HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (26 page)

A noise like shifting gravel rattled from Lublinsky’s throat. He was laughing. ‘That needle must have entered my brain,’ he said. ‘I don’t follow you, sir. How could I have done such diabolical things? Kopka was with me.’

‘Kopka is dead, and the dead cannot speak. You killed him, didn’t you?’ I hissed. ‘He must have guessed what you were up to, that you were covering up for a criminal. Rather than denounce you, he tried to desert from the regiment. But you chased him, and you brought him back.
You
were the capturing officer the report talks about, Lublinsky, were you not? Kopka was made to run the gauntlet, while every man in the regiment, yourself included, tried to crack his skull open with a stick.’

‘Deserters know the score,’ he growled. ‘It’s no easy thing to leave the Prussian army. That bastard got what was coming to him.’

‘How very convenient for you, Lublinsky.’

‘You cannot frighten me, Herr Procurator,’ he replied boldly. ‘I’ve nothing left to lose. If you wish to believe that Anna Rostova was the murderer and that I was her accomplice, you’re free to do so. If you think that I connived at Kopka’s death, dream on. But you’ll not put those words into my mouth. You won’t get me to confess…’

I played my final card. God help me, I had no alternative.

‘You are proud to be a soldier, are you not?’

‘It was my life,’ he grunted. ‘I’ll be cast off now, I suppose.’

‘A dishonourable discharge,’ I added, ‘a barebacked whipping out of the regiment. Then civil charges to face. Complicity to murder, obstruction of Justice, theft from a corpse. You are going to pay in full for Anna Rostova’s crimes, as well as for your own. You won’t find much in the way of sympathy in any prison. An officer who’s betrayed his trust? The lowest of the low. Sentence? Life. With forced labour and reduced rations. With a bit of luck, you may survive a year or two. I want you to suffer, Lublinsky. And to make quite sure of it, I will condemn you to serve out your time in a…military prison!’

‘You can’t do that!’ he roared, the enormity of the threat opening up before him. He would be hated and brutalised by his guards, reviled and tormented by his fellow prisoners. Each moment of every day he would be hounded and harried by a heartless pack of wild dogs.

‘Can I not, Lublinsky? You know the legal code by heart, I suppose? I can condemn any man to the sentence I think most fit. Article 137 of the Penal Code. You go where I decide to send you.’

There is no such article, but Lublinsky was not to know. I pronounced this threat like a pagan god who knows no pity for the creatures under his jurisdiction. And like a deity devoid of all Christian compassion, I obtained what I insisted on having. He blubbered for a moment, but then he found his voice. His mutilated tongue began to squawk in fractured measures.

‘The first time, that morning, I went to see the corpse she’d found. I guessed she was hiding something. Some
secret…’ His voice was strained, low, and I had to struggle to understand. ‘Then, Kopka went for gin. For her, for Anna. She put her spell on me while he was gone. “I’ll cure your face,” she said.’

‘There is nothing new or interesting in this, Lublinsky,’ I cut in. ‘I want to hear the rest. I want to know about those footprints.’

‘Kopka saw them…’

‘And you assumed that the woman had left them?’

Lublinsky shook his head. ‘Not the first time, sir.’

‘You drew them on that occasion, did you not?’

‘I drew what I could recall. It was months afterwards. I was no good at it, but Professor Kant was happy. There were footprints all around that body. On the ground. In the snow,’ Lublinsky went on. ‘There was a cross on the sole. When I told Anna, she said that cross was the sign of the Devil mocking the crucifixion. It was a sacrilege, she said. So when I saw that cross again, I did not draw it. Nor did I report everything that I found there…’

He paused, and peered into my face, looking for approval. He was offering me something, working to save his miserable hide, just as he had done when he surrendered Anna Rostova into my hands the day before.

‘What did you find?’ I asked, trying to sound detached.

‘A chain,’ he said. ‘In the hand of Jan Konnen. A watch-chain with a broken link.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘When Kopka wasn’t looking, I slipped it in my pocket. It was silver.’

