'It's very simple, Mr. Lau. I did not dislike him. I was...disappointed in him. As a young man he had had enormous potential; a truly original mind, capable of the highest level of synthetic thinking. He had already done great work in the 1950s. He might have become...” For a moment the aloof gray eyes gleamed, but she cut herself off with a tired wave. “However, he threw it all away.'
'To become a TV star?'
'No, that was later. That followed, perhaps inevitably. No, he threw it away by taking the easy course, not the scientist's way. He was lazy and he was dishonest,” she said flatly. “He plagiarized the ideas of others, Mr. Lau. No, that isn't the right word. He stole the ideas of others.'
'Including yours.'
'Most definitely. In 1966 he wrote a monograph, in its time a significant contribution, in which his ‘new’ approach to the nondirectional complexities of primary-plant succession were taken directly from an unfinished paper on which I had been working for more than a year.'
'Rough.'
The lounge was warm but she pulled the collar of the cape a little closer around her. “Afterwards I made the most strenuous objections, quite publicly, and he baldly denied my accusations. That's all there was to it.'
'You never got any satisfaction?'
One gray eyebrow rose. “Prior to last night, you mean?'
John didn't smile. “Prior to last night.'
'Once in print he went so far as to say that it was conceivable we had gotten the same idea at the same time, but that he had simply been fortunate to publish first. Like Darwin and Wallace, you know? That was not enough for me.'
'Sorry, I know who Darwin was,” John said. “I'm afraid I never heard of Wallace.'
She smiled for the first time. Not with humor, but not with malice either. “That is precisely my point.'
'It must have been pretty hard to take.'
'Mr. Lau,” she said wearily, “if I had wanted to kill him over it, I assure you I would have done it many, many years ago, not now. Believe me, I put all this behind me when I left the hallowed halls of ivy for the far more civilized world of commerce.'
'That was when?'
'In 1970. I've been with Amore Cosmetics ever since. I'm now their director of research and development.'
'Have you had much contact with Tremaine since then?'
'None at all. It was a chapter in my life I was happy to close. Nothing until his publisher contacted me about this book of his.'
'You must have had to take a week's leave to come here.'
'Yes, a week's vacation.'
'Why?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Why use up a week's vacation for this if you put it behind you long ago? Why not just let him write whatever he wanted to?'
She stared silently out the window for a moment. “Audley was incapable of perceiving his own inadequacies, Mr. Lau. I have no doubt whatever that his book would have blamed his misdirection of the expedition on others. Especially on me, as the assistant director. I couldn't allow that.'
'You think he misdirected the expedition?'
She gave a dry bark of laughter and looked levelly at him again. “Yes, I think he misdirected the expedition. I make no secret of that either.'
'I understand you have some kind of report on that.'
'I have?” She looked genuinely puzzled.
'You were showing it to some of the others in the bar.'
'Oh, that, yes. Not a report, but a Park Service memorandum: the results of a pro forma investigation concerned with the tragedy. Sketchy as it is, there is no doubt about Audley's culpability.'
'I'd like to see it, please.'
'As I recall, I gave the copy I have with me to Mr. Pratt. But I can tell you what it said, Mr. Lau. Simply this: They should never have been on the glacier that day. There had been increasing earth tremors, even small avalanches, and what did any of us know about ice travel? I advised against it, the Park Service advised against it. But no, he knew better. And as a result of his obstinacy and Walter's incompetence, three young people died.'
Two, John thought. One was already dead when the avalanche hit, assuming Gideon was right. Which he was, of course.
'Or rather two,” Anna murmured, in tune with him. “I understand someone seems to have been killed with an ice ax before the avalanche struck. Can you tell me which one it was?'
'I don't know which one it was. I hear there was some bad feeling among the crew.'
'Oh, yes, there was considerable bad feeling.'
'Over what?'
