The low murmur came from the bed. Johannes was standing over Kant, staring down at his master. ‘Herr Professor?’ he called, his voice too loud in the muffled silence of the room.
‘Professor Kant,’ I urged, stepping up to the flea-ridden bed myself. ‘Is all well with you, sir?’
Kant’s left eye flashed open and he stared at me for a moment.
‘A cold-blooded murderer,’ he muttered. ‘He bows to no one…’
He repeated the last two words over and over again.
‘What is he saying, Herr Procurator?’ Johannes whispered across the bed.
I shook my head, wanting silence, wanting Kant to stop this raving. My mind was in a whirl. Did he view my failure to catch the murderer as the defeat of Rationality and Analytical Science? Had the killer overstepped some mark that only Kant could see? Could this threat to the world as he conceived it account for his altered state of mind?
Suddenly, Professor Kant let out a shrill whimper.
‘Oh, Lord!’ Johannes exclaimed. ‘He needs help, sir. Call a doctor!’
‘Who takes care of him?’ I asked.
‘He treats himself, as a rule. His knowledge of physic is beyond the skills of most of the physicians in Königsberg…’
‘In this state,’ I insisted, ‘he cannot help himself. He needs to be bled and poulticed. We need a professional.’
‘There is a doctor living close by. He sometimes takes tea with my master. Perhaps he would be…’ Johannes seemed to waver, as if crushed beneath the new responsibility that had been unexpectedly thrust upon him. ‘But then again…’
A single glance at Professor Kant was enough to tell me that the time for hesitation was past. His eyes were closed, his face pale and expressionless, his respiration shallow and laboured.
‘Where does this doctor live?’ I asked.
‘At the end of the street, sir. The first house on the left.’
I turned without another word and ran, the voice of Johannes following me down the stairs.
‘But the man is Italian, sir, and he’s very young!’
Five minutes later, short of breath, I reached the door of ‘Dott. Danilo Gioacchini, Medico-Chirurgo’, as the brass plaque described him. Beyond the door, I thought I heard the muffled sound of crying, and almost feared to break in on some domestic crisis. The house was made of weathered clapperboard that had once been painted blue, but now was a sadly faded grey. Crushed in between more substantial brick buildings on either side, I wondered whether its air of genteel poverty mirrored the cramped situation of the people living there. Was that the cause of the tears? It could not be easy for an Italian to make his way in Königsberg, despite the friendship of Immanuel Kant. Foreigners were held in low regard, Papists even more so, not only by the likes of Agneta Süsterich and Johannes Odum, but by every devout Pietist.
But what else could I do? I raised the iron knocker which was shaped like a closed fist, and let it drop. A moment later, the door opened a crack to reveal the face of a pretty, dark-haired woman. Standing by her knee, holding tightly to the young woman’s skirts, a little girl of two or three years of age stared solemnly up at me.
‘I am looking for the doctor,’ I said, choosing my words with care for fear of not being understood. If this was the doctor’s wife, she had probably come with him from Italy. ‘It concerns Professor Kant…’
The name of Kant brought a fleeting smile to the housewife’s lips.
‘Danilo!’ she called, turning towards the interior of the house, opening the door wide for me, and waving me to enter.
A moment later, the doctor himself appeared in the hall. He was, indeed, young, thirty-five at the most, though his long blond hair was thinning. Tall, slim, stylishly dressed in a high-collared jacket of black velvet, he welcomed me with a warm smile and sparkling brown eyes. Cradled one in each arm, he held up two identical infants which might have been born within the week. Both babies were screaming with all the strength in their tiny lungs.
‘Twins!’ he said. From the sudden creasing of his brow I could not have guessed whether he was proud of the fact, or apologising for the disturbance.
‘I am sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘Professor Kant needs help.’
He did not let me finish.
‘I’ll get my bag,’ he said in flawless German. Then he spoke rapidly in Italian to his wife, who stepped forward immediately and took the wailing babies from him. A minute later, we left the house behind us.
Five minutes more, and we came to a stop in front of Professor Kant’s. As we ran side by side along the snow-covered street, I had told him as well as I was able all that had happened, and tried to describe the patient’s condition.
