The Stronger Sex (25 page)

I remembered that I had promised Klofft to play another game of chess with him. Young whippersnapper that I was in his opinion, I had then told him what I thought of his Hungarian escapade. But next moment he had positively humbled himself, asking me – no, pleading with me – to come and play chess with him again some time soon. He had sounded almost pitiful. I felt sorry for him. Ridiculous? Yes, but I wouldn't be able to wriggle out of keeping my promise.

And that wasn't the only promise I had thoughtlessly made, although I really wanted to leave that house and its occupants entirely behind me. I had also committed myself to Cilly. I had told her I'd like to discuss those two newspaper articles with her, the different presentation of the alarming Ida and the attractive Tippi.

Did I really want to? What would I say to the ageing Frau Klofft? Was I going to say I didn't think Ida at all “devastated”, or “fluorescent” in her physical decline, a figure to run from; was I going to say I thought her attractive? And was I going to tell her that radiant, seventy-seven-year-old Tippi could still look desirable to young men like me?

Did I want to comfort her?

As I was trying to shake off these embarrassing reflections, the phone rang. Simone said, “I have a Herr Manderscheidt on the line. Sigrid Enke says you know him and he's already been to see you. Shall I put him through?”

I hesitated, but then I said, “Yes, please do that.” Maybe the detective could provide me with a little amusement.

When I had given my name, all he said, in a voice pregnant with meaning, as if the importance of his information ruled out any preliminary greetings or other civilities, was, “Herr Schmickler is here.”

“Herr Schmickler?”

“Yes, the Swiss boyfriend of your opponent in the case at the tribunal! The travel expert. The man from the Beauté du Lac hotel! You can't have forgotten his name!”

“No, of course not. But what's the significance of his arrival?”

“I thought you'd be able to tell me that!”

“My dear Herr Manderscheidt,” I said, “am I Jesus?”

He did not reply. I was afraid I might have annoyed him, and he would simply ring off. I quickly added, “Well, right, so Herr Schmickler is here. And what's the significance of that? If you ask me, I'd say he felt a burning desire to see the lovely Käthchen again and boarded the next plane. Or she felt a burning desire to see
him
again, because she was lonely in her quiet apartment, so she asked him to come and give her his support as soon as possible. Quite simple but also quite plausible, wouldn't you say?”

He made a sound like a snort of suppressed laughter. “The burning desire bit could be right.”

“Why?”

“Listen, I posted a man outside Katharina Fuchs's apartment. And he took a couple of pretty photos! Frau Fuchs and Herr Schmickler leaving the building and having breakfast in the café on the corner. What the pair of them got up to out in the street was pretty close to the tender farewell between Frau Fuchs and her GP. That gymnastic exercise they were doing – you do remember it, don't you?”

“Yes, I remember it.” Suddenly I realized what his information might mean. “Look,” I said, “are you still keeping Frau Fuchs and Dr Wehling under observation? I mean, hasn't Klofft called that off?”

I couldn't make much of his answer. “No, no – I stationed the man there because Frau Broogsitter called me. The neighbour. She told me Herr Schmickler had arrived. She didn't say Herr Schmickler, of course, she didn't know the name, but she said a very good-looking suntanned man in his mid-thirties. And then I posted my man there.”

After a while I asked, “Have you shown those photos to Klofft as well?”

“Of course.”

“Just as you showed him the photos of Frau Fuchs and Dr Wehling?”

“Of course.”

I said, “You don't spare your client's feelings much, do you?”

He sighed. Then he said, “Sparing my clients' feelings isn't part of my job, Dr Zabel. What kind of photos do you think I sometimes come up with for people involved in divorce cases? Or other… delicate matters? Sometimes I think one of them is going to go for my throat one of these days. Or take a revolver out of a drawer and shoot me down.” He sighed again. “I really do.”

I did not reply to that. Suddenly he said, “Are you always anxious to spare your own clients' feelings?”

For a moment I didn't know what answer to give. Then I said, “What I'd really like to know is what you, as an experienced investigator, make of Herr Schmickler's visit. I'm sure just the burning desire explanation wasn't enough for you. You must have a theory.”

