‘The Blue Unicorn, sir,’ he announced.
Chapter 29
As Officer Stadtschen hauled on a bell-rope, all the church bells in the city of Königsberg seemed to clang and chime together. Before they fell silent again, a window creaked open high above the Unicorn sign, and a pale round face peered down at us in the street.
‘D’you know what time o’ night it is?’
‘Police,’ Stadtschen yelled. ‘Open up, and quick about it!’
The same fat, frightened man unbolted his door some moments later and waved us into the bar. He seemed unduly concerned to be discovered in his nightgown and bedcap. All was dark in the low-ceilinged room except for a pale glow in the chimney-place from the dying embers in the grate.
‘I was asleep, sir,’ the innkeeper whined, wringing his hands and looking as thoroughly guilty as I have ever seen a man who might reasonably be supposed to have done nothing criminal.
Then, Stadtschen alarmed him all the more.
‘Bring the register for Herr Procurator Stiffeniis to see,’ he barked.
A large leather-bound ledger was quickly laid flat on the table in front of me. I sat down and began to turn the pages, all of which were blank.
‘Is this some sort of joke?’ I asked, looking up. ‘Is no one staying here?’
Stadtschen leaned threateningly over the shoulder of the man and hissed into his ear. ‘Withholding names from the police, landlord?’
The fat man’s fears became ever more visible. ‘I would not dare, sir! The beadles search the town so frequently in the present situation.’ He bent over the book, saying, ‘With your permission, sir?’
He licked the tip of his finger and fumbled his way through the pages. ‘We’ve had so few guests, sir. Especially in the last month. Who’d come to town to be murdered? But here we are, sir.’
He pulled back and showed me what he had found. One name was written on the page, together with a date.
‘Herr Lutbatz, sir. A merchant,’ he murmured. ‘There’s no one else staying here tonight. He’s a travelling gentleman, highly respected in his trade, I’m told. A touch eccentric in his way of er…doing, and…er, dressing, but I ain’t got nothing against that, sir, ‘ave I?’
There was something decidedly shifty about the landlord. He seemed to be dropping hints of some sort, and I believed I had a good idea of what he might be hinting at. ‘Does anyone visit him?’ I asked, leaning closer.
‘Well, sir,’ he began nervously, ‘you know how it is, sir. When a man is travelling all alone, like he is, he…well, how can I put it? He sometimes falls into company, sir. That’s what I would call it. Company…There’s not a great deal I can do about it. His visitors come, then they go. We have so few guests to stay these days, I tends to close a blind eye. He is alone tonight, I do know that. Said he was feeling like junk for the knacker’s yard when I gave him his dinner…’
He stuttered to a halt, looking at me with a sort of pleading grimace of helplessness.
I leaned back in my chair. Women! I thought. I had been hoping that the landlord might have something to say about the customers who had recently been to visit Lutbatz.
‘Do any of his customers call on him here?’
‘Not this trip, sir. Times is hard in Königsberg. For all of us.’
‘I wish to have a word with this man,’ I said.
‘Shall I tell him to come down here, sir?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’d prefer to speak to him in the privacy of his chamber. Would you step up and tell him that I am here?’
The innkeeper wiped his damp brow with the back of his hand and let out a sigh of evident relief. Another man’s trouble was no trouble at all, so long as he himself was not involved in it, it appeared. He scuttled away up the stairs, returning a minute later to say that Herr Lutbatz was waiting for me in his room.
‘Shall I come up with you, Herr Procurator?’ Stadtschen asked.
‘I do not need a nursemaid,’ I replied sharply. The truth was that I did not intend to risk making public the name that Roland Lutbatz had inscribed on his list for Sergeant Koch. ‘Return to the Fortress, if you will, Stadtschen. And remind Mullen to find a priest for the funeral.’
