HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (7 page)

Three lines at the bottom of the affidavit confirmed that Frau Totz had served short beer and hot sausages to Jan Konnen. She declared that she had never seen the man before, and that he had made no particular impression on her. She thought he had left the inn alone at ten o’clock, or thereabouts, though she could not be certain. In her opinion, the murdered man had visited their inn in search of wholesome food and good ale, and for no other reason.

A single sheet of paper, the next in the sheaf, drew a verbal portrait of the first victim. The information, such as it was, could have been chiselled with ease onto his tombstone. Jan Konnen, blacksmith, fifty-one years old, lived alone. He had never wed, and had no known living relatives. A taciturn and secretive man, Konnen was a complete enigma even to his closest neighbours. On this account, Rhunken had ordered the police to make extensive enquiries into his private life, but nothing untoward had been discovered. Konnen had no debts, no friends, he did not mix with women of low repute, nor belong to a political faction. He held no known grudge against any man, had never committed a crime, never been arrested. To all appearances, he was a blameless innocent who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he had paid with his life for that mistake. At the bottom of the page, Rhunken had written a note: ‘Enquiries made regarding possibility that victim might have had foreign political connections – no evidence found.’ The last words Procurator Rhunken had written made me gasp: ‘victim – category C – protocol 2779 – June 1800, I. M. O., Berlin’.

Like any other young magistrate just setting out on his career in the very first year of a new century, so soon after the revolution in France, and the rise of Napoleon, I had read that particular protocol. It warned of the possible infiltration of spies and revolutionaries who aimed to undermine the stability of the Nation and introduce Republicanism. Rhunken appeared to have convinced himself that the investigation should proceed in that direction, and he had given Konnen a low, but significant grading, as a potential danger.

I turned the page in search of more, but the following sheet referred to the case of Paula-Anne Brunner, second victim of the murderer. A statement taken from her husband related that his ‘poor missis’ had done more or less the same thing the day she was murdered as she always did, which amounted to feeding her hens, collecting their eggs, and selling them to her neighbours and to one or two shops in town. ‘The only new thing she did,’ the bereaved spouse complained, ‘she went and got herself killed!’ Frau Brunner was a sociable woman who went to the Pietist Temple twice a day, three times on a Sunday. She was renowned for honesty, moral rectitude and good works, and she was immensely popular with all the neighbours. She had no known enemies. Indeed, it was believed that she had never argued with any single person in her entire life. Clearly, Rhunken had suspected the husband of the crime. Heinz-Carl Brunner had been held in prison for two days and subjected to ‘severe interrogation’. In short, they had beaten him until he screamed for mercy, then let him go when he said nothing incriminating. At the exact time of the murder, as several rival farmers had noted, Brunner had been working in his field with two of his helpers, and this alibi could not be shaken. So,
he
was in the clear. Once again, Rhunken had added a note which seemed to sum up the direction which his enquiry was taking: ‘No political ties or radical affiliations reported or found. Prot. 2779?’

I suppose I must have let out a groan.

‘Is everything all right, Herr Stiffeniis?’ Koch enquired.

‘Was Procurator Rhunken collaborating with any other magistrate? I mean, might someone else have been helping him to collect evidence or take statements from these witnesses?’

‘Oh no, sir,’ Koch replied at once. ‘Herr Procurator always worked by himself. I know that for a fact. He trusted no one.’

I nodded and turned my attention to the next sheet of paper, a report concerning the third murder in the series. As I read the name of the victim, a jolt of electricity raced through my veins.
Johann Gottfried Haase
? How I cursed myself for my ineptitude! While travelling towards Königsberg in the coach that day, I had purposely skipped the name of the most important man to die at the hand of the assassin. Johann Gottfried Haase was a scholar of wide international fame, and a frequently published author. Some years before, I had read a pamphlet he had written. A Professor of Oriental Languages and Theology at the University of Königsberg, Haase had caused a sensation when he asserted that the Garden of Eden was by no means fictional. Adam and Eve had, indeed, been tempted by the Serpent, the scholar claimed, more or less on the very spot where we were standing. According to Haase, the city of Königsberg had been built on the original site of the Biblical garden. Who would dare to kill such an eminent man?

Looking down the page, eager for details, I had to laugh. Indeed, I laughed out loud, while Sergeant Koch regarded me with an expression of serious concern.

‘What an idiot I’ve been!’ I said.

‘Sir?’

