The Stronger Sex (4 page)

I was about to get into the back of the car when I stopped. I looked at Karl, who returned my glance, a little surprised. “Do you mind if I join you in the front?”

He hesitated briefly and then said, “No, of course not.”

I couldn't prevent him from opening the door to the passenger seat for me. I got in. As we were driving away I said, “I'm Alexander Zabel. What's your name?”

“Karl Schaffrath,” he replied. “You can call me Karl.”

After a little pause I said, “Well, you know… Herr Schaffrath, I don't think I ought to do that.”

He smiled without looking at me. I asked, “How long have you been working for Herr Klofft?”

He glanced at the rear-view mirror, then looked ahead down the shady street again. Finally he said, “Over forty years.”

“Good heavens! That's a whole working lifetime!”

“Yes.” He smiled. “You could say so.”

I said nothing for a while, and then remarked, “It can't always have been easy for you.”

His own silence lasted a little longer than mine before he replied, “I can't complain.”

He probably assumed I wanted to pick his brains about his employer, as indeed I did. But I could see that I wasn't going to get much out of the attempt. “That's good,” I said. Then I ostentatiously closed my eyes.

Through the reddish film of my closed eyelids I could just see the flickering light cast by the sun, shining through leaves as we drove along the avenue under the elms.

Was Frau Klofft lying out on the terrace by now, helping her suntan along? I only just suppressed the shake of my head that was my instinctive answer to that.

What on earth made me think of such a thing? Cilly Klofft sunbathing! She wasn't the type who could find nothing to do but bother about her appearance. And in addition… well, she was too old!

Really? What did age have to do with it?

I opened my eyes as we were going along the expressway again, and looked out over the glittering water. Several lighters were slowly making their way upstream past the green bank on the opposite side of the river. The coloured pennants hung limp from their masts.

Suddenly I realized why Hochkeppel had told her he'd retired. He had been friendly with her, just as much as being a friend of her husband's, that was it! And that was also why she had told me to give him her regards – twice, in fact. And for the same reason, when she had called the chambers earlier and asked him to represent her husband before the tribunal, he had not wanted to say an outright no to her: no, I will not act for that obnoxious man you married.

In no circumstances did he want to represent him. He knew the obnoxious Klofft. They had played skittles together, later they'd gone hunting together – as I had already heard from Hochkeppel himself – and later, when they had both made their reputations and enough money in their very different professions, they had belonged to the same golf club.

They must share various memories, full-blooded robust memories of the masculine kind, maybe of outings in some Polish or Czech game preserve, or golf in Andalusia, or of some pleasant Portuguese or Tunisian destination. And if I had judged Herbert Klofft accurately, in his leisure activities he would forget himself as forthrightly and with as little inhibition as he did in conversation with a lawyer he assumed to be immature. Maybe he and Hochkeppel had quarrelled at some time, maybe over a black-eyed lady
sitting at the hotel bar where they played golf with an eye open for visitors from Germany.

Hochkeppel did not want to take on board this client who kept his shirt sleeves rolled up. He had told Cilly Klofft he was sorry, but in fact he had retired, he just happened to come to the chambers now and then and it was coincidence that she had found him there. But if she agreed, he would send her a young lawyer who had been working for his legal practice for some time and was very able. And she had said yes, and he had put her in touch with me, and then she had fixed the meeting. Oh, and sent the car for me too.

When we had reached the city centre and stopped at traffic lights, Karl suddenly turned to me and asked, “Is this going to be a difficult trial?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Could be. But it's difficult to predict these things in advance.”

He nodded and then looked back at the street.

Had that been an overture of peace?

When the lights changed to green he said, “Well, old Klofft has a number of difficult cases behind him already.” He laughed. “It's nothing new for him.”

I was right, he didn't want to break contact between us. I waited for a while and then said, “He's something of a pugnacious character, right? That's my impression anyway, pugnacious.”

He laughed. “And you can say that again. Ah, here we are.”

He stopped the car outside the chambers. I gave him my hand. “Don't get out, Herr Schaffrath. I rather think we'll be meeting again.”

“I think so too.” He shook hands with me.

I got out and leaned into the car once again. “And keep your ears pricked, would you?”

He smiled and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

4

Contrary to my expectations, Hochkeppel was still at his desk. He seemed to have put off his lunch break because he wanted to know about my visit to his friend.

He sat leaning slightly forward, raised only his eyes from the document he was reading, and smiled. “Well, how did it go?”

“I'd assume you have a pretty good idea of how it went.” I sat down in his visitor's chair and took Klofft's folder out of my briefcase. “But before I forget, I'm to give you Frau Klofft's regards. She told me to say so. In fact she told me twice.”

“Oh, did she?” He shifted in his chair. Then he slowly leaned back in it. “And what kind of impression did you get of her?”

“What kind of impression?” I shrugged my shoulders. “A very pleasant lady. Clever too, I'd say. But I don't think she has an easy time of it with her husband.”

“You're probably right, yes.” He suddenly sat up straight and looked at me. “Did he… I mean, I hope he didn't treat her badly in front of you?”

“No, no, she wasn't in on our conversation at all. She took me up to him and then went away. I only meant the man isn't… well, he obviously isn't well. And I wouldn't be surprised if he sometimes takes it out on her.”

He nodded, his mouth twisting. “I wouldn't be surprised either.” It almost looked as if he had to make an effort not to say something worse about his friend Klofft.

After a moment's pause I asked, “What's the matter with him?”

“Inability to respect other people!” He cleared his throat thoroughly and adopted another position in his chair. Then he said, “No, she thinks he's getting Parkinson's disease. Or has it already.”

