HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (31 page)

I noted the stinging sarcasm in his voice as he pronounced the last phrase.

‘I will do everything that I can to prevent Martin Lampe…’

I halted, afraid that I might have said too much, but Jachmann was not listening. He had taken up his towel again from a small porcelain basin and had placed his head beneath the tent to inhale the fumes. Clearly, my visit was at an end.

I left the house, caught a two-wheeled cab at the end of the street, and told the sleepy driver to take me to the Fortress. I had not slept all the night, but that was the last thing on my mind as I rushed up to my bedroom. Where was Lampe? Where was his wife? I could not use the gendarmes to locate them. No one must ever know the connection between Lampe, those murders and Professor Kant. I closed the door behind me and felt like a house-fly trapped in a bottle. I buzzed up and down, hopelessly butting my nose against the glass, although the opening was there, if I cared to look for it. If I
dared…
The solution was all too obvious. There was one person I could ask about Martin Lampe: Professor Kant himself. He must know where the man was to be found. But could I ask him without revealing my reasons for seeking Lampe out?

A sharp double rap at my door sent this thought scuttling for the darkest corner like a fugitive sewer rat.

A bleary-eyed soldier stood before me when I opened up, his fist raised to knock again. ‘An urgent message, sir.’

‘What is it?’

‘Downstairs, sir. A woman’s asking for you.’

I was expecting no one. Had Helena, for some reason, taken it into her head to come to Königsberg? Just as she had gone on impulse to visit Ruisling and my brother’s grave the week before?

‘Says her name’s Frau Lampe, sir,’ the soldier added.

I hurried down the stairs, greatly relieved and thanking Providence. God works in mysterious ways, they say. And how truly impenetrable they are! Hope surged in my breast in that moment. But that noble sentiment was no more than the final step on my long slide to perdition and delusion. The messenger had brought me the key to a closed vault that I had been trying in vain to enter. I could never have foreseen the horror awaiting me once the key had turned.

Frau Lampe was younger than I had expected. She could hardly have been forty-five years of age. Standing in the corridor outside the guard-room, her face was finely sculpted by the dark shadows. The flickering lamplight cast a waxen gloss on her pale skin. A thin shawl of grey worsted material covered her head and shoulders in meagre defiance of the rigours of the weather. Although she looked worn and tired, there was something timeless and beautiful about her appearance. She might have been a gypsy girl begging on a street corner for coins. Glancing up at me with a look of the most intense concern, her large black eyes glinted with unexpected directness into mine.

‘Procurator Stiffeniis?’

‘You must be Frau Lampe,’ I said.

She bowed her head in reply.

‘You’d better come out of the cold,’ I said, and led her into a little room that was used as a rule by the officer of the night-watch.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said with an eagerness which took me by surprise as I struck a flint to the wick of a candle. I imagined there could be only one reason for her coming: she had decided to confess all that she knew about her husband and his crimes.

‘I should have come before, sir,’ she began. ‘It concerns my husband.’

I waved her to a chair and sat myself behind the desk.

‘I know who your husband is,’ I said.

Her eyes opened wide with surprise. ‘Do you, sir?’

‘I have heard his name mentioned many a time in connection with the affairs of Herr Professor Kant.’

Frau Lampe looked down, as if to hide her face. Her dignified bearing seemed to diminish like a sail when the wind suddenly drops. It was the work of an instant. At the mention of Kant’s name, a change came over her.

‘You know Professor Kant, then?’ she murmured.

‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘I have that pleasure…’

‘Pleasure?’ she interrupted sharply. ‘I know him too, sir. Like a cripple knows his withered limb.’

Her words were like a blasphemy spoken aloud in a church. ‘You had better tell me what you’ve come to say, Frau Lampe,’ I said gruffly, managing with an effort to control my temper.

‘You think me rude, I suppose?’ she replied, looking me squarely in the face. ‘Professor Kant may well be a friend to you, sir, but me and my husband know the darker side of his character. It’s no lack of respect, but the fruit of bitter experience.’

Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable in the presence of that woman. There was a calm determination in her manner which I did not know how to handle or direct.

‘I doubt that you’ve come merely to express your rancour towards Professor Kant,’ I continued hastily. ‘Very well, then. What brings you here?’

‘Professor Kant is the cause of all my husband’s troubles, sir,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I’ve come.’

‘If you have something to say to me as a magistrate,’ I urged her, ‘then say it at once. The fact is that I need to speak to your husband, Frau Lampe. Do you know where I might find him?’

She raised her coal-black eyes, a pitiful, tragic expression like a stain on her handsome face. ‘That’s just it, sir,’ she said, and her voice broke into a sob. ‘I’ve no idea where Martin is. He disappeared the night before last. I came to report him missing, and they told me to ask for you. But you are investigating murders, sir,’ she said, mopping at her tears with her shawl. ‘Why did they tell me to speak to you? Has something happened to him?’

