HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  The edict was signed with a flourish by King Frederick Wilhelm III, and it was, I noted, a distinctly different flourish from the letter which had been sent to me.

  Was Doctor Vigilantius right?

  Was my summons to Königsberg a fake?

  This letter had been sent from the Imperial capital three days previously, so Rhunken had received it two days before. And that very day, his health had taken a turn for the worse. What I had mistaken for a natural illness – the trembling face, quivering limbs and stench of physical decay – had been provoked by the shock of receiving that letter. Rhunken had suffered a crippling apoplexy as a direct result of the humiliation that the announcement of my arrival had occasioned.

  I recalled the shattered wreck of a man I had confronted in his bedchamber only hours before. How that curt letter must have soured his opinion of me! I had no illusions now about how he viewed me. The magistrate appointed to replace him – ‘a highly qualified person of the most particular talents’ – the man who had ousted him and won the patronage of the King, was not only young, he was also totally inexperienced. And he came from Lotingen, a tiny village on the extreme border of the western circuit. Rhunken had been expecting a serious rival, a senior magistrate, a member of the secret police, or the Security Council, some gifted doyen from Berlin. What he had got was me!

  ‘The statements of the witnesses should be there, sir,’ Koch prompted, his voice intruding on my thoughts.

  I shuffled through the miserable bundle of papers and found with ease the declaration that the innkeeper of The Baltic Whaler had made to the police. It was short, and added nothing to what Ulrich Totz had told me in person. Jan Konnen had been drinking in the saloon bar that night, though not excessively. He was in the company of a group of foreign sailors, who may, or may not, have been playing cards for money, but Totz refused to be drawn on that subject. In the past, it seemed, there had been fierce objections to the renewal of his liquor licence after fierce fighting between gamblers over allegations of cheating. The sums involved had been quite substantial, and one man had lost two fingers in a knife fight. ‘But no one had been gambling that night,’ Totz claimed. I skipped down the page and read:

  Herr Totz declared that he had made no immediate connection between the man seen in his tavern that night, and the body found further down the quayside the following morning. When first approached by police, he denied all knowledge of the victim.

  No mention was made of the strange goings-on at The Baltic Whaler, which the prying serving-boy had mentioned so particularly to me that very afternoon. Indeed, the name of Morik did not appear in the report at all. Evidently the boy had made no claim to superior knowledge when the opportunity presented itself. I was surprised that he had said nothing to excite the interest of the gendarmes who must have filled the tavern that morning with their conversation about the dead man. Morik had, after all, made such a fuss of my own presence at the inn. He had risked a flogging from his master in doing so. Had he been absent that day? Or might the Totzes have prevented him from speaking? Did they have something to hide? Why else would Morik fail to approach Procurator Rhunken when he interviewed the landlord and his wife?

  The wife…

  Three lines at the bottom of the affidavit confirmed that Frau Totz had served short beer and hot sausages to Jan Konnen. She declared that she had never seen the man before, and that he had made no particular impression on her. She thought he had left the inn alone at ten o’clock, or thereabouts, though she could not be certain. In her opinion, the murdered man had visited their inn in search of wholesome food and good ale, and for no other reason.

  A single sheet of paper, the next in the sheaf, drew a verbal portrait of the first victim. The information, such as it was, could have been chiselled with ease onto his tombstone. Jan Konnen, blacksmith, fifty-one years old, lived alone. He had never wed, and had no known living relatives. A taciturn and secretive man, Konnen was a complete enigma even to his closest neighbours. On this account, Rhunken had ordered the police to make extensive enquiries into his private life, but nothing untoward had been discovered. Konnen had no debts, no friends, he did not mix with women of low repute, nor belong to a political faction. He held no known grudge against any man, had never committed a crime, never been arrested. To all appearances, he was a blameless innocent who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he had paid with his life for that mistake. At the bottom of the page, Rhunken had written a note: ‘Enquiries made regarding possibility that victim might have had foreign political connections – no evidence found.’ The last words Procurator Rhunken had written made me gasp: ‘victim – category C – protocol 2779 – June 1800, I. M. O., Berlin’.