I nodded. “I don't know exactly what the symptoms are, but I did notice that his hands tremble. And he sometimes seems to lose the thread of the conversation. That was my impression, anyway.”

“Yes, shakiness is part of it. And the mind sometimes misfires too. Also – how to put it? Difficulty moving about. She's told me he fell over a few times recently for no good reason. It upsets his balance, so to speak.” After a brief pause he said, “That's why he doesn't go out any more. Certainly not to his works.” He looked at me with a grim smile. “He's afraid his people will see what's wrong with him. He couldn't bear that.”

“I'd say that's understandable. Only… you said his
wife
assumed he has Parkinson's?”

He nodded. “But what does his doctor say?” I asked. “Or doctors?”

He laughed. “You don't suppose that idiotic macho man would ever let a doctor examine him properly, do you? Not him. ‘Never had a day's illness in my life.' You know some fools like that, I'm sure. ‘Never been off work for a day either.'” After another pause he said, bitterly, “He'd rather be a burden on his wife.”

He fell silent, staring into space. I'd seldom seen him in a mood like this, in fact I'd never seen him like it. And there was more behind his gloom than annoyance with a friend whose overbearing nature made demands on people.

I'd already had a slight suspicion, a kind of feeling when I heard Cilly Klofft talk about Hochkeppel, but now I was almost sure of it: there'd been something between the two of them, maybe just affection, or maybe something stronger that they both kept under control, or perhaps only she did. Or maybe there'd been an uncontrollable outburst of passion, an actual affair. Very risky, considering her husband; if he'd got on the trail of any lover of his wife he would presumably have dealt summarily with the other man.

It surprised me to think Hochkeppel might have been bold enough to run a risk like that. But who knew what he'd been like in his younger days? And it seemed to me perfectly possible that Cilly Klofft had been capable of it. Hadn't I been thinking that even now she might still be ready for an adventure?

I was startled when Hochkeppel suddenly and audibly cleared his throat again. He asked, “What did he have to say to you?”

I said that Klofft had started by casting doubts on my competence. I was obviously too young for his liking, I said, and too inexperienced.

Hochkeppel laughed. “Don't let it bother you. If it hadn't been that, he'd have thought of something else. And how did you react?”

“I told him to ask you to send him someone else.”

“But he discussed his problem with you all the same?”

I nodded.

He laughed. “Well, well! Pretty good for a beginning!”

As with his friend a little while ago, it was some time before we came to the point. He kept straying into his memories of the lack of consideration that Klofft had shown all his life in carrying his own wishes through against all resistance and all opponents, not least against the wishes of his own wife.

Finally, and after I had glanced at my watch as if casually, he said, “Well, so how about the case in which we're to represent him? All his wife told me was that he'd fired a female employee of many years' standing without notice, and now he's apparently afraid he's got himself into difficulties.”

I said that was the nub of the story, although I still had to look through the file that Klofft had given me, and we didn't have the details of the charges the woman was bringing yet. But from what he had told me, his grounds for
dismissing her were very shaky. I told him the background to the incident just as Klofft had told it to me, and then said that in the entrepreneur's opinion his employee had, first, obtained a medical certificate by devious means, and second, had taken time off when she had not been given permission to do so.

Hochkeppel stared at me. “And who told him those would be sufficient grounds to oppose a charge of wrongful dismissal?”

“No one. Or rather, you might say he told himself so. Anyway, he says he looked it up in the Civil Code.”

“Has he gone right round the bend?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“He's surely not seriously going to attack the doctor too, is he?” Open-mouthed, he looked at me. When I shrugged my shoulders again, he leaned forward. “I advise you very forcibly to steer clear of that argument. I've never yet won a case by managing to prove that a doctor made out a medical certificate for someone in defiance of the facts.”

“I believe you. Only… of course he doesn't need that argument, he just can't let it drop.”

He went on staring at me for a moment, then nodded. “I understand.”

I said, “If he accepts that the medical certificate was correctly made out for Frau Fuchs, then his second reason for firing her falls through as well.”

He nodded. “Yes, of course. Because then the lady didn't take time off just because she wanted to, she took time off because she was sick.” He shook his head. “This is a definitely gloomy prospect.”

“That's what I told him myself.”

“And how did he react?”

“I thought he was going to throw me out, but then he just chucked this file at me.” I picked up Klofft's folder and made as if to throw it Hochkeppel's way.

Apparently he was tempted to laugh, but he suppressed the urge. After a while he said, “How are you going to set about the case?”

“First I'll study this file at my leisure. And then I'll try to think what might be dug up and exploited for our benefit. For instance, it may be possible to claim that Frau Fuchs's conduct was injurious to her health. I know she spent that week in a de luxe hotel, she'll have been waited on hand and foot, but the whole trip might perhaps be represented as too strenuous for her; we could say that at the very least it delayed her recovery. It might be necessary to get an expert opinion.”

He raised one finger, “Careful! An expert opinion can get you quite a long way, but the courts are rather broadminded in such cases. As I'm sure you know. If you have a medical certificate saying you must take time off work sick, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to stay in bed. Or even at home.”

“I know.” I laughed. “Wasn't there once a case of someone who was off work sick and went away to take part in a pilgrimage?”

He waved this aside. “Well, yes, and that's only one of a whole series of judgements. Only one or two years ago there was one, I think it was the Hamm case, a woman, someone's common-law spouse, who was off work sick, went to a football match and moreover put on a steward's jacket because she'd worked for the club before as a steward now and then, so her employer thought he could fire her without notice or any previous warning, for conduct liable to aggravate her state of health. Nothing doing! He lost spectacularly in the employment tribunal. Lost the appeal in the provincial employment tribunal too.”