"Thank you. No further questions."
If he had been defense counsel, Mann was thinking, he would probably have gone too far with the woman, perhaps losing everything in the hope of winning a little more. For a lawyer I'm not the damn type. And Mann reminded himself that there is no type. You recognize a few general patterns, but the simplest human individual is not to be duplicated in a billion centuries.
A ruddy gray-haired man was being sworn in. Paunchy, scant of breath, his prominent eyes had the directionless belligerency of a man in some habitual dread of being laughed at. "Nathaniel Judd, sir, senior partner in the firm of Judd and Doherty."
"The junior partner is Mr. James Doherty, correct?"
"Yes, sir. Since 1955."
"Your business is real estate and general insurance?"
"Yes, sir." Judd spoke breathily on a while about that. Overweight, poor and changeable color, slow motions when his body's natural habit should have been a jerky aggressiveness—maybe what he feared was not only laughter. Jack, with his comprehensive doctor's glance, might have seen Nathaniel Judd as a candidate for a coronary, if the man hadn't already suffered one. Judd was telling how his only son, killed in action in Korea, had been a close friend of James Doherty's overseas. Doherty had written when the boy died, and had looked up Judd after his discharge. "Much as anyone could," said short-breathed Judd, "he's been like another son to me. Took him into the firm, 1955. Fine head for business. Good boy. Sixty-one myself, not too active nowadays."
"Did you meet Mrs. Doherty also that year—1955?"
"Yes, sir, soon after they settled in Shanesville, they invited my wife and me to dinner. Very nice. Met her then. Played bridge."
"Did you meet the Chalmers family then too? And Miss Blake?"