  Like any other young magistrate just setting out on his career in the very first year of a new century, so soon after the revolution in France, and the rise of Napoleon, I had read that particular protocol. It warned of the possible infiltration of spies and revolutionaries who aimed to undermine the stability of the Nation and introduce Republicanism. Rhunken appeared to have convinced himself that the investigation should proceed in that direction, and he had given Konnen a low, but significant grading, as a potential danger.

  I turned the page in search of more, but the following sheet referred to the case of Paula-Anne Brunner, second victim of the murderer. A statement taken from her husband related that his ‘poor missis’ had done more or less the same thing the day she was murdered as she always did, which amounted to feeding her hens, collecting their eggs, and selling them to her neighbours and to one or two shops in town. ‘The only new thing she did,’ the bereaved spouse complained, ‘she went and got herself killed!’ Frau Brunner was a sociable woman who went to the Pietist Temple twice a day, three times on a Sunday. She was renowned for honesty, moral rectitude and good works, and she was immensely popular with all the neighbours. She had no known enemies. Indeed, it was believed that she had never argued with any single person in her entire life. Clearly, Rhunken had suspected the husband of the crime. Heinz-Carl Brunner had been held in prison for two days and subjected to ‘severe interrogation’. In short, they had beaten him until he screamed for mercy, then let him go when he said nothing incriminating. At the exact time of the murder, as several rival farmers had noted, Brunner had been working in his field with two of his helpers, and this alibi could not be shaken. So, he was in the clear. Once again, Rhunken had added a note which seemed to sum up the direction which his enquiry was taking: ‘No political ties or radical affiliations reported or found. Prot. 2779?’

  I suppose I must have let out a groan.

  ‘Is everything all right, Herr Stiffeniis?’ Koch enquired.

  ‘Was Procurator Rhunken collaborating with any other magistrate? I mean, might someone else have been helping him to collect evidence or take statements from these witnesses?’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ Koch replied at once. ‘Herr Procurator always worked by himself. I know that for a fact. He trusted no one.’

  I nodded and turned my attention to the next sheet of paper, a report concerning the third murder in the series. As I read the name of the victim, a jolt of electricity raced through my veins. Johann Gottfried Haase? How I cursed myself for my ineptitude! While travelling towards Königsberg in the coach that day, I had purposely skipped the name of the most important man to die at the hand of the assassin. Johann Gottfried Haase was a scholar of wide international fame, and a frequently published author. Some years before, I had read a pamphlet he had written. A Professor of Oriental Languages and Theology at the University of Königsberg, Haase had caused a sensation when he asserted that the Garden of Eden was by no means fictional. Adam and Eve had, indeed, been tempted by the Serpent, the scholar claimed, more or less on the very spot where we were standing. According to Haase, the city of Königsberg had been built on the original site of the Biblical garden. Who would dare to kill such an eminent man?

  Looking down the page, eager for details, I had to laugh. Indeed, I laughed out
loud, while Sergeant Koch regarded me with an expression of serious concern.

  ‘What an idiot I’ve been!’ I said.

  ‘Sir?’

  The victim’s name was Johann Gottfried Haase, but he was not the person I had been thinking of. It was a simple case of two men sharing exactly the same name! The Johann Gottfried Hasse who had been murdered was a destitute halfwit. He eked out a miserable existence begging crumbs of stale bread and cake from the city bakeries, and asking for money on the streets from casual passersby. Everyone in the city knew him by sight, but no one knew him well. Procurator Rhunken remarked that no written record had been found regarding his birth – he was not so much as related to the scholar. No one could say whether he had ever been to school, passed a night in a poorhouse, a month in an orphanage, or a year in jail, though enquiries had been made by the police on all of those questions. Herr Haase was, to all effects, an utter nobody. ‘NOT OPENLY POLITICAL’, Rhunken had noted. He had not even made the obvious connection with the unknown victim’s eminent namesake. Still, the perplexing question that I had asked myself before returned to my mind, and even more forcibly this time. Why kill such a poor and apparently useless creature? An Oriental linguist-theologian might provoke animosity in some quarters, but a penniless beggar? Again, the protocol number ‘2779’ appeared at the foot of the page.

