The Stronger Sex Read Online Free PDF Page B

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?”
    â€œI told him to ask you to send him someone else.”
    â€œBut 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?”
    â€œNo one. Or rather, you might say he told himself so. Anyway, he says he looked it up in the Civil Code.”
    â€œHas he gone right round the bend?”
    I shrugged my shoulders.
    â€œHe’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.”
    â€œI believe you. Only… of course he doesn’t need that