‘Shall I come in with you?’ I asked.
‘It would serve no purpose,’ the doctor replied, his foreign accent barely noticeable. ‘His servant is with him, I presume?’
‘Johannes is waiting for you. I am obliged to go to Sturtenstrasse,’ I apologised, recalling my neglected duty. ‘But I’ll return the instant I can.’
I heard the front door open, then close, as I walked away quickly through the darkening, empty streets in the direction of the fish market, arriving out of breath and ruffled about ten minutes later. The fog was thicker near the harbour and the estuary. A solitary soldier was standing guard at the corner of the street. He might have been carved from ice, his leather cap and black waterproof cape glistening in the orange light of the flaming torch that he held in his hand. Until that instant, I had not given a thought to the identity of the person who was lying dead in that place. Kant’s sudden collapse had been the only thing on my mind.
The guard stepped forward, his musket crooked beneath his arm, preventing me from advancing further.
‘I am Hanno Stiffeniis,’ I announced. ‘The investigating magistrate. Where is the body?’
‘Down that way, sir,’ the man replied, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘There’s another squaddie standing over the corpse.’
‘Nothing has been removed, I hope?’
‘No, sir. We were told to wait for you.’
This phrase was uttered between gritted teeth, as if the harshness of the cold and the length of time he had been required to wait had turned to harsh resentment against my person.
‘Let no one pass,’ I said sharply. ‘Except for Sergeant Koch, my assistant. He should be here soon.’
I had no idea where Koch’s hunt for Herr Lutbatz, the haberdasher, might have taken him, but I was certain that he would appear at the scene once he learnt what had happened. And I wished to have him there at my side. His experience, company and sound good sense would help me in the examination that I was about to undertake. My heart skipped a beat as I caught my first glimpse of the dark form huddled on the ground, and noticed at the same time the imprint of a man’s shoe frozen in the ice. It bore a distinctive cross-cut…
Since that day, I have oftentimes asked myself whether Emanuel Swedenborg somehow touched upon a truth when he described the secret language of the dead. Now, I know for a fact that it exists. But then, I was incapable of translating the cold, silent mouthings into words. That night, I clearly heard the murmurings of the mysterious energy that Swedenborg tells us every departed soul transmits to the living.
Moving closer to the corpse, half-stumbling in a state of mounting anxiety which suddenly seized upon me, I was unable to swallow.
The young gendarme saluted and took a step backwards.
‘Herr Procurator? I am glad you’ve come, sir,’ he said with evident relief. The lantern in his left hand cast a sparkling aureola of dancing light on the packed blue ice of the pavement.
‘Hold up your light,’ I said. ‘I wish to see the body.’
He closed the shutter with a sharp, metallic click, directing the narrow beam of yellow light against the high, brick wall which ran the length of the street. The dead man was kneeling on the ground, head bent forward on his chest, his right shoulder resting hard up against the wall. I stopped sh
ort, that question thudding in my head like a hammer beating heavily on an anvil.
‘Draw close!’ I cried sharply.
The soldier’s teeth were chattering loudly. Little more than a lad, he was frightened. How long had he been standing there alone, waiting for me to come, not daring to look at the dark shape pressed against the wall in case the murderer emerged from the shadows and struck again?
As I drew near, a traveller’s tale I had read flashed into my mind. It concerned the members of a mystic Asiatic sect, who believed that the souls of the dead lingered near the corpse until the moment of burial. I seemed to hover above the body kneeling there in the street wrapped in a glittering mantle, just like the one that…
Falling down on my knees on the frozen stones, I found myself staring hopelessly into the lifeless face of Amadeus Koch. His mouth gaped, as if he had attempted to shout for help, his eyes wide open in a startled flash of realisation. I knew there would be a tiny pinprick at the base of his skull. My thoughts began to rush in a maelstrom of guilt and regret, blood swooshing loudly in my ears and throbbing painfully at my temples.
Kant’s cloak. My cloak. The cloak I had loaned to Koch…
Whom had the killer intended to strike: Professor Immanuel Kant? Me? Or had he chanced upon Koch by accident? I had to lean against the wall for fear of fainting, paralysed with horror, the muscles in my arms and legs as stiff and rigid as they were bereft of strength. Had the murderer mistaken his man?
