HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  Kant ignored me. Turning to Vigilantius, he said: ‘Explain yourself.’

  The doctor smiled triumphantly in my direction before he spoke. ‘This corpse does not confirm what we know from the other bodies, Herr Professor. The scent here is…entirely different. The energy with which the soul left this body is distinct from what I have divined in other instances. They were taken unawares; this boy was not. He realised what was about to happen. He saw the blow before it fell, and he was terrified.’

  Kant was silent, absorbed in his own thoughts.

  ‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘And does this corpse tell you anything more?’

  I was lost for words. What devilry could induce him to speak in such a deferential manner to an infamous necromancer? Kant had formulated a code of social ethics and rational analysis which had dragged Mankind out of the Dark and into the Light. And was he now inviting a smooth-tongued quack to reveal what a dead body had told him during a vulgar spirit-raising?

  ‘Professor Kant!’ I burst out, unable to contain myself. ‘Herr Tifferch’s corpse revealed what was obvious to any man with two eyes in his head. His back was covered with wounds, old and new…’

  ‘I told you how he was murdered,’ Doctor Vigilantius sneered. ‘He did not die of those wounds. You would have had the proof if you had had the courtesy to wait last night.’

  Kant turned and fixed me with a stare.

  ‘Indeed, Herr Procurator, what did you make of those wounds?’ he queried, like a falcon that has spotted a limping hare.

  ‘I know they did not kill him,’ I muttered. ‘They were self-inflicted.’

  ‘Self-inflicted?’ Kant interrupted me. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I searched his house first thing this morning,’ I began, ‘and there I found evidence of how he had procured those wounds…’

  I stopped, embarrassed to speak to Kant about such things.

  ‘Well?’ he insisted.

  ‘A goad was carefully hidden in a cupboard, sir,’ I murmured. ‘Herr Tifferch had quite an eccentric private life.’

  ‘How interesting!’ Kant exclaimed. ‘Rip the mask from any man’s life, and what do we find? A black heart behind a smiling face, the bent wood of Humanity. Do you think that this is the motive behind his murder?’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ I replied. ‘There is another element which may indicate a common factor in all of the other killings, too.’

  I took a deep breath before continuing. Immanuel Kant was the person that I admired above all the intellectual authorities in the Enlightened world. His learned meditations upon the topsy-turvy broomstick that was Man had marked out the path of Rational analysis and Enlightened behaviour. He had summoned me to Königsberg to assist in solving a mystery, and I did not intend to disappoint him.

  ‘Herr Tifferch had a secret hoard of anti-Napoleonic trash hidden away in a cupboard,’ I announced. ‘He may have been assassinated by the political enemies of the State. Procurator Rhunken held the same opinion. I’ve read his reports…’

  ‘But how did he die?’ Kant spat out the question like an angry adder. ‘That is the question which interests us, Stiffeniis.’

  ‘I…I do not know yet,’ I admitted hesitantly. ‘He might…’

  Kant was no longer listening. Curtly, he turned to Vigilantius.

  ‘Is there any trace of the claw on the child’s body?’ he asked.

  I was stunned. Professor Kant had used the term employed by the woman who had found the body of Jan Konnen. The Devil’s claw.

  ‘No sign, sir. Not this time,’ Vigilantius replied gravely.

  ‘What are you talking of?’ I cried in frustration, excluded from their conversation by the cryptic intimacy of this exchange. Had Jachmann been right to express concern for Kant’s mental health? ‘No trace of what?’

  ‘I’ll show you later,’ Kant replied with a flash of impatience. ‘If there are two murderers, we don’t need paranormal powers to see the problem that it poses for the authorities. Come, Stiffeniis, let us take a closer look at the physical evidence.’

  Laying his slender hand on my arm, pulling me forward, we took a step towards the body. Vigilantius moved aside with a sweep of his cloak like an actor who has successfully recited his lines and I forced myself to look down. I did not see the dead boy from The Baltic Whaler. I saw another body lying there on the wet ground, the skull crushed, bone splinters white and stark against the mess of blood and brain, eyes staring at me through a glassy veil. I fought to cancel out the unwanted vision, struggling to concentrate all my attention on what was, in that moment, before my eyes.