“Well…” He thought for a moment. “It couldn't exactly be called a theory. But I've thought a bit, of course.” He paused, probably to heighten the suspense. Then he said, “Don't you think it's possible that Herr Schmickler is doing the same for Frau Fuchs that you're doing for Herr Klofft?”

“What do you mean?”

“Investigating, what else? Collecting material to bring up at the hearing. Something to surprise the opposition! Something to scuttle you as Klofft's lawyer, understand?”

I took a deep breath and then said, “My dear Herr Manderscheidt, could it be that your idea of proceedings in an employment tribunal is… er, not entirely accurate?”

He said, with unmistakable sarcasm, “Well, listen to that, will you?”

“Yes, listen to that, because it's a fact. Maybe you know it yourself, but you just haven't stopped to think. An employment tribunal is not like criminal proceedings. And certainly nothing like what you see on TV. You don't find a lawyer suddenly, just before the guilty verdict, producing the knife used to stab the victim and found by the lawyer's detective under the pillow of the chief witness for the prosecution.”

“You don't say so!”

“Listen, Herr Manderscheidt, I don't mean to lecture you, I really don't. But look at it like this. First, we now have a date for the hearing, at which the judge will tell
us what he thinks of the prospects of the charge of unfair dismissal, and then Frau Fuchs's lawyer and I, on behalf of Herr Klofft, will present our clients' viewpoints, and the judge will listen to all that and suggest a settlement, and if there is no settlement then we get a date for further proceedings at which, in essence, the same thing happens again, and—”

He interrupted me. “Dr Zabel?”

“Yes, what?”

“Could we cut this short? I have to make some very important phone calls soon.”

“Go ahead, I don't want to stop you.”

“Kind of you. I'd like to call again some time, if I may.”

“Of course. You're welcome.”

“And by the way,” he said, “I never thought you were Jesus!”

“Really?”

“Really.” He laughed. “Not the way you carry on with the weaker sex… well, goodbye.” And he rang off.

What was
that
supposed to mean? I thought for a moment and then called his number back; it was still on my display. He answered at once.

I said, “What was that last remark of yours all about?”

“Oh, that!” He laughed. “Just a little dig. Forgive me, please.”

“Don't beat about the bush. I want to know what you meant before I forgive it.”

He seemed to be in some embarrassment. “Come on, out with it!” I said. “We're grown men, we don't need to mystify each other.”

“Of course not.”

A silence. “Well?” I said.

“Well…” I could almost hear him forcing himself to say it. “Well, Herr Klofft told me you were a… the sexy sort.”

“The sexy sort?”

“That's the way he put it.” He hesitated. Then he said, “He told me you were… making up to his wife. Making eyes at her. He said she seemed to like it. Which wasn't surprising with such an old lady and a nice young man like you.”

For a moment it took my breath away. Then I asked, “He said that?”

“Why, yes, or my name isn't Leo Manderscheidt!” The effect he was having on me seemed to encourage him. He went on, “And he said his wife was still quite an eyeful, but if a young man like you was after a woman of seventy he must be… er, highly sexed.” He hesitated and then added, “Well, to tell you the truth he put it more plainly than that.”

“In what way?”

“He said you must be a damn randy young dog.”

I said nothing, and heard him suppress a laugh. “Sorry… but it did strike me as rather funny.”

“Funny? You call that funny?”

“Forgive me, but… yes, a little funny, Dr Zabel.”

“Well, well. At least he didn't threaten to have my blood.” When Manderscheidt did not reply, I added, “Or did he?”

“No, no, of course not.” He took a deep breath and then said, “It's obvious, you might expect such a reaction from a man like Klofft. Or at least, you could have expected it of him when he still had his health and strength. But set your mind at rest, he didn't say anything of that kind.”

“Well, fabulous! Thank you for the explanation, and goodbye.” I rang off.

I felt a total fool. Taken in by people to whom I'd been feeling superior. My client the self-made man, Klofft, describing me as a randy young dog in conversation with a dubious character like Herr Manderscheidt. And possibly there had also been a third person pulling the strings in this manoeuvre. Cilly.

