“Well…” the coroner began.
“Are you a barrister? A trial lawyer?”
“I wasn’t aware that this was a trial,” Stone replied.
The coroner asserted himself. “I will permit Mr. Barrington to put questions to Mrs. Manning, if he believes he can shed some light on this matter.”
“I believe I can, Your Honor,” Stone said. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to address a coroner in a former British colony, but “Your Honor” seemed to do the trick. He picked up a manila folder, stepped forward, and addressed his new client. “Mrs. Manning, how did your husband earn his living?”
“He was a writer; he wrote spy and mystery novels, mostly; he had quite a following.”
“And when your husband was preparing to write a book, was it his practice to make notes?”
“Yes, he made very extensive notes, sometimes writing almost the whole book in telegraphic form.”
Stone picked up the leather-bound book from Sir Winston’s table. “In a form like the contents of this diary?” he asked.
“Exactly like that. Paul bought that blank-paged book in Las Palmas specifically for the purpose of outlining a new novel. He mentioned it to me over dinner, and he wrote in it often. He liked to save his notes in a bound form, because the university he attended had asked to be the repository for his personal and professional papers.”
“And why, when Sir Winston read you the passages from this outline, did you not mention your husband’s usual practice?”
“He didn’t give me a chance,” she said, casting a withering look at Sir Winston.
“I see,” Stone continued. “Mrs. Manning, what was your husband’s state of health shortly before his dea
th?”
“Well, Paul had never been seriously ill, but he wasn’t in very good shape.”
“How do you know this?”
“We both had thorough physical examinations before we set out across the Atlantic.”
Stone removed a sheet of paper from the manila folder in his hand and presented it to her. “Is this a copy of your husband’s examination results?”
She looked at the paper, then handed it back. “Yes, it is.”
Stone looked at the jury and the coroner. “Please follow as I read from the doctor’s report.” He held up the paper and began to read. “‘Paul Manning is a forty-two-year-old author who has come in for a physical examination prior to an extensive sea voyage. Mr. Manning has no complaints, but he is desirous of being examined and taking a copy of his medical records on his journey.
“’Mr. Manning is six feet, two inches tall and weighs two hundred and sixty-one pounds, rather too much for a man of his frame. The results of blood tests show a serum cholesterol count of 325 and serum triglycerides are 410. These are both dangerously elevated, the high end of normal being 220 for cholesterol and 150 for triglycerides. Because of these numbers, in conjunction with Mr. Manning’s lack of regular exercise and a history of heart disease in his family, I have advised Mr. Manning to immediately undertake a program of exercise, a diet low in cholesterol and other fats, and to bring his weight down to a maximum of two hundred pounds.’”
Stone handed the coroner the page and turned to his client. “Mrs. Manning, did your husband take his doctor’s advice and go on such a diet?”
“For about a week,” she replied. “Paul was incapable of dieting for longer than that.”
“Right,” Stone said and addressed himself to the coroner and the jury. “Paul Manning was grossly overweight and had been clogging his coronary arteries with cholesterol for many years. He was, in short, a heart attack waiting to happen, and happen it did, in exactly the way Mrs. Manning has described. You have heard how she coped with this disaster at sea, and I put it to you that she could not have invented such a story. It is simply too heartrending not to be true. This brave woman has lost her husband under extraordinary circumstances and then mustered the fortitude to save their yacht and her own life. You cannot believe otherwise. Thank you for your time, Your Honor, gentlemen.” Stone sat down.
The coroner turned to Sir Winston. “Do you have any further questions?”
“None,” Sir Winston replied almost inaudibly, looking at his knees.
“Gentlemen,” the coroner said to the jury, “do any of you have a question?”
The jury was mute.
“Then I will ask you to retire and consider your verdict.”
Stone and Allison Manning sat at the bar of the Shipwright’s Arms, as Thomas Hardy’s restaurant and inn was called, and sipped piña coladas.