HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘Good morning, Herr Procurator,’ she chimed brightly. ‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you? I thought I saw a glimmer of light beneath your door, and did not know whether to knock. I was wondering if you would care for something special for your breakfast.’

  ‘I told you last night what I want, Frau Totz,’ I answered sharply. ‘Bread, honey, hot tea.’

  That smile did not fade or flicker, despite my rudeness. It was fixed, immovable, dreadful in its intensity, especially so early in the morning.

  ‘We have fresh cheese and some choice cuts of ham in the cold-room,’ she went on smoothly. ‘I was wondering whether you might like to try…’

  ‘Another time,’ I said, cutting her insistence short. The landlady had been spying on me. Morik had been spying on the other guests the night before. And someone else had been spying on Morik. Was spying a contagious disease in the Totz household? I could not suppress a note of sarcasm when I added, ‘Your great concern for my well-being is most reassuring, ma’am. Send Morik up at once, if you please.’

  Her head was covered with a linen bonnet a size too small from which her reddish-brown curls seemed stiffly intent on fighting their way out. The bonnet drooped towards her right shoulder and that grotesque smile slowly faded away until it was a poor, pale shadow of its former self.

  ‘Morik?’ she murmured. ‘That boy should have been busy down in the kitchen an hour since, but I haven’t heard a peep out of him. I thought that he might have come up here to wake you, sir.’

  ‘Morik, here?’ Was that her true motive for peeping through the keyhole? I hesitated, wondering what sort of a vile bawdy-house I had been lodged in. ‘His bedroom stands on the far side of the courtyard from mine, does it not?’

  A frown flitted across her brow. ‘Oh no, sir, no,’ she said. ‘Morik sleeps down in the kitchen behind the stove.’ She let out a sigh. ‘I’d better go and see what’s got into him. With your permission…’

  ‘Who is staying in that room over the way, then?’

  ‘That room, sir?’ she said with a puzzled expression, glancing across the yard. ‘No one, sir. It’s been vacant since two business gentlemen from Hanover left last Thursday.’

  ‘But I saw someone in there last night. I’d have sworn that it was Morik.’

  ‘You must be mistaken, sir,’ she replied quickly, and the smile reappeared like a carnival mask, but it was tense and rigid, ever more patently false. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m needed downstairs in the kitchen.’

  ‘When you find him, Frau Totz, send Morik along with my breakfast, will you?’

  The woman’s lips pursed like those of an insolent child suppressing a remark for which she knew she must be scolded. Whatever she might have been intending to say, however, she simply said: ‘As you wish, Herr Stiffeniis.’

  I returned to my desk and added a few more items to the list of things I had to do, then I washed and shaved with care, dressed myself in a clean linen shirt and my best brown suit and took out my periwig from its travelling-box. Lotte had remembered to pack it for me, despite the fret of my departure. I disliked wearing the wig – it made my scalp hot and itchy – and generally I avoided doing so, but in the present circumstances I was not a private citizen: the people of Königsberg would expect formality of the man who had been entrusted with the salvation of the city. That mass of silver curls would, I hoped, lend an air of authority to my person which my youth might seem to deny. It would also, I reflected, protect my ears from the cold…

  There was a knock at the door, and Frau Totz appeared again, carrying my breakfast on a tray.

  ‘He’s nowhere to be seen, sir,’ she announced grimly. This time she did not attempt to smile. Her green eyes glanced away from mine and darted swiftly around the room, almost as if she thought the boy might be playing hide-and-seek, almost as if I were a party to the game.

  ‘Do you think he’s hiding under my bed?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh, no, sir. What an idea!’

  Nevertheless, she did glance towards the four-poster again. ‘He ought to be down in the kitchen getting breakfast ready,’ she murmured slowly.

  ‘He has probably gone out on an errand,’ I said to put an end to the subject. ‘Now, can I have my breakfast?’

  Frau Totz blushed bright red and cried: ‘Oh, dearie me! Forgive me, sir!’

  I took the tray from her hands and looked her squarely in the eye. Tiny beads of sweat had begun to break out on her forehead along the line of her ginger hair.

  ‘What, precisely, are you afraid of, Frau Totz?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, sir, I’m not…not afraid exactly,’ she muttered uncertainly. ‘But Morik’s such a hothead. His noddle’s full of strange ideas.’