As the cold penetrated my knees, the words Professor Kant had spoken earlier returned to plague me: ‘Where is that cloak I gave you?’ Had he somehow foreseen what would come to pass? Had he abandoned the high ground of Logic for the murky paths of Divination? Had Science led Kant to a conclusion that I myself could never have imagined? Was this the cause of his indisposition?
I remained some time in this bewildered state, kneeling beside the lifeless corpse of my assistant. Koch’s eyes were twisted upwards and to the left, as if he had had an intuition an instant before the blow was struck. A film of ice had solidified the liquid surface of those sightless orbs. The lamplight flashed in a bewitching illusion of Life.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ a voice behind me asked.
The young soldier leaned forward with his torch, the light and shadows playing mercilessly across Koch’s face. The sergeant seemed to live and breathe again.
‘Herr Procurator,’ he said. ‘This man is holding something in his fist.’
With as much gentle care as I could summon, I introduced my forefinger inside Koch’s clenched palm and prised his frozen fingers back. A bronze ring dropped to the ground with a clink and rolled away. The bait. Koch had exposed his neck to the murderer in Sturtenstrasse while picking up a bauble. Muttering a prayer, I asked his forgiveness as I rifled through his pockets and extracted all the objects that a cautious man carries around with him. A fine linen handkerchief, a house key, a couple of thaler notes, and a piece of paper that had been carefully folded and folded upon itself until it formed a square no larger than a snuff-box. Equally carefully, for fear of tearing it, I unfolded the sheet of paper and held it close to the lamp.
In all that I have written so far, I have endeavoured to lay bare the facts alone, to avoid weighing one detail more heavily than any other. It seemed to be the most objective method of describing the slow progress that my investigation made, and it provides the true sequence of events by which the affair in Königsberg clarified itself to the point at which I can give a true account of the matter. But now, I must allow my heart to speak for once. I must, for my head had no part in it.
As I read what was written on that paper, something died inside me. For an infinity of frozen time, I held my breath, my heart battering and flailing painfully within the confines of my breast while I examined that note and saw the asterisk that only Sergeant Koch could have made, the rest written out in a hand not his.
The note reported the complete list of shops and private persons who had purchased fabrics and needles for knitting and embroidery. It must have been supplied by the man from whom Koch’s deceased wife had purchased such things. I write it out word for word as I read it there in the Sturtenstrasse:
6 reels of silk, colour ochre – Frau Jagger
10 skeins of undyed wool – ditto
6 pairs of knitting needles – Emporium Reutlingen
10 balls of wool, light blue – ditto
15 balls ditto, white – ditto
Four yards, Burano, embroidered – Fraulein Eggars
The list went on, but I had stopped at a large asterisk imprinted halfway down the page like a royal seal. The item reported was the following: ‘6 whalebone needles, size 8, for the beading of oiled tapestry wool’. Next to it was written the name of the purchaser. It was the only male name on the list.
I read the item again and again, spelling out the letters one by one like a child learning the alphabet on his first unhappy day at dame school. Like the puzzled boy, I had to conclude that the letter ‘K’ was truly a K, that the letter ‘A’ followed it, an ‘N’ came next, and that the ‘T’ which ended the name was the vilest letter in the whole alphabet. I chained the letters together to form the name of the person who had purchased those lethal ivory needles from Herr Roland Lutbatz.
Chapter 28
A biting easterly wind whistled up the hill from the nearby port and fish market, sweeping away the fog in rolling waves. High above my head, windowpanes rattled and shutters shook. Somewhere close by, a heavy metal gate groaned on its hinges, clanging shut, then opening again, with every fresh gust that came charging in from the Baltic Sea.
Alone in Sturtenstrasse with the lifeless body of Amadeus Koch, I started nervously at every sound. Frost formed crackling in my hair, my body seemed to be turning into stone, but only one thought possessed my mind: I would not desert him again. I had let Koch go his own way that afternoon, and his life had been stolen away. As I stared down with awe and nervous fright at the lifelorn body kneeling against the wall on the frozen pavement, I could only ask myself whether Sergeant Koch had understood what was happening as the needle bit home. Had he recognised the face of his killer?
