HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (33 page)

‘Cover your mouth, sir,’ Stadtschen advised, blocking the way, and holding me in check.

‘One of our lads was carried off this morning with choleric fever. Spewing his guts up when he wasn’t busy on the latrine. Day and night for almost a week. What a way to go!’

Stadtschen raised his hand to his mouth and nose, while I turned my head to the side and used my jacket collar for the same purpose. The stink as we entered the room was hideous and sweet. The walls had been washed with lime, and the flickering light from our torches rebounded off the walls in a blinding flash. The space was empty and bare, except for a large tin bath placed against the far wall. I stepped across, glanced into it, then looked away. The naked corpse of a man had been laid flat on its back, eyes popping, broad chest sunken, skin wrinkled and yellow, the stomach swollen almost to bursting. Though I struggled not to think of it, I realised it would not be long before the nauseous gases exploded out of him.

I struggled to concentrate my mind on the task at hand. I did not have Professor Kant to help or direct me, as he had done when he took me to visit his
Wunderkammer
for the first time, proudly showing me the severed heads of the victims suspended in distilled wine.

‘Over there, sir,’ Stadtschen replied, waving his torch towards the far corner.

The man found in the wood had been laid on a mat of rough hessian. Stadtschen was right, I admitted. ‘Corpse’ was not the correct word. I fought the rising tide of revulsion in my gullet, and heard Stadtschen clear his throat and spit behind my back.

‘I hope he was dead when they stripped him clean,’ he murmured, as I fixed my torch in a ring on the wall.

Resolving to do as Professor Kant had taught me, I knelt down to examine attentively what was left of the body. I noted ribs and bones, sections of vertebrae which had been broken in at least three places, skeletal remains of the arms and the legs, everything tinged pale orange or dark brown where the muscles and flesh had been torn away. Shreds of transparent tendon, scraps of gristle and elastic cartilage still clung to the joints, though hardly a trace of soft tissue remained. It was impossible to determine the state of rigor mortis. So, there was no way of guessing how long ago the man might have been dead.

‘Jesus, they were hungry, sir!’

Stadtschen’s words were blunt and crude, but I admitted to myself that his observation was apt enough. Searching through my pockets, I drew out the long key that opened the door to my office. With some difficulty, I used it to turn the glistening skull towards me. In that instant, the true significance of the
memento mori
with which we love to decorate our Prussian churches struck me with a force that I had never felt before. Indeed, it took me a moment to pluck up the courage to look more carefully at the skeletal face, and the detached lower jaw. The skin was gone entirely, the ears and flesh of the cheeks and chin having been devoured. On the crown of the head, a tuft of hair had escaped being pulled away from the scalp in the frenzy of feeding. Though the strands were soaked in blood, the tips were clean. And they were white. A man of a certain age, I decided, or one who had aged prematurely. Might his hair have blanched as the attack took place? I dismissed this fanciful notion, my thoughts turning instinctively to Martin Lampe, Kant’s valet, the secretary who had transcribed his master’s work at dead of night, the servant I had never ever seen. Lampe was almost seventy years old. His hair could well have been white.

‘They started with the juicier bits, sir. Cheeks and lips, muscles and fat, the flesh on his arms and legs and whatever was attached to that
thing
there.’

Stadtschen was standing close behind me, leaning forward, peering eagerly over my shoulder. I would have preferred him to stand further off and let me get on with my work in peace, but his finger stretched forward and touched the skull, which lolled and rolled onto its side, then came to rest like a soup bowl, giving an extra twist to the gristly tubes of the trachea and oesophagus, which had somehow survived the onslaught.

‘They ripped his head off, sir. It’s plain to me, this case bears no relation to the corpse of that man of yours that was stabbed to death yesterday afternoon.’

I paused for a moment, remembering Amadeus Koch, whose body was safely housed in the Fortress chapel. At least, I reflected morosely, his death had been more sudden, and I had preserved him from the horror of the charnel house.

‘Begging your pardon, sir. You an’ him was close, I know.’

