HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  Along the way, we were obliged to pass the entrance to the lane which ran alongside the rear of Professor Kant’s house. A feeble light glimmered behind the curtains of the window of his bedchamber on the first floor.

  ‘Go faster, Mullen,’ I urged, looking dead ahead, wishing to be far away from the sight of that window and that house as quickly as possible. The paper that I had found in the sergeant’s pocket weighed on my conscience like a ton of lead: ‘6 whalebone needles, size 8, for the beading of oiled tapestry wool – Herr Kant’.

  A show of bustle was made, but the procession advanced no faster than it had gone before, and we reached our destination no sooner. As we came in sight of the Fortress, I strode on ahead and ordered the gate to be swung open to receive the party.

  ‘Corpse for Procurator Stiffeniis,’ Mullen snarled at the watch as he and Walter passed inside. The sentinels crossed themselves and looked shyly away. One man half-turned and touched his crotch superstitiously, the way soldiers do when they see a coffin.

  ‘Has he got a wife, sir?’ Mullen asked, drawing up with the box in front of a low building on the far side of the courtyard. ‘She’ll surely want to watch over him this night.’

  ‘I’ll keep the wake,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else.’

  Mullen nodded to Walter, who muttered something back in that strange language of his, then they pushed open the chapel door, and began to haul the coffin inside. I followed them in. Then, a lamp was brought, and others hanging from the walls were lit from it. Inside the church, everything glistened. Pyramids of large silvery cannonballs and chain-shot had been built in orderly piles as tall as a man down the central aisle. Along one wall, artillery pieces were stacked one on top of another like glossy black cheroots in a tobacco shop. The far wall was blocked by gun carriages stacked end to end. An odour of rats, of rat poison and decaying vermin stifled the air. Large canvas maps covered the vast walls. A plain wooden crucifix hung by a long chain from the roof. There was no other religious symbol in the place.

  ‘This is the regimental chapel,’ Mullen confided in a whisper. ‘I tried to tell you before, sir. They keep the arms and explosives stored in here. The rest of the Fortress is as damp as a washerwoman’s mop. We can set the coffin in that space over there, sir. They shifted the altar out to make more room, but the place is holy. Will it do you, Herr Procurator?’

  I did not trouble to answer. Searching in my pouch, I found a tenthaler note and handed it over. ‘Drink something strong tonight in memory of the man who lies here, Mullen. Bring a pastor at dawn. We’ll bury him then. Send Stadtschen to me on your way out.’

  Corporal Mullen saluted, Walter clicked his heels, the door closed behind them, and I listened to the sound of their voices laughing and joking as they faded away in the distance. Alone in the chapel, I moved past the stacks of cannon and the heaps of munitions, and knelt down beside the coffin. I placed my hand on the cold wood, closed my eyes, and began to pray to God, imploring Him to welcome the soul of Amadeus Koch with open arms. Even more earnestly, I begged the Sergeant to forgive me. I had failed to understand the immediacy of the danger in which I had placed him. I have never forgiven myself for giving him that cloak. When my little ones kneel down beside their cots each night, join their tiny hands and say their simple prayers, they invoke the name of Amadeus Koch, as I have taught them to do in memory of the man who lost his life while innocently trying to help their father.

  Behind me, the door-latch scraped and footsteps sounded sharply on the stone flags. I turned and composed myself as Stadtschen marched into the chapel. He glanced at the coffin for a moment, then looked at me, a puzzled expression on his broad red face.

  ‘Herr Procurator?’

  ‘It’s Koch,’ I said, and his name died on my tongue.

  Stadtschen took off his cap and bowed his head towards the coffin.

  ‘I want you to find a person for me,’ I said, breaking in on his respectful silence. ‘The man’s name is Lutbatz. Roland Lutbatz. His testimony may be vital for the investigation.’

  ‘Where do you want me to start, sir?’

  ‘He must be staying somewhere. He’s not a local man. A cheap hotel, or a lodging-house, perhaps.’

  ‘I’ll send the watch out.’

  ‘Jump to it,’ I said. ‘He could leave town at any moment. Herr Lutbatz deals in haberdashery, supplying shops and emporia here in Königsberg.’

  Stadtschen frowned. ‘Haber-what did you say, sir?’

