The Stronger Sex (8 page)

He made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, that stupid scrap of paper. I must have it here somewhere.” He pushed a few papers about, acting as if he had to search for the brochure. “What do you want it for?”

“I want to know what kind of medical treatments Frau Fuchs had during her holiday. The hotel seems to have offered a range of them!”

He stared angrily at me. “What do you mean, holiday? That was no holiday, as you well know! No one said she could take a holiday!”

“You're right. She was off work sick. And I'm afraid she really
was
sick.”

“And you think you can deduce that from a scrap of paper? Why not try voodoo?” He stopped searching and stared at me.

“I might be able to deduce from that scrap of paper whether a neutral observer, such as a judge, for instance, could get the impression from it that Frau Fuchs had good reasons for going to that hotel, in order to have medical treatment there for her condition.”

“That's all garbage! Anyone would think you lived on another planet! Good heavens, don't you know what those advertising people are like? These places promise people ‘wellness' – wellness, I ask you – before we know it they'll be offering eternal life, and guests go and munch their carrots and their radishes and sit with their arses in a mud bath or a whirlpool bath and pay through the nose for it. It's got nothing to do with medical treatment! What time do you think you're living in?”

I looked at him in silence. In the end there was nothing he could do but go on searching. It didn't take him much
longer. After a few seconds he came up with a colour leaflet printed in a narrow, upright format, glanced at it and threw it to me.

It was not just a scrap of paper but a small brochure. I opened it and saw five names of qualified doctors on the third page, one of them also a professor, physicians whose services were available to guests at the hotel. It was probably the detective who had stuck a strip of paper with holes punched in it to one edge, overlapping the side of the leaflet so that it could be fitted into a ring binder and read there.

I opened the folder and put the brochure in where it belonged, taking my time about it. He watched me in silence.

I said, “It was a mistake to take this brochure out of the file, Herr Klofft. If I distrusted you, it might make me think you wanted to leave me in the dark about what a shaky case this is, for myself and my legal practice. And if you did that, it would be a very bad mistake, because it would do neither you nor me any good. You can be quite sure that Frau Fuchs's lawyer will back up the medical qualities of that hotel with all the expert opinions he can scrape up. And you can be equally sure that we will then look pretty silly in court.”

He said, “Don't you think the tone you are taking is outrageous?”

I said, “No, as a mater of fact I don't.” I put the folder in my briefcase and stood up. “I'll let you know when there's any news. And please let me know as soon as you hear from the lawyer representing Frau Fuchs. Goodbye, Herr Klofft.”

He was still staring at me darkly, but he said nothing. I had only just closed the door when his bell rang, twice. I went to the stairs, expecting to be met by his wife on my way or on the ground floor. But unexpectedly a door opposite Klofft's room opened. Cilly Klofft appeared.

She was still wearing her painter's smock. She smiled at me, stepped aside and held the door open.

8

It was an embarrassing realization, but there was no getting around it: I was a stupid, insensitive philistine. The pictures I saw in this light and quite large room, her temporary studio, all bore the same unmistakable handwriting. They were painted in strong colours applied with sweeping, often broad brushstrokes. There were portraits, a nude, still lifes of everyday items, a view of a landscape lying fallow, its horizon consisting of the distant rooftops of a row of five-storey apartment houses built of some speckled material.

I realized that the portrait of an elderly woman hanging in Hochkeppel's office on the wall opposite his desk was probably by the same hand. He had been looking past me and therefore straight at it when he said that Cilly Klofft might have been a great painter if she hadn't got involved with that man. I had been in his office day after day without ever once asking who had painted the picture. I had noticed it as little as the group of comfortable chairs under it upholstered in dark leather. Calfskin, lamb? No idea.

