HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  Was there some further aspect of the case that escaped me? Sergeant Koch had been murdered the previous afternoon, so the killer was still at large. What the woman had just told me cast doubt on my suspicions regarding her husband’s involvement in Koch’s death. She had placed his disappearance almost twenty-four hours before the murder of my assistant. Might something tragic have happened to Lampe as well? Or had he come out of hiding solely to commit another crime? There was still a chance that Lampe was innocent. But then a more cynical idea took hold, and I studied the woman’s face attentively. Did she possess the skill to act the role that she appeared to be playing? Might she be trying to provide an alibi for her husband?

  I stood up with decision.

  ‘I need to search your home, Frau Lampe.’

  If he was hiding there with her connivance, I would catch him off his guard. If he were not, I would have the opportunity to scour the house for evidence that might be used against him.

  To my surprise, Frau Lampe stood up and prepared to leave without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’ll do anything if it helps you to find Martin, sir,’ she said, forcing a weak smile, following me in silence out of the gate to where a police coach was parked. I woke the driver with a shake, and we climbed aboard.

  ‘Tell him where to go, Frau Lampe,’ I ordered, and she gave the coachman an address in the Belefest village area.

  ‘Will seeing the house help you to discover where he is?’ she asked uncertainly as the vehicle gathered speed. ‘I’ve searched it myself from top to bottom. He left no note, and nothing at all’s been carried away, sir.’

  ‘It is normal police procedure, Frau Lampe,’ I replied in the vaguest terms. ‘There may be some clue that you have missed.’

  She nodded eagerly and seemed relieved to hand the business over to me.

  A church bell tolled eight of the clock. At this hour, I reflected, looking out of the window of the coach, any other town in Prussia would be wide awake, the workrooms, shops and offices open for trade. But under the arches of the low porticos on either side of the narrow street, all was closed and tightly shuttered. There was not a soul to be seen in Königsberg, with the exception of the armed soldiers guarding every crossroads. Truly, the city was under siege. And it was all the doing of Martin Lampe. Bonaparte’s marauding army posed less of a threat than the enemy already within the city walls. I had to find him. Perhaps then, the city would begin to live again.

  After two or three kilometres, the carriage began to slow down, then came to rest at last beside a sad row of dingy little country cottages with sagging roofs of ancient thatch the colour of ash. We were in the village of Belefest, the lady told me as I helped her to climb down into an unpaved muddy lane. There were tall leafless trees on either flank. In the spring and summer, when brilliant green and the brighter tints of hedgerow flowers salvage the world, the hamlet might have made a first impression which was less dreary, grey and depressing.

  ‘You won’t find much sign of Martin’s presence in the house, sir. My husband and I have lived together so little. Professor Kant could not, would not, get along without him,’ she said harshly. There was no mistaking her tone, or her meaning. She did not like Immanuel Kant. His name seemed to burn on her tongue like acid.

  The house was tiny, standing at the lower end of the row. A small garden stood before the front door. Poor, I judged, but not destitute. Then, Frau Lampe explained that she and her husband occupied only two rooms of the place: they had been obliged to let the whole upper floor to lodgers. She opened the door with her key and an overwhelming odour of stale boiled cabbage drifted out. A lamp was brought, the tinder struck – in that room, it was never day – and soon the humble dwelling was crudely illuminated for me to see.

  ‘May I look around?’ I asked, glancing quickly about me, taking in the meagre furnishings. Frau Lampe watched me as I searched the place, opening cupboards and drawers, feeling under every cushion and coverlet, excusing myself as I stripped away the bed and examined the straw mattress for anything that might be hidden inside or underneath it. I found nothing more exceptional in the dwelling than a few cracked mugs and mismatched plates, the dirty old clothes they had used to work in the garden, odd remnants of Martin Lampe’s past glories in the army, which consisted of a pair of corporal’s epaulettes and a faded, moth-eaten uniform jacket. Inside a chest, washed-out household linen, nondescript rags of clothing, an ancient horse-blanket Lampe had brought back from Belorussia, together with a pair of yellow spare sheets and some faded fineries Frau Lampe had worn when she was younger and had known better days.

