HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (21 page)

The land of shadows…

‘I was revolted by what we saw there,’ Koch continued, ‘while you two were in your natural element. You share a knowledge which goes far and away beyond my own comprehension, sir. If
that’s
philosophy, I thought, I want none of it.’

If Sergeant Koch was horrified, I was dumbstruck at this description of what he believed Professor Kant and I were doing in the hallowed name of Philosophy.

‘D’you really think that Kant believes in the powers of reasoning, sir?’ Koch ploughed on, pulling a wry face of disbelief. ‘After what we’ve seen in that room?’

‘Clearly you do not, Koch,’ I said bitterly.

He did not react to the jibe.

‘I was shocked, to be honest,’ he continued. ‘He was hovering like a vulture over the body of that poor murdered boy on the river bank. He seemed to gather strength from what he saw there. Any decent man would shrink at the sight of such a thing, but
he
did not. His mind was charged with supernatural energy by the spectacle of that lad’s corpse. I had the same impression in that room. Did you see the burning light in his eyes, sir? Wild with excitement, he was. His voice grew stronger, his whole expression changed. Why, he’s eighty years old…’

Koch broke off for a moment, and rubbed his hands as if to purify them.

‘His behaviour gave me quite a turn, sir. He seemed to revel in the fact of death. He’s not diminished or humbled by it. No, I would say that he is fascinated by the subject in a manner that is not entirely…healthy.’

Koch paused before pronouncing the final word. Then, he waited for me to reply. But I had no reply to make. He had not specifically mentioned my own way of behaving, but he made no secret of the unwholesome fact that he thought that I shared Kant’s unhealthy interest.

‘Don’t waste your time trying to explain what drove Anna Rostova to it, sir. Leave the explaining to Professor Kant. He’ll come up with an answer.’

How could I defend the philosopher from such a perverse misreading of his intentions? Immanuel Kant had assembled the evidence in his laboratory in the interests of understanding and science. For the same reasons, he had made his way down to the River Pregel. He was not ‘hovering like a vulture’ over the corpse of Morik, sucking energy from the dead like a vampire. He was seeking Truth, regardless of the harm he might do to his own great mind and fragile body. And I was the only man alive who understood his working method to the extent that I could help him. Was this not patently clear to Koch?

Searching frantically for some winning argument to counter the sergeant’s jaundiced view, my eyes darting hither and thither, I suddenly spotted a sheet of paper lying on the floor. It must have fallen from my pocket. The sketch that I had traced the evening before of the footstep enshrined in the snow behind Professor Kant’s house. In that instant, profound peace descended on my troubled mind. I might have been walking through a vast and silent forest from which the chattering songbirds had taken wing with the first onset of winter cold.

‘I will demonstrate to you that Professor Kant is not fascinated by Evil, Koch. I will prove it!’ I said in a flash, wondering how in heaven’s name I had forgotten such an important piece of evidence. ‘Call the coach at once. Our own eyes will tell us whether Anna Rostova is the killer, or not. Thanks to Professor Immanuel Kant, I should add.’

As I turned the key and pushed open the heavy door of Kant’s dark
Wunderkammer
, my nerve-ends were tingling. At my side, Sergeant Koch appeared to be untroubled. Calm and detached, apparently in full control of his faculties, he might have been Professor Kant’s most convinced advocate. We seemed almost to have exchanged roles. Koch looked steadily ahead, while I glanced anxiously here and there, examining the sandglass clock in its wooden frame, the lidded crucibles and the clay retorts that Professor Kant had used to conduct his scientific experiments with a good deal more attention than they deserved. I had reason enough to be uneasy; I was not entirely certain that I would find what I was searching for. Would I be able to confound Koch’s doubts, and silence my own?

Neither one of us was so wholly unguarded in his motions, however, as to direct the lantern at the shelves lining the far wall. We seemed to have reached an unspoken pact on that score: those jars did not exist. Even so, we were aware of the glitter of light on the curved glass surfaces just beyond the edge of our vision. I could not shake off the notion that some unspecified ‘thing’ might take shape and step out of the dark shadows. Something evil and ominous. Had Kant really frequented that place alone? Or with Doctor Vigilantius, cutting and carving what the murderer had left in one piece? Koch’s suggestion that Professor Kant found some morbid satisfaction in handling those distressing objects forced its way into my mind, but I shrugged it off.

‘We must find the sketches that the Professor asked Lublinsky to draw,’ I said, shifting an alembic jar from the worktop and taking my own drawing from my pocket. ‘If any footprints were found beside the dead bodies, I intend to compare them with the partial print that I traced last night in Kant’s garden.’

‘Do you think that it belongs to the killer, sir?’ Koch asked.

‘That’s what we are here to find out. If it does, we’ll be able to match it against Anna Rostova’s shoes.’

‘The gendarmes will have to catch her first,’ Koch objected.

‘When they do, I want to be ready,’ I stated guardedly. ‘I must be sure in my own mind whether she is innocent or guilty before I proceed.’

Lifting down the fascicles from the shelf where Immanuel Kant had left them, I placed them on the table while Koch held up the lantern to assist me.