After appearing opposite Klofft's door, she had let me into the studio, saying, “Just a minute, please,” and had gone over to her husband's room without closing the door. While I was still trying to take in the wealth of pictures hanging on the walls, standing on the floor and on two portable easels, I heard his voice on the other side of the broad corridor, distant but raised so angrily that I could make out what he was saying. He obviously hadn't even given his wife time to close the door behind her.

“Don't let that whippersnapper come here unannounced again!” he barked. She said something I couldn't hear. Then
his penetrating tones again. “Nonsense! And kindly don't open the front door in that get-up. To a total stranger at that!”

The door of his room closed. Cilly Klofft reappeared. She smiled, closed the studio door behind her. “The tea will be ready in a minute. Shall we sit down?”

“Thank you.”

She had put the tea things and a plate of butter cookies on a small round table under one of the windows. The silence as we sat down and she poured me tea lasted too long for me. She could have supposed I thought it was her fault that I had heard a marital quarrel, and I didn't comment because I felt she and her problems were a nuisance. I said, “I've only just realized that the portrait in Herr Hochkeppel's office is by you.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “His mother. Did he never tell you?”

“No.” I hesitated, but then I added, “But I have to confess that I never asked him who painted the picture.”

“Why should you?”

I said, “Wouldn't any… well, any reasonably perceptive person have asked him? Except for a philistine like me. You see… until now I've always walked past pictures like a blind man.”

“You're not a philistine.”

I looked at her. She was smiling. “At least you noticed that the portrait in Hochkeppel's office comes from my studio.”

“Well, yes. And it was… well, a kind of revelation suddenly finding myself here surrounded by all… all this abundance.” I glanced around the room. Once again I noticed the screen standing at one of the windows, and the top of a large easel showing above it. I could also see the picture holder and the top strip of the canvas fixed into it, but I couldn't see how far advanced the painting that seemed to be in progress was, or what it showed.

She suddenly said, “Can you tell me why you and my husband were angry? Or does that count as a legal secret?”

“Well…” I hesitated, but then I said, “He kept a piece of information from me. Maybe unintentionally, maybe not. I don't know. In any case, I told him that if I didn't know about it, that could do no one but the other party any good.”

She looked hard at me. “Was it information putting him in the wrong?”

After another hesitation I said, “You could say so. Yes.”

She nodded. “Then you can assume that he concealed it on purpose. He can't bear not to be in the right. And when that happens he'll tell downright lies, trying to make his way out of a tight spot on any and every pretext until nothing works any more.” She snorted, a contemptuous sound. “But then there's never any question of an apology. He turns abusive instead.”

She stopped. I said, “Like with you just now?”

“You heard all that?”

“Yes. And I have to say…”

She waved that away. “Oh, I could have answered him back, but I didn't want to put you in that position.” She laughed. “He was lying again. Silly thing to do. He knew very well that you hadn't turned up unannounced, he listened to your call. The recorded message. I could tell from his phone. The little light for new messages wasn't blinking, it was steady. He listened to your message, but he hadn't got around to deleting it.”

I nodded. “If he'd admitted that, he wouldn't have had any reason to attack you.”

“You're right. Or that's to say… he'd have thought of something else.” She laughed, shook her head, looked down at herself. “This smock of mine.” She opened both hands, held them palm up to the right and left of her
thighs as if presenting the painter's smock she wore. Then she looked up and said, “I mean, would you call this thing sexy?”

I instinctively stared at the smock, its short grey skirts flecked with colour and leaving her brown knees bare, the narrow shady divide showing between her thighs.

I said, “I… well, perhaps he…” I wanted to say perhaps Klofft had meant to say she looked slovenly in it, no, not slovenly, maybe a little shabby, no, not that either, for Heaven's sake, I didn't know what I could say, and instead of a reasonably plausible comment I just uttered an inarticulate sound. I felt the blood rising to my face.

“What a silly question!” she said. “What could you possibly say to that?” She laughed. “
No
wouldn't do because it's not polite. And
yes
definitely wouldn't do either. Do forgive me.” She leaned forward and glanced at my cup. “A little more tea?”