  ‘We had much, much more,’ she murmured, ‘but the pawnbroker got it all. My first husband, Albrecht Kolber, was the beadle. We were well-to-do, but he died of choleric dysentery.’ The widow Kolber had married Martin Lampe nine years after his honourable discharge from the Prussian army, where he had served in Poland and in Western Russia under King Frederick the Great. Without any other trade to his name, Martin Lampe had entered into service as the valet to Immanuel Kant.

  ‘Martin wanted to marry me, and I needed a husband,’ she explained flatly. ‘We had to wed in secret, of course. Professor Kant wanted only bachelors in his employ.’

  I wiped the dust from my hands and turned to face her. My search had told me nothing more than Frau Lampe herself had told me while I was sifting through the material wreckage of her life. First, of her short but happy marriage to Beadle Kolber, then, her impoverished widowhood, and, finally, the new lease of married life she had found with Martin Lampe.

  She watched as I turned away from what I had been doing and looked around helplessly. Had some detail escaped my notice? Were Martin Lampe’s secrets locked up in his brain and nowhere else?

  ‘I told you before, Herr Procurator,’ she said gently. ‘You won’t find any sign of his presence here. There’s nothing worth a brass half-farthing. Nothing worth a memory.’

  ‘Do you have a hiding-place for money, papers, valuables?’

  She shook her head ruefully. ‘Everything I own, I wear on my back, sir. You’re looking in the wrong place. If you want to know what Martin had on his mind, there’s only one place to turn for help.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  An air of concern clouded the woman’s face, but in an instant the look was gone. ‘You say you are a particular friend of Professor Kant’s, sir. Why not ask him where Martin is? I’d ask him myself, but I cannot…’

  I stiffened. ‘What makes you think that Kant would know?’

  ‘Martin often goes to his house,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘He’s been helping Kant to write a book.’

  ‘He’s been doing…what?’ I spluttered.

  ‘Not that he makes a penny out of it,’ she went on resentfully. ‘I’ve no idea what he does precisely. He comes home so tired out, he’s not fit for work in the garden.’

  ‘After your husband was dismissed from service,’ I interposed, ‘he was prohibited from ever visiting the house again. Professor Kant’s friends keep a close watch to make sure there’s no communication between them.’

  Frau Lampe laughed shrilly. ‘Even his dearest friends have to sleep, sir. Martin goes there after dark. I warned him, but he would not listen to me. The forest is a dangerous place at night.’ She frowned and her voice was suddenly tense. ‘You’ve no idea what my Martin’s life was like in that house, have you? For thirty years he waited hand and foot on the most famous man in Prussia. If you knew the truth, sir, you wouldn’t envy him.’

  ‘Your husband has been most fortunate,’ I said stiffly, ‘in having served the noblest mind that ever lived in Prussia.’

  A veil seemed to fall over her face. ‘I could tell you things that Kant’s best friends don’t know,’ she replied in a low voice.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, steeling myself to hear the gossip that cast-off servants and their irate wives reserve for their former employers.

  ‘Everyone in Königsberg – and elsewhere for all I know – has heard of Profe
ssor Kant. His precise way of thinking, the regularity of his habits, the stern morality of his temperament, the impeccable elegance of his dress. Not a hair out of place, not a word out of turn, not a spot on his reputation. A living clock, they call him in this town. A clockwork man, says I. Nothing happens in his life by chance. No accidents befall him. Have you ever stopped to think how that affects the people in his service? Martin had no freedom, no life. Every single instant of every day, from the moment Martin woke him in the morning to the second when he tucked the Professor up in bed and blew out his candle, my husband was at his side, and never a single thought in his head but what his master put there. Waiting hand and foot on that man like a slave.’

  She halted, her facial expression changed. Some rebellious thought seemed to pass through her mind and ripple the furrows on her brow like wind over still water.