  ‘This is him,’ I mumbled. ‘Morik.’

  Signs of terrible violence were written on his face, or what was left of it. The left side of his skull had been crushed like a fragile eggshell. Slivers of brain and spots of congealed blood were splattered on his hair, temple, forehead and cheeks. His left eye stared up at the cloudy heavens from the corner of his mouth, as if it had crawled there of its own accord like some hideous slug.

  Kant might almost have read my mind.

  ‘Does this sight disturb you?’ he asked, looking intently at me, studying my face, rather than the disfigured face of the dead child on the ground. ‘Of course, it must. Your brother suffered similar wounds to the cranium, I suppose?’

  I swallowed hard. Kant’s concern had quite unmanned me.

  ‘It…the crushing…was on the other…the right lobe,’ I managed to reply.

  ‘Were you obliged to examine his body?’ Kant asked, scrutinising me closely. ‘I don’t remember having heard of a criminal investigation afterwards.’

  ‘No, sir,’ I murmured. ‘There was no investigation.’

  He hesitated a fraction. ‘Let’s get on with the business, then.’

  ‘It…This, I mean, was a fearful blow,’ I said, struggling to direct my attention to the dreadful sight before me. ‘Death must have been instantaneous.’

  ‘And the boy saw it coming,’ Kant added. ‘His fists will be clenched, I’d wager. Move his clothes away, will you?’

  Before I could react, Koch had dropped to his knees and pulled the sodden clothes away from the boy’s hands to reveal the accuracy of Kant’s intuition.

  ‘Sergeant Koch is my assistant,’ I explained quickly, having completely forgotten his presence just a few steps behind me. ‘He used to work for Procurator Rhunken.’

  ‘His name is not new to me,’ Kant replied, eyeing Koch curiously. He drew closer and followed every movement, his hand still on my arm, the other gripping his silent manservant for support.

  ‘Note the look on the boy’s face, Stiffeniis,’ he said, his voice quavering with emotion. ‘Physiognomy teaches us much regarding that expression, does it not?’

  I could only stare at the dead boy’s face, unable to frame a single thought.

  ‘Can’t you see?’ Vigilantius snapped. ‘Everything is different here.’

  ‘Note the position of the legs,’ Professor Kant continued, ignoring both of us, completely absorbed in what he was doing. ‘The others were kneeling when they were murdered. This boy was not. You saw the position of the body of Herr Tifferch last night. Now you have room for comparison. I instructed the soldiers to conserve his corpse under the snow for you and the doctor to examine.’

  So, there it was. The answer to the question with which I had been plaguing Koch. Professor Kant had been behind it all. He had arranged and orchestrated every move that I had made since reaching Königsberg. He had sent me to see Herr Rhunken, who was not expecting me. Then, I had been directed to the horror chamber of Vigilantius. Kant had decided that I ought to lodge at The Baltic Whaler. The police had had no say in the matter. Nor had the King. Immanuel Kant knew more about those murders than any man in Königsberg.

  ‘Let’s see if Vigilantius is right,’ he said. ‘Turn the boy on his stomach, Herr Koch. If you would be so kind?’

  Koch lay Morik gently face-down in the mud. The boy’s hair and neck were caked with blood and mu
d. ‘Bring water, Sergeant,’ Kant urged, and Koch sped off towards the bridge, returning with a metal water bottle he had taken from one of the soldiers.

  ‘Douse his head,’ Kant instructed. ‘Pull back the hair. Remove that mud.’

  He directed Koch’s attentions with the firmness he might have used to guide the hand of his laboratory assistant at the University. ‘More water. Clean the neck. Yes, there, there!’ Kant pointed with impatience.

  As the blood and the dirt drained away, white flesh emerged. Kant leaned forward and stared intently at the bumpy vertebrae of the boy’s neck. ‘There is no wound here. No sign of it at all. The injury to the skull was done with a hammer, or a heavy object. It ought to have bled copiously, and yet I see no sign of blood here on the ground.’

  ‘The cold might have staunched the bleeding,’ I suggested.

  ‘The temperature cannot explain the absence,’ Kant snapped with a flash of irritation.