Once more, I tried to ignore this gushing babble as I sifted through the corporeal wreckage looking for some clue to the identity of the unknown man. The ribcage, pelvis, hips, and a mass of tangled bones lay in the centre of a horrid, bloody mash, which was all that remained of the internal organs. The larger bones bore marks of deep indentations made by pointed teeth, or fangs, as I suppose they ought more correctly to be called. Having caught up with their prey, the beasts had evidently dragged him to the ground by his arms and legs. Then, they had set to work. Blood-soaked scraps of clothing were tied up inextricably in the mess, and I made no effort to shift them. What purpose would it serve? Any colour they might have had was irremediably fouled and stained by the blood and the gore.

‘No clothes to help us,’ I said. ‘No shoes.’

‘I bet they ate ’em, sir,’ Stadtschen answered, blandly unaware of the importance the discovery of those shoes with the distinctive cross-cut on the soles might have made. ‘A hungry wolf’ll dine on anything, sir. Got a digestion like a French grenadier. They eat their young, I’ve heard tell. The wolves, I mean.’

I bent even lower, as much to escape Stadtschen as to gain a better view of the skull. The upper teeth were unevenly ranged with broken points and tips, badly consumed with age and use, as if the dead man had chewed long and hard before he swallowed his meat. I peered more closely at the oral cavity, telling Stadtschen to lower his light. The tongue had been ripped out during the assault, blood had caked the gums and everything else, with the exception of a white strip of bone or naked cartilage which stood out like a jagged slit on the roof of his mouth. A fang had evidently penetrated the palate as the beasts tussled with the head of the man.

Could any death be more terrible?

I let out a sigh of helplessness, looking into the blood-rimmed cavities of the skull, the dark empty spaces where the eyes had once nestled. What did you see in the final instant of your life? I wondered. Who were you? Some drunken wretch wandering alone at night through the forest? Another hapless victim of the killer? The murderer himself?

There was nothing in that hideous mess of mute humanity to tell me what I wanted so desperately to know. If this were truly Martin Lampe, his identity had disappeared for ever.

‘The medical officer will be coming to inspect them later this morning,’ Stadtschen rambled on at my back. ‘The innards of this one have begun to putrefy already. That other fellow doesn’t look too good, either. The quicker they’re in the ground, the better, sir, in my opinion. I should report this to the doctor.’

I could have ordered snow and ice to be carried down there, as Professor Kant had done in his effort to preserve Lawyer Tifferch for Doctor Vigilantius and myself to see, but the corpse was too far gone for physical recognition.

‘Before you speak to the doctor,’ I said, ‘you can do yourself a favour.’

‘Sir?’

‘You acted out of order, you know that, don’t you, Stadtschen?’

He held his breath, waiting for me to continue.

‘I ought to mention your impulsive decision to move the remains in my report to the King,’ I said, watching him. ‘But I may yet be persuaded to change my mind. Find Frau Lampe quickly, and bring her here. The woman lives in Belefest village. She came to see me this morning, saying that her husband had disappeared. I doubt she’ll be able to tell us anything, but duty requires it before these men are finally laid to rest. Make sure…’

Make sure she recognises him
.

That is what I would have liked to say, but I didn’t.

‘You can count on me,’ Stadschen replied with an ingratiating smile and a smart salute.

My torch had nearly burnt itself out. The prospect of remaining there without a light prompted me to remove myself quickly. With Stadtschen following hard on my heels, we soon arrived at the main gate. I dismissed him, and was gratified to see him running off in the direction of Belefest.

But the identity of the bones in the charnel house was not my only concern. Nor was the question of finding Martin Lampe, if he were still alive. The King and his report would have to wait until I returned.

‘Take me to Magisterstrasse,’ I shouted to the driver as I jumped aboard the waiting coach. As fast as you can go.’

I had been so busily engaged the previous afternoon and night that I had hardly given a further thought to Professor Kant. Indeed, I did not realise just how long it had been since I had seen him, nor how tired I was, until I leaned my head back against the comfortable bench of the coach and gave myself up to the swaying rhythm of the vehicle, soon drifting into what must have been a sound sleep.