‘Herr Stiffeniis?’
I spun around. In the wailing wind I had heard no one approach.
A man in uniform towered above me. Another soldier even taller than the first, a dark scarf wrapped around his face, came slithering up the hill, dragging a long, wooden box over the ice and snow as if it were a sled. I recognised those men in a flash. I stretched to my full height, but I was still dwarfed by Corporal Mullen and his Magyar companion, Walter.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘That body’s for the cellar, sir. Orders of Doctor Vigilantius…’
I did not wait to hear the rest. A tidal wave of resentment swept over me.
‘He will not touch this body!’ My voice bounded back off the stone wall and echoed down the empty street. My stiff limbs quivered with violent emotion. A sort of desperate hysteria, a cocktail of hopelessness and guilt, possessed me. ‘There’ll be no more dismembering here. Vigilantius has gone from Königsberg. He’ll not be coming back! Koch must be buried whole. In Christian fashion. I want him taken to a church.’
The two giants exchanged glances.
‘There’s a chapel in the Fortress, sir,’ Corporal Mullen suggested. ‘Being as it’s the only dry room in the place, they use it…’
‘I don’t care what they use it for,’ I countered sharply. ‘If it’s been consecrated, I intend to see Koch’s body laid out there. I’ll pay for your trouble.’
Mullen’s dark eyes glistened. His companion grunted.
‘We’ll see what we can do,’ the Corporal replied. His tone suggested that my whim would cost God knew what effort to satisfy. ‘Now, let’s be getting the poor, unfortunate gentleman into the box, shall we, Walter?’
Rigor mortis and the freezing wind had fixed Koch’s body in the kneeling position in which he had been found. Ice had formed on tha
t waterproof cloak, and the soldiers struggled without success to find a hand-hold on the glistening material, their clumsy fingers slipping and fumbling.
‘Strip that cloak from his back,’ I ordered.
I must have sounded wild and heartless, for Mullen let out an excited hoot.
‘Strip his cloak off? What for, sir? He’s stiff as a board already. It won’t come off that easy.’
The waxen fabric of Professor Kant’s cape – the cause of Koch’s murder, as I believed – encased the corpse like a gleaming winding-sheet. ‘I’ll not have Koch buried in that garment,’ I insisted peevishly. ‘Get – it – off – him!’
Mullen stared at me for a moment.
‘Here, give us your knife, Walter,’ he said with a groan. ‘We’ll need to lay him on his flank, sir. There’s no other way to go about the business.’
‘Do it!’ I snapped, watching as they obeyed my instructions.
The blade was short but sharp, and Mullen made a slicing laceration from the collar down to the hem. Then, having freed one side, they rolled the body over onto the other flank, and exerted themselves to release the sergeant’s arms from the sleeves. Kicking the ruined remnants of the cloak aside, the soldiers lifted up the heavy corpse with some difficulty by the stiff arms and bent legs.
‘Go gently,’ I urged, as they set him down on his back inside the box.
‘We’ll have to straighten him out,’ Mullen stated flatly, ‘or that lid won’t go on.’
‘What are you waiting for?’
They pressed down hard on his knees, first the left, then the right, and the joints gave way with a sharp crack. It was a heartrending sound, yet my spirits lifted a trifle, seeing Koch laid at rest, and in his own clothes. For one instant, I allowed myself to believe that life might return, that my faithful assistant would sit up, breathe and talk to me once more.
‘Can I close it, sir?’ Mullen asked.
I took one long last look, then nodded.
Walter put the lid on, covering Amadeus Koch for ever. Then Mullen slammed home half a dozen nails, and we prepared to march away through the dark, empty streets. News of the murder would keep the townspeople behind their doors more surely than any curfew. Mullen and Walter went first, pulling their heavy sled with vigour, swishing and bumping through the ice and the slush. I followed close behind them, the gendarmes who had discovered the body bringing up the rear.
HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason Page 33