‘That’s theft,’ I sneered.

He hesitated for a moment. ‘I gave it to Anna. A gift from Satan, she said, and I’d be rewarded ‘cause I’d done the right thing. She told me then what she had done. She’d pulled the Devil’s claw from the dead man’s neck before we arrived. Afterwards, she made me bring her any trifle that I found at the murder scenes. Those things were charged with the power of life and death…’

‘If she was the murderer, why didn’t she take them herself?’ I objected.

‘She wanted to tie me to her, sir,’ Lublinsky mumbled. ‘To make me her accomplice. She promised she’d heal me with the Devil’s claw. I had to swear an oath. Tell anyone this secret, she said, and the spell won’t work.’

‘The second time, you found the same footprints by the body?’

Lublinsky nodded. ‘There was that cross-cut again. It was hers, I’d swear, though I didn’t see her that time. Her power was growing with each murder, she said. I thought she’d put a spell on Professor Kant ’cause he insisted that I should be sent out. Whenever there was another murder, I had to go and draw it. An’ while I was there, I collected the Devil’s gifts for Anna.’

I frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘They all had something hidden in their hands, sir. All of them. Those corpses…I took the objects and I gave them to Anna Rostova like an obedient dog.’

My heart beat fast. A new light shone on what I knew.

‘What did you find?’

‘A key in the fist of the dead lady.’

Professor Kant had surely been referring to something of the sort when he spoke of the murderer having used some stratagem to induce the victims to fall down on their knees. The list that Lublinsky gave me contained nothing of any import or value. The victims had died clasping banal objects of everyday use, sinister and mysterious by their association only with murder and witchcraft. The chain of Konnen, the key in Frau Brunner’s hand, a brass button stamped with an anchor in the hand of the third, a groat from the fingers of Lawyer Tifferch.

‘I cleaned the bones of the dead for her. I sorted through the muck for Anna Rostova,’ Lublinsky went on. ‘Like a carrion crow.’

‘Did you take the weapon for her, too?’

‘No, sir. She must have spirited it away. I never saw her there again. Not once after the first time.’

He stared at me in disbelief, as if awaking from a dream.

‘She killed them, but I didn’t give a damn. Not me. If people dying meant her power was growing, I was glad of it. God help me! I wanted her to kill again.’

He let out a strange cry, a strangled whimper, and I realised he was laughing.

‘I carried a mirror in my pocket,’ he said, his shoulders heaving, ‘to see my face. Waiting for it to change after each murder. She promised much, but nothing changed. Still the same. Ugly brute…’

He was mad, lost in a world of vain hopes of his own creating.

‘It’s funny, is it not?’ he said with sudden vehemence, his head jerking round at me. ‘That woman terrified the city and commanded the King. No one would have given her a second glance if Nature hadn’t marked her out. We’re two of a kind, we are. Me, with a face disfigured by smallpox. That wild silver hair she had. Those blazing eyes. I wanted her. Even as she plunged that dart in my eye…’ He fixed me with that mocking eye of his. ‘Did you think to find the answer to your mystery in two such monsters, Herr Stiffeniis?’

There was a claim to omnipotence in his tone, I suddenly realised. He was proud of what he had done. He seemed to think that he and Anna Rostova had held Königsberg in their hands. And he was right. They had toyed with the authorities, with the police, the King. Professor Kant had been taken in by them. And so had I. Anger burst from me like hot water gushing from a Greenland geyser. All pity gone, I felt the urge to harm him, to repay him for his arrogance.

‘You murdered Anna Rostova last night. You convinced yourself that she was the killer.’ I struggled to control my voice, caught my breath, checked my anger before I continued. ‘You were wrong, Lublinsky.
Wrong!
Now, how did you leave this room?’

He did not trouble himself to answer. Instead, like some hideous parody of Narcissus, he turned his head towards the winter scene outside the window and studied himself once more in the glass.