  ‘My husband was obsessed with the need to assist Professor Kant. When Herr Jachmann dismissed him, I realised that something was wrong. He blamed Martin…’

  ‘It was not a question of blame,’ I interrupted. ‘Herr Jachmann decided that a younger man was needed.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she replied, shrugging her shoulders. A nervous motion of her hands and the glinting brightness of her eyes suggested a fear of something that I could not name. ‘Martin had a special task in that house. Something only he could do,’ she added, her voice sinking to a barely audible whisper.

  ‘A special task?’ I echoed. Distressed by her husband’s disappearance, I wondered whether she had begun to imagine plots.

  ‘ “I am the water in Kant’s well,” Martin told me once.’

  ‘And what do you think he meant by that?’

  Frau Lampe’s eyes flashed up at me.

  ‘Why, the book Professor Kant was writing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Martin told me he was helping his master to put the finishing touches to his final work. Kant’s hand was not so steady as it used to be, his sight was poor, he needed a secretary to write it out for him.’

  ‘Kant was dictating the text to your husband?’ I burst out incredulously. ‘Is that what you are suggesting, ma’am?’

  Frau Lampe closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Night after night after night. Often dawn was breaking before he got home. Martin isn’t young any more, but he always was so diligent. He was so proud of what they were doing together. Helping Professor Kant rewrite his philosophy. That was what he said.’

  ‘When did all of this begin?’

  Frau Lampe grimaced with the effort of recall. A chasm split her brow. ‘More than a year ago, sir. Martin was torn from my bed once more by that ogre. He came home when he could, but some nights he didn’t come at all. And when he did come, he was not the same man. He’d sit by that window there, looking out like a haunted soul. He didn’t say a word to me.’

  I gazed at the murky window and tried to imagine what Martin Lampe had been thinking about. Had the murdering demon in his soul risen to the surface while his wife looked helplessly on?

  ‘Did he tell you what this work involved?’ I asked.

  ‘He said I wouldn’t understand. He and his master were exploring a new dimension. That’s what he said, sir. A new dimension.’

  Martin and Professor Kant, I noted. Not Professor Kant and Martin. Was that how she had interpreted Lampe’s words, or had the husband presented the case to his wife in that light?

  ‘Has your husband ever studied philosophy?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no, sir. But he learnt a great deal from his master. Martin was always going on about the new philosophers who’d been attacking Kant. He said they’d be obliged to eat their words when the book came out.’

  There it was again. The final testament of Immanuel Kant. The book that no one had ever seen. Nobody, apart from Martin Lampe…

  ‘That book turned Martin into a different man,’ she continued. ‘He frightened the life out of me sometimes, sir. He was obsessed, driven, and it was all Kant’s doing.’

  ‘Your husband was only executing his duty,’ I suggested vaguely, ‘unpleasant as it might have been.’

  ‘Unpleasant?’ she hissed. ‘It was worse than that. Kant brought Martin to the verge of murder.’

  ‘Indeed?’ I said coldly, as if what she had just told me was a reasonable argument and not an obscene calumny.

  ‘Martin told me so. One day a young gentleman came to visit Kant. When Martin served them tea, he said that they were pleasantly engaged in a discussion of philosophy…’

  The relationship Jachmann had mentioned earlier flashed through my mind. ‘Was the name of the visitor Gottlieb Fichte?’

  Frau Lampe shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea, sir. After they’d finished talking, Professor Kant accompanied his visitor to the door and saw him out.’ She stared at me, a smile frozen on her face.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Kant told my husband to run after that young man and kill him with a knife.’

  Here was the other side of Herr Jachmann’s coin. Not a mad Martin Lampe, but a mad and murderous Immanuel Kant.

  ‘Did your husband obey?’

  ‘Of course, he did, sir. It was his duty. But that young philosopher ran away before Martin could catch up with him.’

  ‘Would your husband have obeyed Kant up to that final point?’

  She joined her hands as if she to pray. ‘I begged him not to listen,’ she whispered with a moan. ‘Kant is senile, I said. He’s demented. To tell you the truth, sir, I was glad when Herr Jachmann dismissed my husband. I thought he’d be out of harm’s way. But nothing really changed. Professor Kant sent a secret message, calling him to the house under cover of night.’