I sat up with a start as the vehicle drew up before the house in Magisterstrasse. And another alarm bell began to ring in my head when I glanced out of the window. The young Italian doctor that I had met the previous day was running up the garden path towards the door, and he was clutching a large brown medicine bottle in his hands.

I leapt down from the carriage, and hurried to reach the porch before Johannes Odum could close the door.

‘What’s the matter?’ I panted.

‘It’s my master, sir,’ the servant cried, the tears starting from his red-rimmed eyes. ‘He’s barely conscious. Doctor’s been to fetch a cordial.’

I pushed past him, and flew up the stairs to Kant’s bedchamber.

As soon as I entered the room, I saw that I had come too late. The tiny, shrivelled creature lying on the bed had already set one foot in the next world. Immanuel Kant’s once-delicate face seemed to have turned in upon itself, his cheeks were two great, gaunt hollows, his closed and sunken eyes resting inside deep dark pits. His narrow shoulders protruded through the cotton sheet, like wings flanking his ears. His breathing was loud and regular, but he did not look like a man who was taking his rest. It was the beginning of a sleep from which he would never wake.

Herr Jachmann stood with bowed head on the far side of the room, while Doctor Gioacchini ministered to Professor Kant, gently prising his lips apart and spooning a dark green liquid into his mouth. I took a step closer to the foot of the narow bed. The doctor glanced over his shoulder and nodded quickly to me, then he turned back, concentrating all his attention once again on his patient.

Some minutes passed in silence, then a cry escaped from the physician’s lips.

‘Herr Professor!’

Kant had opened his eyes. He was staring fixedly at me.

The doctor dropped his head to the philosopher’s breast, and listened to the feeble beating of the patient’s heart. Moving his ear closer to Kant’s gaping mouth, he suddenly looked up at me with a bewildered expression on his face.

‘Professor Kant wishes to speak to you,’ he whispered, raising his watch, counting off the seconds as he measured the dying man’s pulse. ‘Be quick, sir,’ he urged. ‘His strength is ebbing fast.’

I drew near and bent over the bed. Fright swept through me in an awful spasm. I had to struggle to control my emotions as the philosopher’s eyes closed once again like shutters. He seemed to me to be drifting beyond the realm of physical communication.

‘It is I, sir, Hanno Stiffeniis,’ I breathed into his ear.

Kant’s eyelids did not so much as flicker, his face was a mask of deathly anticipation, a film of perspiration glistening on his broad forehead.

‘How long has he been in this state?’ I whispered.

‘Too long,’ the doctor answered.

I turned to the bed once more. Kant’s respiration was more regular, though his pale pinched face seemed to have retreated even more deeply into the hollow cavity between his shoulders.

‘Professor Kant,’ I called, more loudly than before.

Kant’s blue eyes opened suddenly wide, and swivelled to look at me. The closeness of death made the orbs appear more pale and transparent than ever. His lips gaped open, then closed again.

‘Call him back,’ Doctor Gioacchini urged at my shoulder.

‘Professor Kant, speak to me,’ I implored, lowering my ear so close to his pursed lips that my being was filled with the sweet, rotting odour of approaching death. I did not draw back from it. I breathed it in as if it were the purest mountain air. A wild, mystical ecstasy stirred within my craving soul. Immanuel Kant was in his death throes, and his last desire on Earth was to confide in
me
.

My ear grazed his lips. I felt them quiver at my touch.

‘Too late…’ he said in a hushed, strangled expulsion of breath.

‘Sir?’ I whispered, swallowing hard, my mouth parched and dry.

He sank back on the pillow, the merest trace of a smile on his lips, like a wisp of cloud in a blue summer sky.

‘The killer has not been caught yet,’ I began to say, then instantly regretted it.

With a display of strength I could hardly believe possible in that weak state, Kant shook his head slowly from side to side, his eyes staring fixedly into my own.

‘But he
will
be stopped,’ I added.