‘By means of that window? Is that how you escaped? You’re practically alone,’ I nodded over my shoulder at the amputee. ‘That fellow down there has pain enough. They give him something to help him sleep, I bet. But vengeance is the most powerful painkiller, and your legs are not hampered, soldier.’

‘She’ll be happy with the Devil she worshipped,’ Lublinsky said with bitter intensity.

‘She was
not
the killer,’ I insisted coldly. ‘Do you hear me? She did not
kill
those people.’

‘I know what I know,’ he growled angrily.

I shook my head. ‘Those footprints that you saw beside the corpses were not left by Anna Rostova. She played with you, tricked you time and time again. She made you believe what she wanted. She took your money. You were her dupe…’

‘Hang me, sir,’ he moaned suddenly. ‘Kill me. I was a good soldier before black wolves began to howl in my soul. Snap my neck in two. ‘Twill all be over in a second.’

I looked at him in disgust. His face was deformed by anguish and fear, as well as ruined by uncaring Nature. Even so, I realised, the surgeon had been right. Lublinsky’s soul was blacker still. I rose, grabbed for my hat, and strode from the room without a word or a backward glance.

I saw Anton Lublinsky no more. I had lied to him on that count. In the report I wrote that evening, unable once again to prove what I knew, I glossed over his part in the death of Anna Rostova, concluding that the midwife had been killed by a person, or by persons, unknown. I heard no immediate news of Lublinsky’s fate, though when news did eventually come, it was not good. Demoted to assist in the regimental kitchen after losing his eye, he was subsequently condemned to a military prison for murdering a soldier who had mocked him once too often. There, Lublinsky swallowed broken glass and slowly haemorrhaged to death.

Outside the Infirmary, I stopped to try and collect my thoughts. I felt depressed, sick at heart, thoroughly dispirited. Perhaps desperate was the most apposite word to describe my state of mind. Where should I turn? What should I do now? If only I could find the courage to resign this thankless task and return to the monotony of my life in Lotingen with my wife and children, I would be taking a step in the right direction. I ought to write to the King, explain my incapacity, and ask to be released immediately from my burdensome duties.

But then, as always in times of doubt, my thoughts turned to Immanuel Kant. How would I justify the renunciation in his eyes? Would he dismiss me as a faint-hearted coward incapable of putting his suggestions to good use? If not for me, I could almost hear him say, Morik, the Totzes and Anna Rostova might still be alive, and Lublinsky might not have lost his eye and his soul.

‘Herr Stiffeniis?’ a voice sliced through my thoughts. A gendarme had appeared at my side. ‘I’ve been looking all over the place for you, sir,’ he said, rummaging in his shoulder-bag. ‘I’ve got a dispatch here from Herr Sergeant Koch. And there’s someone…’

‘From Koch?’ I interrupted.

I tore the letter open, and began to read.

I had the sensation of joy one feels after a long, hard winter, opening a window one morning and finding the first frail butterfly of Spring quivering on the glass. All hope lost a minute before, my strength and determination returned with every word that I read. Each sentence sounded to my ears like a military fanfare calling me to battle once again.

‘Herr Procurator?’

I had forgotten the presence of the soldier.

‘An old gentleman is waiting for you downstairs, sir. He says his name’s Professor Immanuel Kant.’

If Immanuel Kant had come to the Fortress, I reasoned, something serious had happened, an event of such urgency that it had obliged him to break with his usual routine. Something so simple for other men, any unforeseen change of plan constituted a sort of cataclysm for Professor Kant. Add to this the thick fog that day, a phenomenon for which he declared an unmitigated hatred, and the enormity of Kant’s decision can be imagined. I ran down the stairs without delay, and out into the courtyard, where a single solid figure was barely discernible in the swirling fog. It was not the person I had been expecting.

‘I’m so sorry, sir!’ Johannes Odum exclaimed at the sound of my footstep. ‘I
had
to bring him. I was left no choice.’

‘Is he well?’ I asked, recalling his master’s agitated state of mind earlier that morning, hoping that his indisposition had not deteriorated further.