  I found her manner of speaking allusive and annoying at the same time.

  ‘Strange ideas about what, Frau Totz?’

  ‘I did tell you, sir. An’ I tried to warn you last night, too. He invents things.’ She fixed her eyes on her meaty hands; they seemed to be engaged in a nervous tug-of-war over which she had no control. ‘Always up to no good, that lad,’ she went on. ‘My Ulrich was saying just last night that my nephew’s been acting odd since you arrived, sir. Asking questions about who you are, why you’re here, that sort of thing. Morik seems to think that if you’re staying here, instead of in town, it’s because you are watching the inn.’

  She looked nervously around the room again, then back at me, and I had the distinct impression that my arrival at The Baltic Whaler had whetted the curiosity not merely of Morik the serving-boy.

  ‘There is no reason for you to worry, Frau Totz,’ I said, intent on being rid of her. ‘Your house is far more comfortable than the Fortress. Now, if you’d be so kind, I would like to enjoy your excellent breakfast while the tea is still hot.’

  She jumped as if she had been jabbed from behind with a sharp needle. ‘Oh, pardon me, sir!’ she exclaimed. ‘Wasting your time like this when you have more important things to do! If you need anything, just ring the bell. You’re right about Morik, sir. He’ll be back in his own good time, no doubt.’

  She bowed herself out as if I were the King. Ten minutes later, my breakfast done, my toilet completed, I went down to the lounge where Amadeus Koch was standing before the fire.

  ‘Good morning, Koch,’ I said with energy. ‘I am glad to see you.’

  And indeed I was. I could not have imagined the day before that I would be so happy to see his severe, pale face again.

  Koch bowed deferentially. ‘I hope you slept well, sir? I delivered your note to Herr Jachmann’s house half an hour ago,’ he reported at once.

  ‘Did he send a written reply?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  I was surprised.

  ‘A message by word of mouth?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. I’d have told you if he had. His servant took the note, then closed the door. I waited five minutes or more, but without result.’

  ‘Of course, I…Thank you, Sergeant.’

  I stared at the fire and asked myself what this silence on Jachmann’s part might signify. I had stated my intention to call at his home at twelve o’ the clock that morning. Was I to conclude that the absence of any message implied consent?

  ‘The coach is waiting,’ said Koch, breaking in on my thoughts. ‘D’you wish to go to the Fortress, sir?’

  ‘Is Kliesterstrasse far from here?’ I asked.

  Koch looked at me curiously. ‘A mile, sir, no more. It’s in the business part of town.’

  ‘The weather is better this morning, is it not?’

  ‘It ain’t snowing, if that’s what you mean, sir.’

  ‘Let’s go on foot then, Koch. A walk will do us both good, and I need to learn my way about town,’ I said.

  Frau Totz was hovering near the kitchen door, her eyes fixed on me with an intensity that I could not fathom.

  ‘I’m sure that Morik will turn up soon,’ I called across the room.

  The rigid smile materialised once more like the horrid grima
ce on the face of an Etruscan figurine. ‘He certainly will, Herr Stiffeniis,’ she replied, and instantly bowed her head. For a moment, I thought that she was about to cry. But with a shrug, she turned and disappeared through the door to the kitchen.

  Out in the street, we turned away from the ice-bound port and set off up the long rise of Königstrasse hill, Sergeant Koch walking in dutiful silence at my side. Shops here and there on either side of the thoroughfare were beginning to open their shutters for the day’s business, though there was no one in the street apart from ourselves, and a boy with ringlets and a white skullcap whom we met halfway up the hill. He was kneeling with a bucket and cloth, attempting to scrape the paint off a wall, where some night-creeper had daubed the Star of David and a slogan in large letters using whitewash: Blame the sons of Israel!

  I looked away, not daring to think what might happen if bigoted hotheads chose to take that accusation seriously, as had happened in Bremen three years before. Twenty-seven Jews had lost their lives there, and thousands more had been forced to flee.

  ‘Since these murders began, sir,’ Koch confided, ‘there’s been no lack of threats against the Hebrews. Hostile pastors openly blame the Jews for murdering Our Saviour. The killing of a churchgoer in Königsberg might provoke a bloodbath…’

  He fell silent as we approached a tobacco shop.