  ‘What would you suggest then, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘He was not killed here. Nor by the person that we are seeking. The evidence is quite plain,’ he replied. ‘This boy was killed for a different motive, whatever it may have been.’

  I was bewildered. Kant had reached the same conclusion as Vigilantius.

  ‘But there cannot be two murderers in Königsberg!’ I protested. ‘Morik was killed at the inn. I saw him there. His body was left here to throw me off the trail. I have every good reason to believe that he knew something about the other murders. Why, I spoke to him last night!’

  Kant’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘You spoke to the boy? Do you mean to tell me that you arrived at the inn and immediately won his confidence? Well, that is truly remarkable! I was right to choose you, and correct again in sending you to The Baltic Whaler.’

  For a moment, I believed he was teasing me. Then, I thought, perhaps he was genuinely impressed. He had placed me there for no other purpose, after all. ‘That tavern is a hotbed of spying and sedition,’ I said. ‘But you knew that already, sir, didn’t you?’

  Kant looked at me, and I’d swear there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Your arrival must have caused some tension,’ he observed quietly.

  The events of the previous evening at the inn flashed before me. The anger on Herr Totz’s face, the suspicious behaviour of his wife, the boy’s terror of them both. I told Kant everything that Morik had revealed about the foreigners staying there, and added what I had seen from my bedroom the night before.

  ‘It’s just as Procurator Rhunken suspected,’ I said. ‘Insurrection. Foreign agitators. What better motive could explain these murders?’

  ‘I could postulate a hundred,’ Kant replied immediately. ‘One certainly comes to mind.’

  He gazed at the River Pregel, as if the dark waters were an aid to concentrated thought.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ I asked timidly.

  ‘The sublime pleasure of killing, Stiffeniis,’ he replied slowly, carefully separating his words.

  I was amazed. Had I heard him right?

  ‘Can you be serious, sir?’ Sergeant Koch burst out. ‘Excuse me, Herr Stiffeniis,’ he apologised, ‘I did not mean to interrupt.’

  ‘I appreciate your frankness, Herr Koch,’ Kant replied. ‘Go on, Sergeant. Say what you feel compelled to say.’

  ‘Could any sane person kill for such a reason?’ Koch demanded. He did not seem to be the least intimidated by the mighty reputation of Immanuel Kant. ‘For pleasure, and nothing more?’

  Kant studied him quizzically for a moment. ‘Have you ever been to war, Sergeant?’

  Koch blinked and shook his head.

  ‘But you do have friends or acquaintances in the army?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but…’

  Kant raised his hand. ‘Bear with me, Koch. If you were to object that killing an enemy on the field of battle is a question of duty, I would not dispute it. But there is an ambiguity in doing the deed which may be worthy of our consideration. I have met few soldiers who are ashamed of their murderous capacities, or reticent in claiming to have perpetrated the most exquisite savagery in the sacred name of duty. And not on the field of battle alone. Duelling is common among the officers in our army.’ He nodded down at the corpse. ‘A man who possesses these lethal skills may find untold pleasure in using them.’

  ‘A soldier, sir? Is that your theory?’

  Kant directed his attention to me, as if Koch had never opened his mouth.

  ‘Imagine the power of life and death in the hands of this person, Stiffeniis! He chooses the victim. He chooses the time, and the place of the execution.’ He counted off these circumstances on his thin white fingers. ‘Only God has such unbridled power on this Earth. The act of killing may be a source of immense power, of gratification in itself, but that is not the end of it. Look over there,’ he said, pointing across the river at the crowds lining the opposite bank. ‘Look at the soldiers manning the bridge. Consider our presence here, the terror that moved the authorities to summon us. Whoever he is, whatever his motives may be, this person has unleashed Chaos in Königsberg. He commands us all!’

  ‘Power, sir?’ Koch insisted with a frown. The hypothesis seemed to alarm him more than any other possibility.

  ‘A power which accepts no human limits, Sergeant Koch. A Deity. Or a Demon, if you like.’

  A cold wind swept over the waters of the River Pregel. When Doctor Vigilantius spoke, his voice sounded as sharply as the first crack of the polar ice-cap in Spring.

  ‘Professor Kant,’ he said. ‘I can do no more for you, sir. I have urgent business to attend to. If you need me again, you know how to contact me.’