As she poured it, I caught a hint of her perfume. She asked if I liked the tea. I said yes, very much. Some people, she said, didn't like drinking it surrounded by the smell of paint. A friend of hers always said that in this studio tea tasted like turpentine, but of course that was nonsense. I said yes, I thought so too.

When we had both sipped some of our tea, silence fell. I was beginning to wonder how I could continue the conversation, and for a moment I was alarmed by the idea of coming out with a remark to the effect that I hoped she didn't mind my saying so, but in fact I did think the short, lightweight smock she was wearing was rather sexy. I kept my lips firmly pressed together.

All at once she said, “Maybe you ought to know that my husband had a relationship with the woman he dismissed without notice. It lasted about ten years. He won't tell you, but I do think you should know, because otherwise you can't understand this case properly.” And after a pause she
went on, “She broke it off about a year ago. It looks as if she'd met another man. Younger, probably. Anyway, a man with whom she could have a future.” She breathed out audibly. “She's something over thirty now. And my husband is nearly eighty.” Another little pause, and she asked, “Can you imagine what effect that had on him?”

She looked at me with a rather forced smile.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

“Perhaps not entirely.” She stopped smiling. “Since then he's been persecuting her with – well, if it didn't sound so dramatic, I'd say with positively biblical rancour. He harassed her at work whenever he had a chance. That was while he still went to the works. He would run her down in front of other people. And when he stopped going out of the house, because he was afraid everyone would notice what was wrong with him, he told his business manager Herr Pauly to keep a particularly sharp eye on her. Goodness knows what other ways he found of making life difficult for her! Really, you'd hardly believe it!”

After a while I asked, “How do you know all this? I mean… he won't have told you about this… this relationship. Or did he?”

“Of course not.” She laughed. “Maybe you don't yet know the ritual observed by such comedies – no, tragicomedies. Usually, anyway. The wife finds out that her husband is cheating on her. But she doesn't do anything about it, maybe because it hurts too much, maybe because she hopes the affair will run its course and come to a natural end. And as long as she lets him keep his girlfriend, everything's all right. So a marriage becomes a lie overnight, and that happens again and again, getting a little worse with each new girlfriend. And in the end there's nothing left but a sense of deep disgust. Very deep.”

I hesitated, but then I asked, “Still, there are also husbands whose wives cheat on
them
.”

She looked at me, surprised, and then laughed. “Yes, of course you're right. There are certainly cuckolded husbands around. In fact they're positively classic figures.” She stopped for a moment and then asked, “But have you ever met a husband who caves in and keeps quiet when he finds out that his wife's deceiving him?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don't know… well, I expect you're right.”

Suddenly she said, with a dismissive gesture, “Oh, it doesn't matter anyway. I don't want to confuse you!” She looked at me. “You just ought to know that there were not several reasons why the woman lost her job, there was
only
one reason, the sole and crucial reason: he wanted to revenge himself on her. And that's also the only reason that he himself takes seriously. I don't know exactly what he told her. And you, of course. But you can be sure he's scraped the bottom of the barrel for most of his reasons, if not all of them. Perhaps he invented them. Or even faked them.”

She nodded decisively, as if to reinforce this serious allegation. Then she said, “And if she gets herself a lawyer who's any good, you'll be in trouble.”

I said, “That's what I assume, yes.”

She said, “I'm sorry I involved you in this business.”

“Oh, come on, you did no such thing!”

“I did. But believe me, it wasn't my idea.” She seemed to be very anxious for me not to bear her a grudge over this case, which did indeed promise to be a bruising contest. “He must have got cold feet when she instantly threatened to sue for wrongful dismissal,” she said. “And then he told me to call Hochkeppel. That's where rancour comes into it. He wanted to get his old… old friend into difficulties with this dead-end case. He didn't expect Hochkeppel to extricate himself the way he did. Nor did I.”