‘I am not competent to pass an opinion,’ Dr Winkler said.

‘Do you know a man called Cooler?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He was there when Harry was killed.’

‘Then of course I have met him. He wears a toupée.’

‘That was Kurtz.’

Dr Winkler was not only the cleanest, he was also the most cautious doctor that Martins had ever met. His statements were so limited that you could not for a moment doubt their veracity. He said, ‘There was a second man there.’ If he had to diagnose a case of scarlet fever he would, you felt, have confined himself to a statement that a rash was visible, that the temperature was so and so. He would never find himself in error at an inquest.

‘Had you been Harry’s doctor for long?’ He seemed an odd man for Harry to choose – Harry who liked men with a certain recklessness, men capable of making mistakes.

‘For about a year.’

‘Well, it’s good of you to have seen me.’ Dr Winkler bowed. When he bowed there was a very slight creak as though his shirt were made of celluloid. ‘I mustn’t keep you from your patients any longer.’ Turning away from Dr Winkler, he confronted yet another crucifix, the figure hanging with arms above the head: a face of elongated El Greco agony. ‘That’s a strange crucifix,’ he said.

‘Jansenist,’ Dr Winkler commented and closed his mouth sharply as though he had been guilty of giving away too much information.

‘Never heard the word. Why are the arms above the head?’

Dr Winkler said reluctantly, ‘Because He died, in their view, only for the elect.’

Chapter 7

Chapter 7