Breaker

complex and tore strips off him for having the brass nerve to slander my future son-in-law. Then I asked him which day Mrs. Fielding claimed to have seen Martin, and when he told me, I lied and said she couldn't possibly have done because Martin was out riding with you and me.'

'Oh my God!' said Maggie. 'How could you do that?'

'Because it never occurred to me for one moment that Nick was right,' said Celia with an ironic smile. 'After all, he was just a common or garden-variety policeman and Martin was such a gent. Oxford graduate. Old Etonian. Heir to a coffee plantation. So who wins the prize for stupidity now, darling? You or me?'

Maggie shook her head. 'Couldn't you at least have told me about it? Forewarned might have been forearmed.'

'Oh, I don't think so. You were always so cruel about Nick after Martin pointed out that the poor lad blushed like a beetroot every time he saw you. I remember you laughing and saying that even beetroots have more sex appeal than overweight Neanderthals in policemen's uniforms.'

Maggie squirmed at the memory. 'You could have told me about it afterward.'

'Of course I could,' said Celia bluntly, 'but I didn't see why I should give you an excuse to shuffle the guilt off onto me. You were just as much to blame as I was. You were living with the wretched creature in Bournemouth, and if anyone should have seen the flaws in his story it was you. You weren't a child in all conscience, Maggie. If you'd asked to visit his office just once, the whole edifice of his fraud would have collapsed.'

Maggie sighed in exasperation-with herself-with her mother-with Nick Ingram. 'Don't you think I know that? Why do you think I don't trust anyone anymore?'

Celia held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. 'I've often wondered,' she murmured. 'Sometimes I think it's bloody-mindedness, other times I think it's immaturity. Usually I put it down to the fact that I spoiled you as a child and made you vain.' Her eyes fastened on Maggie's again. 'You see it's the height of arrogance to question other people's motives when you consistently refuse to question your own. Yes, Martin was a con man, but why did he pick on us as his victims? Have you ever wondered about that?'

'We had money.'

'Lots of people have money, darling. Few of them get defrauded in the way that we did. No,' she said with sudden firmness, 'I was conned because I was greedy, and you were conned because you took it for granted that men found you attractive. If you hadn't, you'd have questioned Martin's ridiculous habit of telling everyone he met how much he loved you. It was so American and so insincere, and I can't understand why any of us believed it.'

Maggie turned back to the window so that her mother wouldn't see her eyes. 'No,' she said unevenly. 'Neither can I-now.'

A gull swooped toward the shore and pecked at something white tumbling at the water's edge. Amused, Ingram watched it for a while, expecting it to take off again with a dead fish in its beak, but when it abandoned the sport and flapped away in disgust, screaming raucously, he walked down the waterline, curious about what the intermittent flash of white was that showed briefly between each wave. A carrier bag caught in the rocks? A piece of cloth? It ballooned unpleasantly as each swell invaded it, before rearing abruptly in a welter of spume as a larger wave flooded in.

*20*

Galbraith leaned forward, folding his freckled hands under his chin. He looked completely unalarming, almost mild in fact, like a round-faced schoolboy seeking to make friends. He was quite an actor, like most policemen, and could change his mood as occasion demanded. He tempted Sumner to confide in him. 'Do you know Lulworth Cove, William?' he murmured in a conversational tone of voice.

The other man looked startled but whether from guilt or from the DI's abrupt switch of tack it was impossible to say. 'Yes.'

'Have you been there recently?'

'Not that I recall.'

'It's hardly the sort of thing you'd forget, is it?'

Sumner shrugged. 'It depends what you mean by recently. I sailed there several times in my boat, but that was years ago.'

'What about renting a caravan or a cottage? Maybe you've taken the family there on holiday?'

He shook his head. 'Kate and I only ever had one holiday and that was in a hotel in the Lake District. It was a disaster,' he said in weary recollection. 'Hannah wouldn't go to sleep, so we had to sit in our room, night after night, watching the television to stop her screaming the place down and upsetting the other guests. We thought we'd wait until she was older before we tried again.'

It sounded convincing, and Galbraith nodded. 'Hannah's a bit of a handful, isn't she?'

'Kate managed all right.'

'Perhaps because she dosed her with sleeping drugs?'

Sumner looked wary. 'I don't know anything about that. You'd have to ask her doctor.'

'We already have. He says he's never prescribed any sedatives or hypnotics for either Kate or Hannah.'

'Well then.'

'You work in the business, William. You can probably get free samples of every drug on the market. And, let's face it, with all these conferences you go to, there can't be much about pharmaceutical drugs you don't know.'

'You're talking rubbish,' said Sumner, winking uncontrollably. 'I need a prescription like anyone else.'

Galbraith nodded again as if to persuade William that he believed him. 'Still ... a difficult, demanding child wasn't what you signed up for when you got married, was it? At the very least it will have put a blight on your sex life.'