HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  As we moved around, looking for a way inside, the stench grew overpowering. Severed heads had been impaled on pointed sticks. I recognised the curved tusks of a boar, a black bear, the striped muzzle of a large badger, the rotting head of a lynx, but could not put a name to others. They reminded me of the hideous gargoyles the French used to decorate their Gothic cathedrals. But this blood was real, the eyes glazed, the yellow teeth long and sharp.

  ‘What sort of beast would live in such a manner?’ muttered Mutiez, turning to me. ‘Will this convince you, sir?’

  I did not reply, but forced myself to examine the trophies attentively, noting the worms and maggots that wriggled and squirmed inside the eye sockets and muzzle of the boar.

  ‘He is quite a hunter,’ I said.

  ‘A prodigious supplier to the company cook . . .’

  The lieutenant’s voice faded away, a grimace twisted his face.

  ‘What’s up, Henri?’ Lavedrine enquired. ‘Wondering whether the meat from these things ended up on your plate?’

  I could not shake free of the belief that what we had seen in the house, what we were seeing there, were related episodes in the same nightmare. The mutilation of the children and this butchery were the work of the same remorseless hand. My heart sank at the thought of finding Frau Gottewald. Whatever Durskeitner was, his predatory nature seemed no different from that of the beasts he trapped and slaughtered. I shrank with shame to think that he was Prussian.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  Lavedrine narrowed his eyes and glanced at me.

  ‘I am ready,’ I said, hiding behind a show of boldness, taking paper and graphite from my satchel, though my hands were shaking.

  Mutiez pulled aside the wicket gate and bent low. He seemed to think twice, as if some obstacle prevented him from going further. The creaking of the door had set off a barrage of noise inside, as if a thousand devils were eager to escape from Durskeitner’s hell.

  He drew his sword and dashed in. Lavedrine and I followed him.

  Our lanterns illuminated a scene that I will never forget. The hut was crammed with roughly made wooden cages. On one side, squirrels, moles, ferrets, hedgehogs, rats, and voles. Against the other wall, animals of potentially greater dimensions, though they were all extremely young: a deer, three snarling lynx kittens, a baby bear, three infant badgers, a dozen fox cubs, and many another creature. Along the far wall, cages full of birds were piled precariously one upon another. Twittering sparrows, tits, blackbirds, crows and starlings. A young kestrel or kite, which was nursing a broken wing. Before we finished that morning, I had counted fifty-seven cages in the menagerie. All these creatures began to cry out in fear, showing off sharp teeth and baring their claws, while some began to squabble in their cages, snarling and snapping at one another, as if our arrival had signalled the start of a fight to the death.

  Lavedrine ventured into the corner, pointing out a bed of moss, complete with torn and filthy blankets thrown roughly to one side. Above this nest, a French military jacket was hanging from the wall on a peg, together with a collection of ropes and cords of different lengths and thicknesses, and a pair of hats roughly fashioned from fur.

  Turning back towards us, Lavedrine raised his hand and gently touched the skeleton of a bird that had been suspended from the roof by a piece of twine. Wings outspread, as if in flight, it began to spin wildly. Above our heads, a flock of dead birds shifted and twisted on the currents of cold air that entered by the door and escaped through gaps in the walls.

  Taking care that my mantle did not touch the unsavoury mixture of mud and excrement, I half-knelt on the floor to make a rough sketch of the layout of the place.

  ‘What do we know about this man?’ Lavedrine asked above the noise, making a circle of the room, gazing into each cage as he passed, bending low to peer into the least accessible.

  ‘Not much, sir,’ the officer replied, looking nervously around him. ‘He may have told the guards something since I left him, of course.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Lavedrine continued, but he did not seem convinced.

  He reached above his head and set another skeleton spinning. The bird seemed to come to life, trying desperately to make its escape. ‘Corvus nigro,’ he added with a thin smile. ‘A scavenger and pest. One of the largest birds in Europe. This one died, or was killed, before it grew.’ He glared at Mutiez. ‘Does the hunter know anything about Frau Gottewald’s fate, do you think?’

