you get my drift.'
Judd reached down to tug his ankle onto his knee and wedge it forcibly into place. He leaned forward conspiratorially and leered, male to male. “What it added up to,” he said, lowering his voice, “was that Jocelyn Yount was hardly the world's most difficult lay, if you'll pardon my Latin.” He made a snuffling noise. His small eyes twinkled. “I do not speak from personal experience, I hasten to add.'
'You were telling me why you think that's Pratt's skull,” John said.
Judd chewed his lower lip for a moment. “I think it was the weekend before the avalanche. Steve flew back to Juneau for the day for something or other—supplies, I suppose. The rest of us took most of the day off and James talked Jocelyn into going off on a picnic, which didn't take much talking. Anyway, Steve got back to Gustavus before they did, and when they finally got in, you'd have had to be blind not to see what they'd been up to. Well, Steve had had this sort of trouble with Jocelyn before, and he just blew up, literally flung himself on James like a panther. Chairs flying, Jocelyn screaming—oh, it was quite a show. You can ask Audley—oops.” He rolled back his head and chuckled warmly. “Well, that might be a little difficult, but you can ask Anna. She was there too.'
'Who got the best of it?” John asked.
'Oh, Steve, quite definitely. They were both powerful men, you understand, but James was in the wrong and knew it. Besides, he was caught by surprise. This wild animal just leaped on him. He wound up on his back with Steve straddling his chest, pummeling away like a madman—'
'Were there any injuries?” John asked, remembering what Gideon had told him about the mandible. “To Pratt's jaw? Or Fisk's jaw, for that matter?'
'Injuries?” Judd made chewing motions, presumably to help him remember. “Well, there was a little blood, I think. James had a split lip, a few scrapes, no more than that. Why do you ask?'
'Go ahead,” John said. “What happened then?'
'Somehow Audley cooled things down before anyone got killed, but Steve took himself pretty seriously, you see, and this was a real blow to his ego, his manhood, whatever. And the fact that Jocelyn truly couldn't see what all the fuss was about didn't make him any happier. Audley insisted on a truce, and Jocelyn got a fatherly lecture, too, but it was all very touchy, very uncomfortable, from then on.'
He went back to snapping his suspender strap gently, thoughtfully. “Well, when I heard yesterday that someone had apparently been murdered, I assumed...well, obviously.'
'Assumed what, Dr. Judd?'
'Well, I can't say that I reasoned it through very carefully. I suppose I assumed there must have been another confrontation out there on the ice before the avalanche struck, and that Steve—well—killed James.'
'Why not the other way around? Pratt must have had it in for Fisk too.'
'Oh, well, I suppose so, but James was a quiet, sober sort. He knew he had that licking coming and he took it like a man. Steve was more of a brawler by nature; thin-skinned, belligerent, quarrelsome...'
Judd's fingers drummed thoughtfully on either side of his abdomen while he searched for more adjectives. For a man who hesitated to speak ill of the dead he was pretty good at it, once he got going.
'It doesn't sound as if you liked him too much yourself,” John said.
The fingers stopped their tapping. “Ah, liked him myself?'
I hit some kind of nerve there, John thought. He's thinking hard. “Did you and Fisk have a problem?'
Judd tipped back his head and chortled. “Why should there have been a problem? He was Audley's student, not mine, and Audley was welcome to him.'
John waited for him to go on. Judd was hiding something, waffling, embroidering the facts. Something.
'Oh, I suppose you could say I didn't care for his ways too much, but no, there was no problem, none at all. Steve and I got along just fine.'
Something.
* * * *
'I make no secret of it,” Anna Henckel said forthrightly. “Professor Tremaine was no friend of mine; there was little about him I respected.” She hesitated, not something she did often, John imagined. “But I am sorry he was murdered in that way.'
Did that mean she'd have preferred some other way? Dr. Henckel didn't show much in the way of grief for the dead Tremaine. No more than Judd had. She had made an impressive entrance in her “Dracula cape'—not black these days, but bottle green—a dramatic, full-length, collared cape held together at the neck by a heavy chain. She had set the staff she carried in a corner and had taken the one unpadded wooden chair in the upstairs lounge. Since then she had sat with the cape around her shoulders, stiff and distant, as restrained as Judd had been wriggly. Occasionally she took a puff from a cigarillo, held between the tips of her thumb and middle finger, European- fashion.
'What was it about him you didn't like?” he asked.
'Because you are a policeman is no reason to dissimulate,” Anna replied sharply.
These weren't exactly your everyday interviews. He'd been at it only an hour and already he'd run into an “egad” and a “dissimulate.” What next?
'I'm aware,” she went on, “that you've already talked with Walter. Do not ask me to believe he passed up the opportunity to prattle about my long-standing differences with Professor Tremaine.'
'I think maybe he did say something about it, now that you mention it,” John allowed.
Anna studied him expressionlessly. If that was her you-sir-have-the-balls-of-a-fish look, no wonder Tremaine had wilted.
'I'd like to hear your version,” he said.