He saluted and left, while I began to climb the stairs to the second floor, where Roland Lutbatz was hovering by his bedroom door. I saw immediately what the innkeeper had meant when he used the word ‘eccentric’ to describe the man. Had I stumbled by accident into a house of ill repute, the whores would not have been half so extravagantly dressed for bed as Herr Lutbatz was. He emerged coyly into the corridor, and smiled anxiously in welcome. His peccadillo had little to do with women, I realised. The lemon-coloured turban on his head might have been bobbing on the surface of a tropical sea. His nightgown was a rich emerald-green damask with chevron patterns in a darker weave, the silky material shimmering and undulating in the candlelight.
‘Herr Procurator?’ he asked, stepping nimbly to one side and bowing me into his boudoir, the air of which was richly perfumed.
‘What a fright I got when the landlord knocked!’ he exclaimed, pushing a chair close to the fire for me. He threw a log onto the embers, which flared up in a bright explosion of sparks, and adjusted the lemon-coloured turban on his head. ‘Now, what can I do for you, sir?’
‘I need to ask you some questions, Herr Lutbatz.’
The man sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, pursed his red lips in a most exaggerated and feminine expression of alarm and began to pat himself lightly on the chest, as if to calm the rapid palpitations of his troubled heart.
‘Oh, do! Please do, sir,’ he replied, spreading his hands on his knees as if to brace himself. His nails were carefully cut and buffed, except for those of the little finger on each hand which curled like an eagle’s talons.
‘There has been a spate of murders in Königsberg. You know that, don’t you, Herr Lutbatz?’
He nodded gravely. Then, his dainty features grimaced into a mask of alarm. His eyes blazed. ‘You do not think that I am involved, sir?’
I smiled to reassure him.
‘I need some information connected with your trade, sir. Nothing more.’
His mouth formed a gaping ‘O’ of surprise.
‘But I deal in fabrics,’ he said. ‘Are you sure that I’m the man for you?’
Without waiting for my answer, he leapt up from his seat with unexpected agility and ran to the far side of the room. ‘Here, you see? This is my business, sir. Material of the finest quality.’
He threw open one of the boxes which covered a good part of the floor and drew out a sample weft of dark red velvet. ‘I travel all over the continent, France and the Low Countries for the most part, to buy my wares, and I sell them here in Prussia. All the shops in Königsberg buy from me, and private customers too, of course. All the very best people…’
‘Like Frau Koch?’ I asked.
‘Frau Koch, sir?’ he repeated, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘Frau Koch has been dead these past five years. The poor lady…’
He fell silent, evidently unsure where I was leading him.
‘Sit down, Herr Lutbatz,’ I said. ‘I am not here to see your goods.’
He sank unhappily onto his chair and stared at me.
‘Frau Koch was the wife of my assistant. Sergeant Koch came to see you today, did he not?’
He let out another sigh of relief. ‘He did, sir. His wife was a seamstress. She traded with me for many years. I gave her material in exchange for samples of her best work. Frau Merete was a delightful woman.’
‘I want to know what Herr Koch asked of you, and what you told him in reply.’
Lutbatz looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘I thought you said that he was your assistant, sir? Did he not tell you himself?’
‘I wish to hear from you what the outcome of the meeting was,’ I said drily.
‘Well, he came to ask about some needles, sir,’ Herr Lutbatz replied in a nervous flurry. ‘The sort we use in
tapestry work. I let him see my samples, and Herr Sergeant asked if I had sold any to persons living here in Königsberg.’
‘And what was your reply?’
‘I checked my books and found the information he was seeking, sir. I’ve sold no needles of that type so far this trip. But Sergeant Koch was interested in others I had sold in the past and I gave him the records.’
I took out the paper I had found on Koch’s corpse and handed it to him.
‘Do you recognise this as the list that you gave him earlier today?’
‘I believe it is,’ he said, jumping up and running to the other side of the room. He clipped a silver pince-nez on the bridge of his nose and peered intently at the note. ‘Yes, yes, this is my handwriting. These are customers of mine. I had one or two more to see tomorrow, then I meant to leave for Potsdam.’
‘Do you mean to say that you have not yet completed your business in town, Herr Lutbatz?’
‘That is correct,’ he replied.
‘Have you spoken to Herr Kant yet?’
