HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (8 page)

‘If your investigation points that way, I wish you all success. But now, sir, I will leave you to digest your meal in peace,’ he said with a warm smile and a bright twinkle in his eye, as if meaning to return to his own table.

‘A political coup does not worry you, then?’ I said, unwilling to end the conversation.

He stared at me intently. ‘Of course it does, sir, but such an explanation would mean that commercial travellers like myself and my friends could go about our business undeterred. One government is very much like another where trade is concerned.’

‘I am glad if I have set your mind at rest,’ I replied with a smile.

Herr Stoltzen bowed his head and smiled back. ‘My friends and I will toast your good health. With your permission, sir?’

He clicked his heels lightly, returned to his companions and spoke to them quietly. All raised their beer mugs and smiled at me convivially.

I raised my glass to return the courtesy.

I have just interrogated my first suspect, I thought.

I drank my wine to the lees. Then, wishing good night to the three men with a nod of my head, I rose from the table and retired upstairs to my bedroom. The fire had been banked up for the night, a copper jug of water was warming on the hearth. Despite feeling deathly tired, I sat down at the desk to finish the letter to my wife.

I added a few tender words of love for the children, then sealed the envelope and set it to one side. Leaving the candle on the table by the window while I put on my night-clothes, I glanced casually out of the window to see if it were still snowing. The sky was a mass of heavy swirling clouds, the moon barely visible. I was just about to turn away and take myself to bed, when a sudden movement in a window on the far side of the courtyard caught my eye. Peering through the misty glass, I observed a dark figure in the far room holding a hooded candle, his head turned to one side as if he were eavesdropping. In the flickering candlelight, the face was grotesque, the eyes two dark, gaping, black holes, the forehead and nose monstrously distorted by the shadows. The figure placed the candleholder on the window ledge, and in that moment, I recognised him. It was Morik.

What was the boy playing at?

He looked up and waved his hand. The lad knew the room in which I was lodging and he appeared to be trying to attract my attention. My thoughts flew to the three travelling merchants. Was he daring to spy on them? The serving-boy truly was a pest. I decided that I had better speak to him about his behaviour the very next morning. Sooner or later, the boy was going to get himself into serious trouble.

I snapped the curtains shut and blotted his figure out, determined to have no more to do with Morik and his foolishness. It had been a long, hard day and I was thoroughly exhausted. Quickly, I washed my face and hands, then I retired to my bed. The crispness of the fresh linen sheets, their heady perfume of blubber soap and starched cleanliness, induced a strong sense of well-being as I nestled down beneath the heavy eiderdown coverlet. Soon, I knew, I would be sound asleep. But in those delicious moments before gentle Morpheus had fully narcotised my senses, I suddenly tensed with fright. Had I dreamt it, or had I actually seen a moving shadow lurking at Morik’s back? A pale apparition glimpsed so fleetingly that my conscious mind had not fully registered it?

I sat up with a start, jumped out of bed, and darted over to the window. Throwing back the curtains, I looked out across the yard. All was dark on the other side of the court. There was nothing left to see.

No candle. No Morik. No sign of man, or ghost.

The first pallid intimation of the dawn caressed the curtains around my bed, but I had been wide-eyed and awake for an hour already. The ritual nightmare had brought me choking from my sleep, hair plastered to my forehead, limbs rigid, my heart in my mouth. And yet, somehow, the frightful dream had been less painful, less vivid in its gruesomeness than usual. The rock had barely penetrated his skull. The grass had not been red with blood. His glassy eyes had seemed to be less fixed, less accusing than they had been on previous occasions. For the first time, in those dreams that had plagued my sleep for seven years, I had not been frozen with fright. I had
moved
. I had tried to reach him, skipping down from the towering height of the rock, holding his salvation clasped in my hand. I could not be blamed for neglect this time. I had taken the vial from my pocket, the glass cold against my fingers, a flash of sunlight making the contents gleam and glisten like melted amber…