  I gave over attempting to represent the chaos. For the sake of clarity, I had limited my sketching to a rough indication of the general layout of the hut, adding a word here and there—birds, vermin, and so on—to indicate what was contained in the cages, more as a show of methodology than a useful exercise.

  ‘Do you doubt that he’s guilty?’ I asked.

  Lavedrine shrugged. ‘What have we got here? Dead animals, but no dead woman.’

  His attitude continued to puzzle me. What did he want? A Prussian had been captured, a man that even the most patriotic of his countrymen would judge to be a criminal type. Animal-skinners, bone-merchants, men who handled the carcasses of animals—with the exception of licensed butchers—belonged to the lowest social class. Durskeitner lived from hand to mouth, trapping game, slitting throats, stripping the creatures of their fur, trading their meat for a crust of bread. On the evidence we had seen, he was a reprobate who went further than his sordid trade required. He lopped off heads, and stuck them on poles. A savage. He had admitted entering the house, seeing the corpses. Did Lavedrine see fit to defend a monster who had cut the throats of three children, sexually mutilating two of them into the bargain?

  ‘This hideaway is close to the house,’ he continued. ‘Durskeitner must have passed there often on his way to town. He sells fresh game to anyone willing to pay, or barter.’ He raised his hand and set another skeleton spinning. Looking pointedly at me, he asked: ‘Would Frau Stiffeniis swap carrots for a fresh rabbit from a poacher that she knew?’

  Mutiez held up the palms of his hands. ‘Et voilà! He saw the woman. Some violent passionate impulse possessed him. Then, he eliminated the witnesses.’

  ‘And mutilated them after death,’ Lavedrine reminded him.

  Mutiez scratched his head.

  ‘Just wait till you see him, sir.’

  Lavedrine laughed, clapping his hands sharply, which set the animals off in a frenzy of scuffling and rustling again. ‘Is that what you think, Henri? Sex? Let me ask you a question. I’d wager fifty francs on your answer. This renowned slayer of rats and mice is physically impaired, is he not?’

  Mutiez stared at him, eyes wide open with surprise.

  Lavedrine ploughed roughly on. ‘Just look around you. This man is not only a hunter. These animals are a source of income, but that is not the principal use that they serve. He hoards these creatures, holds them captive, lords it over them. He is their king and master! Have you ever eaten a badger, Henri? The meat would kill you. A kestrel, or a rat? These animals are not all edible. There is a non-utilitarian principle at work here,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘They look well nourished, regularly fed. These beasts have been treated with care, I would say.’

  Mutiez closed his right eye and sighted down his nose, as if to say: ‘What in God’s name are you thinking, sir?’ But Lavedrine was looking pointedly at me.

  Was he trying to impress me with his investigative skill? Was he telling me to keep to my place and leave the brainwork to him? There was a superior air about his way of thinking out loud that seemed to hint that whatever I had seen in Lotingen (or in Königsberg with Kant, for that matter), it was naught compared to the sights that he had seen and the cases he had solved in Paris. If that smile were a provocation, I ignored it. I had no intention of being drawn into a pointless discussion.

  Even so, he had made a strong impression on me. Perhaps it showed on my face, for he said: ‘Strange, don’t you think, Stiffeniis? The man is physically hampered.’

  ‘How did you guess?’ Mutiez
asked.

  ‘It was not a guess,’ Lavedrine replied. ‘I simply interpret what I see, Stiffeniis. If you had observed the closeness of the cages to the ground, the small stature of these animals, you would have reached the same conclusion.’

  I bridled at the mention of my name. He used it carelessly, the way a teacher calls the name of one to catch the attention of many.

  ‘He only kills the largest specimens,’ he continued. ‘He skins them, chops them to bits, then impales the useless heads on stakes like so many scarecrows.’

  ‘Is that what he uses them for?’ I asked, won over by this clever interpretation of those horrid trophies. As a child, I remembered helping our serfs to plant their men of straw to frighten off the ravaging birds in my father’s cornfields.

