The Stronger Sex (20 page)

And that idea could be further developed. Where and with whom had Frau Fuchs meant to spend the week off for which she had so urgently asked the company? With a new boyfriend, presumably – Herr Schmickler? And why not in Switzerland? Why not by Lake Léman? Why not at the five-star Beauté du Lac hotel?

It might be worth looking more closely into Herr Schmickler than had my legal colleague Gladke, who made him sound like a kindly uncle hovering in the background. Had Frau Fuchs booked herself into the Beauté du Lac? Or had Herr Schmickler, the professional travel expert, done it for her?

And if so, when? Only on the Saturday, and after he had convinced Frau Fuchs of the advantages of the hotel? Or maybe earlier, even before Katharina Fuchs had asked for leave to go away, perhaps assuming that there would be no trouble in getting it? Meaning even before she had her attack of lumbago?

I saw a faint gleam of hope. I was also encouraged by the fact that Gladke hadn't said a word about the doubtful nature of the famous order that my client had cited, and had not even hinted at immoral acts into which the boss might have tried to coerce his employee. However, if Gladke did know about that, and had refrained from mentioning such immorality, only to bring it up in court later, I could say goodbye to my case and at best wish my client better luck in the future.

While I was still wondering hard and rather desperately whether some way out of this impasse might yet occur to me, there was another knock at the door.

Frau Enke looked in. “You're still here, then?”

“You don't think I'd leave without saying good evening to you, do you?”

“My God, you're so charming today!” She smiled. “I mean are you still here to see a visitor?”

“A visitor?” I felt hot, thinking for a moment that Cilly might have come to discuss something with me – what I didn't know, but something. Maybe Karl had brought her and she had been waiting in the car out in the street until Hochkeppel went home.

I asked, “What kind of visitor?”

“A Herr Manderscheidt. Leo Manderscheidt.” She came in and gave me a business card. “A private detective. He says he has new information on the case in which you are representing Herr Klofft.”

I stared at the card. Then I said, “Yes, OK. Bring him in, would you?”

21

Herr Manderscheidt was a small, thin man of around fifty, wearing a summer jacket, shoes made of interwoven leather strips, and a pair of slightly baggy light-brown trousers. Under his arm he had a thin brown imitation leather briefcase. When Frau Enke had shown him in and closed the door after him, he went on standing there, sketched a little bow to me and said, “Good afternoon, Dr Zabel.”

“Come in, do.” I half-rose and pointed to the visitor's chair in front of my desk.

Herr Manderscheidt came over, sat down, crossed one leg over the other and then changed them around. “Forgive me for disturbing you so late.”

“That's all right, but…” I glanced at his business card and then looked at him. “I thought you'd finished your
investigations and then written your report? The report on Frau Fuchs and her trip to Geneva?”

“Oh, that wasn't the end of it!” He raised both hands. “Herr Klofft asked me to carry out some further inquiries for him.”

“Oh yes? And in what field were you to…”

Herr Manderscheidt was obviously unwilling to come straight out with what he had to say; he wanted to add factors designed to heighten the suspense. “I've just been to see Herr Klofft,” he said, “and gave him a report. A provisional report.”

“Yes, fine. And what was in it? I assume you're authorized to tell me?”

“Yes, of course.” He smiled. “Herr Klofft asked me to go and see you at once. Here in your office, you understand?”

“Yes, I do. You mean a phone call wouldn't have done?”

“Not at all.” He put his head back and tilted it slightly to one side, smiling broadly. “The evidence I have is… visual, if you see what I mean.”

“Yes, you have photographs to show us. Or videos. So may I see them, Herr Manderscheidt?”

“Of course.” He picked up his briefcase, opened the catch, but then put the briefcase back on his lap as he looked at me with a smile. “I have also been paying a little attention to Dr Wehling on Herr Klofft's behalf.”

I stared at him. “Dr Wehling? Frau Fuchs's GP?”

“That's right. I assume you've read the certificate and the later document he made out for Frau Fuchs, certifying her fit again?”