  ‘Frau Lampe,’ I said, turning the argument aside, pointing to a piece of embroidered linen draped over the back of a chair. ‘Are you interested in needlework?’

  She glanced up in perplexity, then nodded.

  ‘Where do you purchase your materials?’

  She looked at me as if I were deranged.

  ‘From a shop? A travelling draper, perhaps?’ I suggested.

  ‘There are two shops that I go to,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Do you know a man named Roland Lutbatz?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Have you bought anything from him recently?’

  ‘I do not know him personally, sir,’ she replied. ‘He supplies goods to shopkeeper Reutlingen. I’ve seen him there on one or two occasions.’ She stopped and frowned. ‘What has Herr Lutbatz to do with my husband’s disappearance?’

  ‘He says that he spoke to your husband recently,’ I answered. ‘Martin was interested in buying needles for carding tapestry wool.’

  ‘Carding wool?’ she repeated, as if she did not understand.

  ‘Did you instruct your husband to buy them for you?’

  She did not reply. She was too frightened to answer, I could see that, calculating whether her husband would gain or lose by what she might have to say. I knew how I wished her to answer. I desired it with all the impelling force that Doctor Mesmer mentions when he speaks of the transference of thought. I wanted her to tell me that her husband had, indeed, bought those needles for her, and for no other purpose than that for which they were intended. I prayed with all my heart that the certainty I had felt in identifying the murderer would be dashed to smithereens. I wanted Lampe to be innocent. If Kant’s unwitting influence had driven him to murder, there would be no end to the scandal.

  ‘I did not ask my husband to purchase anything from Herr Lutbatz,’ she said at last. ‘He may have wished to surprise me with a gift. He sometimes does.’ She studied my face carefully. ‘Will this help you to understand what has happened to him, sir?’

  ‘You have been a great help to me, Frau Lampe,’ I said, standing up and preparing to leave, ever more convinced of the guilt of her husband. ‘Please contact me if anything else occurs to you. With your assistance the police will find him soon, I’m certain.’

  ‘There’s something else, sir,’ she said, stopping me on the doorstep
. ‘I should have mentioned it before, but I hoped it would not be necessary.’

  ‘Of what are you speaking, Frau Lampe?’

  ‘I’ll show you, sir.’

  She led the way quickly into the back garden, tramping through the deep, packed snow to the farthest corner of the enclosed land. It was a small plot in which Frau Lampe and her husband had managed to cultivate an apple tree and some rows of vegetables, the plants now frozen, black and withered with the frost. A dense, dark, untended wood stretched away up the hill behind the house. There was a vague, menacing quality about the place. Wisps of fog clung to the naked branches and the stark damp trunks. Dripping icicles hung from the trees like the stalactites in the gloomy caves of Bad Merrenheim.

  ‘Can you see these marks?’ she said, bending to the ground and indicating footprints in the frozen snow.

  I knelt to examine them. They were little more than scuffs left by someone in a hurry wearing shoes unsuited to the weather and the terrain.

  ‘It was snowing the night that Martin disappeared. I saw these tracks the morning after, when I went to the shed over there to get some dried herbs. It has not snowed since.’

  ‘Why should he come this way?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a short cut to Professor…to the town,’ she corrected herself.

  Leaving her at the garden’s edge, I ventured further into the wood, following the tracks until I reached a wild plum tree. Enshrined in the frozen snow was the first clearly delineated footprint. I stared at it for what seemed an eternity of time.

  ‘Are you certain these traces were left by your husband?’ I called back.

  ‘I cut the soles of Martin’s shoes myself. The leather was worn. I did not want him to fall and injure himself.’

  I had seen the distinctive cross-cut that Frau Lampe had made three times before. In the drawing made by Officer Lublinsky at the scene of the first murder. The previous afternoon in Professor Kant’s garden. And the night before, beside the lifeless body of Amadeus Koch in Sturtenstrasse.