HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  The man did not so much as blink. ‘That’s done easy, sir. Digging would have been a bit of a job with this hard frost,’ he said with a smile that seemed to light up his face. He chewed on the proposition for a moment, before adding: ‘I have the key, sir.’

  Lavedrine pulled out some of the coins and thrust them at the man. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  Five minutes later, we stood watching while Pieter Sweiten fumbled with the keys on a large keyring, looking for the one that would unlock the perforated metal grating that gave access to the von Mandel family tomb. In comparison with the more recent and fashionable pyramid, it was an unimpressive block of weathered stonemasonry, laid over the interred chamber of the burial crypt, which was reached by means of a short flight of five or six steps. Covered with snow, the pediment dripping icicles, the broad rim of the capstone of the funeral chamber bore a carved legend: Eccoci, mortali. Qui riposiamo per sempre. Lasciateci dormie in pace.

  ‘It is Italian,’ Lavedrine said with a dismissive shrug. ‘Leave us alone is what it says. More or less.’

  ‘There!’ the estate caretaker exclaimed. Having found the key, he had released the lock and given the iron grating a resounding kick with his boot which set the air clanging. ‘All that rust and ice,’ he said by way of exclamation.

  ‘Do you have a lamp in the house?’ Lavedrine asked him.

  ‘I do, sir,’ the man replied, though he did not move.

  ‘Would you mind getting it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, carefully climbing the steps, which were treacherously slippery on account of the snow that had gathered down there in the stairwell.

  ‘We may be home in time for dinner,’ Lavedrine murmured in the interval of loitering, though it was clear that dinner was the furthest thing from his mind. ‘If Kant was right, the question may be quickly settled.’

  The old man returned, his oil-lamp already lit, and we made our way down into the tomb: Pieter Sweiten going first, Lavedrine following, while I came last.

  ‘No one’s been down here since the old Duke died. That’s twenty-odd year ago, as I do recall it.’

  The chamber was cold, dark, damp, musty. The four walls were dressed unevenly in stones of the same material as the exterior, but these were stained brown and green with mildew and rot. Tangled black weeds, which had flourished in the summer, were lank and odorous. The air was heavy, unclean, lacking in phlogiston, and it caused the lantern flame to gutter and fade.

  ‘Here we are, now,’ said Pieter Sweiten, dropping down on one knee, rubbing at the stone with the elbow of his coat, spitting and trying again when his first attempt to clean the stone failed. ‘This here’s the resting-place of Humbert-Arthur von Mandel, 6th Duke of Albemarle and Svetloye. That were my master. I helped to carry him down. It took six of us.’

  ‘Which stone covers the tomb of the child, Georg-Albert?’ Lavedrine cut him off, his hand falling heavily on the shoulder of the kneeling man.

  Pieter Sweiten looked up, his face as dark and grey as his beard in the poor light. ‘Now, that I don’t know, sir. He died afore I came here, that child, I mean. You can probably read them things better than me,’ he added, which meant, not surprisingly, that our guide was unable to read for himself.

  ‘Give me the lamp,’ I said, and almost snatched it from his hand. Apart from the freezing cold, a numbness had begun to creep into my bones at the thought of what we were about to do. I wanted to get it over with. Moving close to the wall, I held up the lantern, and peered at the next stone.

  ‘Dorothea-Ann Lundstadt, Duchess & Wife, 1741–1770,’ I read, bringing the lamp nearer to the stone as I struggled to read the rough, old-fashioned lettering. ‘And here is the little one. Georg-Albert von Mandel, Aged 8 months, Stolen in his Sleep. Slain by a Foul Hand, 2nd December, 1765.’

  ‘Sweiten, can you pull that stone out from the wall?’ asked Lavedrine, as if it were the most natural thing to do when entering a funeral crypt.

  ‘I can do it, sir,’ the man replied, ‘but I ain’t so sure I want to.’

  ‘This is a criminal investigation,’ I reminded him. ‘When we have finished our work, I will write you a note in the cemetery register, in case it is ever needed.’

