I explained all this to James in the spring of 1994, and showed him the correspondence I had had with my solicitor and my accountant. I believe it concentrated his mind on the choices open to him, and I am confident that he put aside any thought of attempting to rekindle the affair with Kate Hill-Sumner. I hope I don't flatter myself when I say it came as a shock to him to realize that he could no longer take my automatic presence in his life for granted, and that he took this possibility rather more seriously than he took his relationship with Kate Hill-Sumner. I can say honestly that I have no lingering resentment toward James or Kate because it was I who was empowered by the experience. I have a great deal more confidence in myself and my future as a result.
I was aware that William and Kate Hill-Sumner had a child sometime in autumn 1994. By simple calculation, I recognized that the child could have been my husband's. However, I did not discuss the issue with him. Nor Indeed with anyone else. I could see no point in causing further unhappiness to the parties involved, particularly the child.
I have never met Kate Hill-Sumner or her husband.
*19*
Inside Broxton House, Nick Ingram abandoned both women in the kitchen to put through a call to the incident room at Winfrith. He spoke to Detective Superintendent Carpenter, and gave him details of Harding's activities that morning. 'He's been taken to the Poole hospital, sir. I shall be questioning him later about the assault, but meanwhile you might want to keep an eye on him. He's not likely to go anywhere in the short term because his arm needs stitching, but I'd say he's out of control now or he wouldn't have attacked Miss Jenner.'
'What was he trying to do? Rape her?'
'She doesn't know. She says she shouted at him when her horse bolted, so he slapped her and knocked her to the ground.'
'Mmm.' Carpenter thought for a moment. 'I thought you and John Galbraith decided he was interested in little boys.'
'I'm ready to be proved wrong, sir.'
There was a dry chuckle at the other end. 'What's the first rule of policing, son?'
'Always keep an open mind, sir.'
'Legwork first, lad. Conclusions second.' There was another brief silence. 'The DI's gone off in hot pursuit of William Sumner after reading your fax. He won't be at all pleased if Harding's our man after all.'
'Sorry, sir. If you can give me a couple of hours to go back to the headland, I'll see if I can find out what he was up to. It'll be quicker than sending any of your chaps down.'
But he was delayed by the wretched state of the two Jenner women. Celia was in such pain she was unable to sit down, and so she stood in the middle of the kitchen, legs splayed and leaning forward on her two sticks, looking more like an angry praying mantis than a crab. Meanwhile, Maggie's teeth chattered nonstop from delayed shock. 'S-s-sorry,' she kept saying, as she took a filthy, evil-smelling horse blanket from the scullery and draped it around her shoulders, 'I'm j-just s-s-so c-cold.'
Unceremoniously, Ingram shoved her onto a chair beside the Aga and told her to stay put while he dealt with her mother. 'Right,' he said to Celia, 'are you going to be more comfortable lying down in bed or sitting up in a chair?'
'Lying down,' she said.
'Then I'll set up a bed on the ground floor. Which room do you want it in?'
'I don't,' she said mutinously. 'It'll make me look like an invalid.'
He crossed his arms and frowned at her. 'I haven't got time to argue about this, Mrs. Jenner. There's no way you can get upstairs, so the bed has to come to you.' She didn't answer. 'All right,' he said, heading for the hall. 'I'll make the decision myself.'
'The drawing room,' she called after him. 'And take the bed out of the room at the end of the corridor.'
Her reluctance, he realized, had more to do with her unwillingness to let him go upstairs than fear of being seen as an invalid. He had had no idea how desperate their plight was until he saw the wasteland of the upper floor. The doors stood open to every room, eight in all, and there wasn't a single piece of furniture in any but Celia's. The smell of long-lying dust and damp permeating through an unsound roof stung his nostrils, and he wasn't surprised that Celia's health had begun to suffer. He was reminded of Jane Fielding's complaints about selling the family heirlooms to look after her parents-in-law, but their situation was princely compared with this.
The room at the end of the corridor was obviously Celia's own, and her bed probably the only one left in the house. It took him less than ten minutes to dismantle and reassemble it in the drawing room, where he set it up close to the French windows, overlooking the garden. The view was hardly inspiring, just another wasteland, untended and uncared for, but the drawing room at least retained some of its former glory, with all its paintings and most of its furniture still intact. He had time to reflect that few, if any, of Celia's acquaintances could have any idea that the hall and the drawing room represented the extent of her remaining worth. But what sort of madness made people live like this? he wondered. Pride? Fear of their failures being known? Embarrassment?
He returned to the kitchen. 'How are we going to do this?' he asked her. 'The hard way or the easy way?'
Tears of pain squeezed between her lids. 'You really are the most provoking creature,' she said. 'You're determined to take away my dignity, aren't you?'
He grinned as he put one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, and lifted her gently. 'Why not?' he murmured. 'It may be my only chance to get even.'
I don't want to talk to you,' said William Sumner angrily, barring the front door to DI Galbraith. Hectic spots of color burned in his cheeks, and he kept tugging at the fingers of his left hand as he spoke, cracking the joints noisily. 'I'm sick of the police treating my house like a damn thoroughfare, and I'm sick of answering questions. Why can't you just leave me alone?'