“I have.” I looked hard at him. “And what is your research intended to show?”

“Well…” Head still tilted, he raised his shoulders and smiled meaningfully. After a moment's pause he said, “I have found out that Frau Fuchs and Dr Wehling… possibly, and I emphasize
possibly
, but all the same it would probably
not be wrong to say that the two of them possibly have a relationship.” He looked at me. “A sexual relationship, you understand.”

I should have been able to work that one out for myself. My stubborn client had been unwilling to abandon his idea that Katharina Fuchs had promised her GP – her very personal physician, as he had described him – “something nice” and had therefore given her a false medical certificate. And so he had set Herr Manderscheidt on the pair of them, at the latest after Katharina's return from Geneva.

So now that my legal colleague Gladke had made it abundantly clear to him today that a medical certificate would weigh more with the tribunal than heated speculations, he had summoned his detective and told him to find all he could to prove that, in spite of all this legal quibbling, Frau Fuchs had her GP at her beck and call and, if he was a good boy and gave her the certificate she needed, would go to bed with him.

I asked, “And how are you going to prove it? Did you see the two of them engaged in sexual intercourse?”

He laughed a little artificially. “You're joking. But there are certain indications allowing us to conclude that they have an intimate relationship… or such at least is my experience of life.”

I had annoyed him and he was beginning to strike back. Of course it was unfair of me to take it out on him for this silly peering through keyholes. He had done only what Klofft paid him to do.

I said, “OK. What did you find out, then?”

He began with a point that at first seemed to have nothing to do with the subject, rambling on about a woman called Frau Broogsitter, Daniela Broogsitter, who worked freelance from home as a typist for an agency, typing out clean copies of manuscripts, long documents and so forth on her computer. Consequently Frau Broogsitter spent most
of the day at home, and had attracted Herr Manderscheidt's interest because her apartment was opposite Katharina's.

So Frau Broogsitter was Frau Fuchs's neighbour, and through the peephole in her front door one could see who entered or left the apartment opposite. In addition, it was normally very quiet in Frau Broogsitter's apartment, so that from the desk where she worked it was easy, in spite of the slight sound made by her keyboard, to hear when the bell of Frau Fuchs's apartment was rung. It had a very shrill note.

At this point it seemed a good idea to ask how old Frau Broogsitter was.

“Fifty-one,” said Manderscheidt.

“And she lives on her own? No husband, no partner?”

“No, obviously not.” He smiled. “Yes, as you suspect, it's likely that she's not particularly fond of her pretty young neighbour with her men friends. But for that very reason we may also assume that she keeps quite a sharp eye on her.”

So over a cup of coffee which she offered him in her apartment, Frau Broogsitter had told Herr Manderscheidt how she had noticed, some time ago, that Dr Wehling had seemed to visit her neighbour rather late in the evening, and didn't leave again for at least an hour. She couldn't remember exactly when that had been, she said, and of course it didn't fundamentally interest her what her neighbours got up to, but unless she was much mistaken, it must have been at the time when Frau Fuchs was having frequent visits from that manufacturer, that tall, good-looking man, probably her boss, the owner of the fine new building in the Industrial Park – there'd once been a piece in the paper about it.

After that first visit, she said, Dr Wehling had come a few more times, at intervals but always late in the evening, and always staying for about an hour or even more. And then all that had died down, but the week before last he had suddenly turned up again quite late on a Friday, two days before the Sunday morning when a taxi driver came
for Frau Fuchs, went into her apartment and carried her large suitcase and a travelling bag to the taxi, and she had followed on crutches.

Well, one might assume that she had called in Dr Wehling that Friday evening because she was suddenly taken ill; maybe she had fallen, or slipped in the bathtub, and injured her foot. But then it did seem strange that she hadn't stayed in bed, but obviously went away on holiday two days later.