  The owner, a tall, thin man wearing a soiled brown apron and black skullcap, was idling against the door-post, smoking what must have been his first pipe of the morning, studying us attentively, nodding in an inviting sort of manner. He let out an audible growl of contempt as we walked on past his emporium without so much as stopping. Glancing in at the dusty window, the sort of trade that he attracted was evident. Twists of dusty, rough, black tobacco-shag dangled from hooks; short cob-pipes, and even shorter ones of white clay, yellow with age, lay scattered in a heap beside a pile of mouldy cheese roundels. Situated so close to the port, I chose to speculate, the sort of customer who frequented the area was rough and ready, neither choosy nor particularly extravagant in his tastes. They would be sailors for the most part, or soldiers from the garrison, men in search of cheap, strong smoke and the sort of pipe that would suffer any number of hard knocks.

  Jackets made of stiff canvas hung suspended on rails outside the next shop. They were ugly garments stained with sea-salt and clearly second-hand. Koch’s pea-coat, I noted, was of heavy grey wool, and it was almost new, while my own black mantle of imported English wool – fashioned by Helena on the occasion of an invitation two months earlier to a Christmas dinner at the home of Baron von Stiwalski, whose estate of Süchingern was less than a mile from Lotingen – was a trifle light for the season, perhaps, but no one could possibly doubt the quality of the material. Even so, the owner came running out onto the pavement, bowing and inviting us to step inside and try on waterproofs ‘guaranteed to resist the rigour of the very coldest seas,’ as he proclaimed with a certain pomp. We might have been the only customers he had seen in a month or more.

  I smiled, and said: ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘Half-price to you, sirs!’ the man called after us.

  ‘Business does not seem to be booming,’ I said to Sergeant Koch, as we continued on our way, our progress continually monitored by the shopkeepers all along the street.

  ‘It’s a problem, sir. Not just here, almost everywhere in town. The shops open first thing in the morning,’ he replied, ‘then close by three o’clock, most of them. No one goes out after dark. The vegetable market near the cathedral has a bit of a crowd around midday, the fish market down in Sturtenstrasse is still pretty busy, depending on the state of the tides, but not the way it used to be. Just look, sir!’ Sergeant Koch observed with a sweep of his hand as we turned the corner into a broad cobbled street marked ‘Baltijskstrasse’.

  I noted two well-dressed gentleman fifty yards ahead, walking in the same direction as ourselves. On the other side of the street, a maid in a linen cap and a red-and-white striped apron was furiously sweeping the snow from the steps of an elegant town-house. Another maid in a similar garb, carrying a covered basket under her arm, hurried into a house further down the row, slamming the door at her back. Otherwise, the street was empty. No horses, carts or carriages disturbed the peace. There was nothing remarkable to be seen.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Baltijskstrasse was the busiest street in Königsberg, sir,’ he said excitedly. ‘A year ago, you couldn’t take here a step without bumping into someone.’

  ‘Where have all the people gone?’

  ‘They’re barricaded in their homes, sir,’ Koch replied. ‘Waiting for the killer to be caught.’

  ‘You may be right,’ I allowed with a sigh of discomfort. I had never imagined that accepting the investigation would require me to re-establish normal life in Königsberg, and safeguard the lives of potential sacrificial goats.

  ‘What news is there this morning, Koch?’ I asked, suddenly aware how silent, how aloof, I must have appeared to my assistant.

  ‘All men under the age of thirty-five with military experience have been recalled to active service by General Katowice, Herr Stiffeniis,’ Koch replied with his usual vigour. ‘That’s another reason why the town’s so empty. The general wants a close watch to be kept on all known agitators, foreign residents and other aliens.’

  ‘Is there a list, Koch?’

  ‘I suppose there must be, sir.’

  ‘Can you get a copy of the names for me?’

  ‘I’ll try, sir. God knows how complete it will be. The hotels will be easy enough to check’ – Koch panted with the pace I was setting, letting out little puffs of steam as he spoke – ‘but the dock area is another matter. You’ll have noticed that yourself, sir. There’s much coming and going, but if they made you sign the visitors’ book at The Baltic Whaler, it’s only because they know who you are.’