I dismissed the memory as I jumped up from my bed, shivering in the cold as I agitated the grey embers of the fire, adding wood shavings and some larger chips of wood which Morik had left behind for that purpose the previous evening. The first flame crackled into life, and I swung the copper pot over the fire to reheat the water I had used to wash myself the night before. Crossing over to the window, I looked out on the day. There had been more snow during the night, but the pearl-grey sky was free of further threatening clouds. A freezing day to come, I thought, noting the extraordinary length of the icicles that dangled from the guttering of the roof above my room. The window on the far side of the yard where I had seen Morik the night before was dark, reflecting only the gleam from my candle. What had the boy been doing there? Had somebody been watching him, an accomplice, perhaps, or had I imagined the entire scene?

I wrapped the top coverlet from the bed around my shoulders, and sat down at the desk to make a list of all the things I would need to do that day. The name of Lawyer Tifferch was at the top. He had been dead three days already, so the trail was already growing cold. Today my work would start in earnest. I had wasted time enough with the necromancer, Vigilantius, the night before. I had not been long at my task, however, when I heard someone clumping about in the hall outside my door.

‘Morik!’ I thought, rising quickly and striding to the door, intent on catching the little sneak off his guard. The boy was spying again. On me, this time.

With a sudden wrench, I threw the door wide open.

Frau Totz was on her knees in the hallway, staring hard where the keyhole had been but a moment before. She fell backwards onto her large bottom, her legs seesawed into the air, and she let out a yelp of surprise. A second later, raising herself to her normal height again as if nothing untoward had happened, she fixed me with that mincing smile she habitually wore. It appeared to have been painted on her face.

‘Good morning, Herr Procurator,’ she chimed brightly. ‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you? I thought I saw a glimmer of light beneath your door, and did not know whether to knock. I was wondering if you would care for something special for your breakfast.’

‘I told you last night what I want, Frau Totz,’ I answered sharply. ‘Bread, honey, hot tea.’

That smile did not fade or flicker, despite my rudeness. It was fixed, immovable, dreadful in its intensity, especially so early in the morning.

‘We have fresh cheese and some choice cuts of ham in the cold-room,’ she went on smoothly. ‘I was wondering whether you might like to try…’

‘Another time,’ I said, cutting her insistence short. The landlady had been spying on me. Morik had been spying on the other guests the night before. And someone else had been spying on Morik. Was spying a contagious disease in the Totz household? I could not suppress a note of sarcasm when I added, ‘Your great concern for my well-being is most reassuring, ma’am. Send Morik up at once, if you please.’

Her head was covered with a linen bonnet a size too small from which her reddish-brown curls seemed stiffly intent on fighting their way out. The bonnet drooped towards her right shoulder and that grotesque smile slowly faded away until it was a poor, pale shadow of its former self.

‘Morik?’ she murmured. ‘That boy should have been busy down in the kitchen an hour since, but I haven’t heard a peep out of him. I thought that he might have come up here to wake you, sir.’

‘Morik, here?’ Was that her true motive for peeping through the keyhole? I hesitated, wondering what sort of a vile bawdy-house I had been lodged in. ‘His bedroom stands on the far side of the courtyard from mine, does it not?’

A frown flitted across her brow. ‘Oh no, sir, no,’ she said. ‘Morik sleeps down in the kitchen behind the stove.’ She let out a sigh. ‘I’d better go and see what’s got into him. With your permission…’

‘Who
is
staying in that room over the way, then?’

‘That room, sir?’ she said with a puzzled expression, glancing across the yard. ‘No one, sir. It’s been vacant since two business gentlemen from Hanover left last Thursday.’

‘But I saw someone in there last night. I’d have sworn that it was Morik.’

‘You must be mistaken, sir,’ she replied quickly, and the smile reappeared like a carnival mask, but it was tense and rigid, ever more patently false. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m needed downstairs in the kitchen.’

‘When you find him, Frau Totz, send Morik along with my breakfast, will you?’