The victim’s name was Johann Gottfried Haase, but he was not the person I had been thinking of. It was a simple case of two men sharing exactly the same name! The Johann Gottfried Hasse who had been murdered was a destitute halfwit. He eked out a miserable existence begging crumbs of stale bread and cake from the city bakeries, and asking for money on the streets from casual passersby. Everyone in the city knew him by sight, but no one knew him well. Procurator Rhunken remarked that no written record had been found regarding his birth – he was not so much as related to the scholar. No one could say whether he had ever been to school, passed a night in a poorhouse, a month in an orphanage, or a year in jail, though enquiries had been made by the police on all of those questions. Herr Haase was, to all effects, an utter nobody. ‘NOT OPENLY POLITICAL’, Rhunken had noted. He had not even made the obvious connection with the unknown victim’s eminent namesake. Still, the perplexing question that I had asked myself before returned to my mind, and even more forcibly this time. Why kill such a poor and apparently useless creature? An Oriental linguist-theologian might provoke animosity in some quarters, but a penniless beggar? Again, the protocol number ‘2779’ appeared at the foot of the page.

It was a recurrent theme. I could only ask myself what had prompted Procurator Rhunken to decide that the murders were politically motivated. The only common factor that I could find was the absence of anything even remotely political in the victims’ lives. Had their apparent indifference to politics seemed to him to be a blind? He had made a note to the effect that Konnen might be a secret agent. Did he believe the same of the others, too? And if so, which foreign power did he suspect them of spying for? Perplexed in my own mind, I turned slowly to the next sheet of paper.

Though not in sequential order, I found it to be the deposition of the midwife who had discovered the body of Jan Konnen. In all that I had read before, this witness had been referred to only in terms of her trade and but never by name, which was very odd. I glanced quickly through the information. Again, no name was given. Early that morning, this mysterious midwife declared, while on her way to minister to a fisherman’s wife who lived on the quayside, she came across the body of a man who appeared to have slumped against a wall. The only detail which added to the scant account that I had read in the coach was of some importance. ‘I knew that there was evil in it,’ she declared. ‘Satan used his claws.’

I paused. Sergeant Koch had used the same expression when first he told me of the crimes, but what exactly was
she
referring to? This superstitious woman had seen the dead body with her own eyes. Why use those particular words to describe what she had observed? The Devil’s name, I realised, was never far away in Königsberg. I had heard Satan invoked already with great familiarity by Koch, by the maid of Herr Rhunken, by Doctor Vigilantius, and by the soldiers remaining in the Fortress. Was it nothing more than a superficial reflection of the fierce religious sectarianism for which the city was renowned throughout Prussia? The Pietists were a dominating influence in Königsberg; the University was packed with members of the sect. Their reading of the Bible led the Pietists to believe that eternal salvation could only be achieved by personally wrestling with the Devil and his temptations. They had even invented a specific term for it.
Busskampf
, they preached, was a necessary battle that every true believer must fight and win if he hoped to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

I shook my head, and read on to the end. Lublinsky and Kopka, the two officers who had countersigned the woman’s statement and based their own report on it, had not pressed her for precise details. Indeed, they had not asked her much at all. Not even her name! Then again, neither had that most excellent magistrate, my predecessor, Procurator Rhunken…

‘Your master kept few notes, Koch,’ I said, as I replaced the sheet.

‘True, sir, very true. Kept it all in his head, he did.’

I made no comment, reflecting only that Procurator Rhunken’s way of going about the investigation left much to be desired. A degree of professional jealousy might explain his determination to tell me nothing more at our interview than the scant information which his papers contained, but it did not speak well for him, and it made my task all the more difficult.

Finally, there was a brief note about the latest victim, Jeronimus Tifferch, the notary, whose body I had examined in the cellar not an hour before. In his case there was a notable and remarkable difference. Regarding his personal history and habits, there was absolutely nothing. Merely a statement of his death. No other word had been consigned to paper. No person had been questioned, no detailed examination had been made of the corpse. So far as I could tell, no doctor had even been called to verify that he was actually dead, nor to sign a certificate to that effect. As a result, no possible cause of death had been hazarded. As in the notes I had read in the coach the day before – I was getting used to the omission by now – no mention was made of the nature of the weapon which might have been used to kill him, nor of the sort of wound it had inflicted. Indeed, the normal process of legal investigation seemed to have been suspended in Tifferch’s case. In anticipation of my coming, perhaps?

There was a knock at the door. Without lifting my head from my work, I heard Koch murmuring with someone on the threshold.