  ‘Only the larger heads. They tell us that Durskeitner is an able hunter, and proud of his skills. Also, they frighten off scavengers that might feed on the fresh meat. Which brings us back to these cages.’ Lavedrine walked along one row, running his fingers against the bars with a loud clicking sound as his nails struck the uprights. ‘They contain animals that are small by nature, or in terms of maturity. So, what does he feed them on?’ His finger suddenly stopped, pointing into a cage that held three lynx kittens who began to spit and snarl ferociously. ‘These have been fed on meat. Fresh meat, and generously. There’s still a good bit left inside the cage. Liver, by the look of it, and from a large deer, like the one hanging up outside. Each one of the carnivores—there are hundreds here—has been rewarded with a piece of meat from a larger animal. He treats them well, but when they outgrow his pleasure, he’ll kill them, too. It is an endless chain, and Durskeitner exploits it like the dominator that he is. Can you see one single large animal inside the hut?’

  Like children set loose on a treasure hunt, Mutiez and I began peeping into the cages. I would have liked to find the exception that brought his castle tumbling down, though I was disappointed.

  ‘You’re right, sir!’ Mutiez cried excitedly, darting around the room.

  If he were right, I asked myself, did the evidence prove that Durskeitner was the author of the massacre, or was Lavedrine convinced that the man was innocent? Something in the Frenchman’s manner made me less than certain of his opinion. And in the course of his detailed disquisition on the arrangement of the animals, he had made no reply to the question that Mutiez had asked.

  ‘What is this physical defect?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you asking me, or Mutiez?’ Lavedrine replied with a sardonic smile. ‘Do you trust my intuition, or must he tell us what he knows for a fact?’

  ‘Before we entered the cottage,’ I reminded him, ‘you claimed to be able to read the signs at the scene of a crime by means of your senses alone. I should like to see this remarkable talent put to work, sir. Here and now. As you say, Mutiez will confirm the accuracy of your predictions.’

  Was it a challenge? I suppose it was, yet I knew that I should have been grateful for his refusal to condemn a vagrant Prussian mole-catcher out of hand. Mutiez had said nothing to deny that he had touched on a remarkable truth. The die was cast against me. But it did not change the fact that I found the Frenchman’s ability to deduce physical deformity in Durskeitner so disquieting.

  What had he seen in that hut, that I had not?

  ‘Procurator Stiffeniis is surprised by my hypothesis, Mutiez. He asks you to confirm or deny it. Durskeitner is deformed, is he not?’

  Mutiez scratched his neck inside his collar, an embarrassed smile on his face.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Stop there!’ Lavedrine cried out, taking a step towards him. ‘Let us say that this man is not of normal height. Let’s say that he is affected by “nanismus”. By which I mean that he is a dwarf.’

  Mutiez touched his side below the ribcage with the peak of his képi. ‘This high, sir. If he’d lived anywhere else, he’d be entertaining kings. But here in Prussia, giants are revered.’

  ‘I am right then. And for no better reason than his diminutive size,’ Lavedrine concluded, raising his hands like a lawyer, ‘you, Henri Mutiez, consider this Prussian dwarf to be guilty of slitting the throats of children and abducting women. Are you of the same opinion, Stiffeniis?’

  Was Lavedrine convinced that I would defend Durskeitner despite the evidence, simply because he was a Prussian, like myself?

  ‘One thing is certain,’ I said. ‘You do not believe in the thesis that you have just described. Some sixth sense leads you to deduce that Durskeitner is not like other men, but it does not tell you whether he is the murderer. Nor that he has carried off the mother.’

  Lavedrine bunched his cheeks and let out a sigh.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I wish this sixth sense were a thousand times sharper. I might have solved a hundred crimes that have puzzled me.’

  ‘If Durskeitner is innocent, I’ll be surprised,’ Mutiez interrupted.

  ‘Remember what I have told you: there is purpose here,’ Lavedrine went on. ‘He kills animals for meat and skins. This is not senseless butchery. More to the point, he has not deflowered them afterwards. If Durskeitner, the dwarf, protects and nurtures the young, why in God’s name would he murder three children?’

