Chapter 6

AN AMATEUR DETECTIVE has this advantage over the professional, that he doesn’t work set hours. Rollo Martins was not confined to the eight-hour day: his investigations didn’t have to pause for meals. In his one day he covered as much ground as one of my men would have covered in two, and he had this initial advantage over us, that he was Harry’s friend. He was, as it were, working from inside, while we pecked at the perimeter.

Dr Winkler was at home. Perhaps he would not have been at home to a police officer. Again Martins had marked his card with the open-sesame phrase: ‘A friend of Harry Lime’s.’

Dr Winkler’s waiting-room reminded Martins of an antique shop – an antique shop that specializes in religious objets d’art. There were more crucifixes than he could count, none of later date probably than the seventeenth century. There were statues in wood and ivory. There were a number of reliquaries: little bits of bone marked with saints’ names and set in oval frames on a background of tinfoil. If they were genuine, what an odd fate it was, Martins thought, for a portion of Saint Susanna’s knuckle to come to rest in Dr Winkler’s waiting-room. Even the high-backed hideous chairs looked as if they had once been sat in by cardinals. The room was stuffy, and one expected the smell of incense. In a small gold casket was a splinter of the True Cross. A sneeze disturbed him.

Dr Winkler was the cleanest doctor Martins had ever seen. He was very small and neat, in a black tail-coat and a high stiff collar; his little black moustache was like an evening tie. He sneezed again: perhaps he was cold because he was so clean. He said, ‘Mr Martins?’

An irresistible desire to sully Dr Winkler assailed Rollo Martins. He said, ‘Dr Winkle?’

‘Dr Winkler.’

‘You’ve got an interesting collection here.’

‘Yes.’

‘These saints’ bones …’

‘The bones of chickens and rabbits.’ Dr Winkler took a large white handkerchief out of his sleeve rather as though he were a conjurer producing his country’s flag, and blew his nose neatly and thoroughly twice, closing each nostril in turn. You expected him to throw away the handkerchief after one use. ‘Would you mind, Mr Martins, telling me the purpose of your visit? I have a patient waiting.’

‘We were both friends of Harry Lime.’

‘I was his medical adviser,’ Dr Winkler corrected him and waited obstinately between the crucifixes.

‘I arrived too late for the inquest. Harry had invited me out here to help him in something. I don’t quite know what. I didn’t hear of his death till I arrived.’

‘Very sad,’ Dr Winkler said.

‘Naturally, under the circumstances, I want to hear all I can.’

‘There is nothing I can tell you that you don’t know. He was knocked over by a car. He was dead when I arrived.’

‘Would he have been conscious at all?’

‘I understand he was for a short time, while they carried him into the house.’

‘In great pain?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘You are quite certain that it was an accident?’

Dr Winkler put out a hand and straightened a crucifix. ‘I was not there. My opinion is limited to the cause of death. Have you any reason to be dissatisfied?’

The amateur has another advantage over the professional: he can be reckless. He can tell unnecessary truths and propound wild theories. Martins said, ‘The police have implicated Harry in a very serious racket. It seemed to me that he might have been murdered – or even killed himself.’

‘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.’