Chapter 32
After leaving Belefest, I returned to my office in a troubled mood.
I knew exactly what I ought to do. The killer had a name. Martin Lampe should be hunted down and prevented from striking again. Yet, there was something else that I had to do, something no magistrate should ever do. I determined to hide the identity of the killer. Professor Kant must never learn who he was, or know how close he had been. If the murderer could be stopped, if I could cover his tracks, I would lead the investigation away from him until it fizzled out. If any man spoke the name of Martin Lampe again, it must only be to remember him as Professor Kant’s valet. Anything else was a blasphemy.
I planted my elbows on the desk, pressed my head between my hands. I felt as though my brain might erupt from my throbbing skull. The first thing to do was to draw him into my net. He had murdered Sergeant Koch, but I had been the real target. Lampe had set his heart on slaughtering me, and he would not rest until he had eliminated the danger. Could I offer myself as a bait to entice him out of his hiding hole?
Suddenly, another course of action opened up before me, one which would set me for ever beyond the pale of the law.
Lampe had disappeared. His wife presumed that he was dead. She had come to the Fortress to report him missing. Could I turn the situation to my advantage? All I had to do was call Stadtschen, inform him that the man was nowhere to be found, provide a detailed description, and suggest that Lampe might have been murdered. A search would be set in motion. If he were found alive, he would be brought to me for questioning. Then, I would have him where I wanted him.
I poured myself a glass of wine, and drank it off in a single draught. As the liquid traced its acid path to my stomach, I realised with a shudder what would follow on once I had him in my custody. A terrible energy began to surge through my veins. My thoughts were swept up, invaded, conquered by the recollection of a cold grey morning ten years before. The intoxicating smell of blood as the blade scythed effortlessly through the neck of the French king. I clutched my fists to my eyes, trying to cancel that image from my memory.
I would kill Martin Lampe.
I sat still for quite some time, seeking to reclaim possession of myself, struggling to remember who I was, to understand what I had become – what I was about to become. I could not risk a public trial. The manipulation of justice is no simple matter. If Lampe were forced to stand before me in the dock, I would have to prove his guilt in full. A magistrate is charged not only to condemn guilt, he must also demonstrate what led the felon to his error. Too much might be said in a courtroom debate of Professor Kant’s influence over his valet. But if I gave orders to take the man up for his own safety, who would question my motives? If something happened while he was in my care, would any man dare to accuse me?
A short time later, a knock came at the door, and a soldier entered carrying despatches. ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ he apologised, setting them down on my desk. ‘Officer Stadtschen sent these.’
I glanced at the two letters, waiting for the door to close. The larger one, a white envelope with an imposing red seal, brought a lump to my throat as I slit it open. It was one of those missives all Prussians in the civil administration dread to receive, an anonymous secretary informing me that I was to give a full account of myself. A report of my investigation to date was required for submission to His Majesty, King Frederick Wilhelm, the following morning.
I let the paper fall on the table.
What was I to do? Could I avoid the Royal Imperative? Postpone the task until I was in a better position to reveal to the King what I wished him to know of the situation in Königsberg? I picked the letter up, read it once more, let it drop back onto the table, turning my attention to the second despatch, which seemed less intimidating. This message bore no Hohenzollern seal. It was a single sheet of grey paper, folded in four, and closed with a loop of string. But as I read what Stadtschen had written, my heart began to race.
…a heap of bones. Tatters of clothing suggest the victim may have been a man. He had been chased through the woods, as streaks and stains of blood in the snow reveal, and was torn to pieces as he tried to escape. Pawprints indicate at least a dozen animals in the pack. The beasts were famished…
Another body had been found. Why had I not been informed at once?
My conception of the murders that Martin Lampe had committed was well-defined, precise in every detail. Whoever he was, the victim had not been killed by Lampe. But that did not diminish my impatience with Stadtschen’s interfering ways. With Koch dead, he had spotted an opportunity for his own advancement. He had taken upon himself the responsibility to have the soldiers collect the bones in a sack, and bring them to the Fortress. ‘The remains will be held for a day in case someone comes to claim the body,’ he noted officiously. ‘If no one does, burial in a pauper’s grave will follow on.’