The valet looked perplexed. ‘He’s not been right since you left the house,’ he said, his voice tense with concern. ‘Then, he insisted on speaking to you again, sir. At once, he said. He…he needs that cloak he gave you.’

If I had been puzzled by the Professor’s generosity that morning, I was even more surprised by this sudden
volte face
. If that heavy garment were so essential to his physical well-being, why had he left the warmth of his fire for the freezing cold and the rheumatic damp without waiting for me to bring it back?

‘Whatever for?’ I asked.

There seemed to be nothing logical or even rational in such behaviour.

‘I’ve no idea, sir,’ Johannes replied. ‘He has no clear idea what he wants himself. You saw the way he was this morning. So keen to give you that garment, insistent almost…Well, he wants it back! He was so overwrought that I hitched the horse to the landau, and drove him here to calm him down. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Where is he now?’ I interrupted.

‘In the guard-room. But let me tell you what happened this morning…’

I felt the hand of fright clasp at my heart.

‘After you left the house with Sergeant Koch,’ Johannes continued, ‘he sat himself down in the front parlour for the best part of an hour and stared fretfully out of the window.’

‘Was he expecting visitors?’

‘Oh, no, sir,’ Johannes said emphatically. ‘No one comes to the house these days. You are the first visitor he’s had in a month or more. I took him his morning coffee at eleven o’clock, as usual, but he didn’t touch it. He jumped up suddenly, saying that he urgently needed a book from Herr Flaccovius, his editor, in town. It was for his treatise, he said. He could not go on without it.’

‘That mysterious treatise again,’ I said, hoping that Johannes might have discovered something in the mean time.

He did not rise to the bait. ‘Professor Kant ordered me to run all the way to the bookshop,’ he reported instead. ‘He was a bundle of nerves until I had put on my overcoat and hat, and was preparing to leave the house.’

‘You left him alone?’ I burst out angrily. ‘Unprotected again? Is that what you are trying to tell me?’

‘What else could I do, sir?’ Johannes whined. ‘He was safe in his own home, it was daytime, and you had sent those soldiers to watch the house. There was no danger at all. How could I refuse to go?’

‘The fog is so thick, I doubt that the gendarmes can see their own noses,’ I seethed, truly vexed and frustrated by the news.

‘I took my own precautions, Herr Procurator,’ Johannes replied in an attempt to soothe me. ‘I stopped at Frau Mendelssohn’s and asked her to go across and sit with him while I was out. Frau Mendelssohn lives…’

‘I know who the woman is,’ I broke in, recalling my chance meeting with the inquisitive old lady as I left the house that very morning.

‘She’s a devoted admirer of Professor Kant’s,’ Johannes continued. ‘I told her that I was obliged to run to town on an errand, and warned her not to let my master out of her sight. I made no mention of the real motive for doing so, saying that he wasn’t feeling as well as he should. Then, I rushed off to the bookshop. But when I got there, Herr Flaccovius had no idea what I was talking about. He checked his ledger and found that my master had, indeed, ordered that particular book. But Herr Flaccovius himself had delivered it into Professor Kant’s hands four months ago. I returned home rapidly, thinking I had made a mistake with the title of the volume. I expected Professor Kant to be angry, but when I told him of the mix-up, he didn’t seem put out in the least.’

‘We have witnessed many unpredictable and disconcerting changes of mood in him. He has a great deal on his mind with this investigation,’ I said to mask my own perplexity, which was great enough. Could Herr Professor Kant be so wholly confused?

‘The oddest thing comes last,’ Johannes went on quickly, as if I had spoken my puzzlement aloud. ‘When I saw her to the door, Frau Mendelssohn told me that my master had been in the most excellent high spirits. Not sick at all, she said. He had entertained her to a disquisition on the cause of her migraine headaches, which he attributes to an excess of magnetism in the damp air of the town. He had been so concerned about her health, he went to get some anatomical prints from his study to show her the nerves which react to humidity. Frau Mendelssohn offered to look for the illustrations, but he insisted on searching them out for himself.’