The ghost of that body down in the charnel house rose up before me, as if I had called to it. I wanted to reassure Professor Kant that all was well, inform him that the murderer had been defeated, announce that the avenging hand of God had found the killer out, and struck him down as he deserved. But I did not. I could not. Perhaps I never would be allowed to tell him. Time was pressing hard, the sands were running out. Immanuel Kant was, I believed, beyond hearing, beyond hope, beyond pain or any sentient feeling.

‘You were right,’ he wheezed suddenly.

I held my breath as he continued.

‘You saw the truth in Paris. Then, your brother…’

I was robbed of the power of sensible speech. I wanted to run away from that room, to escape from that dying man and the implications of what he was saying. But I was caught, unhinged, helpless.

‘You watched him die,’ he continued, each word a conquest, each pause a march to a mountain top. ‘That’s why I sent for you, Hanno…You have been inside the mind of a murde–’

He sank back exhausted. The air rushed out of his lungs in a long, whistling diminuendo, like a grace-note fading in an organ pipe.

‘His mind is drifting,’ Doctor Gioacchini murmured, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing it hard as an enigmatic smile began slowly to form itself on Kant’s bloodless lips.

With a sudden yawning gasp, Immanuel Kant pronounced with crystal clarity the final phrase of his earthly existence. Everyone present heard the declaration. Herr Jachmann faithfully recorded it in his written memorial of the event which was published some months later.

‘Es…ist…gut.’

He repeated the phrase again and again, his lips moving soundlessly now, as a heavy burden seemed to fall away from his body in a gentle ripple. Then, he moved no more.

I stood transfixed.

Immanuel Kant was dead.

Beyond the window, grey day surrendered slowly to the onset of dusk, heralding the coming of the night. There was something portentous and fitting in the rotation. My mind was a blank. Some moments later, when I came to myself, I was wailing aloud, clasping my spiritual master’s ice-cold hand in mine. In that instant, the horrid nightmare of those frantic days dissolved away. It might all have been nothing worse than a bleak and terrifying dream. I had no thoughts for Martin Lampe, nor for any other creature on the face of the Earth. No space survived for anything, except the tiny corpse stretched out lifeless on the bed before me and the mystery of the words that Professor Kant had murmured as he died.

Es ist gut
.

What was good?

What good had Kant discovered in the failure of my investigation?

You were right. You saw the truth…

In the name of God, what had I ever been right about?

What
truth
had I ever seen?

The image of Immanuel Kant on his deathbed ought to have swept away all other thoughts and considerations, and for a while it did so. I was consumed with sorrow as I drove away from the house, having taken my leave of Johannes Odum, Doctor Gioacchini and Herr Jachmann. But as I sat alone in the darkness of the coach, and the wheels turned, and the Fortress drew ever closer and closer, that perplexing, enigmatic smile on the dead man’s lips began to trouble me. Indeed, it seemed to overlap and blend and meld with the characterless blank of that
other
enigmatic mask of death, the unknown face of the man whose skull and bones lay rotting in the charnel house.

Could any two deaths be more starkly different?

Professor Kant had died peacefully at home in his bed, surrounded by the love and respect that had accompanied him throughout the course of his long life; the man in the morgue had been torn to shreds by snapping fangs, alone and at night in a deserted wilderness. Infinite pain, infinite terror. No hope of salvation for him. It was as if a legion of demons had been released from Hell by a pitiless Creator for an hour, and on one condition: that they wiped out every single trace of that man’s existence. I could imagine no more fitting punishment for a heartless killer.

But was he the killer? Was that man truly Martin Lampe?

I would never rest until I could put a name to that corpse. Resolution of that mystery would signal one of two things – that the desperate hunt for Martin Lampe must continue, or that peace had been restored to Königsberg. In the latter case, the troubled souls of those who had been annihilated by the fury of the killer would be laid to rest, along with their bones.

Then, and only then, I would find peace.

I entered the main gate of the Fortress briskly, intent on going down to the charnel house to take a second look. This time, I determined to go alone, without Stadtschen breathing down my neck. I crossed the courtyard and entered the North Tower without meeting anyone, and soon reached the ogive arch and narrow door which led down to the dungeons. Arming myself with a torch from the wall, I opened the door.