Above all, I reasoned, there was one glaring omission in all that I had read so far. The name of the ‘eminent person’ who had called Vigilantius and myself to investigate the string of murders in the city. I could find no reference to it in what Rhunken had chosen to record. Did he not realise that some rival authority was conducting a parallel investigation?

‘Herr Stiffeniis, sir?’

Koch’s voice interrupted my considerations. I looked up and found him standing stiffly in front of the desk, his linen handkerchief close to his mouth, his glaring eyes red and puffy.

‘What is it, Koch?’

‘His Excellency, Herr Procurator Rhunken, sir. A guard just brought the news. My master is dead.’.

I have rarely seen such naked sorrow on a human face. Instinctively, I looked down at the pile of papers scattered on the desk.

‘When will the funeral take place?’ I asked.

‘He’s been entombed already, sir,’ he said, slowly passing a hand over his eyes. ‘An hour ago, apparently.’

‘But that’s impossible!’ I protested. ‘Herr Rhunken was an authority. The city will want to pay its tribute to…’

‘It was his final wish, sir. He wanted no one present at his burial.’

I looked away to the farthest, darkest corner of the room. Koch had been greatly attached to the magistrate who had died. Still, he could hardly reproach me for Rhunken’s death. And yet, I sensed a hidden vein of condemnation in his voice. I could not help myself, a feeling of discomfort crept up on me. Half an hour before I had been congratulating myself on the fact that I was sitting at Herr Rhunken’s desk, that his assistant was standing stiffly to attention in front of me, that the Procurator’s personal archives were at my complete disposal, that his own sparse accounts of his investigative methods were in my hands to be rifled through, criticised and challenged. But now, suddenly, he was dead.

In some indefinable manner, I felt as if I had been the cause.

It was past ten o’clock when Sergeant Koch left me at The Baltic Whaler that night. The tavern was busy when I entered, so I sat myself down at a table in the quietest corner, that is, the one furthest removed from the fire, to pen a note to my wife before calling for my dinner. But what should have been a simple task proved far harder than I had anticipated. What should I tell Helena about what was happening in Königsberg? What could I say of the investigation that could reassure her, and what, instead, was better kept to myself? I mused for a moment, took up the quill once more, dipped it in the inkpot and went on:

I stopped, uncertain how to go on. I had no desire to tell my wife of the difficulties that I had been obliged to face that day, nor of the horrors that I had seen. What could she do to help me? I swirled the point of the duck-quill in the ink, and turned my thoughts to brighter matters.

‘Sir?’ a honey-sweet voice recalled me to my immediate surroundings. A buxom woman in her mid-forties with a moonlike face and large, bright, green eyes stood before me, holding an empty tray in what seemed to me to be a parody of servitude.

‘I am Gerta Totz, sir,’ she announced with a hideous, mincing smile, ‘wife of the landlord. Are you ready for your dinner? Would you care to try something in particular?’

‘Anything at all will do,’ I said, quickly folding up the letter to my wife. I had not eaten since my arrival in Königsberg six hours before, and the smell of fine cooking which filled the room was sufficiently enticing to whet my appetite.

‘I’ll bring the best we have, then,’ she said, bobbing and removing herself in the direction of the kitchen. As she moved away, I noticed that she stopped to say a quiet word to three prosperous-looking gentlemen who were sitting in a tight huddle at a table quite near to my own.

Something in her manner of addressing them caught my attention, and I followed her progress across the room, wondering whether she would be equally deferential to all the other customers in the place, but she disappeared into the kitchen without saying a single word to anyone. My interest awakened, I looked around at the assembled company. Beyond those gentlemen with whom Frau Totz had just spoken, closest to the fire, sat the same plump, dark-skinned man wearing the red fez and bright oriental naval garb that I had noticed in the afternoon. He sat peering intently into the darting flames, as if to evoke the warmer lands of his home. In the far corner of the room, a knot of fishermen were drinking strong ale and singing sea shanties. Other less notable customers were scattered around the room in groups of two or three. A couple of women with brightly painted lips and rouged faces sat with a group of foreign navy officials whose uniforms I could not place. The men were drinking and playing cards, the women watching the movement of money around the table with sparkling eyes and animated smiles. There could be little doubt where their interest lay, nor of the means they would employ to procure it. In short, it was the sort of scene one might find anywhere along the Baltic seaboard on a cold, winter night, and I soon grew bored of looking.