‘So, he
was
left alone,’ I concluded, angry with myself, above all. No matter how carefully I tried to guarantee his safety, Professor Kant still managed to slip outside my net.

‘Could she prevent him from retiring to his private study?’ Johannes protested with a show of helplessness. ‘But then…then…’

‘Then,
what
?’ I prodded.

The valet ran his hand across his brow, as if to wipe away the troubled frown that etched itself there. ‘She says that she heard voices.’

‘Perhaps he was murmuring as he sorted through the prints? Old people often talk to themselves without being aware of it.’

My reassuring words did not sound convincing, not even to myself.

‘It wasn’t that, sir,’ Johannes added with a sigh. ‘She actually
saw
the visitor leaving by the garden path. The path where you and I examined those footprints in the snow last night, sir.’

I felt cold sweat break out on my brow.

Had the murderer somehow managed to set foot in the house despite the presence of the soldiers on guard? But no, Frau Mendelssohn reported that she had heard them speaking together. Would the killer have entered the house merely to speak with Kant? And even more to the point, what would Immanuel Kant have had to say to
him
?

‘Was your master upset?’

‘Not at all, sir,’ Johannes replied promptly. ‘As Frau Mendelssohn said herself, what possible harm could there be in Martin Lampe?’

‘Martin Lampe?’ I asked, recalling my brief conversation with Frau Mendelssohn that morning. ‘What in heaven’s name was he doing there?’

‘I’ve no idea, sir. I could hardly ask Herr Professor.’

‘Do you know Martin Lampe?’ I asked.

‘No, sir. I’ve never met him. Herr Jachmann forbade him ever to return to the house.’

‘Where does he live, Johannes?’

Johannes shrugged his shoulders. ‘Herr Jachmann might know, though I’d rather you didn’t ask him, sir. Professor Kant certainly knows, but I have no idea myself.’

The cold was even sharper than before as night came on. The air nipped at my cold hands and at the surface of my face like an angry puppy, and I regretted my act of generosity to Sergeant Koch.

‘Take me to your master,’ I said. ‘I have a confession to make, regarding the cloak that he so desperately wants.’

Professor Kant was seated comfortably before a huge, black, cast-iron monster of a stove in the guard-room, staring fixedly at the little blue flames that darted playfully from its open maw, a brown felt hat resting on his bony knees. In the far corner, off-duty soldiers played pinochle and smoked their long clay pipes, blissfully ignorant of the hallowed company they were keeping. Seeing him there, so old and physically frail, I felt an overwhelming urge to protect him. Such bleak surroundings seemed so unnatural for a man of his immense talents.

‘Procurator Stiffeniis has come, sir,’ Johannes announced.

Professor Kant jumped to his feet, spilling his hat onto the floor. He was clearly surprised to see me. ‘You are well, then?’ he asked, as if I had just that minute returned from a long and dangerous journey. ‘But where is my cloak?’ he added with that sudden shift of focus that had become so characteristic of late, and so disconcerting.

I hesitated by the door, unable to reply. Such attention to inconsequential detail robbed me of the capability to form a thought. Was Kant offended by my appearing in his presence without the gift? Or had a more general concern for the state of my health provoked the first of his two questions?

‘I loaned your cloak to Sergeant Koch, sir,’ I said, not quite certain if it were the correct thing to say. It was, anyhow, the truth, and the confession was made. ‘The poor man was soaked to the skin,’ I added by way of explanation.

Kant looked at me in silence as if my words had enchanted him. He seemed put out by the news. I had done something unforgivable, it appeared. But what wrong had I done? Such an uncompromising reaction to a simple act of kindness amazed me. It was inexplicable in the light of his own selfless generosity to me. Desperately I searched for something to say that would placate his anger, but before I could speak, he turned and smiled at me. The brainstorm had passed. He was himself once more.

‘Isn’t it odd, Stiffeniis?’ he said calmly.

‘Sir?’ I asked with circumspection.