Was there some further aspect of the case that escaped me? Sergeant Koch had been murdered the previous afternoon, so the killer was still at large. What the woman had just told me cast doubt on my suspicions regarding her husband’s involvement in Koch’s death. She had placed his disappearance almost twenty-four hours before the murder of my assistant. Might something tragic have happened to Lampe as well? Or had he come out of hiding solely to commit another crime? There was still a chance that Lampe was innocent. But then a more cynical idea took hold, and I studied the woman’s face attentively. Did she possess the skill to act the role that she appeared to be playing? Might she be trying to provide an alibi for her husband?

I stood up with decision.

‘I need to search your home, Frau Lampe.’

If he was hiding there with her connivance, I would catch him off his guard. If he were not, I would have the opportunity to scour the house for evidence that might be used against him.

To my surprise, Frau Lampe stood up and prepared to leave without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’ll do anything if it helps you to find Martin, sir,’ she said, forcing a weak smile, following me in silence out of the gate to where a police coach was parked. I woke the driver with a shake, and we climbed aboard.

‘Tell him where to go, Frau Lampe,’ I ordered, and she gave the coachman an address in the Belefest village area.

‘Will seeing the house help you to discover where he is?’ she asked uncertainly as the vehicle gathered speed. ‘I’ve searched it myself from top to bottom. He left no note, and nothing at all’s been carried away, sir.’

‘It is normal police procedure, Frau Lampe,’ I replied in the vaguest terms. ‘There may be some clue that you have missed.’

She nodded eagerly and seemed relieved to hand the business over to me.

A church bell tolled eight of the clock. At this hour, I reflected, looking out of the window of the coach, any other town in Prussia would be wide awake, the workrooms, shops and offices open for trade. But under the arches of the low porticos on either side of the narrow street, all was closed and tightly shuttered. There was not a soul to be seen in Königsberg, with the exception of the armed soldiers guarding every crossroads. Truly, the city was under siege. And it was all the doing of Martin Lampe. Bonaparte’s marauding army posed less of a threat than the enemy already within the city walls. I had to find him. Perhaps then, the city would begin to live again.

After two or three kilometres, the carriage began to slow down, then came to rest at last beside a sad row of dingy little country cottages with sagging roofs of ancient thatch the colour of ash. We were in the village of Belefest, the lady told me as I helped her to climb down into an unpaved muddy lane. There were tall leafless trees on either flank. In the spring and summer, when brilliant green and the brighter tints of hedgerow flowers salvage the world, the hamlet might have made a first impression which was less dreary, grey and depressing.

‘You won’t find much sign of Martin’s presence in the house, sir. My husband and I have lived together so little. Professor Kant could not,
would
not, get along without him,’ she said harshly. There was no mistaking her tone, or her meaning. She did not like Immanuel Kant. His name seemed to burn on her tongue like acid.

The house was tiny, standing at the lower end of the row. A small garden stood before the front door. Poor, I judged, but not destitute. Then, Frau Lampe explained that she and her husband occupied only two rooms of the place: they had been obliged to let the whole upper floor to lodgers. She opened the door with her key and an overwhelming odour of stale boiled cabbage drifted out. A lamp was brought, the tinder struck – in that room, it was never day – and soon the humble dwelling was crudely illuminated for me to see.

‘May I look around?’ I asked, glancing quickly about me, taking in the meagre furnishings. Frau Lampe watched me as I searched the place, opening cupboards and drawers, feeling under every cushion and coverlet, excusing myself as I stripped away the bed and examined the straw mattress for anything that might be hidden inside or underneath it. I found nothing more exceptional in the dwelling than a few cracked mugs and mismatched plates, the dirty old clothes they had used to work in the garden, odd remnants of Martin Lampe’s past glories in the army, which consisted of a pair of corporal’s epaulettes and a faded, moth-eaten uniform jacket. Inside a chest, washed-out household linen, nondescript rags of clothing, an ancient horse-blanket Lampe had brought back from Belorussia, together with a pair of yellow spare sheets and some faded fineries Frau Lampe had worn when she was younger and had known better days.

‘We had much, much more,’ she murmured, ‘but the pawnbroker got it all. My first husband, Albrecht Kolber, was the beadle. We were well-to-do, but he died of choleric dysentery.’ The widow Kolber had married Martin Lampe nine years after his honourable discharge from the Prussian army, where he had served in Poland and in Western Russia under King Frederick the Great. Without any other trade to his name, Martin Lampe had entered into service as the valet to Immanuel Kant.

‘Martin wanted to marry me, and I needed a husband,’ she explained flatly. ‘We had to wed in secret, of course. Professor Kant wanted only bachelors in his employ.’

