HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  Chapter 13

  Gerta Totz had told me the name of Morik’s killer. Despite the absurdity of the accusation, I could not shake off the sense of responsibility and even guilt that it involved. Had I been the unwitting cause of the boy’s death? Had the mere act of speaking to me been enough to provoke his killer?

  I tried to displace these sombre thoughts with others of a more resolute kind. I would need to be more incisive if I hoped to confirm my suspicions of a political plot at The Baltic Whaler. I had learned little from Frau Totz. Unless her husband were more forthcoming, I would be obliged to resort to torture. Whether I felt happy with the idea or not, the worsening political situation would oblige me to use hot irons and crushing weights.

  Officer Stadtschen entered the room a moment later, pushing Ulrich Totz before him. The innkeeper appeared to have been more liberally treated than his wife. He had suffered a dull, dark bruise high on his forehead, but nothing worse. There were no open wounds. No blood to spatter my papers and my clothing.

  ‘Sit down, Totz,’ I said, waving him to the chair.

  ‘I’d rather stand,’ he replied.

  Stadtschen jabbed him in the back.

  ‘Do as you are told,’ he growled.

  I observed Ulrich Totz from the corner of my eye while I organised fresh paper, and prepared myself to question him. A supercilious smile played about his surly lips.

  ‘Does something amuse you, Herr Totz?’ I enquired.

  ‘With your permission, Herr Stiffeniis,’ he began, ‘that cell stinks. It’s full of rats. You found comfort under my roof.’

  ‘It is cosy compared to the unmarked grave of a murderer,’ I snapped.

  He answered this with a lazy shrug. ‘Very well, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis,’ he said, ‘let’s get down to business. It won’t take long. I admit my crime. I killed our Morik with these here hands.’

  He held them up to me for examination. They were large and meaty. I saw them picking up some heavy object, and smashing open the side of Morik’s head. How many blows had it taken, I wondered with an inward shiver, before the boy’s eye popped out from its socket and the skull poured forth its bloody pulp? Despite the feeling of revulsion, my heart leapt with excitement. The murderer was ready to confess.

  ‘I want the facts, Totz,’ I said calmly.

  He nodded, then spoke for ten minutes without a pause, describing all that had taken place at The Baltic Whaler the night before. Such an ample confession should have pleased me, yet there was something mellifluous and practised in the telling that disconcerted me. Only the temptation to believe that these bare-faced admissions would soon release me from the investigation stilled the objections I might have raised. I let him go on unchecked, my hand racing over the page as I recorded his admissions.

  ‘I’ve always supported what happened back in ’89,’ he declared proudly. ‘Kings and nobles prancing around, while we slave day and night like dogs over the bones. I’m a Jacobin, all right, Monsieur Robespierre’s my god. I don’t give a hoot for religion. That’s more bloodsuckers for you. Priests! Chop their stinking heads off, and good riddance, I say. Not just in France, but here in Prussia too. Damned Pietists! Just you wait ‘til Napoleon gets here! He’ll show ’em! I knew the inn was being watched by the police, but no one could prove a thing against me. Not ‘til you arrived.’

  Totz wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, and stared back at me with nonchalant indifference. ‘The minute you turned up, I knew the danger we were facing,’ he continued. ‘Well, two can play at that little game, thinks I, and I played my part well enough. But then Morik had to go and stick his nose in the pie. I caught him spying again last night. He would have told you soon enough…’

  ‘Is that why you killed him?’

  Totz’s eyes blazed with hatred. ‘Revolutions have their victims! You might almost say you killed him yourself, Herr Procurator. If you hadn’t come along when you did, no one here in Königsberg would have given Morik a second of his precious time.’

  ‘Where was he killed?’

  Ulrich Totz let out a long, weary sigh. ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering to ask,’ he sneered. ‘You saw him from your window, Gerta told me. God knows how you didn’t see me as well! I caught him lurking outside the store-room, so I just pushed him down the stairs.’

  So, it was Totz’s face that I had seen at Morik’s back the night before. The admission should have banished any lingering doubts from my mind. So why did I have the feeling that he was telling me exactly what I wanted to hear?

