"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 had 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 toupee."
"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."
7
AS I SEE IT (как я вижу это), turning over my files (перебирая мои папки; to turn over — переворачивать), the notes of conversations (записи разговоров), the statements of various characters (утверждения различных персонажей), it would have been still possible (было бы все еще возможно), at this moment (в этот момент), for Rollo Martins (для Ролло Мартинса) to have left Vienna safely (покинуть Вену безопасно). He had shown an unhealthy curiosity (он выказал нездоровое любопытство;