The Stronger Sex by Hans Werner Kettenbach Page B

blackbird which lives in the trees in the yard here suddenly struck up its song, he smiled. I wondered whether he remembered why he had begun telling me this story, Cilly Klofft’s story, but I was afraid he’d forgotten his point of departure. I cleared my throat and asked, “And how did Klofft come into this? I mean, a valves manufacturer and a painter, they wouldn’t normally have much in common, would they?”
    â€œHow true!” His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Just about nothing, I’d say! But you’re forgetting the fitters’ workshop. He was employed there at the time, as a foreman or something. Anyway, they kept meeting each other by chance on the site after she’d moved into her studio in the yard.”
    He stopped. After a while I asked, slightly incredulously, “And so she fell in love with him?”
    He looked at me, smiled, shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the window. “Looks like it, wouldn’t you say?”
    â€œYes, but…” I stopped short, suddenly realizing that this conversation was taking its toll on him. Whatever I said to explain why I couldn’t understand Cilly Klofft’s deciding to marry this man, why I thought it incredible, it would hurt Hochkeppel, I felt sure of that. Because I’d have been hammering it home that it meant casting an unattractive shadow of doubt on Cilly herself, on her taste and her judgement.
    He too was silent for a while. When I began to fear that the silence might get embarrassing, he said suddenly, “You know, Alexander… I can’t explain it properly either. But he was rather good-looking in those days. A woman’s kind of man, people said, though Heaven knows what that means.” After a pause he added, “And among the art students she’d mingled with there were quite a number of rather, well,
weedy characters. He’d have seemed like something more than that. A real man, so to speak, no question of it.”
    His mouth twisted. Then he said, “Or maybe she was impressed by him as a technological genius, an inventor. I’m sure he made a great display of that. And he really had invented a few things already. Took out patents for them. Valves of some sort, gauges, devices for adjusting measurements precisely. I remember a beer-tapping system, but there were much more complex things as well. At the time he was begging his boss, the owner of the fitters’ workshop, to go in on the production of these instruments. But he was probably too old and too inflexible, so Klofft’s devices had to be shelved, for the time being anyway.”
    He nodded, and then said, “The misunderstood genius, do you see?” After a small pause he added, with a caustic laugh, “Extremely interesting, that kind of thing! And extremely attractive, I assume.” He all but closed his eyes and fell silent.
    Then he suddenly sat up, looked at me as if he had just woken from sleep and asked, “Did you find anything in the file?”
    It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. “In Klofft’s file – no. Or nothing I could use against Frau Fuchs.” I hesitated, and added, “More like the opposite. More like something she could use against us.”
    He frowned and looked at me keenly. “And what might that be?”
    â€œShe booked a few treatments in that hotel. Medical treatments, obviously. Even on the first day. That’s in the detective’s report. And he said that the hotel lays stress on its range of what its advertising calls ‘wellness’ treatments. Medical treatments.”
    â€œDidn’t this Sherlock Holmes character bring back one of the hotel’s brochures with a list of the treatments on offer?”

    I hesitated, and then said, “His report did indicate that there was something of the kind. But it wasn’t in the folder.”
    â€œSo?”
    I looked enquiringly at