Before passing through, I hesitated on the threshold.

The smell of decay seemed to reach out from below like an effluvial tide to greet and drown me. It was a distillation of human and vegetal decomposition, and a million other age-old odours compounded together beneath the ancient mound of the Fortress. For an instant, I almost turned away. Only the desire to know led me onward, the desperate hope that some vital clue might still be found.

I entered, pulling the door closed behind me, and began to descend the dark staircase by torchlight. But as I went down, and down again, I became aware that another torch was coming up the stairwell towards me. Peering into the depths for some moments, I was at last able to discern two shadowy figures down there in the gloom. I recognised Officer Stadtschen at once. But who was the other person? My heart leapt into my throat. Had I come too late? Had the doctor already given the order for those putrid human remains to be taken out of the charnel house and buried?

I halted, anger and frustration mounting, waiting for Stadtschen to draw near, anxious to hear by his own admission what further damage had been inflicted on my investigation in my absence. But then, as they came within ten steps or so, my heart took a leap and a bound. Dressed in a trailing black shawl, which covered her head and her shoulders, was Frau Lampe, and she seemed to be leaning heavily on the arm of the soldier. For that, if for nothing else, I uttered a word of thanks to the Lord. She had seen the paltry remains, then.

They took a few more steps, then Stadtschen looked up, caught sight of me and stopped in his tracks. The woman raised her tear-filled eyes to mine a second later. Her skin was pale: it seemed to be as transparent as melted wax, paler even than the face of Professor Kant. Her cheeks and mouth were puffy and swollen. Her mournful appearance seemed to confirm what I desired to know above all other things. I almost rejoiced in her sorrow.

She had identified Martin Lampe!

‘Frau Lampe?’ I called, a chirping note in my voice that I hoped she would not perceive or understand.

The woman sobbed loudly, and looked away, shaking off the supporting arm of Officer Stadtschen, as if I had caught her in an unguarded moment of weakness that she did not wish me to see.

‘The body was found on the woodland path that your husband took,’ I said as solemnly as I was able. ‘Not much remains, I’m afraid. You must be upset, I am truly sorry…’

‘Upset, sir?’ Despite the expression of distress on her face, her voice was firm. Indeed, there was a stinging, acrimonious tone to it. ‘Any soul would be
upset
, Herr Stiffeniis. I pray no other woman will be forced to see what I have had to see.’

I studied her face uncertainly.

‘Nothing in that loathsome
thing
,’ she hissed at me with barely controlled anger, ‘can ever make me think it’s Martin. Nothing! I hope the search for him is going on?’

I must have held my breath, for it exploded from me in an audible gasp.

It was not finished, then. Martin Lampe was still free to prey upon the innocent and the unsuspecting, like the beasts that had ripped the unknown man to pieces. Hungry for human life, he was hiding out there somewhere, poised to strike again at any moment.

‘Frau Lampe was taken ill, sir,’ Stadtschen explained quickly.

I heard the sound of his words, but did not absorb the substance of them. My thoughts were already racing wildly through the dark streets and dank alleyways of Königsberg in pursuit of the killer.

‘Those bodies ought to be removed, Herr Procurator,’ he added. ‘Once I have seen the lady safe upstairs, I’ll get the doctor to do something. They are no fit sight for any woman. No man, either. They ought to be interred at once, sir, or we’ll have an epidemic on our hands.’

‘Very well,’ I said sharply. ‘Inform the doctor. Take Frau Lampe home. But within the hour, Stadtschen, I want a signed affidavit on my desk to the effect that visual recognition was not possible, given the state of…alteration of the body. I will be in my office, waiting. I have a report to write, regarding my investigation. For the King.’

I stared at Stadtschen as I rapped out these final words. I had spared him once, I would not do so again. He had failed me, and I fully intended to tell His Majesty of the stupidity of the officer’s actions. By removing that unknown corpse from the woods, he had struck a mortal blow against my investigation, leaving me no possibility of drawing any definite conclusion about the death or the identity of the man who would soon be laid to rest in an unmarked grave.