  ‘Dashery, Stadtschen. Cotton, needles, thread, that sort of thing. People selling such items might know where he sleeps.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea where to start,’ the officer replied, to my surprise.

  ‘Your wife?’ I asked.

  A light twinkled in Stadtschen’s eyes. I took it to be a sign of amusement, though I would soon be obliged to revise my opinion. ‘Not likely, sir! There’s an old biddy that lives here inside the Fortress. She does…well, she offers various services for the soldiers of the regiment.’

  ‘Services?’ I returned, unable to suppress the note of sarcasm in my voice.

  ‘Not what you are thinking, sir,’ Stadtschen replied. ‘She’s long past that! She washes, mends and sews for bachelors who need a helping hand. She might well know the man you’re looking for.’

  ‘Inside the Fortress, you say? There can’t be many women living here.’

  ‘None at all, just her, sir,’ Stadtschen confirmed.

  I glanced towards the coffin. I had not intended to abandon my vigil so soon. But my most immediate duty was to the living. Who, better than Koch, could understand my motives? He would not feel abandoned in the Fortress chapel, surrounded by munitions, maps and firearms. He would hear the trumpet sounding as the guard was changed that night, the measured crash of heavy boots on the cobbled square-ground, the reassuring shout of orders, the rush to obey. His life had been lived among such things. I had brought him home, for he had no other home to go to.

  Five minutes later, Stadtschen and I were walking quickly through a dingy honeycomb of towering stone walls and cluttered paved courtyards. We were in the medieval core of the Fortress, which seemed to accommodate all the trades and the services that make a barracks function. Each separate courtyard seemed to proclaim its trade by the odour it gave off: horses here, kitchens there, stinking of boiling meat; leather shops and bootmakers; bakers’ furnaces; the foundry full of smoke and steam and coal-dust where shot and cannonballs were forged. It was a world within itself, it seemed to grow darker and become more odoriferous the further in we went, stinking of open latrines, vile excrement, and finally, total abandonment. In the darkest shadows, grey rats skipped squeaking from beneath our feet.

  ‘Good work, Stadtschen,’ I commented, as we stopped before a rotting door which had not seen paint since the coronation day of King Frederick the Great, or perhaps even before.

  ‘This is the place, sir,’ he confided, pounding at the flimsy wooden panels with force enough to smash them to matchwood.

  A wizened old woman appeared almost immediately, peeping out, eyeing the white double-sash and the chevron stripes on Stadtschen’s uniform. She might have been ninety years of age, or a hundred years older. There was so little light, it was impossible to tell, her complexion black with ingrained dirt, wrinkles engraved in her dewlapped cheeks and forehead like those of a stone gargoyle. Her ragged clothing seemed to cling to her like a skin. Ancient brown sacking for a dress, her bonnet of the same rough material, all stiff with grime. No doubt, she stank to high heaven, but the stench that issued from her dwelling was strong enough to overmatch the filthiest of ancient sluts.

  ‘I was expecting His Excellency,’ she said, peering up at Stadtschen.

  ‘We’ve other business on our hands, mother,’ he replied. The tone of his voice surprised me greatly. This giant had been entrusted with the watch, he was responsible for Section D of the prison with murderers, cannibals, thieves and forgers under his command. He ruled them all with an iron fist, yet
his voice was soft, even deferential, when he addressed himself to this old hag.

  ‘Three times I done it. Three! Allus comes out the same,’ she muttered, her voice fading away to nothing. She looked up suddenly and said fiercely to no one: ‘It will not be Königsberg, I’ll tell ye that again. He’ll not strike here, soldier, ye can rest assured of that!’

  I glanced at the ancient, then back at Officer Stadtschen. Neither said a word, their eyes locked in silent communion, as if they understood each other perfectly well.

  ‘What is she talking of, Stadtschen?’ I asked.

  I repeated the question more loudly when neither answered, and a terrific noise exploded in the farthest, deepest, darkest corner of the room. The flurried beating of wings, the cries of birds, many birds, a whole flock of them, chattering away excitedly like hungry starlings gathering in a wood as the winter comes on, before migrating in a swirling black mass. But what were these birds doing in the Fortress?

