"Gardening," she replied.
"Now," Hewitt said, taking his usual seat at his desk and waving Stone and Allison to a sofa. "Here's how it will go on Monday: the judge will select a jury, which should take an hour or so, then the prosecution will make an opening statement, probably a very long and passionate one, if I know Winston Sutherland, and I have since he was a lad. The jury will be very impressed. Then I will make an opening statement, which will be equally passionate, but very much shorter, for which the jury will be grateful, I assure you. That should bring us to lunchtime.
"After lunch, Winston will present his case, which will almost certainly be confined to reading passages from Mr.Manning's journal, or outline for his novel, whichever way you would like to characterize it. I would be very surprised if he called any other witnesses."
Stone interrupted. "Isn't he required to submit his evidence and witnesses to the defense?" "Oh, no," Hewitt replied. "Nothing of the sort. Then we will call your writer acquaintance, Mr…"
"Mr.Forrester, from The New Yorker," Stone said.
"Yes, quite. I should think it would be best if you, Stone, questioned him. I'm sure you already have a complete grasp of what we must get from him."
"Yes," Stone said. "I want to…"
Hewitt held up a hand. "No need to go into that; I trust your judgment completely."
"Thank you very much," Stone said, "but shouldn't we go into this in more detail?"
"Completely unnecessary, I assure you," Hewitt replied with a big smile. "Then we will put Mrs.Manning on the stand, and I think you should question her as well," Hewitt said. "No need to go over that with me, but I should think that the two of you might go through it once or twice."
"You may be sure we will," Stone said. Jesus, he thought to himself, is this the man's idea of preparation?
"Then there will be cross-examination and redirect, but I urge you to keep redirect to an absolute minimum, since Lord Cornwall is impatient at such times. Then Winston will make his closing statement, which will be annoyingly like his opening one, then I will make our closing statement, which will move the jury very nearly to tears. Juries always love my closing statements. Then we will wait for the jury to make its decision."
"We have no idea, of course, how long that will take," Stone pointed out.
"Quite the contrary; I would be surprised if they took more than an hour, two at the most. The jury will, like most juries, have already made up their individual minds before the proceedings are finished. They will just need time to chat a bit to be sure they're all in agreement."
"That has not been my experience with juries," Stone said.
"Oh, I am sure that in your country there is extensive deliberation before the jury decides what it has already decided," Hewitt said, chuckling, "but in St.Marks, it is considered rude to keep anyone waiting, especially on so important a matter as Mrs.Manning's life."
"That will be very nice of them," Stone said dryly.
"Of course it will, and we will be spared the suspense."
"I hope we are spared a great deal more," Stone said.
"You may certainly hope," Hewitt said. He looked at a gold pocket watch that he produced from his Bermuda shorts. "Well, I see that time is getting on. We will meet at the court at ten o'clock on Monday morning and all do our very best." He rose and left the room without so much as a good-bye. Stone reflected that Hewitt had not offered them the promised tea, for which he had obtained the unnecessary milk.
Allison turned to Stone. "You know, sometimes I think he's not entirely all there."
Stone certainly could not disagree with her. "What did you two talk about while I was shopping for milk?"
"I told you," she said. "Gardening."
CHAPTER 23
Stone was having lunch alone at the Shipwright's Arms when Thomas called him to the phone. "It's Bob Cantor," he said, moving the receiver down to the end of the bar, away from where Hilary Kramer was sitting.
"Hello, Bob," Stone said into the instrument. "You back from the Canaries?"
"I'm home again," Cantor replied, "and a little worse for the wear. The jet lag will kill you."
"I sympathize. You got something new from the Canaries?"
"Nothing at all. I have got something new from here, though."
"Shoot."
"You remember I told you I checked out Paul Manning's credit record?"
"I do, and he had a pretty good one, as I recall paid everything on time."
"That's right, but I had that infomation only from a phone call from a friend at my bank. Now I have the printed report, and it shows a lot more."
"Like what?"
"Seems Mr.Manning was living right on the edge. He was pulling in a magnificent income, of course, probably something between a million and two million a year, and closer to two. But he was spending one hell of a lot of money, too."
"That's very interesting," Stone said.
"It gets more interesting. The credit report shows that he was pretty maxed out on all his credit cards and that he was borrowing heavily to make it from paycheck to paycheck."
"Writers don't get paychecks, do they? They get royalty checks."
"Okay, okay, he got paid in widely separated lumps, but they were big lumps. My point is, his credit record shows that he was borrowing heavily from three banks, usually a hundred thousand bucks at a time, then repaying it when his royalty or advance check came."
"Was he keeping up?"
"Just barely. I, ah, did a little unauthorized snooping last night."
"What do you mean?"
"I drove up to Greenwich, got into his house, and had a look through his financial records, which his secretary had neatly filed away."
"Bob, you should check with me before you do things like that."
"If I had checked with you, you wouldn't have let me do it."
"You're right about that. So what did you find out?"
"When he got a check he would pay off the three banks, and there would be only a few thousand left, not enough to get him to the next publisher's payment. Right before he set off on the transatlantic voyage, he two checks at once from two contracts, and that squared him for a while. But he borrowed while he was away, and now the banks are lined up, waiting for the will to be probated."
"Well, I guess that's going to cut into Allison's insurance money."
"I wouldn't worry about that," Cantor came back. "Manning had twelve million bucks in life insurance."
"Twelve million bucks? Nobody has that much insurance."
"You'd be surprised how many people do. He was paying something like fifteen thousand bucks a month in premiums, which is one of the reasons, along with his lifestyle, that he was having to go to the banks to get by. And get this, he also had mortgage life insurance to cover both the house and the boat loans. When Allison pays all the outstanding bills, she's going to have at least eleven million bucks in cash, tax free, plus the house, the boat, the cars-everything-free and clear. Her biggest expense is going to be property taxes, and she won't have those long, because she's already put the Greenwich property on the market. I told you I have a buddy up there in the property business."
"Have you seen the New York Times piece on Allison's plight down here?"
"Yep, and you can be sure that the insurance company has seen it, too."
"That means they won't pay unless she's acquitted."
"Wrong; they've already paid. They'd have to sue her to get it back, and they'll have a very hard time doing that."
"Why?"
"Because she's already transferred nearly the whole amount to an account in the Cayman Islands. I found the receipt for the wire transfer."
"Holy shit!" Stone breathed. "Either Allison has some very sharp advice from her lawyer and accountant, or I've underestimated her by a long shot. I've never even seen her so much as make a phone call from down here."
"Well, somebody is, shall we say, acting in her best interests."
"Somebody sure is, and it isn't me."