I had just unfolded my letter again and primed my pen, when a shadow fell over the page. Surprised at such remarkable alacrity, I glanced up, expecting to find Frau Totz with my dinner. Instead, Morik, the serving-boy, was standing over me, his hands firmly clasped behind his back like a common footsoldier waiting to address a confidence to a superior officer.

‘What can I do for you?’ I asked him.

‘Those men at the next table,’ the youngster hissed out of the side of his mouth. Leaning closer, eyes wide and staring, he added, ‘They meet in the cellar at dead of night, sir. Pretend to order something, or they’ll catch on.’

I attempted to look past him, but the boy was standing hard up against my table, blocking out the prospect. ‘Now, listen here, my lad,’ I began sternly.

‘Please, sir!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Do it loud, or my goose’ll be cooked.’

I sat back, perplexed. Then, in a voice that was calculated to wake the dead, I announced to the inn at large: ‘Bring me another quill, boy. And be quick about it! The point of this one’s ruined, I am unable to finish my letter.’

Morik leapt to attention.

‘Right away, sir,’ he shouted.

He was gone in a flash.

I looked more attentively at the three men seated close by. Each one smoking a long clay pipe and quaffing ale from an ample
stein
, they were the picture of respectability.

The landlady appeared again from the kitchen, and came bustling across to my table, though there was still no sign of my dinner arriving.

‘Is everything in order, Herr Stiffeniis?’ she enquired, smiling still. ‘Has our Morik been bothering you?’

‘I needed a quill,’ I said. ‘The boy is seeing to it for me.’

‘Oh, you should have asked
me
, sir,’ she said, wiping the back of her hand across her face. I got the impression that she seemed relieved by what I had just told her. ‘He is such a nuisance, that lad! Can’t be trusted to do a thing! Be sure and tell me if he gets up to any mischief, won’t you, sir?’

‘I most certainly will,’ I assured her.

‘I’ll be a-getting back to the kitchen, then,’ Frau Totz announced, trotting off and nodding silently to the men at the next table as she went.

I put aside my letter, my attention now engaged by the three strangers, my curiosity heightened by this odd exchange with the landlady. Could Morik be telling the truth? There was something decidedly staid and measured in the behaviour of the three guests that was out of place in a quayside tavern. They did not joke, or laugh, and they seemed to speak to each other in unnecessarily hushed tones.

On impulse, I rose from the table and moved towards the blazing fire, as if to warm my hands. As I passed close by their table, I caught a phrase in French. Was that what had tickled the serving-boy’s fancy, the fact that those men spoke the language of Napoleon Bonaparte?

‘Your quills, sir!’ Morik called loudly from my table, holding them up for me and everyone else in the room to see. I returned to the table, recalling what both the landlady and her husband had said of the lad’s untrustworthy nature.

‘I’ve sharpened them to your satisfaction I hope, sir?’ he said out loud. In a whisper he added: ‘Those men are French. They arrived three days ago.’

‘So? What of it?’ I said quietly, taking up one of the quills and trying the point against the paper, playing my part in the charade.

Morik raised his voice again. ‘Right, sir! A sharp knife in case they split again.’

But he made no move to leave me in peace as the landlady passed by, taking four more pints of frothing ale to the fishermen who were merrymaking in the far corner. As soon as she had gone, Morik lowered his voice again. ‘Stop them, sir! Before they strike again.’

I stared hard at the boy. He stood looking around the room, a stiff smile engraved on his lips. I could see quite clearly that he was afraid.

‘Stop
who?
’ I asked.

‘Those Frenchmen, sir! Two nights ago that man was killed. They’ve been here before, they’ll murder again.’

‘Why should they wish to kill anybody?’ I asked quietly, holding a pen up to the light and examining the point, playing my part with more care now.

‘Let
me
try, sir,’ Morik said aloud, grabbing the pen from my hand and a scrap of paper from the pile I had placed on the table. He wrote something, his hand shaking as he did so, then glanced up to gauge my reaction.

‘Napoleon intends to invade Prussia,’ I read.

Before I could speak, he picked up the paper, rolled it into a tight ball, strode across to the fire and thrust it deep into the flames. He did not return to my table. Instead, Frau Totz appeared at my side. Morik must have seen her coming.

‘Here’s your dinner, sir,’ she said, laying a large, full plate on the table. ‘I hope I have not made you wait too long?’

Her sharp eyes followed Morik as he moved away from the fire and through a door that led into the kitchen.