‘Our job must begin in this room,’ I said, splitting the bundle of papers into two roughly equal piles. ‘Those are for you to check,’ I said, moving the first pile towards Koch. ‘These are mine.’

I did not need to encourage him. He shifted a large alidade measuring-instrument out of harm’s way and bent over the tabletop in silence, concentrating on the stack of documents I had placed in front of him. On the other side of the table, I began to sift through my own portion of the papers, and I was soon equally absorbed in the work. Not least for the meticulous order which Kant had brought to the task. My admiration for his methodology knew no limits. Each item in the first file I examined had been separated from what followed by a sheet of paper which noted the time and the date at which the report had been compiled, together with a short comment regarding the reporter and the weight to be attached to the evidence that he had supplied. The brilliant, organisational nature of Immanuel Kant’s mind was precisely reflected in the physical disposition of his papers. The first file consisted of the finding-officers’ reports. There was nothing new to me in any of them.

The next bundle was captioned ‘Doctor Vigilantius’ in Kant’s distinctive handwriting. As I digested the first few lines that he had written, every distraction flew from me. It was the original transcript of the necromancer’s communication with the departed soul of Jan Konnen:

Clearly, Professor Kant had witnessed a séance like the one I had attended shortly after my arrival in Königsberg.
Were you not impressed by what you saw last night at the Fortress?
But what had the philosopher himself been thinking, as he watched Doctor Vigilantius at work? I sought some clue which might reveal his own most private sensations, but no hint was given away. Kant had transcribed the spoken words alone and had left no testimony regarding his intimate impression of their veracity.

I put the first file back on the table and took up a bulkier one. It was marked ‘Spatial Characteristics of the Murders in Königsberg’. As I began to read, my heart tightened in my chest. Who but Immanuel Kant could conceive of a systematic enquiry into murder which might easily have been an additional chapter to the
Critique of Pure Reason?
Who but Professor Kant could maintain a semblance of calm enquiry when face to face with outrageous facts that would have driven any sane man to quaking terror?

I turned another page and let out a sigh of satisfaction. Drawings of the positions in which all the victims had been found were collected together and catalogued in a portfolio. A connoisseur of prints or a collector of anatomical drawings could have done no better. Professor Kant had inspired the hand of a rough, untaught soldier to replicate the sort of evidence that the untrained police ignored as a rule. The schematic reporting of such invaluable details opened up prospects regarding the nature and execution of crime which no man had ever contemplated before myself. I laid the drawings out on the table in the order in which the murders had taken place, and called for Koch.

‘Just look at these,’ I said, my voice echoing around the vault.

‘What are they, sir?’

‘The precise positions in which the bodies were discovered.’

The pencil lines were faint, uncertain. They had been gone over more than once as the amateur sketcher tried to get closer and closer to the horrid truth before his eyes. ‘These doodles are Lublinsky’s work. Now, let us see if the footprints left in Kant’s garden match anything shown here.’

We began to study them together, Koch’s intensity matched by my own, glued to those drawings, analysing every line and every mark until our poor eyes ached. But there was nothing to suggest that the sketch I had made the night before was similar to anything that Lublinsky had ever drawn.

‘What about these smudges, sir?’

Koch’s finger indicated some odd cross-hatchings traced near the body of Jan Konnen. We stared at them for some moments. They might have been marks in the form of a cross like those that I had found in the snow, but the scale was wholly different. I had drawn a shoe in its actual proportions, and nothing else, while Officer Lublinsky had attempted to sketch the entire scene of a murder.

‘I don’t know, Koch. It could be a cross. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that it is, but it might be something else,’ I admitted reluctantly, picking up another sheet of paper. ‘We must consider the possibility that the artist was not equal to his task. In trying to represent everything, he may have included too much. Still, this looks like a cross, don’t you think?’ I indicated the drawing with my finger. ‘Officer Lublinsky may have excluded a great deal of vital information in pursuit of what he thought was clarity. Too much, too little? In either case, the drawings are not conclusive.’

‘So, until we find Anna Rostova and compare her shoes with the drawing that you made,’ Koch concluded, ‘we’ll never know for sure if it was she who entered Professor Kant’s garden, will we, sir?’

The image of Anna Rostova flashed before my eyes. I saw the gendarmes chasing her, catching her, throwing her to the ground, doing her harm. It ought to have been my most fervent wish. Instead, it was my greatest fear. I had let the hounds loose before, and caused unnecessary suffering. Now, I wavered between extremes. If she were the killer, the case would be over, she would be condemned. But what if she were innocent of murder? She would escape execution, but not imprisonment for abortion, and the inevitable abuse of incarceration and forced labour. I hardly knew which I preferred.

‘And yet,’ I murmured, my eyes nailed to those sketches, ‘they were all kneeling. Lublinsky is consistent in that respect. Each one fell down in more or less the same position.’

‘Just like Tifferch, sir. He…’

‘Herr Tifferch was lying on an anatomic table,’ I interrupted. ‘He was an isolated object without a context. Concentrate on the
drawings
, Koch. Here, you see, the victims are located in the real world. This is the world in which the killer moved. I…I had not fully understood the implications before. I had thought it a mere coincidence that they were kneeling…’

I paused, deep in thought.