And that wasn't all. On the Monday after the Sunday when Frau Fuchs came back from her holiday, Dr Wehling had visited her again, once again in the evening, and as before spending a good hour there. When he left, she went to the door with him, and not just that, the two of them had kissed each other goodbye, and what a kiss! Why, Frau Broogsitter had said, it was halfway to being a sexual act in itself! And the same spectacle, from his arrival at dead of night to their passionate embrace when he left, had been repeated three days later, on Thursday last week.

I said, “Herr Manderscheidt!”

He raised his eyebrows and batted his eyelids. “Yes?”

I said, “I don't know what Frau Broogsitter understands by halfway to a sexual act – if those were really her own words.”

“Of course they were her own words!” He was obviously angry. “You don't think I'm making all this up, do you?”

I raised my hands placatingly. “Of course not.” Then I leaned slightly forward. “But don't you think that Frau Broogsitter may have put rather too strong a construction on what she… er, happened to see? I mean, perhaps Frau Fuchs and her GP have become quite friendly in the course of time, and they kiss when they meet and part, a kiss on the right cheek, a kiss on the left cheek, particularly if no one is watching, and poor lonely Frau Broogsitter is imagining the rest of it?”

He said, “I've told you what Frau Broogsitter told me. You'll have to interpret it for yourself.”

“Of course, Herr Manderscheidt. I'm not blaming you in any way at all. But… well, you are a man of the world.” I looked at him and gave him a mollifying smile. “Do you really think I can come out with all this in court?”

“You won't have to.” He raised his briefcase. “You haven't seen my material yet.”

He opened the briefcase, took out two folders, opened the first and fished out a large-format photograph. After glancing at it briefly, he handed it over the desk to me. “There you are.”

The photo showed an open door, and standing in the doorway a woman in her mid-thirties with shoulder-length dark-brown hair, wearing a dressing gown, and a man in his early fifties, tanned, salt-and-pepper hair, clad in a dark suit with a tie. The two were embracing, but in a curiously distorted, close position, as if they had to brace themselves against a violent gust of wind.

The man stood with his shoulder against the door frame, showing an angular profile, the woman had both arms under his jacket, while her bare leg, turned to the camera, was raised and pressed against his hip. She held her face a little way away from him, so that you could see her tongue pushing between her lips.

“So that's Frau Fuchs, and the man is Dr Wehling?” I asked.

“Exactly.” He handed me a series of other photographs, dropped one after another on the desk, and said, “And this… and this one… and this one. All of them showing Frau Fuchs and her GP kissing goodbye after a sick visit. Or whatever you like to call it.”

I looked through the photos. Obviously the first in the series showed the doctor coming out of the door and glancing at the stairwell; the next was presumably Dr Wehling again, turning back and taking Frau Fuchs, who was standing in the doorway behind him, by the upper
arm. After that came the snapshot of that convulsive embrace.

I asked, “How did you come by these? I mean… how could you take these photos without letting the two of them notice?”

The hint of a smile on his face slowly widened. It was clear that he had impressed me, and he was enjoying his triumph. He said, “Frau Broogsitter agreed to let me take the peephole out of her door and replace it temporarily with a special aperture setting for a camera. And I shot these love scenes through the aperture at the critical moment. Love scenes or whatever you like to call a live show of that nature.”

I passed over this second dig at me. I said, “You must be very skilful technically.”

“Yes, I am.” He was pleased with himself. In this sudden about-face he was obviously even prepared to grant me a glimpse of his working methods. “But don't think I spent the whole time in Frau Broogsitter's apartment, waiting for Dr Wehling to call at the apartment opposite.”

I said, “No?”

“No, of course not.” He smiled. “Frau Broogsitter called me on Tuesday last week and told me about the first farewell scene the evening before. So then, in the afternoon, when Frau Fuchs had left the place to go and see her lawyer, I fitted the aperture device in. And on Thursday evening, when Frau Broogsitter had called to say that Dr Wehling was visiting again, I drove round to her place.” He leaned back, smiling. “And I was on the spot at just the right time to record their goodbyes across the corridor.”