compartment. He walked back to the wing and held open the door for her. 'You're on your way,' he said.
An engine coughed to life, followed by another.
She slung an arm around his neck and gave him a much bigger and wetter kiss than he could have expected. 'I'll never be able to thank you enough, but I'll try,' she shouted over the roar of the engines. 'Goodbye.'
'Good-bye,' Stone said. Then an unexpected sound reached his ears. He looked back toward the airport gate and saw a Jeep driving toward them, making some sort of strange siren noise. The vehicle skidded to a halt next to the airplane, and two starched and pressed black policemen got out. The officer gave them a casual salute with a swagger stick. 'Mrs.Allison Manning, I presume?'
'Yes,' she said.
'Good afternoon,' he said, smiling, then handed her a document. 'You are under arrest for the crime of murder. You will be charged tomorrow morning at ten o'clock at the courthouse in St. Marks City. Do you have any luggage?'
'No,' Stone said quickly, 'Mrs.Manning does not have any luggage.' He took the document and looked at it; it appeared to be a properly drawn warrant. He turned to Allison. 'You'll have to go with them. I'll get you a local lawyer and see you at the hearing tomorrow morning. I doubt if I can get anything done until then.'
Allison looked stunned. 'All right,' she said. She put a hand on his arm. 'I'm so glad you're here.' She got into the Jeep and was driven away.
Chester killed the engines. Stone watched until the Jeep had driven through the airport gates, then went and got her duffel and briefcase from the luggage compartment. He didn't know what was in that briefcase, but he knew that he didn't want Sir Winston Sutherland rooting around in there. Poor Allison Manning, he thought. She's in for a rough time, and I suppose I'm going to have to help her.
CHAPTER 7
Stone drove back to Markstown, mulling over what he might do to help Allison Manning. There wasn't a whole lot, he reckoned. He could find her a local lawyer, and that was about it. Then he recalled that Sir Winston had asked him, during the fateful coroner's jury, if he were licensed to practice in Britain. Maybe, with the help of Woodman and Weld in New York, he could get hold of some high-class British barrister and have him flown in, if Allison Manning could afford it. He parked the car behind Thomas Hardy's restaurant and walked in.
Thomas was alone at the bar, writing on a steno pad. He looked up as Stone came in. 'I heard,' he said. 'Chester called me.'
'It looks bad,' Stone said, taking a stool and handing Thomas the arrest warrant. 'I'm going to have to find her a first-class barrister.'
Thomas shoved a pad across the bar. 'I thought that might be the case. Here's a list of three who might-I stress, might-take her on.'
Stone read four names. 'What about the fourth name?'
'First we'd better call the first three. Shall I?'
'Please.'
Thomas picked up the phone and dialed a number.
Ten minutes later, after the third call, Thomas hung up the phone.
'Well?' Stone said.
'No hope,' Thomas replied. 'The word is out that Sir Winston really wants this one-nobody knows exactly why-and nobody is going to go up against him right at this moment in time, with an election coming up soon. The consensus seems to be that a conviction would give him a lot of favorable publicity, and nobody wants to get between Sir Winston and publicity.'
'What if Sir Winston should lose the case?'
'As far as I can tell from these phone conversations, nobody in the legal community thinks he's going to.'
'How about somebody else?'
'Not a chance,' Thomas said. 'I eliminated most of them before I made my list. Those three were the only ones who might have opposed Sir Winston.'
'What about the fourth name on the list?'
'Sir Leslie Hewitt,' Thomas said.
'Yes, what about him?'
'He'll represent her,' Thomas said. 'He hates Sir Winston's guts, as his father before him did.'
'Well, then, give him a call.'
Thomas shook his head. 'You don't understand.'
'Explain it to me.'
'Leslie was once a first-rate barrister, one of the best, in fact.'
'And now?'
'He's well past eighty; he hasn't tried a case in at least fifteen years; and…'
'And?'
'And he's…failing, you know? I mean, he's bright as a new penny at times, but at other times…'
'I think I get the picture,' Stone said. 'You're suggesting that an eighty-year-old barrister who's half gaga should defend Allison Manning?'
'No, that's not what I'm suggesting. You've got a hearing tomorrow morning at ten, and somebody besides you has got to be there to go through the motions, to be the barrister of record until you can get somebody in here from out of the country.'
'You mean from England?'
'Probably. You could go to Antigua, which is another former British colony and which has a similar legal system, but that's too close to home. Those people are going to have to get along with Sir Winston, too, if his political dreams come true, and they are very likely to.'
'I thought about London. I do a lot of work for a firm in New York, and I can ask them to recommend somebody in London. But I don't know whether Allison can meet that kind of expense.'
'Then she's between a rock and a hard place,' Thomas said. 'Right now, I think you and I had better go see Leslie Hewitt.'
They drove along the coast road to the western end of the island and turned off toward the beach onto a rutted dirt road.
'Where are you taking me?' Stone asked.
'Leslie has a cottage down by the beach,' Thomas replied. 'It's been in his family since the seventeenth century.'
'Is he black?'
'Yes.'
'I would have thought that in the seventeenth century, any blacks on this island would have been slaves.'
'You're not far off the mark there, but an ancestor of Leslie's bought his freedom and started a stevedoring business. They were a very prosperous family indeed until we got our freedom from Britain. Then the new government confiscated nearly everything Leslie had inherited.His wife died, his children fled the country, and he was left here with nothing but this cottage.' He pulled up before a whitewashed building.
It was larger than Stone had imagined. He got out and, with Thomas leading the way, approached the Dutch front door, which was open at the top.
'Leslie!' Thomas called out. He beckoned to Stone and entered the cottage. They walked through a small foyer and into a comfortably if somewhat seedily furnished living room. 'Leslie!' Thomas called out again, but there was no reply. 'Let's take a look out back.' They walked through a neat kitchen and through a pretty garden, then down to the beach. A tiny black man in faded shbrts and a straw hat was pulling a dinghy up the beach from the water. 'There he is,' Thomas said, approaching. 'Leslie, how you doing?' he asked.
'Thomas? Is that Thomas Hardy?' Leslie Hewitt asked, shielding his eyes from the light.
'Sure is,' Thomas said. 'Come to see you, and I brought a friend.' He introduced the barrister to Stone.
'How do you do, Sir Leslie,' Stone said.