  It was a recurrent theme. I could only ask myself what had prompted Procurator Rhunken to decide that the murders were politically motivated. The only common factor that I could find was the absence of anything even remotely political in the victims’ lives. Had their apparent indifference to politics seemed to him to be a blind? He had made a note to the effect that Konnen might be a secret agent. Did he believe the same of the others, too? And if so, which foreign power did he suspect them of spying for? Perplexed in my own mind, I turned slowly to the next sheet of paper.

  Though not in sequential order, I found it to be the deposition of the midwife who had discovered the body of Jan Konnen. In all that I had read before, this witness had been referred to only in terms of her trade and but never by name, which was very odd. I glanced quickly through the information. Again, no name was given. Early that morning, this mysterious midwife declared, while on her way to minister to a fisherman’s wife who lived on the quayside, she came across the body of a man who appeared to have slumped against a wall. The only detail which added to the scant account that I had read in the coach was of some importance. ‘I knew that there was evil in it,’ she declared. ‘Satan used his claws.’

  I paused. Sergeant Koch had used the same expression when first he told me of the crimes, but what exactly was she referring to? This superstitious woman had seen the dead body with her own eyes. Why use those particular words to describe what she had observed? The Devil’s name, I realised, was never far away in Königsberg. I had heard Satan invoked already with great familiarity by Koch, by the maid of Herr Rhunken, by Doctor Vigilantius, and by the soldiers remaining in the Fortress. Was it nothing more than a superficial reflection of the fierce religious sectarianism for which the city was renowned throughout Prussia? The Pietists were a dominating influence in Königsberg; the University was packed with members of the sect. Their reading of the Bible led the Pietists to believe that eternal salvation could only be achieved by personally wrestling with the Devil and his temptations. They had even invented a specific term for it. Busskampf, they preached, was a necessary battle that every true believer must fight and win if he hoped to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

  I shook my head, and read on to the end. Lublinsky and Kopka, the two officers who had countersigned the woman’s statement and based their own report on it, had not pressed her for precise details. Indeed, they had not asked her much at all. Not even her name! Then again, neither had that most excellent magistrate, my predecessor, Procurator Rhunken…

  ‘Your master kept few notes, Koch,’ I said, as I replaced the sheet.

  ‘True, sir, very true. Kept it all in his head, he did.’

  I made no comment, reflecting only that Procurator Rhunken’s way of going about the investigation left much to be desired. A degree of professional jealousy might explain his determination to tell me nothing more at our interview than the scant information which his papers contained, but it did not speak well for him, and it made my task all the more difficult.

  Finally, there was a brief note about the latest victim, Jeronimus Tifferch, the notary, whose body I had examined in the cellar not an hour before. In his case there was a notable and remarkable difference. Regarding his personal history and habits, there was absolutely nothing. Merely a statement of his death. No other word had been consigned to paper. No person had been questioned, no detailed examination had been made of the corpse. So far as I could tell, no doctor had even been called to verify that he was actually dead, nor to sign a certificate to that effect. As a result, no possible cause of death had been hazarded. As in the notes I had read in the coach the day before – I was getting used to the omission by now – no mention was made of the nature of the weapon which might have been used to kill him, nor of the sort of wound it had inflicted. Indeed, the normal process of legal investigation seemed to have been suspended in Tifferch’s case. In anticipation of my coming, perhaps?

  There was a knock at the door. Without lifting my head from my work, I heard Koch murmuring with someone on the threshold.