‘Did Morik serve you as he ought?’ she asked.

‘He seems a most accommodating fellow.’

‘He always makes a fuss of new guests,’ she explained. ‘But he’s far too nosy for his own good, that lad! Drive my poor sister to her grave, he will. He’s all she’s got. Working here in the inn, with all these sailors passing through, has turned his silly head. He’s interested in everybody’s business but his own. Enjoy your meal, sir.’

Was that the true explanation of the boy’s behaviour? The coincidental fact that the first victim of the unidentified murderer had spent his last night on earth in the bar of The Baltic Whaler might be at the root of the boy’s gossip. But then another aspect of the situation struck me forcibly. If the mysterious person who had had me called to Königsberg had been behind all that had happened so far, had he also decided that I should be lodged at The Baltic Whaler? Did he suspect that something illegal was going on there? And if so, what was I supposed to do about it?

I determined to do two things. I would speak privately to Morik about his absurd accusations. Then, I would question Innkeeper Totz more closely with regard to the statement he had made to Procurator Rhunken. But first of all, I had my empty stomach to care for. I took up my fork and spoon and set to with a will, dining on a rich vegetable broth, roasted chicken and an abundant helping of those tiny turnips that are stored under ice through the winter. The wine was white, a fruity vintage imported from the Nahr region, and it was surprisingly good.

As I ate my dinner, however, I did not lose sight of the three men who had aroused Morik’s suspicions. One of them in particular caught my attention. He was taller, older, more heavily built than his companions. Detached and watchful, seemingly aloof from the general conversation, he appeared to be more alert than the other two concerning what was going on in the inn. Every now and then, he would lower his head and say a quiet word to them in confidence.

French spies conspiring against Prussia? Murdering innocent people in the streets? It took an incredibly wild stretch of the imagination to credit what Morik had said of them. What military objective could such a devilish strategy serve? The victims were men and women of no civic importance. Their deaths would not affect the city and its defences, except, perhaps, by spreading panic. But would the spread of panic help Bonaparte invade Prussia if it was happening in Königsberg alone?

I did not realise until too late that the three foreign gentlemen were looking in my direction. While I had been mentally analysing them, they had been paying more careful physical attention to me. Suddenly, the tallest one – the leader, as I described him in my own mind – rose from his seat and came across to my table.

‘Good evening, sir,’ he began with a polite bow. ‘My name is Guntar Stoltzen. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘Not at all. I have finished my meal, Herr Stoltzen,’ I said, sitting back in my chair and looking up at him. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

‘My friends and I are jewellers,’ he began, nodding over his shoulder in the direction of his companions. ‘The serving-boy told us yesterday that there have been a number of murders in the city, sir. He said that you are here to investigate them.’

So, Morik had been at work with them as well.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ he continued, ‘I would not have you believe that I am more interested in the affairs of other men than of my own, but we are concerned for our safety. We’ve still a long way to go and…well, you understand, of course. We’re carrying precious gems to Tallinn. What we heard alarmed us. Being robbed is one thing. Being robbed
and
murdered is quite another!’

I sipped a little wine and gathered my thoughts. Clearly, this Morik was a scandalmonger. He had frightened these innocent travellers, and awakened my own suspicions with ease. Frau Totz was right about him. The boy was definitely a troublemaker.

‘You are French, are you not?’ I asked.

‘German, sir, my companions are French. We have travelled through East Prussia many times before and nothing unpleasant has ever befallen us. But this news is alarming. If these murders were committed by robbers, we might easily be in danger. Do you not agree?’

‘Where did you hear that these crimes had been committed by thieves?’ I enquired, expecting Morik’s name to be raised again.

‘What other reason could there be for killing innocent people?’

‘Why kill, if not for gain? Is that what you mean, sir?’

Herr Stoltzen smiled and nodded his head.

‘Would you be happier to believe that the murders had been committed for political reasons?’ I probed.

‘Politics?’ He frowned, evidently surprised by the suggestion. ‘Is that why these people have been murdered, sir?’

I shook my head. ‘You have formed one opinion, I offer an alternative which would guarantee the safety of you, your companions, and the valuables you are carrying.’

‘A political plot?’ he mused. ‘For what purpose, sir?’

I shrugged my shoulders and put a piece of bread in my mouth, chewing slowly for some moments before I replied.

‘Imagine that someone wished, for reasons still to be determined, to spread terror here in Königsberg. A spate of apparently random murders would do the trick, don’t you think?’