  ‘Your assistance has been of incalculable value in this affair, sir,’ Kant replied with all the respect he might have employed if David Hume or Descartes had been present. ‘Stiffeniis will make good use of your findings.’

  With a final, dismissive glance in my direction, Augustus Vigilantius, that glowing meteor of the Swedenborgian universe, turned and walked away along the river bank, never to appear again in Königsberg while I was there, except in the columns of Hartmanns Zeitung. His ‘urgent business’ turned out to involve a conversation with a billy-goat, the animal having been possessed by the soul of the farmer who had once been its master.

  Kant smiled warmly at me. ‘I hope we’ll have no further need of him,’ he said. ‘Now, regarding your conspiracy theory, Stiffeniis. You should verify it.’

  I was taken back. ‘I thought you did not share my opinion, sir?’

  ‘It is your theory, Stiffeniis,’ he said warmly. ‘You must put it to the test. That is the essence of modern scientific methodology. Go at once to the Fortress and interrogate those people from the inn. When you’ve finished, there is something I would like to show you.’

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Stiffeniis,’ Koch intervened. ‘What about the fisherman who found the corpse? You’ll need to speak to him, sir.’

  Before I could reply, Kant turned sharply on Koch.

  ‘Don’t waste your master’s time! That poor fellow knows nothing, I am sure. I’ll pick you up at four of the clock,’ he said to me as he turned away towards the bridge. After a few halting steps, he looked back with an enigmatic smile. ‘Aren’t you curious to know more about the Devil’s claw, Hanno?’

  He did not wait for my answer.

  ‘I am at your disposition, sir,’ I murmured, watching in silence until he had safely reached the stairway to the road. Then, I gave orders for the body of Morik to be removed, waiting while the soldiers went about the sad business. As they covered his face, I recalled the fawning smile of Frau Totz and her pretence of concern for the child that morning. A wave of anger swept over me.

  ‘To the Fortress, Koch,’ I snapped. ‘It is time to loosen some tongues.’

  Chapter 12

  Koch glanced around the room with a show of concern. ‘I had your personal belongings brought here from the inn,’ he said. ‘It was the best I could do at such short noti
ce, sir.’

  The accommodation on the first floor of the Fortress was tiny. There was just space enough for a narrow bed and a wooden chair on which my travelling-bag had been placed. The acid taint of stale urine from a cracked porcelain night-bowl peeping beneath the cot hung heavily in the air. A window high in the wall provided next to no illumination, and it was icy cold in there. No one had taken the trouble to light the stove. The screaming and shouting of the prisoners down below was muted, which was a relief, but had a turnkey come along and locked us in for the duration, I would hardly have been surprised.

  ‘It will do well enough,’ I said with less animation than I truly felt. I had taken possession of Procurator Rhunken’s private chamber, the room he used for resting when the pressure of work denied him the comfort of returning to his own house. I glanced at the four walls as if to familiarise myself with their grey drabness. ‘This is where I should have been lodged in the first place,’ I added with the conviction of an anchorite examining the cave in which he was destined to spend the rest of his penitent life.

  ‘You did make some important discoveries down at The Baltic Whaler, sir,’ the sergeant reminded me.

  ‘We should be thankful for small mercies, I suppose.’

  ‘Professor Kant seemed pleased,’ Koch continued, though his tight-lipped manner gave the lie to the compliment.

  ‘Is something bothering you, Koch?’

  He did not try to deny the suggestion, tugging at his shirt collar as if the room were ten degrees warmer than it was. ‘A couple of things, sir,’ he began with some hesitancy. ‘I was wondering about Professor Kant, sir.’

  ‘What of him?’ I asked brusquely.

  ‘I was most surprised to find the gentleman down by the river this morning, sir. At his age, it seems rather odd that he should take such a…morbid interest in murder. Don’t you think so, sir?’

  ‘He is not vulgarly interested in murder, Koch, if that is what you mean,’ I replied quickly, for the sergeant had given voice to a perplexity which I shared. ‘Herr Professor Kant cannot countenance the disorder that crime brings, that’s all. He fears for Königsberg and would suffer any inconvenience for the city that he loves.’