I wiped the dust from my hands and turned to face her. My search had told me nothing more than Frau Lampe herself had told me while I was sifting through the material wreckage of her life. First, of her short but happy marriage to Beadle Kolber, then, her impoverished widowhood, and, finally, the new lease of married life she had found with Martin Lampe.

She watched as I turned away from what I had been doing and looked around helplessly. Had some detail escaped my notice? Were Martin Lampe’s secrets locked up in his brain and nowhere else?

‘I told you before, Herr Procurator,’ she said gently. ‘You won’t find any sign of his presence here. There’s nothing worth a brass half-farthing. Nothing worth a memory.’

‘Do you have a hiding-place for money, papers, valuables?’

She shook her head ruefully. ‘Everything I own, I wear on my back, sir. You’re looking in the wrong place. If you want to know what Martin had on his mind, there’s only one place to turn for help.’

‘And where is that?’

An air of concern clouded the woman’s face, but in an instant the look was gone. ‘You say you are a particular friend of Professor Kant’s, sir. Why not ask him where Martin is? I’d ask him myself, but I cannot…’

I stiffened. ‘What makes you think that Kant would know?’

‘Martin often goes to his house,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘He’s been helping Kant to write a book.’

‘He’s been doing
…what
?’ I spluttered.

‘Not that he makes a penny out of it,’ she went on resentfully. ‘I’ve no idea what he does precisely. He comes home so tired out, he’s not fit for work in the garden.’

‘After your husband was dismissed from service,’ I interposed, ‘he was prohibited from ever visiting the house again. Professor Kant’s friends keep a close watch to make sure there’s no communication between them.’

Frau Lampe laughed shrilly. ‘Even his dearest friends have to sleep, sir. Martin goes there after dark. I warned him, but he would not listen to me. The forest is a dangerous place at night.’ She frowned and her voice was suddenly tense. ‘You’ve no idea what my Martin’s life was like in that house, have you? For thirty years he waited hand and foot on the most famous man in Prussia. If you knew the truth, sir, you wouldn’t envy him.’

‘Your husband has been most fortunate,’ I said stiffly, ‘in having served the noblest mind that ever lived in Prussia.’

A veil seemed to fall over her face. ‘I could tell you things that Kant’s best friends don’t know,’ she replied in a low voice.

‘Go on,’ I said, steeling myself to hear the gossip that cast-off servants and their irate wives reserve for their former employers.

‘Everyone in Königsberg – and elsewhere for all I know – has heard of Professor Kant. His precise way of thinking, the regularity of his habits, the stern morality of his temperament, the impeccable elegance of his dress. Not a hair out of place, not a word out of turn, not a spot on his reputation. A living clock, they call him in this town. A clockwork man, says I. Nothing happens in his life by chance. No accidents befall him. Have you ever stopped to think how that affects the people in his service? Martin had no freedom, no life. Every single instant of every day, from the moment Martin woke him in the morning to the second when he tucked the Professor up in bed and blew out his candle, my husband was at his side, and never a single thought in his head but what his master put there. Waiting hand and foot on that man like a slave.’

She halted, her facial expression changed. Some rebellious thought seemed to pass through her mind and ripple the furrows on her brow like wind over still water.

‘My husband was obsessed with the need to assist Professor Kant. When Herr Jachmann dismissed him, I realised that something was wrong. He blamed Martin…’

‘It was not a question of blame,’ I interrupted. ‘Herr Jachmann decided that a younger man was needed.’

‘Perhaps,’ she replied, shrugging her shoulders. A nervous motion of her hands and the glinting brightness of her eyes suggested a fear of something that I could not name. ‘Martin had a special task in that house. Something only
he
could do,’ she added, her voice sinking to a barely audible whisper.

‘A special task?’ I echoed. Distressed by her husband’s disappearance, I wondered whether she had begun to imagine plots.

‘ “I am the water in Kant’s well,” Martin told me once.’

‘And what do you think he meant by that?’

Frau Lampe’s eyes flashed up at me.

‘Why, the book Professor Kant was writing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Martin told me he was helping his master to put the finishing touches to his final work. Kant’s hand was not so steady as it used to be, his sight was poor, he needed a secretary to write it out for him.’

‘Kant was dictating the text to your husband?’ I burst out incredulously. ‘Is that what you are suggesting, ma’am?’

Frau Lampe closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Night after night after night. Often dawn was breaking before he got home. Martin isn’t young any more, but he always was so diligent. He was so proud of what they were doing together. Helping Professor Kant rewrite his philosophy. That was what he said.’

‘When did all of this begin?’

Frau Lampe grimaced with the effort of recall. A chasm split her brow. ‘More than a year ago, sir. Martin was torn from my bed once more by that ogre. He came home when he could, but some nights he didn’t come at all. And when he did come, he was not the same man. He’d sit by that window there, looking out like a haunted soul. He didn’t say a word to me.’