  The woman pointed a gnarled and twisted finger into Stadtschen’s face.

  ‘Tell that booby not to scare my babes!’ she screeched. ‘His Excellency won’t stand for it!’

  Suddenly, she waddled away into the room, moving through the darkness like a fish through water, the door swinging open on its hinges.

  ‘Come in,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘See for yourself, soldier. You can tell the General from me.’

  Stadtschen stepped forward eagerly, like a hunting-dog that had spotted a falling grouse.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said, catching at him, holding him back by the sleeve. ‘Let’s waste no time. I intend to trace Roland Lutbatz tonight.’

  Stadtschen snapped to attention, as if he had awakened from a trance.

  ‘Her name is Margreta Lungrenek, sir,’ he confided. ‘She knows the man you’re after, sir. I’d swear it…’

  ‘Tell him what I do!’ the woman shouted from the darkness of the room. Old she might have been, but her hearing was not impaired. ‘I’ll not invite ye in again!’

  ‘Five minutes, no more,’ I snapped, stepping into the room, holding up my lantern. ‘Lutbatz, or we leave. I hold you responsible.’

  In the receding gloom, I could just make out a pile of wicker cages stacked one above the other against the far wall. There were dozens of these cages, each one stuffed full of birds of all colours, shapes and sizes. I recognised sparrows, blue tits, pigeons, ravens, starlings, blackbirds, but there were more, far more, a hooded barn owl among them.

  ‘Herr General loves ’em,’ the woman clucked, waving her hand in a sweeping gesture towards the cages. ‘He knows plain truth when it’s laid out before his eyes.’

  ‘She’d fallen on hard times, sir,’ Stadtschen whispered. ‘Her eyesight’s failing. Can’t hardly hold a needle no more. Then, the General heard about her talents. He gave her shelter in the Fort…’

  ‘General Katowice?’ I asked, astounded. What had he to do with this old woman and her winged menagerie? I had taken Mistress Lungrenek’s references to the garrison commander as nothing more than the ragings of folly.

  ‘She sees the future,’ Stadtschen continued. ‘His Excellency won’t make a single move these days without consulting her. He’s obsessed with the thought of Napoleon invading the city. Since these killings started, he’s convinced himself that it’s the work of French infiltrators. The General is a great admirer of Julius Caesar, sir. He swears them Romans never went to war without consulting people like her.’

  ‘Aruspices,’ I murmured. ‘That was the name for them.’

  Stadtschen stared at me wide-eyed. ‘It’s true, then?’ he murmured.

  The notion of Katowice trusting in omens and believing oracles was disconcerting in the extreme. If the commander of the Fortress and defender of the city placed his undivided trust in divination, all was lost. I recalled the energetic figure, the determination of speech, the directness of manner, which had seemed so reassuring on my own arrival at the Fortress. Was his ebullient state of mind induced by knowing that his forces were strong, his strategy secure? Or was it all bluster, based on the visions of a mad old woman?

  ‘Look here!’ she snapped, moving away from the cages, stooping over a small, round table in the darkest corner. A large, black bird, a dead carrion crow, had been laid out on the wooden surface. Its curving sabre of a beak hung loose, its plumage glistened red with blood, and the table had been strewn with its guts. The carcass had been arranged inside a circle of letters chalked apparently at random on the wooden surface. The innards had been ripped from the bird’s breast, and arranged all around the body. The beak pointed one way, the rigid wings stretched out on either side. For all the world, it looked as if the bird had been crucified.

  ‘Note the beak,’ the ancient whispered, placing her hands on the table, leaning close and breathing in the stench. ‘It points to this letter here. The wings indicate these two vowels. An’ see the claws! That’s the place, there, sirs! Jena! It’s far from Königsberg. That’s where General Katowice should be. Not here, messin’ about!’

  She peered short-sightedly at Stadtschen, a thin knowing smile on her lips.

  I realised that I ought to have been chasing hot on the heels of Herr Lutbatz and the killer of Koch, but that woman’s claim to read the future in the entrails of birds pricked my new-gained curiosity. If I had learnt anything from Immanuel Kant regarding my experience with Vigilantius, it was to pursue the light, even if it were nothing more than a pinpoint glimmer at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

  ‘I’ll tell him, mother,’ Stadtschen said, his voice quick, nervous. ‘I promise you, I’ll tell him straight. But Procurator Stiffeniis has a question for you. Just answer him, then we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘Do you know a man named Roland Lutbatz?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, sir, I do,’ she replied quickly. ‘I’d be lost without him. I know him like I know my birds. I saw him yesterday.’

