Stone placed the small duffel on the bed in the aft cabin and looked at Allison, who was sitting on the little stool in front of the vanity, brushing her hair. She looked, he thought, like something out of a Degas oil. He was having a lot of trouble. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, that he had represented a client whom he knew to be guilty; that was part of his job. It was the first time, however, that he had represented a guilty client with whom he had been enthusiastically making love—one he had grown very fond of—was nearly in love with. It was also the first time he had represented anyone charged with a capital crime. He was trying very hard to ignore his cop’s instincts and keep her innocent in his mind.
“Allison,” he said absently.
“Yes?”
“After Paul died, why didn’t you use the satellite phone to call for help?”
“Two reasons,” she said without hesitation. “First, I couldn’t get the damned thing to work. I’ve never been very good at reading manuals, and I just couldn’t get it to lock onto a satellite, so I gave up. After I got to port I got it to work the first time; maybe it was because the boat wasn’t moving anymore, or maybe it was the crossword syndrome.”
“What’s the crossword syndrome?”
“You’re working on the crossword, and there’s a big patch of it you just can’t solve. So you put the thing down for a while—maybe until the next day—and you pick it up and immediately get all the words. Maybe it’s like that with following directions in a manual.”
“I’ve had that experience,” Stone agreed. “What was your second reason for not calling for help?”
“First of all, I did call for help, but on the VHF radio. I didn’t know how to work the high-frequency unit—still don’t—but I tried calling ‘any ship’ on channel sixteen, but I never got an answer. I never even saw a ship or a yacht the whole trip. Second, I would have been ashamed if somebody had come to my rescue.”
“Why ashamed?”
“Well, I had a perfectly good yacht under me, and I had some idea of how to sail it, so my sense of self-reliance would have been punctured if I’d had to ask somebody else to do it for me. Anyway, in the end, I proved I could sail her.” She looked at him in the mirror. “Why did you want to know about the satellite telephone?”
“I thought the police might have seen it during their search and that Sir Winston might ask the question at the trial. If he does, stick with the answer about not being able to get the phone to work, and calling for help on the VHF; don’t mention that business about your sense of self-reliance. I’m not sure how it would play with the jury.”
“Okay.”
“Later, I’ll go through your testimony with you, and we’ll fine-tune it.”
“You mean you’re going to rehearse a witness?”
“You bet I am. Oh, I’m not going to tamper with your story; I just want to shape it in a way that will tell the jury, in a simple and straightforward way, that you’re innocent.”
“Okay. What are you going to do the rest of the day?”
“I have to go out and talk to Leslie Hewitt about the trial. I’ve made some notes that I want to give him.”
“I’ll be here all day,” she said, “or as long as the cops are.”
“You don’t have some other escape plan up your sleeve, do you? Because if you do, I beg you not to try it.”
“Relax, Stone; I’ve learned my lesson about escaping.”
“I hope to God you have.”
Stone borrowed Thomas’s car
and drove along the coast road to Leslie Hewitt’s house. He turned down the dirt road to the cottage and parked out front, next to Hewitt’s Morris Minor station wagon, and got out, taking a file folder with him. The front door of the house stood open, and Stone stepped inside. “Leslie!” he called. “You home?” There was no response. “Leslie!” he called again. He looked in the little study and in the kitchen, but the barrister was not in the house.
Stone walked out the back door and into the garden, but there was still no sight of Hewitt, not even down at the beach. He walked a few steps more, looked around, then turned to go back into the house. As he turned his eye drifted to his left and there, behind a low hedge, lay the inert form of Sir Leslie Hewitt, clad only in faded Bermuda shorts. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned away from Stone; a bucket of hand gardening tools lay next to him and a trowel was near his right hand.
“Leslie!” Stone cried, turning him over on his back and brushing dirt from his face. He slapped Hewitt’s face lightly and peeled back an eyelid. The pupil was contracted; thank God for that.
Suddenly Hewitt coughed, then opened his eyes. “Oh, good morning,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with a fist. “I must have dozed off.”
“Leslie, are you all right?” Stone asked. “You were out like a light.”
“Young man, when you are my age, you will take the occasional nap, too, believe me.” With Stone’s help, he got to his feet. “Well now, what brings you to see me?” he asked.
Stone wasn’t sure that Hewitt recognized him, and he didn’t want to ask. “I brought you some material to read in preparation for the trial,” he said. “Do you feel up to reading it?”