  ‘Pushed him down the stairs, Totz? You did much more than that!’

  ‘When I found him snooping there, I knew for certain he’d tell you. I had to kill him, didn’t I? He was courting you like a big, fat maggot on a tasty bit of red meat.’

  ‘Let’s be more precise about what happened, Totz,’ I interrupted. ‘You grabbed the lad and you pushed him down the stairs. Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘I saw you blowing out your candle and closing the curtain to go to bed. That was when I decided to act.’

  ‘Very well. You pushed him down the stairs, and then?’

  ‘I ran down after him and struck him dead.’

  ‘What did you hit him with?’

  ‘The first thing I laid my hands on.’

  ‘What?’ I insisted.

  He did not hesitate. ‘A hammer we use for opening barrels. It was easy. He was that scared. But you knew that already, didn’t you? He told you himself that his life was in danger.’

  ‘You are not here to question me, Totz,’ I warned.

  ‘What do you want to know then, sir?’ he replied with a shifty look.

  ‘I want to know why you killed the boy there in the cellar. In your own house. Why not lure him out of the inn?’

  Totz shrugged. ‘He’d never have come with me. And sooner or later, you’d have paid attention. What else could I do? I had to silence him. And quick.’

  ‘You could have sent him out of Königsberg. Home to his mother.’

  ‘And you’d have been more suspicious than ever! No, better another victim of the Königsberg killer. Another dead body in the streets.’

  ‘And your wife was a party to it?’

  ‘Gerta don’t know nothing,’ he added quickly. ‘She wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘You killed him by yourself, then? No one helped you?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. One proper blow and the boy was dead. There was blood all over the place.’

  ‘If I may speak, sir,’ Officer Stadtschen intervened, ‘I can confirm that an attempt had been made to clean up the mess, but there were traces of blood everywhere.’

  I turned back to Totz. ‘Why did you take the body to the river?’ I asked.

  Ulrich Totz smiled that slow, dreamy smile once more.

  ‘I wanted him to be found, sir. Like all the others. But not outside my own door again. Konnen brought trouble down hard on me. We lost a lot of business after that. The river’s only a couple of hundred yards away from the inn through the back streets.’

  ‘How did you carry the boy, Totz?’

  ‘In a sack slung over the back of my old packhorse. He didn’t weigh a mite. I threw the rags I’d used to clean the blood into the river. Ten, fifteen minutes, it didn’t take no more. We come back unseen, and…’

  ‘We?’ I raised my head sharply from the words I had just transcribed. ‘You, and who else, Totz? Your wife? One of the guests?’

  ‘Me and the packhorse. Don’t insist, Herr Procurator. Gerta knows less than nothing about all of this.’

  ‘She knows that you killed Morik, does she not?’ I countered, uncertain whether some vestige of humanity might be leading him to shield his wife from her part of the blame in their nephew’s death.

  ‘She does not, sir. She’ll ne’er forgive me. Morik was her sister’s only son. She’s always felt a duty to help that boy.’

  ‘But who helped you, Totz? I can hardly believe that one man…’

&nb
sp; ‘Herr Procurator, I’ve already told you,’ Totz replied forcibly. ‘I did it all on my own. By myself. No one helped me.’

  ‘What about those foreigners who were staying at the inn last night?’

  He shrugged. ‘The Frenchmen? They were customers, paying guests. No more, no less,’ he answered squarely, his eyes blazing fiercely into my own.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.

  He looked at me coolly for a moment, then an ugly smirk erupted on his face. ‘Believe whatever you like, Herr Procurator. I’ll not tell you any more about my private affairs.’

  ‘We will see about that,’ I replied, eyeing him coldly, letting the threat dangle. ‘We have proven methods of making the recalcitrant talk.’

  ‘Torture, sir? Is that your game? I bet you enjoy seeing ’em stretched out on the rack, screaming their guts out, don’t you, sir?’

  If Ulrich Totz was trying to taunt me, he succeeded. As a consequence, I felt less hesitation about the idea of subjecting him to pain. Indeed, I almost enjoyed the prospect. He would laugh from the other side of his insolent mouth.