A groan of angered exasperation escaped me.
Did he think I would tell General Katowice what a clever fellow he was? Did he hope that I would mention him by name in my report to the King? I read on, my annoyance flaring into white-hot anger as I neared the end.
‘Though not within the city walls, the place where the body was found still falls within the jurisdiction of Herr Procurator,’ Stadtschen continued, ‘being the abandoned hunting ground of the ancient feudal manor of…’
I jumped up from my chair, threw open the door, and called out the name of Stadtschen with all the force of rage in my lungs.
The empty corridor boomed with the sound. Footsteps clattered further off, and the echo of my cry was taken up by other voices, all of them calling the name of Stadtschen.
The man arrived at a gallop a minute later, his wig set lopsidedly on his head, the top button of his uniform loose, as if my summons to duty had caught him unprepared. His sweaty face might have been wiped with a knob of lard, and I took some pleasure in his discomfiture.
‘Sir?’ he said, breathing heavily after the exertion.
‘Where is it, Stadtschen? Where’s the body?’
He stared at me, his face a theatre of alternating expressions: surprise, shock, fear, anxious submission to my authority.
‘Body, sir?’
‘The man in the woods near Belefest,’ I snapped, waving his despatch in his face. ‘Who gave you permission to tamper with it? Are you blind to what is going on in Königsberg, Stadtschen? Someone is killing people. The only way to catch him is to search each murder scene for clues. But you decided to move the corpse! I suppose your men have trampled all over the place like a herd of cows.’
‘Procurator Stiffeniis,’ he interrupted, his voice trembling, ‘there was no reason to think that he had been killed by any man.’ He pointed his finger at the despatch in my hand. ‘I reported the fact there, sir. Near the end. “Ravaged by wild animals.” Wolves, most probably. They’d torn…’
‘What makes you think the wolves killed him?’ I shouted. ‘The murderer could have chased this man through the woods. The victim may have been dead before the animals got to him.’
The possibility had never entered the numbskull’s mind.
‘But, sir!’ he protested again. ‘The murderer always strikes inside the city walls. That’s why I thought…’
‘You thought?’
I mimicked him sarcastically, but his desperate reasoning struck a spark of hope in my heart. He was right. Martin Lampe had never killed outside the town. Yet Belefest was where he lived. Was he hiding somewhere near his house, or in the woods behind it? I had seen his footprints in the snow on the path that led from the village to Königsberg less than an hour before. His wife had verified them for me. Had Lampe killed someone else on his way home from town? Or had he himself been torn to pieces after murdering Sergeant Koch?
‘Is the body still in the Fortress?’
‘Indeed it is, sir.’ Officer Stadtschen seemed to grow before my eyes as he replied. Unlike the ones that had gone before, this question had not been prompted by anger, no
r tainted by accusation. His massive chest swelled out, his back straightened, his puffy face relaxed once more, taking on its usual air of arrogant self-righteousness. ‘We can go there now, sir. If you wish, that is, Herr Stiffeniis,’ he added more cautiously.
‘Lead on,’ I said.
On the ground floor, not far from the main gate, Stadtschen lifted a flaming torch from the wall and handed it to me. He took another one for himself, opened a narrow arched door, and we went spiralling down the staircase that led to the dungeons and maze of passages lying beneath the Fortress. I had been there in the company of Sergeant Koch on the night of my arrival in Königsberg. On that occasion, we had met a necromancer, and heard his animated conversation with the lifeless shell of a murdered man.
This time, I intended the inspection of the body to be strictly factual.
