?"
"Nope. Never got invited. She kept saying I could go as soon as the decorating was finished, but"-she pulled another face-"it was just an excuse to put me off. I didn't mind. Fact is, I'd probably have done the same in her shoes. She'd moved on-new house, new life, new friends-and you grow out of people when that happens, don't you?"
"She hadn't moved on completely," he pointed out, "You still work with William."
Polly giggled. "I work in the same building as William," she corrected him, "and it gets up his nose something rotten that I tell everyone he married my best friend. I know it's not true-it never was, really-I mean I liked her and all that, but she wasn't the best-friend type, if you know what I mean. Too self-contained by half. No I just do it to annoy William. He thinks I'm common as muck, and he nearly died when I told him I'd visited Kate in Chichester and met his mother. I'm not surprised. God, she was an old battleaxe! Lecture, lecture, lecture. Do this. Don't do that. Frankly, I'd've wheeled her in front of a bus if she'd been my mother-in-law."
"Was there ever a chance of that?"
"Do me a favor! I'd need to be permanently comatose to marry William Sumner. The guy has about as much sex appeal as a turnip!"
"So what did Kate see in him?"
Polly rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. "Money."
"What else?"
"Nothing. A bit of class, maybe, but an unmarried bloke with no children and money was what she was looking for, and an unmarried bloke with no children and money is what she got." She cocked her head on one side, amused by his expression of disbelief. "She told me once that William's tackle, even when he had a stiffy, was so limp it was more like an uncooked sausage than a truncheon. So I said, how does he do the business? And she said, with a pint of baby oil and my finger up his fucking arse." She giggled again at Galbraith's wince of sympathy for another man's problems. "He loved it, for Christ's sake! Why else would he marry her with his mother spitting poison all over the place? Okay, Kate may have wanted money, but poor old Willy just wanted a tart who'd tell him he was bloody brilliant whether he was or not. It worked like a dream. They both got what they wanted."
He studied her for a moment, wondering if she was quite as naive as her words made her sound. "Did they?" he asked her. "Kate's dead, don't forget."
She sobered immediately. "I know. It's a bugger. But there's nothing I can tell you about that. I haven't seen her since she moved."
"All right. Tell me what you do know. Why did your story about Wendy Plater insulting James Purdy remind you of Kate?" he asked her.
"What makes you think it did?"
He quoted from her letter. " 'She'-meaning Wendy-'had to apologize, but she doesn't regret any of it. She says she's never seen Purdy go purple before! I thought of you immediately, of course...' " He laid the page on the bench between them. "Why that last bit, Polly? Why should Purdy going purple make you think of Kate Sumner?"
She thought for a moment. "Because she used to work at Pharmatec?" she tried unconvincingly. "Because she thought Purdy was a prick? It's just a figure of speech."
He tapped the copy of Kate's draft reply. "She crossed out, 'You promised on your honor' in this before going on to write 'The story about Wendy Plater was really funny!' " he said. "What did you promise her, Polly?"
She looked uncomfortable. "Hundreds of things, I should think."
"I'm only interested in the one that had something to do with either James Purdy or Wendy Plater."
She removed her arm from the back of the seat and hunched forward despondently. "It's got nothing to do with her being killed. It's just something that happened."
"What?"
She didn't answer.
"If it really does have nothing to do with her murder, then I give you my word, it'll go no further than me," he said reassuringly. "I'm not interested in exposing her secrets, only in finding her killer." Even as he spoke, he knew the statement was untrue. All too often, justice for a rape victim meant that she had to endure the humiliation of her secrets being exposed. He looked at Polly with unexpected sympathy. "But I'm afraid I'm the one who has to decide whether it's important."
She sighed. "I could lose my job if Purdy ever finds out I told you."
"There's no reason why he should."
"You reckon?"
Galbraith didn't say anything, having learned from experience that silence often exerted more pressure than words.
"Oh, what the hell!" she said then. "You've probably guessed anyway. Kate had an affair with him. He was crazy about her, wanted to leave his wife and everything, then she blew him away and said she was going to marry William instead. Poor old Purdy couldn't believe it. He's no spring chicken, and he'd been rogering himself stupid to keep her interested. I think he may even have told his wife he wanted a divorce. Anyway, Kate said he went purple and then collapsed on his desk. He was off work for three months afterward, so I reckoned he must have had a heart attack, but Kate said he couldn't face coming back while she was still there." She shrugged. "He started work again the week after she left, so maybe she was right."
"Why did she choose William?" he asked. "She wasn't any more in love with him than she was with Purdy, was she?"
Polly repeated the gesture of rubbing her thumb and fingers together. "Dosh," she said. "Purdy's got a wife and three grown-up children, all of whom would have demanded their cut before Kate got a look in." She pulled a wry face. "Like I said, what she really wanted was an unmarried guy without children. She reckoned if she was going to have to bust a gut to make some plonker happy, she wanted access to everything he owned."
Galbraith shook his head in perplexity. "Then why bother with Purdy at all?"
She hooked her arm over the sofa again and thrust her tits into his face. "She didn't have a father, did she? Any more than I do."
"So?"
"She had a thing about older men." She opened her eyes wide in flirtatious invitation. "Me, too, if you're interested."
Galbraith chuckled. "Do you eat them alive?"
She looked pointedly at his fly. "I swallow them whole," she said with a laugh.
He shook his head in amusement. "You were telling me why Kate bothered with Purdy," he reminded her.
"He was the boss," she said, "the guy with the loot. She thought she'd take him for a few bob, get him to pay for improvements on her flat, while she looked around for something better. The trouble was, she didn't reckon on him getting as smitten as he did, so the only way to get rid of him was to be cruel. She wanted security, not love, you see, and she didn't think she'd get it from Purdy, not after his wife and children had taken their slice. He was thirty years older than she was, remember. Also, he didn't want any more kids, and that was all she really wanted, kids of her own. She was pretty screwed up in some ways, I guess because she'd had a tough time growing up."
"Did William know about her affair with Purdy?"
Polly shook her head. "No one knew except me. That's why she swore me to secrecy. She said William would call the wedding off if he ever found out."
"Would he have done?"
"Oh, for sure. Look, he was thirty-seven years old, and he wasn't the marrying kind. Wendy Plater nearly got him up to scratch once till Kate put a spanner in the works by telling him she was a lush. He dumped her so quick, you wouldn't believe." She smiled reminiscently. "Kate practically had to put a ring through his nose to get him to the registry office. It might have been different if his mother had approved, but old Ma Sumner and Will were like a couple of old folks, and Kate had to work her socks off every night to make sex more attractive to the silly sod than having his laundry done on a regular basis."