  With a great deal of hesitation, and no lack of grumbling, Sweiten put his shoulder to the work, wedging an iron spike with a flattened end between the stones, then pushing and twisting and grunting until the slab came suddenly free with a sickening wrench of stone on grating stone.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Herr Magistrate?’ he said, his eyes holding on to mine in the earthy gloom. ‘I would not want to get myself in trouble, now.’

  ‘This gentleman is a French investigator, I am a Prussian magistrate. This child was murdered forty-three years ago and we have found new evidence which may reveal who killed him. And why.’

  Pieter Sweiten stared from one to the other. ‘Who killed him, sir? They hanged the murderer forty years ago. And knowing won’t do him no good,’ he objected. ‘Will looking at his coffin tell you who murdered him?’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ said Lavedrine. ‘But looking in his coffin may.’

  ‘Oh, Lord help us!’ the old man cried, jumping to his feet, pulling back from the violated tomb, the dark shape of the coffin still inside the hole, the faint odour of organic decay, a life corrupted by worms and damp, creeping out.

  ‘You can wait outside if you wish,’ Lavedrine added, putting himself between the man and the open tomb, edging him towards the door, the steps, the fresh air, and the daylight. ‘We won’t be long.’

  Pieter Sweiten seemed to suck air into his lungs as he turned and fled. He slipped and fell on the steps going up, but no cry escaped from his lips. Pain told him that he was living, while the child down in the burial chamber was not.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ said Lavedrine, throwing off his cloak.

  With some misgivings, I bent forward to help him.

  Together we reached into the damp, cold niche, and dragged out the coffin. Then, we laid it flat on the frozen earth. The wood was soft in places. It seemed to give like flesh, to yield and fold itself around my fingers. But Lavedrine was immune to any shuddering sensation of revulsion. He picked up the iron spike, then looked at me.

  ‘Shall I do it?’ he asked. ‘Or will you? You are the magistrate, after all.’

  ‘This was your idea,’ I replied. ‘Get on with it’.

  He wedged the thin edge between the wooden top and the deeper basin of the small black funeral casket, then suddenly he stopped. ‘These are winged nuts, I think. The box may be easier to open than I thought.’

  He dropped down on his knees and began to exert pressure. His body seemed to quiver, the veins standing out like snakes on his temples, as he twisted hard against the incrustation and the rust of so many years in the corrosive ground.

  He let out a grunt as the first nut gave. The second came away more easily. And the third, with no more than reasonable pressure. ‘This one won’t budge,’ he said, labouring hard to no avail on the fourth and final nut. He reached for the iron spike again, wedged it into the gap, edged the point as close to the nut as he could force it to go, then dropped all his weight on the lever. ‘Archimedes has a lot to be thanked for,’ he said, as the wood gave with a loud snap, and the lid of the coffin flew up and fell away, exposing the contents of the casket.

  ‘Are ye all right, sirs?’ Pieter Sweiten called from above.

  ‘Aye,’ answered Lavedrine, muttering to me, ‘as right as we’ll ever be.’

  ‘As I am now,’ I whispered, looking into the coffin, remembering something I had read on a gravestone, ‘So shall ye be.’

  ‘But you will take up a lot more room,’ Lavedrine warned darkly. Clearly, the situation itself did not amuse him, but something in my hesitation did.

  Inside the rotten wooden box, the body of Georg-Albert von Mandel had been reduced, but not to dust, as is commonly supposed. The skeleton had fallen in upon itself, or perhaps it
had exploded, then settled back in a disorganised stark blackened shell, the remains of the blood a fine brown powder beneath the tangle of the bones. Rags, which might once have been a white burial gown or a winding-cloth, had faded to grey, stained green and brown, slick with snail and worm trails. The material had split and stretched, then rotted like a stark spidery web.

  ‘The skull,’ said Lavedrine, recalling me to my duty. ‘That is all that concerns us, Stiffeniis. Don’t let your imagination run away with your faculties.’

  I made no move to touch those sad remains, watching in petrified silence as the Frenchman stretched his hands inside the coffin, reaching for the head. Two lifeless holes in that tiny mask of death seemed to stare up at us, the jaw hanging loose, held by a sinew on one side only, as if the ghost of the child, disturbed after so many years, were amazed at such temerity, and wished to scream, but could not.

