Dead in the Water

by Stuart Woods

  “Has it occurred to you that this so-called diary might not be a diary at all, but a collection of notes for Mr. Manning’s next book?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “Now that you have been enlightened as to a writer’s working habits, don’t you think it possible that the book might be Mr. Manning’s preliminary notes?”

  “I suppose it could be,” the captain admitted.

  “Is it not likely that the book is his notes?”

  Sir Winston was up. “Objection; calls for a conclusion.”

  “Your Lordship,” Stone said, “the captain has already reached a quite different conclusion, with the help of Sir Winston, based on no real evidence at all; why can he now not change his mind and possibly reach another conclusion?”

  “Overruled,” the judge said. “Answer the question, Captain.”

  The officer looked very uncomfortable. “I suppose it might be likely that the book is Mr. Manning’s notes.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Stone said. “No further questions.”

  Sir Winston stood up. “Captain Beane, how long have you been a police officer?”

  “For twenty-one years,” the officer said, looking grateful to be back on familiar ground.

  “Is it, after thorough investigation, your professional opinion that the spear gun might have been used as a murder weapon?”

  “Yes, it is,” the captain said, smiling broadly.

  “No further questions,” Sir Winston said, sitting down. “The prosecution rests.”

  Stone was flooded with elation. He turned to Sir Leslie Hewitt and whispered, “Is that it?”

  “It appears to be,” Hewitt whispered back.

  “Good,” Stone said, feeling relieved.

  The judge produced a gold pocket watch from a fold of his robe. “We will break for lunch now,” he said. “Court will reconvene in one hour.”

  Chapter

  53

  Stone stood up and waved at Allison. “Want some lunch?” But a police officer was already escorting her from the dock. “Can’t she have lunch with us?” he asked Leslie Hewitt.

  “I’m afraid not,” Hewitt replied. “Her bail was automatically revoked when the trial began. Don’t worry, they’ll feed her.”

  They walked out of the courthouse, and Hewitt led Stone to a small restaurant across the street. “Everyone from Government House has lunch here,” he said.

  Stone took a seat with the barrister at a small table, then remembered that he was still clad in robe and wig. He removed the wig and placed it on the table next to him.

  “Put it back on,” Hewitt said. “Bad form to remove it as long as you are robed.”

  Stone put the thing back on, and as he did he saw Sir Winston and his assistant at the other end of the narrow room, both still robed and wigged.

  “What would you like?” Hewitt asked.

  Stone didn’t see a menu. “Whatever you’re having.”

  “They make a very nice seafood stew here; it’s the speciality of the house.”

  “That will be fine.”

  Hewitt ordered for both of them, and the waitress brought them cold bottles of beer.

  “Well, we have a decision to make,” Stone said.

  “What is that?” Hewitt asked.

  “Whether to call Allison to the stand.”

  “Of course we must call her,” Hewitt said.

  “But why? Sir Winston has no case at all, as far as I can see. We should simply rest our case and move for an acquittal, and I think we’d get it.”

  “We shall certainly move for an acquittal, as a matter of form,” Hewitt replied, “but it is unlikely in the extreme that we would get it.”

  “Even when the prosecution has offered thin evidence, and that evidence has been refuted in court?”

  “I can see where you might not wish to call Allison, coming from the American legal tradition, as you do.”

  “She’s not required to testify, is she?”

  “Not legally, no; she has a right to forgo questioning by invoking her right against self-incrimination. But unlike in America, in St. Marks the jury may consider that an indication of guilt.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s more, if we didn’t call Allison, Sir Winston would reopen his case and call her himself, you see.”

  “I see.”

  “In any case, Allison is her own best witness, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do think that, but it troubles me that Sir Winston has brought this case with no more evidence than he has.”

  “You must understand that in our legal tradition, although the presumption of innocence is given lip service, in fact even the insinuation of guilt must be answered in order to convince a jury that the accused is innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. Even the term ‘reasonable doubt’ has a different meaning here, as you will learn when the judge charges the jury. It more or less means that if a juror, after hearing the evidence, thinks the prisoner is probably guilty, then he votes that way. Only if he seriously doubts guilt will he vote for acquittal. I know you think all this is very quaint, but that is the way the law has developed here in the years since the British left. Of course, it has been steered that way by the likes of Sir Winston, the prime minister, who was a barrister and a judge, and Lord Cornwall. The system is very much more comfortable if it is easier to find the accused guilty instead of innocent. And, of course, they have no written constitution or Supreme Court looking over their shoulders.”

  “That’s just wonderful,” Stone said glumly. He began to feel a real longing for the vagaries of the American system of justice.

  Their food came and they ate slowly, not talking much. The seafood stew was, indeed, good, Stone thought. “What do you suppose they’re giving Allison for lunch?” he asked.

  “Oh, the food is better there than you might imagine, since the prisoners prepare it themselves in their own little kitchen. They give the warden a grocery list, and he gets them whatever they want. Since they’re not paying a cook, it’s cheaper letting them cook for themselves, no matter what they’re cooking.”