Cilly? Yes, why not? Cilly who was still quite an eyeful at seventy. But was it imaginable that if Klofft really guessed
or even knew that something had been going on between his wife and me he would have kept his mouth shut about it? Wouldn't he at least have asked his wife to account for herself? And would she really have had the nerve to leave me thinking her husband knew nothing about our little adventure?

Difficult to imagine. But something else, a different background to this miserable deception, suddenly did strike me as possible. Yes: maybe some time ago, when he first fell ill, Klofft had come to terms with the fact that he wouldn't be able to keep tabs on his wife. Maybe he was letting her seek an outlet now and then, a minor affair, say with a tourist, someone here for a conference whom she met for a drink in a hotel bar in the afternoon, or maybe with an old acquaintance from student days at the Academy, or a gallery owner. Or Bruno Hochkeppel's young man.

And maybe this complicity went further.

Maybe she told him, in detail, about her new adventure.

He let her have her adventures, and she repaid him by telling him what had happened so that, in that way, he could join in as well.

But wasn't that a very wild theory? And rather an unpleasant, grubby, undignified theory? Who was to say that Herr Manderscheidt hadn't just invented his tale of Klofft's remarks? Maybe to sound things out, or to intimidate me? Let's see if I can't scare this loud-mouthed lawyer shitless?

But why would he do that? Not just as a prank. And he must have expected me to take such gossip badly and choose attack as the best form of defence, call Klofft to account. Herr Manderscheidt would surely, like me, expect Klofft, so domineering with his dependants, to get rid of an informer who couldn't keep his mouth shut on the spot.

Perhaps that was just what Manderscheidt had counted on? Perhaps he had assumed that old Klofft would not be
a client of his much longer, if only for medical reasons, and had wanted to ingratiate himself with me? Seeing me as a promising replacement, a lawyer who would need an investigator in the long term?

Possibly. But one way or another it meant that Klofft really had found out, in whatever way, about the sparks flying between his wife and me.

A new idea took me by surprise. Was Klofft's idea to warn me in good time? Had he maybe told Manderscheidt about the randy young dog because he knew that the detective was addicted to gossip and would be sure to go straight off to give me the news?

Perhaps Herbert Klofft, contrary to what I had thought, was not a vengeful character who wouldn't hesitate to strike out at anyone who came too close to him. Hadn't I thought once that I felt the repellent old villain had a certain liking for me? And wouldn't my… well, dalliance with his wife have hurt him all the more because he didn't wish me personally ill?

It was absurd. I ought to have been worrying about myself, about my reputation in Hochkeppel's practice, maybe actually fearing for my safety. Instead, here I was worrying about Herbert Klofft and his feelings.

I imagined the old man in his armchair by the open balcony door. I saw him staring ahead, moving his lips silently again as if he were gnawing something between his front teeth. Now and then he looked up and out at the green treetops, stopped moving his lips, nodded meaningfully as if he had come to some conclusion in his mind, lowered his eyes and began gnawing with his lips closed again. As I imagined him, he seemed to have come to the end of a long and painful train of thought.

Maybe Olga had told him his lawyer's secrets. “Young man in studio with wife. Wife let him in. They talking softly, sometimes not talking, just breathing.”

Or perhaps some old lady, a tenant in the former fitters' workshop whom Klofft had allowed to keep her attic apartment there, had called him on Sunday morning. “I just thought I ought to let you know your wife has a visitor in her studio. A young man, quite tall, dark-haired, wearing a pale summer jacket. They both arrived just before ten. She took him in with her. She had a large bag with her. I'm not sure, but I think she has just drawn the curtain under the skylight a little way. It was probably too bright for them in there.”

And since then the old man had been tormenting himself with his fantasies. With a film unreeling in his head, hot and burning. And with his anger that seemed to be eating him up inside. The wife he loved was betraying him, couldn't stop it. He'd lived more than half a lifetime with her, the best years of his life, and now she was letting him down. Leaving him alone in this house, a place as quiet as the grave, he was stuck here as if chained to the spot. Unable to go outside the door. Alone as he would be in the grave.