  ‘He’s still wearing his bonnet, you see.’ Lavedrine caressed the grey crusted cap with the tips of his fingers. ‘Is it the same bonnet that Kant mentioned in his report, do you think?’

  I tried to speak, but no words came. I thought of my own children, and I was horrified. What would Helena say if she could see me? The fright of it registered like a voltaic shock. Lavedrine had taken the head in his hands like a baby marrow, and he was attempting to separate it from the body. Like the roots of the vegetable, some obstinate muscle, nerve, or sinew refused to yield, and he was obliged to apply more pressure than was strictly decent or respectful. Then, there was a crack. Whatever it was gave up the fight, and he held the head of the baby couched in his hands. Some crawling creature fell from the cavity onto his right hand, and he shook it rapidly, holding the skull in his left hand only. The forehead was fragmented at various points. As if some object with a small dull point had tried to penetrate the skull and failed. A web of fine cracks like tracery had damaged the frontal plate of bone.

  The Frenchman pulled off the bonnet and held out the head to me in the palm of his hand. ‘This is what Kant would have done,’ he said, ‘but he was prevented. What do you make of it, Stiffeniis?’

  ‘It is a disturbing sight,’ I murmured. ‘Horrible . . .’

  ‘You miss my point,’ he snapped. Despite the macabre circumstances, he was vibrant with curiosity. His eyebrows arched, his head inclined towards his shoulder, he looked at me with a sort of cunning, irrepressible smile on his lips. ‘I am not interested in what you think,’ he went on. ‘I am interested in what you see.’

  For an instant, I slipped back in time. I was standing in Kant’s secret laboratory, examining the decapitated head of a man, which had been preserved inside a jar in wine. Kant had also been amused by my timidity in the face of mortality. He, too, had insisted that I should use my eyes, suppress my sentiments, and describe only what I was able to observe.

  ‘The skull is misshapen by Nature,’ I said, coughing to clear the emotion from my throat. ‘It appears to be much larger on the left side than it is on the right.’

  ‘Precisely,’ he said, the similarity with Kant ever greater. ‘Science is a peculiar trick; it requires an honest eye, and a blunt soul. And what do you . . . Rather, what would our friend, Aaron Jacob, make of such a serious malformation?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘He might see the coming of Lilith, or some such nonsense in it.’

  ‘But we do not,’ Lavedrine went on. It was as if he had discovered the invisible matter that every natural scientist seeks, but cannot find. ‘We stick to facts. The child was not normal. Georg-Albert von Mandel was eight months old, but the bulging of his skull was already evident. The mother certainly knew about it. Why else was she so troubled when the child’s bonnet went missing the day before he died? Why insist on covering the baby’s head? Even in death. Did she hope that no one would notice, but herself? Kant appears to have spotted something, after all.’ There was measureless admiration in his voice. ‘Just think what effects such a malformation, with subsequent compression of the brain, would have had on the child’s existence? Imbecility, at the least. This child was facing a difficult future, despite the immense fortune of his birth. But someone decided—mercifully, perhaps—to spare him the suffering.’

  ‘Kant guessed,’ I countered. ‘He did not know for sure. He was not allowed to examine the corpse. The child was not struck down by hatred, he said. Love was the cause. But we will never know the truth. In any case, it is not relevant to the Gottewald massacre. What has this expedition taught us that will solve that mystery? Nothing, I am tempted to . . .’

  ‘This case is as clear as day,’ Lavedrine declared.

  ‘Is it?’ I questioned. ‘All the actors are dead. You may hypothesise all you like, but you will never know for certain.’

  ‘We know enough, I believe,’ he said, as he replaced the skull gently inside the coffin and reached for the lid and the bolts. ‘Kant dared to hypothesise the unthinkable. Little Georg-Albert was put to sleep for all eternity, and love was the cause.’

  ‘A sleep that we have disturbed,’ I objected.

  ‘Let’s get it done, then. And quickly.’

  I helped him, twisting and tightening the bolts on one side of the coffin, while he applied himself to the fastenings on the other flank.

  As we walked back down the lane to Svetloye, the snow began to fall again. I had written and signed an official note in the graveyard register, concerning the examination of the corpse, and Pieter Sweiten had been rewarded for his help.