  ‘And where was that?’

  ‘The Blue Unicorn, sir. That’s where he stays when he’s in Königsberg.’

  ‘That tavern’s near the Ferkel bridge,’ Stadtschen explained. ‘On foot, it’s five minutes from here, sir.’

  ‘I know far cheaper, if you want their names,’ Margreta Lungrenek offered, as I thrust a thaler into her hand and made to leave.

  ‘God curse you, sir!’ the woman screeched, throwing the coin to the ground and rubbing her hand as if she had just been scorched. ‘There’s a presence hovering over you!’

  ‘Now, mother,’ Stadtschen warned her, his courage coming back as we prepared to leave. ‘Watch that tongue of yours!’

  ‘The Devil knows his own,’ she hissed back, gathering her clenched fists close to her breasts, as if to fight the malignant presence off. ‘I knows a troubled soul when I sees one. Don’t I just!’

  ‘A troubled soul?’ I echoed, despite my wiser instincts.

  My heart thrashed in my chest and rose up into my throat in a choaking, suffocating ball as the ageless one fixed me with her bright unseeing eyes.

  ‘Your father’s dead,’ she said slowly. ‘Dead and buried, but not at rest. He rises from the tomb by light o’ moon, but he’ll rest soon,’ she chanted in a strange singsong voice.

  I turned to Stadtschen quickly.

  ‘This wise dame has told us all we need to know. Let’s go.’

  Outside in the courtyard, the cold, damp air was almost fresh enough to be invigorating after the suffocating pestilence inside that fetid hovel. We turned away and began to retrace our steps through the dark alleys of the Fortress in the general direction of the main gate.

  ‘May I ask you something, sir?’ Stadtschen enquired after he had walked in silence for some minutes at my side. ‘General Katowice uses that old crone to see into the future, sir. And he believes her, too. One time, I asked her to read my own future life. She killed and gutted a bird, and told me lots of things that I would rather not believe, sir.’

  ‘Such as?’ I asked, glancing up at him. His face was
dark, perplexed and puzzled.

  ‘She strewed those guts on the table, like the one we just saw…’

  He halted suddenly, and I was forced to stop.

  ‘What did she see?’ I asked him.

  ‘She spoke just now of your father, sir. Is it true? Did she see the truth?’

  Fear shone brightly in the soldier’s eyes. He seemed to be affected by the sort of innocent fright that I had seen often enough in the eyes of my children when Lotte told them ghoulish bedtime tales of goblins and fairies, wolves and captured princesses lost in the woods. Lotte was a storyteller of awesome power, enough to frighten a child out of its wits if she chose. I had often taken her to task for the wildness of her imagination and the freeness of her tongue.

  ‘What did you ask her, Stadtschen?’

  ‘Oh, you know, sir!’ he said, smiling with embarrassment. ‘The things all soldiers want to know. I asked her what would be my fate if Napoleon ever came to Prussia…’

  ‘My father is not dead,’ I cut in, carefully measuring my words. ‘Nor will he be for a long time yet, I hope most sincerely. Margreta Lungrenek was wrong about my father. Totally wrong. She has no idea at all what she’s talking of. Curse her ignorance! I wonder that Herr General Katowice should take such nonsense seriously.’

  His face lit up like the sun bursting forth from a dark cloud, though that same cloud still hung menacingly over me.

  Shortly afterwards, we left the Fortress, turned left and dived into the town. And Stadtschen was correct in his estimates. Minutes later, we emerged from the maze of alleyways near an ancient stone bridge, one of the many that crossed the River Pregel as it wound back and forth upon itself within the confines of the city. We stopped by a quay lined with heavy barges, watching the sailors smoking their pipes and chatting quietly, taking a moment to catch our breaths, then we turned towards an inn sign fanning in the wind. A blue-painted mythical creature galloped across a field of silver clouds with golden sparks flying from its hooves.