  “I haven’t heard much about the prime minister,” Stone said. “What is he like?”

  “He is exactly my age, which is eighty-nine, if you were wondering, and in better health than I.”

  “How long has he been prime minister?”

  “Since 1966, when the British left.”

  “That’s rather a long time in office, isn’t it?”

  “The people have always liked him. He is not in the way of being oppressive, and he has never been too corrupt.”

  “Just a little corrupt?”

  “Oh, well, you know how government officials are. They are paid very little, really. Do you think Sir Winston pays for his Savile Row suits from his meager salary?”

  “I thought perhaps his beautiful wife had money.”

  “She does, in fact; her father held Sir Winston’s job for more than twenty years.”

  Stone laughed aloud.

  “I know you may think our country amusing, Stone, but it really does work very well, you know. Mostly we live and let live, and if some of us live better than others, well, that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Sometimes I think we are able to be viable as a country because of our climate.”

  “Your climate?”

  “It’s warm year-round, you see, and hot in the summer. When people are warm in winter, they tend to think that they are not so badly off. There are fish in the sea and work in the hotels and bars, and clothing, if one is not a member of the governmental or managerial classes, is rudimentary—a length of cloth, a shawl, a bandanna, a pair of shorts will dress one well enough for most St. Marks occasions.”

  “This country has not been so good to you, Leslie,” Stone said. “I understand that you come from some wealth.”

  “That is true. When I was younger I was something of a firebrand in the legal system. I would have much preferred the American definition of reasonable doubt to our own; I would hav
e preferred better-paid and unimpeachable officials and a more frequent change of prime minister. I was not popular.”

  “If your prime minister is eighty-nine, then there must be a change of power in the offing.”

  “That is true,” Hewitt said, “and Sir Winston is one of two or three who might succeed the present occupant of that office. If he wins a conviction in our case, that will probably give him a distinct advantage.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he will be seen to have prevailed over a wealthy white American with a white American lawyer.”

  “Would he really have Allison put to death in order to obtain a political advantage?”

  Hewitt smiled sadly. “My dear Stone, you are naive. Men have put whole peoples to death for such power. Don’t believe that because we are an insignificant country, political power here is deemed to be insignificant. Remember, if Sir Winston becomes our next prime minister, he will have, for all practical purposes, a lifetime job at the very pinnacle of our governmental and social heap, such as it is on this small island. If he went to England and worked as a barrister, he might make a living, in spite of his race, perhaps even a fine living. But here, on his home island, he can be the closest thing we have to a king.”

  “A big fish in a small pond?”

  “In England, he would be a minnow in the sea.”

  “So his ambition makes him dangerous.”

  “Indeed it does—most immediately to Allison, but eventually to us all on this island.”

  “Is any of the other candidates to succeed the prime minister a better man than Sir Winston?”

  “Both,” Hewitt said. “One of them could be very good indeed. He has Sir Winston’s intelligence without his venality or his vanity, especially that. It is his vanity as much as his ambition that makes him dangerous. If we can defeat him in court today, we will have struck a blow, perhaps a fatal one, to his political dreams. That is why I am taking part in this case. A new prime minister, whoever he is, will not reappoint Sir Winston as minister of justice. He will be back depending on his skill as a barrister and his wife’s money. That would give me great satisfaction.” Leslie Hewitt smiled sweetly.

  Chapter

  54

  Court reconvened after lunch, and Sir Leslie Hewitt rose and addressed the bench. “Your Lordship, normally at this time the defense would move for a dismissal of the charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Certainly, the evidence submitted by the prosecution has been almost laughable and quite easy for us to refute. But the defense will not request a dismissal of charges, because we want the jury to hear our client, Mrs. Allison Manning, tell her own story, so that they will know from her lips that she is an innocent woman.” He sat down.

  The judge nodded sagely. “Mr. Barrington, please call your first witness.”

  Stone stood. “Your Lordship, the defense will, of course, call Mrs. Manning to testify, but before we do, we wish to call one other witness, Mr. James Forrester.”

  “Call James Forrester,” the judge said.

  The bailiff called out the name, and Jim Forrester took the witness stand and was sworn, giving a New York City address and styling himself as a journalist.

  “Mr. Forrester,” Stone began, “were you the last person, apart from Allison Manning, to see Paul Manning alive?”

  “I think I may very well be, along with anyone else who was standing on the quay when their yacht left the Canary Islands.”

  “Good, now let’s begin at the beginning. How long did you know Paul Manning?”

  “I first met him during our university years, more than twenty years ago, when we played on opposing basketball teams.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “While we were not close friends, we had a very cordial relationship, and I knew him fairly well.”

  “How would you describe Paul Manning?”

  “I always found him to be a pleasant and friendly person, very bright, and a good athlete.”