  Lavedrine seemed to be engaged in a furious debate with himself, as if he had thought the argument through, but feared he might have reached the wrong conclusion.

  ‘To possess himself of the mother,’ I replied. ‘To rape and kill her.’

  Lavedrine shook his head, and looked around in silence, as if he might have missed some clue that would throw a shining light upon the matter. ‘It makes no sense,’ he murmured. ‘No sense at all. There is something here that does not fit. Something incompatible with what we have seen at the Gottewald house. They are such different places . . .’

  ‘If I may say a word,’ Mutiez interposed. ‘If she is dead and buried, she’s somewhere here. With your permission, I’ll have a squad brought up with spades. If we can find any sign of freshly turned soil, or leaves that have been shifted, we’ll be well on our way to ending this mystery.’

  ‘It will take time, but something may come of it.’ He turned to me. ‘What’s your opinion, Stiffeniis?’

  I nodded, my mind empty of any alternative proposal. ‘I’d like to finish sketching,’ I said. ‘Then we should speak to the prisoner.’

  ‘While you are busy, Mutiez will send for reinforcements, then he and I will make a more complete search of the hut and outlying land. We can send back anything of interest with the soldiers and make a more thorough analysis when we get back to town. Does that suit you?’ The memory of Kant’s macabre ‘laboratory of crime’ flashed through my mind: the human heads floating in glass jars, their clothes stored in boxes, a folder of drawings recording the exact position in which the dead bodies had been found. Lavedrine would have loved that harrowing place.

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  We divided our tasks, working for little more than an hour. I finished my drawings—seven sketches of the interior and exterior of the hut—while they went through the contents of two tin chests, finding nothing except for bits of clothes, worn-out shoes, and a rusted knife broken off at the hilt. Then, we retraced our path through the forest led by one soldier, while the others remained behind to guard the hut.

  A phrase Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written jangled in my head.

  He spoke of the ‘delicious inebriation’ he always felt while wandering in the woods near Paris. That morning, I had felt the violence that Nature can hide. I had had my fill of woods. My only desire was to return to my home, and the comfort of my wife and children.

  8

  FRANZ DURSKEITNER WAS being held in Bitternau Fortress.

  I stood with Count Dittersdorf by a window on the first floor, looking out on a courtyard on the northern side of the building. As we spoke, we watched French soldiers down below transporting bloody carcasses on their shoulders from a cart to the kitchen. Another man was pushing a handcart loaded with steaming intestin
es to a rubbish dump in the corner. The stench of boiled horse-meat and rotten cabbage was nauseating.

  ‘Somebody will have to go to Kamenetz,’ I said, my bones still aching from the chill of the woods. Lavedrine had raised the question as we returned to town. ‘The father must be told.’

  ‘Make sure the task falls to you, Hanno!’ Dittersdorf urged. His voice was a hoarse whisper as he issued this command.

  I wanted to speak, but he prevented me, laying his hand on my arm.

  ‘Not now,’ he hissed, barely moving his lips. His gaze shifted to Mutiez and Lavedrine, who were talking by the door. He squeezed tightly on my arm. ‘For the love of God, they must be kept away from that place!’

  I glanced towards the Frenchmen. ‘That will not be easy, sir,’ I whispered. ‘Mutiez may send his own men. Lavedrine might want to go himself.’

  Dittersdorf’s other fist beat impatiently against my imprisoned arm.

  ‘General Katowice is there,’ he growled. ‘You will go, Hanno! Do I make myself clear?’

  The Count’s ferocity startled me.

  ‘Hasn’t he been put out to grass?’ I asked. ‘Katowice, and others like him?’

  ‘The French are not so stupid,’ Dittersdorf replied, sotto voce. ‘They have left a number of minor fortresses under our jurisdiction for the moment, but only to avoid swelling the ranks of the rebels, or pushing them into the open arms of Russia.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sooner or later, the French will want to extend their dominion to every forgotten corner of the kingdom. General Katowice hopes that it will be as late as possible. We should humour him, Hanno.’