Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Do you think that Karlovsky himself is interested in Jane as a woman?
Ms. Kirsch: You know. It’s hard for me to say. I’ve known just a multitude of guys who thought Janie was incredibly sexy, and I know that Lamberg-Karlovsky’s marriage is one of those European kinds where he considers his wife’s place in the home and his place outside of the home is fairly loose. I think it’s entirely possible, you know, that he was attracted to Janie and was repulsed. That’s entirely possible.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Do you know of her dating a French professor who is a friend of Lamberg-Karlovsky’s?
Ms. Kirsch: A professor of French or a Frenchman?
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: A Frenchman.
Ms. Kirsch: Unh-unh (negative).
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Do you know of anyone in the class?
Ms. Kirsch: Oh. Wait a minute. Was this Frenchman a former classmate of—
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Yes.
Ms. Kirsch:—Lamberg-Karlovsky’s? Jesus-God, I remember a conversation with her that disturbed me very much. She said she thought Karl was a liar, and I said, “Why did you think that?” And she said, “Well, one night, Lamberg invited me over to go out with this guy who was a classmate of his,” and she said, “Boy, was he weird.” I said, “What do you mean, he was weird?” “Well,” she said, “Lamberg and his wife disappeared upstairs after dinner and left me with this cat, and this guy kept going on about what a shit Lamberg was, and he was a liar in college, that he was absolutely pathological about the untruths that he told, that he was unscrupulous in his relationships with females and so forth.” I can’t remember when she said this went on, but it frightened her terribly.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: It would have been sometime in the first week of December if I remember rightly.
Ms. Kirsch: I wish I could remember when she told me that. Boy, it upset her because I think she felt that—that Lamberg was not entirely sincere. As a matter of fact, I think she thought he was a liar. He would make promises and rescind on them, or he would make statements and then contradict them talking to someone else, that sort of thing.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Do you know anybody that really hated her guts?
Ms. Kirsch: Janie was not universally beloved; I’ll just put it that way. I think an awful lot of people were scared of Jane—that more so than disliking her. It was hard to dislike anybody that fascinating, but it’s easy to be scared of her. I think that if you wanted to pursue something like that, you’d have to see who felt that competitively they would have been hurt by Jane, because in her work, as in her love affairs, she was not going to take any crap from anybody. She was going to plow right through, and if she had to ruin somebody else’s career on the way, she would have done it.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Did Karlovsky feel that way about her?
Ms. Kirsch: Could be. I think Karlovsky is very insecure in his own position at Harvard. I don’t think his appointment for tenure has come through, and I think he feels very resentful about that.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: I think he has two more years in his contract.
Ms. Kirsch: As an assistant professor.