At the bottom, we turned right and entered a narrow tunnel which had been hacked out of the solid rock at some time in the distant past. The rough walls were slick with damp, dark green with moss. Piles of broken chairs, tables, beds and stinking mattresses had been abandoned there to mould and decay. Stacks of ancient breastplates stamped with a double-headed eagle lay rusting and forgotten in a heap. Old-fashioned powder-muskets with blunderbuss barrels were ranged along the walls like fossilised flowers. Each object seemed malignly intent on tripping us up, blocking the way, or falling down and burying us alive. The flickering torchlight saved us from the dangers, but there was little the flames could do against the cold.
As Stadtschen said in utter seriousness: ‘We are in the impenetrable bowels of the Earth, sir. Long before Königsberg existed, before men made houses, this is where they used to dwell.’
It was hard to imagine any human being surviving there for very long. The cold was penetrating, it seemed to filter through my skin and take possession of my bones. The heavy woollen garments that had kept me warm – despite the freezing fog and icy winds that had lashed Königsberg since my arrival – were useless in that dismal cave. I might have been naked for all the good they did me. I am not averse to cold weather. A crisp winter’s morning, frost fresh on the grass, sparkling sun, clean air, is one of Nature’s delights, but the desolate chill of the cold earth has an unpleasant effect on my spirits. I was terrified by the odour of damp and organic decay while still a child. Every year on the anniversary of my grandfather’s death, Father would unlock the door and lead the family and servants down to the crypt to pray for the souls of our ancestors. I knew the smell of the tomb from a tender age. Indeed, I often asked myself in gaping terror whether the dead souls of my forebears would be condemned to breathe that musty stench for Eternity.
With a swoosh of his torch, Officer Stadtschen spun round to face me.
‘Here we are, sir,’ he said, indicating a heavy iron door. He seemed to have regained his mettle. Perhaps he hoped the visual evidence of his good work would convince me to revise my opinion of him. ‘Cold it may be, Herr Procurator, but a corpse will not last long down here. It’s the damp that does it. Rot sets in, then there’s the rats…’
‘I can imagine!’ I cut in sharply. I did not need a catalogue of horrors to compound my discomfort.
‘I only meant to say, sir, that bodies are kept in the charnel house as short a time as possible. Most of them have been exposed above ground to all sorts of horrible mis–’
‘How long has this corpse been here?’ I asked more forcefully, drowning out his evident delight in the mechanics of human decomposition.
‘I’d hardly call it a corpse…’
‘How long?’ I insisted.
‘Four hours, sir,’ he said. ‘Bills are being posted up around the town. I gave the word myself.’ He stopped, uncertain of my reaction. ‘Do you want me to stop them from being put up, sir?’
‘Let them be,’ I replied. ‘Someone may come forward with news of the man.’
‘I tried to tell you what I was about, sir,’ he went on. ‘But when I knocked at your door, you did not answer. They told me in the guard-room that you’d left the Fortress in the company of a lady. I wrote that note before I went to bed, and told them to deliver it the minute you came back. I’d been on duty all night, sir.’
I heard him, but I was not listening. I was doing my sums. If the body had been deposited in the charnel house four hours before, then it had probably been found two, three, or even four hours earlier. That is, the man had died at the very least eight, ten, or even more hours before. I glanced at my watch, and noted that it was twenty past nine. Midnight, then, was the likely hour of his demise, though it was possible he had died some hours before. Physical examination would give me a better idea of the state of preservation and the rigidity of the corpse, but the timing did suggest that this might be the body of Martin Lampe. If so, I calculated, some hours after killing Sergeant Koch, he had been ravaged by wolves while returning home along the forest path. Of course, he could have died at any time after three o’clock the day before (the hour at which Koch’s body had been discovered in Sturtenstrasse), but if, as I believed, midnight proved to be the more likely hour, where had he been hiding? What had he been doing in the interval?
Then again, I reasoned, if the corpse were not Lampe’s, but that of another of his victims – that is, having killed Sergeant Koch, he had chosen to attack someone else as he made his way to Belefest – then I was seriously in trouble. Had Lampe abandoned his chosen modus operandi and favourite weapon, and given himself up to casual slaughter? Two murders in one day. Was his homicidal fury growing? Was his lust for blood urging him to kill with greater frequency?