‘How circumstances alter cases. Unleash Chaos on the world and it has a boundless energy all its own.’ His eyes looked straight ahead. He seemed to be staring at some solid figure, which he alone could see.

‘What do you mean, sir?’ I murmured, now doubly afraid of disturbing him in this perplexing state of distraction, wherever it might be leading him.

‘I mean to say that the further I progress in this experiment, the more I understand that Reason operates on the surface alone. What happens
beneath
the surface shapes events. The Imponderable overrules us all. For the first time in my life, I can feel the invincible strength of blind Destiny.’

He turned to look at me. ‘Don’t you feel it, Hanno?’

He was deathly pale, and seemed more fragile than ever, his voice trailing away to a hollow whisper.

‘Go home, Professor Kant,’ I urged, my heart sinking within me. In that instant, I lost all hope of making my way forward. Immanuel Kant, my anchor, my compass in the storm, had gone adrift. He had left me alone on the angry, empty sea.

‘I’ll give you back your cloak,’ I said soothingly, as if it were the answer to all his problems. ‘The instant Koch returns….’

‘I do not want it,’ he replied gruffly, turning to his valet. ‘Leave us alone, Johannes. Be gone!’

Johannes darted a worried glance at me.

‘Wait next door,’ I said with a nod. ‘I’ll call you when it is time to leave.’

As the door closed, Immanuel Kant placed his hand lightly on my arm. Leaning forward, he peered straight into my eyes. ‘That woman is
innocent
, Stiffeniis,’ he whispered.

I was amazed. ‘How did you reach this conclusion, sir?’ I asked. These swings of the pendulum between confusion and lucidity were disconcerting. I could do no more than follow his lead.

‘Am I not correct?’

I nodded slowly. ‘You are, indeed, sir. But how did you discover it?’

Kant ignored my question. ‘Never mind that now. What leads you to revise
your
opinion of the woman, Stiffeniis? You seemed so convinced of her guilt this morning when you spoke of witchcraft.’

‘She is dead,’ I replied. ‘Murdered before I had the chance to question her.’

Kant hunched forward in his seat. ‘The Devil’s claw?’

‘Strangled.’

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Those drawings that you instructed Lublinsky to make have been invaluable, sir,’ I began. ‘There were footprints left at the scene of the first murder, but Anna Rostova did not leave them. I have examined her shoes. The drawings rule her out. Your method of enquiry deserves to be publicised, sir,’ I continued with enthusiasm. ‘As soon as this affair is successfully concluded, I plan to write a memorandum which will, I hope, explain your methods to a wider public…’

‘Your opinion is most gratifying,’ Kant cut in with cold sarcasm. ‘Perhaps I will find some new admirers now that the old ones have deserted me. Is that what you intend?’

I thought I knew what troubled his mind. ‘Without your groundbreaking work in metaphysical speculation, sir,’ I said with justified vehemence, ‘there would be
no
new generation of philosophers.’

But he would not be halted. His temper exploded, his eyes flashed, his hands waved wildly about him. ‘Nutcracker Kant, the scoundrels call me, claiming that I have imprisoned the mind and the soul in a world of rigid schemes and immutable laws. My last days at the University were unbearable. So humiliating. I have never been treated in such a way before. The
agony
I have suffered!’

Kant’s eyes gleamed with passion. His voice was hoarse with malice. There was no suggestion of humour in the rancorous laughter which now escaped from his lips. ‘They are such fools! Romantic dreamers…they cannot
imagine
what I alone have been able to conceive and carry out. They will never know the beauty of…of…’

He did not finish the sentence. His eyes slid away from mine and came to rest on an imprecise point on the barrack-room wall. He was silent for quite some time, and I knelt beside his chair, afraid to speak, uncertain how to quell the high tide of bitter resentment in his breast. Suddenly, his right hand falling to rest on my sleeve, he began to speak again, his voice all but inaudible above the hissing flames of the stove.

‘Can’t you see the answer? Can you not, Hanno? I expected you to strike to the heart of the mystery. You’re all I have left now that everyone else has deserted me. I cannot finish my work without your help…’