‘Now, isn’t that a coincidence!’ he exclaimed. ‘Sergeant Koch asked me the very same question. I can show you the needles Herr Kant ordered. Sergeant Koch was most interested in those.’
He stood up and crossed the room. ‘Does Herr Kant come here, or do you attend on him at his home?’ I asked.
‘He comes to me, sir,’ he answered, dropping to his knees, throwing open a large brown trunk. ‘Here they are!’ he cried, taking out a wooden box and showing it to me.
‘Does Herr Kant buy only these?’ I asked, as Lutbatz extracted a rolled bundle and placed it into my hands.
‘Oh no, sir,’ the merchant prattled on. ‘He purchases other things as well, cotton, wool, sometimes a little strip of Flemish linen, or a bit of French silk. But these big needles! I don’t know what he does with them all.’
‘Have you ever asked him?’
‘Oh no. No, sir. I supposed they were for his wife. It hardly seems delicate to ask, if he doesn’t say for himself. I’ve often wondered what her work is like,’ the merchant chattered on nervously. ‘I’m on excellent terms with all my clients, they often show me the things they make. If their work is of a reasonably good standard, I sometimes buy it to add to my stock. In the case of poor Frau Koch, I would exchange finished work for fresh materials. There’s an excellent trade hereabouts in local craft for a person such as myself that travels around, but…’
‘But Herr Kant never offered to trade his wife’s needlework for stock,’ I concluded. ‘And I don’t suppose you’ve ever been invited to their house either?’
He arched his eyebrows in surprise. ‘How did you guess, sir? She must be an invalid, I thought. If she sends her husband shopping for her, she can hardly be in the best of health, can she?’
I did not reply. As I unrolled the bundle, I was trying to imagine Koch’s thoughts when he read the name of Kant on the list and saw the articles that the philosopher had purchased. I held the cloth in the palm of my hand, folded it back, and stared at the needles. There were six of them.
‘Whalebone ivory,’ Herr Lutbatz said proudly. ‘Such a lovely colour! Creamy white with an undertone of yellow.’
They were a fraction longer than the one that Anna Rostova had hidden, a fraction brighter, as if whoever had made them had polished them lovingly. There was a large eye-hole at one end, a sharp point at the other. My head was spinning and I offered no resistance as Herr Lutbatz picked up one of the needles, and weighed it in his hand.
‘These are perfect. Light, well-balanced,’ he said. ‘They need careful handling, but they’re far more robust than they look. A skilled worker can do an excellent job with one of these. Can I give them to Herr Kant if he calls before I leave?’
‘I doubt he’ll have much use for them after today,’ I replied.
‘He won’t find better anywhere else,’ Herr Lutbatz insisted with an impatient shrug of his shoulders. ‘That’s what Sergeant Koch said. He’d never seen such fine tools before. His wife would have loved them.’
‘I am sure she would, Herr Lutbatz. You can put them away now,’ I said, and watched as he rolled the needles up, placed them in their box, and returned them to the trunk from which he had taken them. ‘Thank you, sir. You have been a great help.’
‘Think nothing of it, Herr Procurator. I’ve done my duty, I hope. But may I ask you something?’ He looked at me for a moment. ‘Why are you so interested in Herr Kant?’
‘Do you know who he is?’ I countered.
Roland Lutbatz did not hesitate. ‘I told you, sir. He’s one of my customers. Not the most regular, but in my business you must count the pennies as well as the pounds.’
‘Herr Professor Immanuel Kant is a famous man,’ I added. ‘He used to teach philosophy at the university here in Königsberg.’
‘Oh, that!’ the haberdasher returned with a flutter of his eyebrows. ‘He told me all about himself the first time he came to see me. It must be a year ago now. He was full of himself. A real peacock, I’d say! He was a famous philosopher, he taught at the university, he’d published any number of important books. I didn’t take him seriously, I must admit.’
‘Whyever not?’ I asked.
He hesitated, searching for a word. ‘He told me that he was on…intimate terms with the King. Well, I played along, of course, but I didn’t believe the half of it.’
‘Did Herr Kant tell you the sort of work his wife did?’ I asked.