  ‘Give over with your threats, Herr Procurator,’ he stared back at me with that look of open hatred I had seen before. ‘I’m a dead man, you can’t scare me with talk of torture. I don’t mind dying for what I believe in.’

  ‘They were harmless people, Totz,’ I hissed. ‘There is nothing noble in the murders that have embroiled Königsberg. Do you really believe that rebellion will automatically follow on because you have slaughtered a few innocents?’

  ‘It serves the purpose!’

  ‘Purpose?’

  ‘Revolution, sir.’

  I ignored this barb. ‘Apart from Morik, how did you choose the other victims, Totz?’

  He did not reply at once, but sat so long in silence that I thought the question had gone over his head. And all the while, he stared at me fixedly in what I took to be sullen reproach. Only later did I realise that there was crude calculation in his behaviour. He was trying to figure out how much I knew, while I was more than convinced that this was the devil who had unleashed mayhem in the city. The fact that he showed no remorse reinforced my belief.

  ‘I will repeat the question, Totz,’ I said more slowly. ‘How did you choose the victims?’

  ‘The time, the place,’ he murmured. ‘The fact that there were no witnesses hanging around. It was all a question of opportunity. That was the beauty of it. I’d seen Konnen in the inn the night I first got the idea…’

  ‘There was no political reason behind your choice?’

  Totz sat up straighter in his chair, his mouth drawn in a stiff-lipped smile, but he said nothing. I thought he seemed intent on outfacing me.

  ‘You knew Herr Tifferch, didn’t you? He was a prominent lawyer, a well-known hater of Napoleon…’

  ‘All Prussians hate Napoleon!’ he seethed, his face a mask of hatred. ‘Any one of the buggers is a political target as far as I’m concerned. That lawyer was a parasite! Living off the Junkers! Helping to buy and sell for them, sending their tenants to jail for debts and unpaid rents. I’ll get even with the lot of them!’

  ‘You will hang from the gallows,’ I stated coldly.

  I added a note in my report to the effect that the anti-French sentiments of the penultimate victim had been the probable cause of his murder. Everything seemed to me to be suddenly sharp and clear, like a magic-lantern projection when the lamp is lit, the lens is turned and the first slide comes into focus. With one reservation only.

  ‘Were you not afraid of being recognised?’

  Ulrich Totz seemed to relax more comfortably in the chair. ‘People here know me. That made things easier. I’m an innkeeper, see? I know everyone. It was normal enough for me to walk up to someone, stop them, chat for a bit, see that no one else was around, then strike. They didn’t have time to take in what was happening.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Now, tell me about the weapon that you used.’

  He stared at me. ‘I’ve told you already,’ he said.

  ‘You used a hammer to kill Morik, you say. But what about the others?’

  Despite his readiness to confess, I still had no idea how the other victims had died.

  Ulrich Totz rubbed his knuckles and eyed me warily.

  ‘I used whatever came to hand,’ he said slowly. ‘The hammer, stones, my own hands.’

  ‘How did you kill Herr Tifferch, for instance? He had no visible wounds. What weapon did you use on him?’

  For the first time, Totz was silent.

  ‘What about this Devil’s claw that all the town is talking of?’ I insisted.

  Ulrich Totz looked from me to Koch, then back again. He smiled, weakly at first, then with growing confidence. ‘Oh, I can see your point, sir,’ he said with a flash of cunning. ‘I tell you all I know, you pack your things and go back home. Got a wife and bairns waiting for you, is that it? I’ve told you more than enough already, Herr Procurator. The rest you’ll have to discover for yourself.’

  Suddenly, he leaned forward and rested his forearm on my desk. I held up my hand to stay Stadtschen and Sergeant Koch. They had made to pounce on him to protect me.

  ‘Well, Totz? What more have you to add?’

  He eyed me without speaking for some moments.

  ‘Listen, Herr Stiffeniis, and listen good,’ he said in a low, surly voice. ‘You can torture me if it pleases you. You can make me scream, but I’ll tell you nowt. You can torture my wife, and she’ll agree to any words you care to put into her mouth, knowing nothing for a fact. But that’s the end of it. I don’t intend to say another word to you, or to anyone else, ‘til they lead me to the scaffold.’

