Stone, cornered, decided to tack. “Winston, where did you attend law school, if I might ask?”
Sir Winston pulled himself up to his considerable full height. “I read law at Oxford,” he said.
“At Oxford University, in the town of the same name, in England?” Stone asked, sounding surprised.
“The very same.”
“Then, with such an illustrious legal background, perhaps you could provide me with some precedent for a prosecutor—let alone a minister of justice—indulging in such conjecture with a defense attorney.”
“Sir,” Sir Winston said, leaning forward, “you are fucking the lady, aren’t you?”
“Is that why I was brought here?” Stone demanded. “To indulge your prurient curiosity?” He stood up. “Sir,” he said, “neither my sex life nor hers is your proper concern. Rather, you should be concerned with this extremely strange prosecution of an innocent and bereaved woman for a crime which she could never have committed.” He threw down his napkin and left, in the highest dudgeon he could manage.
“You listen to me, Barrington!” Sir Winston called after him, following him through the large office and the reception room into the hallway. “When this trial is over—and maybe even before—you are going to come to a reckoning with me!” His voice echoed down the long hallway.
Stone kept his eyes straight ahead, down the hall and the stairs into the street, expecting to be arrested at any moment. He flagged a cab and dove into it. Not until he was a block away did he allow himself to look back to see if he was being pursued.
Chapter
34
Stone directed the taxi out to the coast road and Sir Leslie Hewitt’s house, then asked the driver to wait for him, hoping that Hewitt might have some explanation for the meeting he had just attended. He knocked at the open door and called out, but no one answered. He walked through the little house to the rear garden and there found Leslie Hewitt at lunch with Allison Manning. He stopped and stared at both of them; this seemed even weirder than his own lunch with Sir Winston.
“Ah, Stone,” Hewitt called out, waving him over. “Come and join us, have some lunch.”
Stone sat down. “Thank you, Leslie, but I’ve already had lunch. What’s going on?” he asked Allison as much as Hewitt.
“I thought I might discuss some of the finer points of the case with my…excuse me, our client.”
“It’s very kind of you to include me in the possessive pronoun, Leslie, but may I remind you…” He stopped himself. “Allison, do you think I could have a few minutes alone with Leslie?”
“Of course,” she said, standing up. “I was just going to the little girls’ room, anyway.”
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“I took a taxi.”
“I’ve got one waiting; we’ll be leaving in just a minute.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to leave,” she said.
“I said, we’re leaving,” he said, trying to hold his temper.
She turned and, without another word, walked into the house.
“Leslie,” Stone said, “what is Allison doing here?”
“I invited her to lunch,” Hewitt said. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“Leslie, may I remind you that I am Allison’s attorney, and you are a consultant on the case, hired to help me with the local judiciary at the trial. You are not the lead attorney, and I must ask you not to have meetings with my client from which I am excluded.”
“Of course I’m the lead attorney,” Hewitt said. “You vouched that to the court yourself.”
“Only because local law requires a local attorney,” Stone said. “I am still making the decisions in this case.”
Hewitt shrugged. “As you wish,” he said blandly.
“Thank you. By the way, I have just come from a command lunch with Sir Winston Sutherland.”