  Above all, I reasoned, there was one glaring omission in all that I had read so far. The name of the ‘eminent person’ who had called Vigilantius and myself to investigate the string of murders in the city. I could find no reference to it in what Rhunken had chosen to record. Did he not realise that some rival authority was conducting a parallel investigation?

  ‘Herr Stiffeniis, sir?’

  Koch’s voice interrupted my considerations. I looked up and found him standing stiffly in front of the desk, his linen handkerchief close to his mouth, his glaring eyes red and puffy.

  ‘What is it, Koch?’

  ‘His Excellency, Herr Procurator Rhunken, sir. A guard just brought the news. My master is dead.’.

  I have rarely seen such naked sorrow on a human face. Instinctively, I looked down at the pile of papers scattered on the desk.

  ‘When will the funeral take place?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s been entombed already, sir,’ he said, slowly passing a hand over his eyes. ‘An hour ago, apparently.’

  ‘But that’s impossible!’ I protested. ‘Herr Rhunken was an authority. The city will want to pay its tribute to…’

  ‘It was his final wish, sir. He wanted no one present at his burial.’

  I looked away to the farthest, darkest corner of the room. Koch had been greatly attached to the magistrate who had died. Still, he could hardly reproach me for Rhunken’s death. And yet, I sensed a hidden vein of condemnation in his voice. I could not help myself, a feeling of discomfort crept up on me. Half an hour before I had been congratulating myself on the fact that I was sitting at Herr Rhunken’s desk, that his assistant was standing stiffly to attention in front of me, that the Procurator’s personal archives were at my complete disposal, that his own sparse accounts of his investigative methods were in my hands to be rifled through, criticised and challenged. But now, suddenly, he was dead.

  In some indefinable manner, I felt as if I had been the cause.

  Chapter 7

  It was past ten o’clock when Sergeant Koch left me at The Baltic Whaler that night. The tavern was busy when I entered, so I sat myself down at a table in the quietest corner, that is, the one furthest removed from the fire, to pen a note to my wife before calling for my dinner. But what should have been a simple task proved far harder than I had anticipated. What should I tell Helena about what was happening in Königsberg? What could I say of the investigation that could reassure her, and what, instead, was better kept to myself? I mused for a moment, took up the quill once more, dipped it in the inkpot and went on:

  Believe me, my love, when I tell you
that I am not doing this in the vain hope of winning back my father’s affection. What has happened will never – ever – be erased from his mind, no matter what I try to do, or fail to do. I have lived under that shadow far too long, and have forced you to share the seclusion of Lotingen with me. It is time to forge a better life – for ourselves, and for our little ones. Lotingen has been a safe haven, but now the storm is over. I refuse to hide away any longer. This investigation opens a doorway…

  I stopped, uncertain how to go on. I had no desire to tell my wife of the difficulties that I had been obliged to face that day, nor of the horrors that I had seen. What could she do to help me? I swirled the point of the duck-quill in the ink, and turned my thoughts to brighter matters.

  Herr Koch and I arrived safe and well in Königsberg this afternoon. I am writing from my lodging near the port. The air is fresh here, I can tell you! But my bedroom is warm, clean and welcoming. It is almost a home from home, indeed…

  ‘Sir?’ a honey-sweet voice recalled me to my immediate surroundings. A buxom woman in her mid-forties with a moonlike face and large, bright, green eyes stood before me, holding an empty tray in what seemed to me to be a parody of servitude.

  ‘I am Gerta Totz, sir,’ she announced with a hideous, mincing smile, ‘wife of the landlord. Are you ready for your dinner? Would you care to try something in particular?’

  ‘Anything at all will do,’ I said, quickly folding up the letter to my wife. I had not eaten since my arrival in Königsberg six hours before, and the smell of fine cooking which filled the room was sufficiently enticing to whet my appetite.

  ‘I’ll bring the best we have, then,’ she said, bobbing and removing herself in the direction of the kitchen. As she moved away, I noticed that she stopped to say a quiet word to three prosperous-looking gentlemen who were sitting in a tight huddle at a table quite near to my own.