  “After your graduation from university, did some years pass before you saw him again?”

  “Only two or three years passed before I saw him the first time,” Forrester said. “I ran into him in a restaurant in Miami, Florida. He was working as a journalist for the Miami Herald, and I was working for a travel magazine in New York.”

  This was information new to Stone, and he wondered why Forrester had not brought it up before. “Did you renew your acquaintance on that occasion?”

  “Yes, we had dinner together.”

  “And when did you next see him?”

  “At a baseball game in New York City, some five or six years later. Paul was covering sports for the Herald, and I visited the press box with a reporter friend.”

  “And did you renew your acquaintance on that occasion?”

  “Yes, we had dinner again after the game.”

  “And when was the next time you saw Paul Manning?”

  “Only a few weeks ago, in Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands.”

  Stone felt relieved to be back on familiar ground. “And how did you come to meet him?”

  “I was doing a travel story on the Canaries, and we were taking some photographs at the Las Palmas yacht club. I ran into Paul at the bar late in the afternoon.”

  “And did you renew your acquaintance on that occasion?”

  “Yes, we talked for an hour or so, and Paul invited me to have dinner with him and his wife aboard their yacht.”

  “Did you detect any change in Paul Manning from your previous knowledge of him?”

  “Only that he had grown much heavier and was sporting a full beard. Otherwise, he seemed the same happy person I had always known.”

  “Did you, in fact, dine with Mr. and Mrs. Manning aboard their yacht?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How long did you spend in their company that evening?”

  “I didn’t return to my hotel until nearly midnight, so I suppose I must have been there five or six hours.”

  “What was your impression of the Mannings as a married couple?”

  “They seemed very happy together; it was obviously a very successful marriage, by almost any measure.”

  “Did they express affection for one another?”

  “Almost constantly. They frequently held hands or kissed. I was impressed that they prepared the meal together and enjoyed doing so. I’ve not known many husbands and wives who could share the galley of a yacht successfully.”

  “Did Paul Manning make mention of beginning to write a new novel?”

  “Yes, he said he was making notes for a new book, and he planned to begin the writing as soon as they were home in the States. He said he planned to call it Dead in the Water.”

  This was news to Stone, something else Forrester hadn’t mentioned. He decided to mine this vein. “Did he mention that he was keeping notes in a book?”

  “Yes, he showed me a leather-bound book that he had bought in a shop in Las Palmas.”

  “Would the bailiff kindly show Prosecution Exhibit Number One to the witness?”

  The bailiff handed Forrester the book.

  “Is this the book Paul Manning showed you?”

  Forrester leafed through the early pages. “Yes.” He held up the open book. “You see, he wrote the title, Dead in the Water, at the top of the first page.”

  “Mr. Forrester, you are a professional writer. Please look through the text of the book and tell me if what you read might correspond with the sort of notes a writer might make prior to beginning to write a book. Take your time.”

  Forrester read several pages while the courtroom waited. “Yes,” he said finally, “this seems very much to me to be a set of notes, though an incomplete one.”

  “Does it appear in any way to be a diary?”

  “Certainly not. It does not describe the relationship between man and wife that I saw in Las Palmas.”

  “After the Mannings sailed from Las Palmas, did you see them again?”

  “Yes, on
the island of Puerto Rico, to the south.”

  “Would you describe the occasion, please?”

  “We were there gathering information for my article, my photographer and I, and I saw the yacht in the marina there. Paul asked me on board for a drink and told me that they were sailing almost immediately.”

  New information again. Stone wished that Forrester would stop elaborating on what he had said earlier. “Was Mrs. Manning present?”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “Had anything in their relationship changed that you could observe?”

  “No, they still seemed to be the same happy couple I had seen a couple of days before.”

  “Were you present when they left the harbor?”

  “Yes, I was standing on the quay, watching them.”

  “Did they still seem to be a happy couple?”

  “Yes, they were laughing as they sailed past the quay. They waved and called out a good-bye.”

  “Did anyone but Allison Manning ever see Paul Manning after that?”

  “No. I believe I was the last to see him.”

  “You have interviewed Mrs. Manning extensively about their experiences after leaving Puerto Rico, have you not?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Did you question her closely about the events that occurred on the occasion of Paul Manning’s death?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did Allison Manning say anything to you about those events that you found to be inconsistent with the impression you had formed of the couple in the Canary Islands?”

  “No, she did not. Everything she told me had the absolute ring of truth.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Forrester; no further questions.”

  “Sir Winston?” the judge said.

  “Thank you, Your Lordship. Mr. Forrester, do you consider yourself to be an expert on marriage?”

  “No, hardly.”

  “Are you not presently involved in a divorce from your own wife?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “So do you think that, on the basis of two brief meetings, you could pronounce their marriage a happy and successful one?”

  “That was my impression.”

  “I ask you again, do you think you are qualified to judge the Mannings’ marriage, one way or the other, after meeting them for only a few hours?”