‘Perhaps, is it just a coincidence, sir? The violence of the attack may have knocked them off their feet.’

‘Oh, no, Koch. No,’ I insisted, shuffling quickly from one drawing to the next, then back again. ‘You see? A man struck from
behind
would fall flat on his face if death were instantaneous, but that was not the case. These people are all
kneeling
. We have the entire sequence of murders here, as Lublinsky sketched them. It’s as if we can see the crimes being committed one after the other. Each victim fell just so, and his or her forehead came to rest against something, a wall, or a bench in the case of Frau Brunner. So
why
did they not fall flat, Koch?’

‘You seem to believe that there
is
a reason, sir.’

‘There is, indeed. Because they were already kneeling when they were struck. That is, they knelt down in front of the killer, then they were despatched.’

Koch looked up and stared at me in wonder.

‘But that’s impossible, sir! Would any sane person do such a thing? I can’t imagine…An execution, sir? As if they were being put to death.’

‘Precisely, Koch. An execution. But how did he get them to kneel?’

Koch glanced from one drawing to the next. ‘Why didn’t Herr Professor Kant point this detail out to you, sir?’ he asked. ‘He cannot have failed to notice the fact.’

‘He has done much more,’ I replied vigorously. ‘He has placed the evidence before my eyes. Kant made sure that Tifferch’s body was preserved under ice and snow for me to see. Then, he made an issue of the fact that Morik’s corpse had not been found in the kneeling position. It is not his way to point things out, Koch. He shows you the available data, then he invites you to explain the obvious. I ought to have understood all this before.’

‘That’s all very well, sir,’ Koch objected, ‘but Professor Kant had no way of verifying the
truth
of what Lublinsky had drawn.’

I was silenced for a moment. It was a reasonable objection, after all. But the answer came to me in a flash: ‘Tifferch’s trousers!’ I exclaimed.

‘Sir?’

‘There we have the proof, Koch. In Tifferch’s trousers. The knees of his breeches were caked with mud. Do you remember? If my theory is correct, all the victims’ knees should be dirty, if Lublinsky has drawn precisely what he was told to draw.’

I glanced around the room.

‘Over there, Koch!’ I said, pointing to the upper shelf against the far wall. ‘Shift that vacuum pump out of the way, and bring down a box. Any one will do. To verify Lublinsky’s evidence, all we have to do is examine the clothing.’

Koch hauled down a long, flat, pressed-paper box, the sort used by tailors to deliver suits and gowns. With mounting excitement we removed the lid. A cloud of dust flew into the air and into our lungs.

‘Paula-Anne Brunner,’ Koch announced with a splutter. The woman’s name was written on a slip of yellow paper listing all the items in the container. I could not fail to recognise Kant’s neat handwriting.

A thin, green cloak of braided cotton,’ Koch began to read. A long-sleeved white blouse. A grey gown of thin, indeterminate fabric. One pair of heavy, grey woollen stockings. One pair of wooden clogs with worn heels…’

‘The gown, Koch.’ I interrupted the litany. ‘Let’s see the gown.’

Koch spread the garment out on the table-top, then stood back. I moved closer and bent over the woman’s gown, flipping it over, then turning it back again, my anxiety mounting.

‘There are no stains,’ I spluttered, the words choking in my throat. ‘Not a single spot of mud on the knees.’

Koch’s voice was a low murmur close to my ear. ‘What does it mean, Herr Stiffeniis?’

‘I have no idea,’ I admitted, my head spinning with confusion.

‘Hold on a moment, sir,’ Koch declared with energy.

Without a word of explanation, he picked up the list, read it again, then began to search through the items in the garment-box. I watched in silence, fighting the impulse to stop him, resentful of the rough way he was rummaging among the articles that Professor Kant had so carefully arranged there.

‘Now, let me see,’ he said quietly, pulling out a pair of woollen stockings. ‘Frau Brunner possessed this gown, I presume, and no other. The stuff is thin for the season, which made it precious. If she had to kneel down on the ground, she’d have done what any other lady would. She lifted up her best gown and soiled her stockings. You see, sir?’

There was no hint of triumph in his voice.

Like Doubting Thomas, I stretched out my hand and touched the rough, grey worsted with my fingertips. There were holes in the toes and heels. The stockings had been darned and mended more than once. And on the knees were two large, dark stains.

‘She put more trust in those heavy stockings to protect her from the winter,’ Koch continued, ‘than in the light gown she was wearing.’

‘So simple, so logical,’ I murmured. And quite conclusive. We may assume from this that all the victims knelt down voluntarily before the person who intended to butcher them. They seem to have helped the killer.’

The words I had read from Vigilantius’s macabre colloquy with Jan Konnen flashed into my mind, and I felt a tingle of excitement. Could there be a grain of truth in what the necromancer called his ‘art’?

Darkness surrounded me after I knelt…

‘A ritual was being acted out, I’d say, sir. The victims were being sacrificed to some pagan deity, perhaps. This certainly strengthens your case against Anna Rostova,’ said Koch excitedly.