‘What a question, sir!’ Lutbatz cried, clapping his hands together excitedly. ‘Naturally, when he returned to me the second time, I asked him if his wife had found the needles to her liking.’
‘And how did he reply?’
‘I found him most evasive. She was little more than an amateur, he told me, but she enjoyed herself, which was good enough for him.’
I glanced out of the window. Dawn comes early in the North and the sky was a rippled pearly pink.
‘Forgive me, Herr Lutbatz,’ I said. ‘I have robbed you of your sleep. Thank you for all that you have told me. It will be most useful.’
I was still speaking when Roland Lutbatz went scurrying across to that table on the other side of the room again. ‘Before you go, Herr Procurator, I hope that you will leave an inscription in my autograph album,’ he said, carrying a volume across to me. ‘I ask every visitor to sign his name and write a phrase to remember him by. It’s a great comfort when you travel the world without a constant friend. I do hope you won’t disappoint me? Sergeant Koch ran off without signing. But I won’t be disappointed twice in one day!’
I took the book in my hands – it was a small thing to do by way of thanks – and examined the neat leather-bound volume. A large red velvet heart and the word ‘Memories’ had been embroidered diagonally across the cover in elegant white letters.
‘I stitched it myself,’ Herr Lutbatz said proudly. ‘All my own work!’
‘It’s quite remarkable,’ I admitted. Indeed, any housewife would have been proud of such handiwork.
‘Now, here’s a pen, sir,’ he said, bringing over a pot of ink and a quill, while I wondered what on earth to write. ‘If you turn back a way, you’ll see the phrase that Herr Kant inscribed with his own hand.’
My hands trembled as I turned the pages and saw what the visitor had written the night that he came to Roland Lutbatz to collect the instruments with which he would inflict sudden death on so many unsuspecting souls:
Two things fill my mind with wonder – the starry sky above my head, the obscurity deep within my soul.
The epigram was signed ‘Immanuel Kant’.
‘Go on, sir,’ Herr Lutbatz urged with a shrill laugh of excitement, ‘let’s see if you can do better!’
I took the quill and in a few seconds I had composed and written the following phrase of my own: ‘Reason has vanquished the clouds of Obscurity, bringing Light.’ Then, as Immanuel Kant had done before me, I signed my name beneath the inscription.
The first rays of the risin
g sun caressed the dark horizon in a golden fan as I left The Blue Unicorn and walked out into the new morning with a lighter step, and an even lighter heart.
Chapter 30
Did I truly believe that Immanuel Kant was the murderer? Even for a single instant? Had I been able to conjure up a mental picture of Roland Lutbatz chatting amiably away, while Professor Kant purchased six ivory needles for the purpose of massacring the innocent citizens of Königsberg in cold blood? At his age? In his frail physical condition?
If the idea had ever flitted across the ruffled surface of my troubled mind for the tiniest fraction of a second, that phrase written out so boldly in the merchant’s autograph book saved me from taking a further plunge into unthinkable error. What I had read was a godless parody of the Immanuel Kant that all the world knew and respected. As I studied those ungainly letters written out so awkwardly, in such an immature and childlike hand, I suddenly realised that a familiar ghost had brushed my sleeve many times in the past few days, and that he had gained ground each time that I failed to recognise him.
The very first time I had not seen this ghostly presence was the day that I came to Königsberg seven years before and found myself so unexpectedly invited to lunch at Professor Kant’s home. His ancient valet was absent that day, attending the funeral of his sister. In thirty years of constant domestic service, it was the only day when he had not been present at Professor Kant’s table. And just a short while after I returned home to Lotingen, the sixty-year-old servant had been summarily dismissed from the house, forbidden ever to return. Yet, Frau Mendelssohn had seen him repeatedly entering and leaving at all hours of the day and the night. She had told me so. She had seen Martin Lampe!
Lampe had managed to worm his way in and out of Professor Kant’s drawing room soon after I had left it, or shortly before I entered. Martin Lampe and I had been like twin satellites in parallel orbits around the same mighty planet, always circling, never meeting. But why had Kant allowed Martin Lampe to return from banishment?
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