As Stadtschen pulled back the rusty bolt to the charnel house, the iron door grated noisily on the rough stone floor, covering the words of invocation that escaped from my lips. I prayed to God that the corpse of Martin Lampe would be waiting for me. Certain knowledge that he was dead would end the terror that had taken possession of Königsberg, and cancel the murderous obsession that had taken root in my own mind.
‘Cover your mouth, sir,’ Stadtschen advised, blocking the way, and holding me in check.
‘One of our lads was carried off this morning with choleric fever. Spewing his guts up when he wasn’t busy on the latrine. Day and night for almost a week. What a way to go!’
Stadtschen raised his hand to his mouth and nose, while I turned my head to the side and used my jacket collar for the same purpose. The stink as we entered the room was hideous and sweet. The walls had been washed with lime, and the flickering light from our torches rebounded off the walls in a blinding flash. The space was empty and bare, except for a large tin bath placed against the far wall. I stepped across, glanced into it, then looked away. The naked corpse of a man had been laid flat on its back, eyes popping, broad chest sunken, skin wrinkled and yellow, the stomach swollen almost to bursting. Though I struggled not to think of it, I realised it would not be long before the nauseous gases exploded out of him.
I struggled to concentrate my mind on the task at hand. I did not have Professor Kant to help or direct me, as he had done when he took me to visit his Wunderkammer for the first time, proudly showing me the severed heads of the victims suspended in distilled wine.
‘Over there, sir,’ Stadtschen replied, waving his torch towards the far corner.
The man found in the wood had been laid on a mat of rough hessian. Stadtschen was right, I admitted. ‘Corpse’ was not the correct word. I fought the rising tide of revulsion in my gullet, and heard Stadtschen clear his throat and spit behind my back.
‘I hope he was dead when they stripped him clean,’ he murmured, as I fixed my torch in a ring on the wall.
Resolving to do as Professor Kant had taught me, I knelt down to examine attentively what was left of the body. I noted ribs and bones, sections of vertebrae which had been broken in at least three places, skeletal remains of the arms and the legs, everything tinged pale orange or dark brown where the muscles and flesh had been torn away. Shreds of transparent tendon, scraps of gristle and elastic cartilage still
clung to the joints, though hardly a trace of soft tissue remained. It was impossible to determine the state of rigor mortis. So, there was no way of guessing how long ago the man might have been dead.
‘Jesus, they were hungry, sir!’
Stadtschen’s words were blunt and crude, but I admitted to myself that his observation was apt enough. Searching through my pockets, I drew out the long key that opened the door to my office. With some difficulty, I used it to turn the glistening skull towards me. In that instant, the true significance of the memento mori with which we love to decorate our Prussian churches struck me with a force that I had never felt before. Indeed, it took me a moment to pluck up the courage to look more carefully at the skeletal face, and the detached lower jaw. The skin was gone entirely, the ears and flesh of the cheeks and chin having been devoured. On the crown of the head, a tuft of hair had escaped being pulled away from the scalp in the frenzy of feeding. Though the strands were soaked in blood, the tips were clean. And they were white. A man of a certain age, I decided, or one who had aged prematurely. Might his hair have blanched as the attack took place? I dismissed this fanciful notion, my thoughts turning instinctively to Martin Lampe, Kant’s valet, the secretary who had transcribed his master’s work at dead of night, the servant I had never ever seen. Lampe was almost seventy years old. His hair could well have been white.
‘They started with the juicier bits, sir. Cheeks and lips, muscles and fat, the flesh on his arms and legs and whatever was attached to that thing there.’
Stadtschen was standing close behind me, leaning forward, peering eagerly over my shoulder. I would have preferred him to stand further off and let me get on with my work in peace, but his finger stretched forward and touched the skull, which lolled and rolled onto its side, then came to rest like a soup bowl, giving an extra twist to the gristly tubes of the trachea and oesophagus, which had somehow survived the onslaught.
HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason Page 38