  ‘This is not the end of our conversation, Totz,’ I returned, staring into his half-closed eyes. ‘I will interrogate you again, and you will tell me everything. Every single thing! About the pamphlets and those foreign agents who helped in your conspiracy. Next time, there’ll be no holds barred.’

  ‘Do your worst, Herr Stiffeniis,’ the innkeeper replied in a low murmur. ‘That’s your job. Mine is to resist.’

  ‘We’ll soon see which of us is the better at his task,’ I said dismissively, pulling out my watch. It was almost four o’clock. Time for my appointment with Professor Kant. I had made enough progress for one day.

  ‘Take him away, Stadtschen.’

  The room seemed suddenly empty. Ulrich Totz had filled the space with his anger, his cruelty and his undisguised hatred for authority. Koch remained silent, and I was certain that he was waiting for me to make some comment. I stood up and walked across to the window. Outside, the daylight was fading. My throat was dry, and I felt light-headed. Ulrich Totz had confessed to killing Morik. My theory of a political plot aimed at creating terror had been confirmed, the murderer had a name. I should have felt proud of myself, and yet, for some niggling reason, I was not entirely convinced. Wasn’t it all just a mite too easy? Could the mystery of Königsberg be such a simple thing? Surely, a magistrate of Procurator Rhunken’s vast experience ought to have arrived at such a conclusion months before.

  ‘If I may make a suggestion,’ Koch spoke out, ‘a public whipping in the square outside the Fortress would not go amiss, sir. I could request permission from General Katowice, if you wish. Procurator Rhunken was a great believer in the efficacy of the rod. Two years ago, a man was whipped for murdering his father. He was, of course, beheaded some months later. But the example made a lasting impression on the populace.’

  Should I follow the lead of Rhunken? Corporal punishment and physical mutilation were still admitted within the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, though it had been formulated in the sixteenth century by Charles V.

  ‘Times are changing, Koch,’ I replied. ‘King Frederick Wilhelm is an enlightened monarch. He believes, quite rightly, that public cruelty may arouse the sympathy of the watching crowd, and thus frustrate the intended purpose of the punishment. If Totz and his wife are members of an active group of Jacobins, a public whi
pping may inflame the spirits of the other members. In attempting to douse the flames, we may succeed in fanning them. I will speak to the suspects first, and warn them of the danger. We have time aplenty.’

  I collected my papers together, and began to put them away in my bag.

  ‘In any case,’ I said, looking at my watch, ‘we have an appointment to keep. Professor Kant and the mysterious Devil’s claw await us.’

  ‘Is there any point, sir?’ Koch returned. ‘I mean to say, you seem to be well on the way to concluding the case without his help.’

  He was right, of course. I ought to have pressed on, there and then, with my interrogation of the Totzes. ‘Beat the iron while it’s red and hot, the people say in Lotingen. But Professor Kant would never forgive me if I let him down.

  ‘Since the case is so clear-cut,’ I said with a smile, ‘we can afford to indulge an old man’s whims for an hour.’

  As we left the room and hurried down the stairs together, I began to compose in my head the letter which would announce my success to Helena, and the prospect of my early homecoming.

  I could not have imagined in that moment of heady euphoria the difficulty I would experience before the day was out in holding a pen, or in trying to form the letters with my shaking hand.

  Chapter 14

  A smart black coach was waiting for me outside the Fortress gate.

  I could not avoid smiling as I made my approach. Professor Kant was busily consulting his pocket-watch behind the closed windows. His insistence on punctuality was maniacal, and all the world knew it. But as I raised my fist to tap on the glass and announce my arrival, a hand touched me fleetingly on the elbow, and a voice whispered, ‘May I speak with you, sir?’

  The servant who had been solicitous of Kant’s safety that morning on the river bank was peeping from the rear corner of the coach. His large, strong face, which had appeared so expressionless then, now seemed tense and drawn.

  ‘Johannes Odum, isn’t it?’

  With a pointed glance he indicated that I should join him behind the coach.

  ‘Your master will not condone time-wasting,’ I warned him.