The woman’s lips pursed like those of an insolent child suppressing a remark for which she knew she must be scolded. Whatever she might have been intending to say, however, she simply said: ‘As you wish, Herr Stiffeniis.’

I returned to my desk and added a few more items to the list of things I had to do, then I washed and shaved with care, dressed myself in a clean linen shirt and my best brown suit and took out my periwig from its travelling-box. Lotte had remembered to pack it for me, despite the fret of my departure. I disliked wearing the wig – it made my scalp hot and itchy – and generally I avoided doing so, but in the present circumstances I was not a private citizen: the people of Königsberg would expect formality of the man who had been entrusted with the salvation of the city. That mass of silver curls would, I hoped, lend an air of authority to my person which my youth might seem to deny. It would also, I reflected, protect my ears from the cold…

There was a knock at the door, and Frau Totz appeared again, carrying my breakfast on a tray.

‘He’s nowhere to be seen, sir,’ she announced grimly. This time she did not attempt to smile. Her green eyes glanced away from mine and darted swiftly around the room, almost as if she thought the boy might be playing hide-and-seek, almost as if
I
were a party to the game.

‘Do you think he’s hiding under my bed?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, no, sir. What an idea!’

Nevertheless, she did glance towards the four-poster again. ‘He ought to be down in the kitchen getting breakfast ready,’ she murmured slowly.

‘He has probably gone out on an errand,’ I said to put an end to the subject. ‘Now, can I have my breakfast?’

Frau Totz blushed bright red and cried: ‘Oh, dearie me! Forgive me, sir!’

I took the tray from her hands and looked her squarely in the eye. Tiny beads of sweat had begun to break out on her forehead along the line of her ginger hair.

‘What, precisely, are you afraid of, Frau Totz?’ I asked.

‘Well, sir, I’m not…not afraid exactly,’ she muttered uncertainly. ‘But Morik’s such a hothead. His noddle’s full of strange ideas.’

I found her manner of speaking allusive and annoying at the same time.

‘Strange ideas about
what
, Frau Totz?’

‘I did tell you, sir. An’ I tried to warn you last night, too. He invents things.’ She fixed her eyes on her meaty hands; they seemed to be engaged in a nervous tug-of-war over which she had no control. ‘Always up to no good, that lad,’ she went on. ‘My Ulrich was saying just last night that my nephew’s been acting odd since you arrived, sir. Asking questions about who you are, why you’re here, that sort of thing. Morik seems to think that if you’re staying here, instead of in town, it’s because you are watching the inn.’

She looked nervously around the room again, then back at me, and I had the distinct impression that my arrival at The Baltic Whaler had whetted the curiosity not merely of Morik the serving-boy.

‘There is no reason for you to worry, Frau Totz,’ I said, intent on being rid of her. ‘Your house is far more comfortable than the Fortress. Now, if you’d be so kind, I would like to enjoy your excellent breakfast while the tea is still hot.’

She jumped as if she had been jabbed from behind with a sharp needle. ‘Oh, pardon me, sir!’ she exclaimed. ‘Wasting your time like this when you have more important things to do! If you need anything, just ring the bell. You’re right about Morik, sir. He’ll be back in his own good time, no doubt.’

She bowed herself out as if I were the King. Ten minutes later, my breakfast done, my toilet completed, I went down to the lounge where Amadeus Koch was standing before the fire.

‘Good morning, Koch,’ I said with energy. ‘I am glad to see you.’

And indeed I was. I could not have imagined the day before that I would be so happy to see his severe, pale face again.

Koch bowed deferentially. ‘I hope you slept well, sir? I delivered your note to Herr Jachmann’s house half an hour ago,’ he reported at once.

‘Did he send a written reply?’

‘No, sir.’

I was surprised.

‘A message by word of mouth?’

‘Nothing, sir. I’d have told you if he had. His servant took the note, then closed the door. I waited five minutes or more, but without result.’

‘Of course, I…Thank you, Sergeant.’