  We sat down at a table in the post-house, eating bread and cheese while we waited for the coach, talking over what we had discovered.

  ‘Karlus Wettig was innocent,’ Lavedrine concluded. ‘Do you remember the question that Kant posed? What reason could there be for the footman to murder the child in his cot? And deny it to the very end? Wetting was not the killer. He tried to defend the actions of another, and Kant knew it. Only the murderer knew of the flaw in the child’s skull, realising the pain and torment that the growing boy would have to face. That person loved him then, and wished to spare his suffering afterwards.’

  Lavedrine shivered as he spoke. His face grew pale. His eyes retreated deeper into their sockets. I cannot say what expression appeared on my own face. I felt as if a venomous asp had nipped me, paralysing all my vital functions.

  The coach pulled in shortly afterwards.

  There were three other passengers aboard.

  Thank God, I thought. There will be no more discussion of what we have seen until we reach Lotingen.

  37

  THE NEXT DAY, I did not see Lavedrine at all. Nor did I hear from him.

  At first, I was content to be left in solitude. I had no desire to talk about the matters swirling around like a vortex inside my brain. Kant’s carefully worded report to the judge protesting the innocence of Karlus Wettig; the evidence Lavedrine and I had uncovered in Svetloye, which seemed to support his thesis. No matter how I tried, I could find no connection between the cases. Nothing in the murder of Georg-Albert von Mandel promised to clarify the mystery of the annihilation of the Gottewald children.

  Nevertheless, Lavedrine’s absence alarmed me.

  Had Kant made everything clear to him, while I was fumbling in darkness and obscurity? Was the Frenchman trying to solve the case alone?

  I had sent a letter to Berlin a week before. The reply was due at any moment. Kamenetz was where the answer lay, according to me. When the case was solved, I would tell him. He would be furious, but I would be beyond caring as I carried off the laurels. I visited my office twice that morning, but the place was colder than the funeral crypt in Svetloye. No Knutzen, no letter from Berlin, no news from Lavedrine.

  Helena was in a state of distraction equal to mine. How many times did I see her glance out of the window that day, as if searching for someone in the lane? As if she, too, were expecting a visitor.

  ‘Lotte’s cousin brought a hen while you were away,’ she announced. She was silent for a moment. ‘Shall I cook it, Hanno?’

/>   ‘I am expecting no one, Helena,’ I replied flatly. In my own mind, I was certain that Serge Lavedrine was the guest that she was yearning to see.

  The previous night I had told her of our business in Königsberg. More or less. I tried to give her the impression that I was hiding nothing that related to the murder, and that she was a party to the investigation. Just as Lavedrine would have done, at least in her fond imagination.

  ‘Professor Kant was interested in crime, then!’ she exclaimed.

  In the four years that had passed since murder drew me back to Immanuel Kant and Königsberg, the philosopher’s name was rarely ever mentioned in our house. When it did come up, I made every effort to set it aside quickly, dismissing the subject in the blandest terms: the anniversary of his death, a commemorative article in one of the papers, a new edition of some work or other. All of these would draw some comment from Helena. And I would respond with an apposite exclamation: ‘How long ago it all seems!’

  Now, the ghost of Kant had been raised once more, and Lavedrine was the necromancer.

  ‘Did he find what he was looking for?’

  I answered offhandedly. ‘Nothing that will help us, I’m afraid.’

  The next morning, I left the house early and made my way into town.

  More uncertainty awaited me at the office.

  Knutzen ought to have been at his post, but my door was locked.

  Had his pig taken a turn for the worse? If so, his duties to me, and, more generally, to the Prussian state, would certainly take second place. And yet, as I entered my room, I realised that he had been there some time earlier in the morning. The day’s despatches and other court papers had been laid out neatly on my desk, along with my pens, and the inkwell had been filled.

  I rifled quickly through the documents. Not a word from Berlin.

  I sat down behind my desk. Without that letter I had no idea where to turn, what to do next. Lavedrine must have found some way out of the impasse. I would have to brace myself to face defeat. While I was blundering about in the darkness, he had chanced upon the light. Immanuel Kant had set him on the right track . . .