Dead in the Water (Stone Barrington 3)

“No, not immediately. I was so terrified and so exhausted from clinging to the mast that I just lay there in a heap. I think I may have even fainted for a while; I don’t know how long. When I could get up again, I made my way back to the cockpit. Paul was dead.”

Stone found that he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a rush, and everyone in the room—the coroner, the jury, and Sir Winston—turned and looked at him. “Excuse me,” he said sheepishly. He looked up and found Allison Manning staring at him. It seemed to be the first time she had been aware of his presence.

“Please go on,” Sir Winston said. “What did you do next?”

“I tried to give him cardiopulmonary resuscitation,” she said.

“Had you been trained in this technique?”

“I took a class once, at the yacht club at home.”

“Did this have any effect?”

“No. I couldn’t get a pulse at all, and Paul…I couldn’t get him to

breathe, and his body was growing quite cold by this time.”

Stone marveled at how calmly she related all this.

“And then what did you do?”

“I sat and cried for a while and let the yacht take care of herself. When I finally got a grip, I started thinking about what to do next. It was dark by then, and it seemed so strange that Paul was dead. I kept expecting him to come up from below and adjust the sails or something.”

“Did you move the body at all?”

“Not at first. Paul is…was a big man, and I’m quite small. I thought about moving him down below, to a berth, but then it occurred to me that if I did, I’d just have to get him up again, sooner or later. So I left him in the cockpit that night. I was exhausted, so I got some sleep. I couldn’t eat anything, though. The boat took care of me; the wind dropped, and she lay fairly quietly.”

“What did you finally do with the body?”

“When I woke up it was still dark, but there was about three-quarters of a moon, so the night was bright. It was clear to me that in that climate, I was going to have to bury Paul at sea. I went up into the cockpit and tried lifting the body, but I couldn’t budge it. Finally I got the main halyard around him and winched him into a sort of standing position. When I let out on the line, he fell to leeward, and I was able to get him onto the side deck and undo the halyard. Then I released the lifelines and got him overboard.”

“What did you do next?”

She swallowed hard, then continued calmly. “I said a prayer for Paul’s soul, then I began to think about sailing the boat. Dawn came; I got the mainsail up with a winch and got us headed due west, and I repaired the headsail reefing swivel with a little steel clip. We had half a dozen spares, and we had already used half of them. Paul often talked about finding some more permanent solution to the problem, but he never did. Finally I got the headsail up again. I set the self-steering gear, as Paul had taught me, and I got a sleeping bag and slept in the cockpit through the morning. It was easy sailing, and with one or two direction changes as the wind came up, I got through the day. I slept in the cockpit that night, and by the second day, I was getting used to sailing the boat.”

“So you just kept heading due west?”

“No, there was a book on board about celestial navigation; I couldn’t find the manuals for the GPS or the high-frequency radio. I had never taken any real interest in the subject before—Paul had always done the navigating—but he had shown me how to use the sextant. From the book I learned how to find our latitude, and I just tried to keep us on the right latitude the rest of the way. We finished up a little farther south than I had tried for; our landfall was at St. Marks, instead of Antigua.”

Sir Winston reached into his briefcase and brought out two books. He showed one to Allison Manning. “And you kept this logbook?”

“Yes, after Paul died I kept the log in a sort of abbreviated fashion. Paul was always very meticulous about recording everything, as you can see by reading the earlier entries.”

Sir Winston held up the other book, a leather-bound volume. “And do you recognize this book?”

She looked at it. “Yes, he bought that in Las Palmas, and he wrote in it a lot.”

“Did you ever read what he wrote in this book, Mrs. Manning?”

“No. He often made notes in such a book.”

“Mrs. Manning, are you quite able to continue? Would you like a rest?”

“No, I’m fine; I’d like to go on.”

“Good, good. Tell me, Mrs. Manning, how would you describe your relationship with your husband?”

“We had a good marriage; we were very content and happy.”