I stared at the fire and asked myself what this silence on Jachmann’s part might signify. I had stated my intention to call at his home at twelve o’ the clock that morning. Was I to conclude that the absence of any message implied consent?

‘The coach is waiting,’ said Koch, breaking in on my thoughts. ‘D’you wish to go to the Fortress, sir?’

‘Is Kliesterstrasse far from here?’ I asked.

Koch looked at me curiously. ‘A mile, sir, no more. It’s in the business part of town.’

‘The weather is better this morning, is it not?’

‘It ain’t snowing, if that’s what you mean, sir.’

‘Let’s go on foot then, Koch. A walk will do us both good, and I need to learn my way about town,’ I said.

Frau Totz was hovering near the kitchen door, her eyes fixed on me with an intensity that I could not fathom.

‘I’m sure that Morik will turn up soon,’ I called across the room.

The rigid smile materialised once more like the horrid grimace on the face of an Etruscan figurine. ‘He certainly will, Herr Stiffeniis,’ she replied, and instantly bowed her head. For a moment, I thought that she was about to cry. But with a shrug, she turned and disappeared through the door to the kitchen.

Out in the street, we turned away from the ice-bound port and set off up the long rise of Königstrasse hill, Sergeant Koch walking in dutiful silence at my side. Shops here and there on either side of the thoroughfare were beginning to open their shutters for the day’s business, though there was no one in the street apart from ourselves, and a boy with ringlets and a white skullcap whom we met halfway up the hill. He was kneeling with a bucket and cloth, attempting to scrape the paint off a wall, where some night-creeper had daubed the Star of David and a slogan in large letters using whitewash:
Blame the sons of Israel!

I looked away, not daring to think what might happen if bigoted hotheads chose to take that accusation seriously, as had happened in Bremen three years before. Twenty-seven Jews had lost their lives there, and thousands more had been forced to flee.

‘Since these murders began, sir,’ Koch confided, ‘there’s been no lack of threats against the Hebrews. Hostile pastors openly blame the Jews for murdering Our Saviour. The killing of a churchgoer in Königsberg might provoke a bloodbath…’

He fell silent as we approached a tobacco shop.

The owner, a tall, thin man wearing a soiled brown apron and black skullcap, was idling against the door-post, smoking what must have been his first pipe of the morning, studying us attentively, nodding in an inviting sort of manner. He let out an audible growl of contempt as we walked on past his emporium without so much as stopping. Glancing in at the dusty window, the sort of trade that he attracted was evident. Twists of dusty, rough, black tobacco-shag dangled from hooks; short cob-pipes, and even shorter ones of white clay, yellow with age, lay scattered in a heap beside a pile of mouldy cheese roundels. Situated so close to the port, I chose to speculate, the sort of customer who frequented the area was rough and ready, neither choosy nor particularly extravagant in his tastes. They would be sailors for the most part, or soldiers from the garrison, men in search of cheap, strong smoke and the sort of pipe that would suffer any number of hard knocks.

Jackets made of stiff canvas hung suspended on rails outside the next shop. They were ugly garments stained with sea-salt and clearly second-hand. Koch’s pea-coat, I noted, was of heavy grey wool, and it was almost new, while my own black mantle of imported English wool – fashioned by Helena on the occasion of an invitation two months earlier to a Christmas dinner at the home of Baron von Stiwalski, whose estate of Süchingern was less than a mile from Lotingen – was a trifle light for the season, perhaps, but no one could possibly doubt the quality of the material. Even so, the owner came running out onto the pavement, bowing and inviting us to step inside and try on waterproofs ‘guaranteed to resist the rigour of the very coldest seas,’ as he proclaimed with a certain pomp. We might have been the only customers he had seen in a month or more.

I smiled, and said: ‘Thank you, no.’

‘Half-price to you, sirs!’ the man called after us.

‘Business does not seem to be booming,’ I said to Sergeant Koch, as we continued on our way, our progress continually monitored by the shopkeepers all along the street.