  ‘I want the names of all visitors who have slept in the city in the past two weeks, Sergeant,’ I returned with force. ‘And The Baltic Whaler would make an excellent place to start the hunt for the killer. There are two Frenchmen and their German companion – travelling salesmen, they call themselves. I would like to know more about them.’

  Koch said nothing for some moments.

  ‘Do you want them interrogated, sir?’ he asked gravely, as if he thought he might be putting into words what I had lacked the courage to say.

  ‘For God’s sake, no!’ I exclaimed. ‘I share General Katowice’s fear of the mob. We must exercise control without being heavy-handed. If these crimes are politically motivated, the important thing is to lull the terrorists into a false sense of security. Interrogate anyone and the whole city will know what we are about. When I say check on them, I mean by talking to the hotel owners in a confidential manner. Sound out their suspicions, ask them if anything out of the ordinary has happened. The police are capable of that sort of strategy, are they not?’

  ‘Is that the line you mean to take in these investigations, sir?’

  ‘What do you mean, Koch?’

  ‘Politics, Herr Stiffeniis. The mere thought of invasion by French cut-throats is enough to frighten the life out of anyone living here in Königsberg. If such a possibility exists, General Katowice should be informed at once. The King too…’

  I pulled up short and turned to him. ‘What can we tell them, Koch? We have nothing to communicate. Bonaparte has not chosen to show himself as yet. Local agents may be at work to undermine the government, using the tactics of terrorism to scare the populace, but this hypothesis needs to be verified. There may well be other alternatives.’

  Koch blew into his handkerchief. ‘May I ask what other alternatives, sir?’

  The question caught me off guard. What alternatives, indeed?

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ I began, walking on, ‘you voiced one yourself just yesterday in the coach.’

  ‘Did I really, sir?’

  ‘You mentioned the Devil.’

  ‘And you, sir,
laughed at the suggestion,’ Koch objected, scrutinising my face as if uncertain whether I might be joking.

  ‘I cannot afford to exclude any avenue, Koch,’ I smiled. ‘No matter how abhorrent the idea may be to me personally.’

  We walked on in silence, Koch occasionally indicating the geography of the place as we went along. ‘This is Kliesterstrasse,’ he announced at last. ‘Which house are we looking for, sir?’

  I did not reply, but began to walk along the dark, narrow alley of uneven cobblestones. Dwellings of different shapes and heights were clustered on either side of a shallow sewage ditch which ran stinking down the centre of the street. Some of the houses were fashioned out of faded wood-and-wattle daub, while others dotted here and there among the leaning terraces were of ancient wind-worn sandstone. They might have been put there to hold the frailer buildings steady in their places. The upper floors on either side seemed almost to touch, closing out the grey sky. Leaded windows, like a honeycomb of stacked wine bottles, gave light, but prevented the curious from looking into the ground-floor rooms. There was a listing, drifting, slanting air about the place, as if a violent puff of wind might bring the whole lot crashing down.

  ‘Procurator Rhunken left his work unfinished at this point, Sergeant,’ I explained. ‘Let us see if we are able to discover what the man we examined last night on that anatomical table has left behind to help us solve his murder.’

  A bronze plate was fixed to the door:

  JERONIMUS TIFFERCH, NOTARY AT LAW & RECORDER OF OATHS.

  Chapter 9

  The door swung open framing a diminutive stunted figure in the entrance. Her face and hair were hidden by a lace cloth of the same sombre hue as her plain black gown. ‘Office closed,’ the woman chimed in a high-pitched, sing-song voice. ‘Herr Tifferch is no more.’

  ‘Frau Tifferch?’ I asked, jamming the door with my foot as it began to close again in our faces.

  Suddenly, the door flew back, the veil began to nod from side to side, then jerked as a cackling whoop escaped from the woman’s lips. ‘Ooh, no! Do you wish to see my lady? Expression of sympathy, is it?’ Throwing the shroud back over her head as she spoke, the ancient exposed a lantern jaw of singular extension as she glared up at Koch and myself. Two yellow fangs protruded from the centre of her shrunken gums like the ravaged teeth of an aged buck-rabbit.