HS03 - A Visible Darkness (59 page)

I invited him to enter the house, asking the soldiers to wait beyond the gate. I did not wish that Helena should see or hear them.

Tessier bridled, but les Halles quickly put him in his place.

‘There’s not the slightest risk, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘In any case, I wish to speak with Magistrate Stiffeniis alone.’

I led him through to the kitchen, sat him down at the table, then heated a jug of Lotte’s cider-and-apples with the poker from the cooking-fire. In summer, we put out the fire after breakfast, but that morning was the first real day of autumn. Edviga had left the fire burning, and she had closed the doors at the front and back of the house. A cold wind was blowing in from the coast, sweeping away the warm, humid air of summer.

‘Your good health!’ he said, emptying half the beverage at a single draught, as if he had eaten nothing for a week and drunk less for a month, fishing with his fingers in the cup for the bits of apple that were resting on the bottom.

‘We found no third corpse at the house of Dr Heinrich,’ he announced with a sigh. ‘Nor anywhere else in Nordcopp. Did you squeeze that out of him? Whether he had killed that girl, and where he might have hidden the body, I mean to say, before you . . .’

An hour earlier, I had watched Edviga close the garden gate.

She had been wearing that gown of Helena’s, though it was a trifle short and unseemly, showing off her shapely ankles to all the world. Over her shoulder she carried a bag, which was filled with food for the journey and clothes that Helena insisted she should carry away with her.

‘Can’t she stay with us a little while longer, Hanno?’

Helena had asked this question in front of Edviga, as if I alone had the power to decide the question.

Edviga and I exchanged looks.

She knew the French would come to Lotingen. She realised that she would have to explain why she had left the camp without saying anything to anyone. She knew what les Halles would ask. Had she carried any amber off with her? If he suspected that there was amber in her bag—Ilse Bruen’s treasure was hidden there, I knew, together with my own gift, the piece of amber that I had removed from the corpse of Kati Rodendahl—she would be subjected to a search with inevitable results: seizure of the goods, and a spell in prison. If she were arrested in my house, it would be a source of embarrassment not only to myself, but to Helena as well.

‘I think Edviga would prefer to leave,’ I murmured.

Edviga did not speak, though she seemed to acquiesce.

‘Our little girl will bear her name. Do you agree to that, Hanno?’

I turned to Helena. She held my gaze. She would accept no less.

‘It sounds very fine,’ I said. ‘Edviga Stiffeniis.’

Edviga glowed with transparent joy, like the most luminous piece of amber ever found on the Baltic shore . . .

Les Halles was staring hard at me.

I looked fixedly into the depths of my cup. I could only pray that he would not guess what was passing through my mind, hoping that he would interpret my silence as a natural timidity to admit what I had done the night before.

‘Gurten and I had little time for talking, Colonel,’ I said at last. ‘He did admit that he had murdered Heinrich and the doctor’s housekeeper, but he would not say why. He also said that he had followed me. His intention, as you know, was to show me that . . .’ I could not find a suitable word. ‘He told me that it was the unborn
corpse of my son that he had torn from Helena’s womb.’ I swallowed hard, remembering the pit of despair into which I had been pitched when I saw that gory bundle in his hands. ‘I struck him then. It was instinctive. I was certainly not thinking of Edviga Lornerssen’s fate in that moment.’

The Frenchman placed his elbows on the table, and settled his face in his hands.

‘Why do you think he set his sights on you?’ he asked.

I shrugged.

‘I was hunting him on your account,’ I said. ‘By order of the French.’

He plunged his fingers into the cup, chasing the last bit of apple. ‘I am not convinced,’ he said slowly, raising the sodden triangle of fruit to his lips. ‘I mean to say, even if he thought of you as a traitor, I have never seen such ferocity directed against another man.’ He chewed, staring at me as he did so. He shook his head. ‘To rip an unborn child from a mother’s womb! As if he thought that death itself were hardly a sufficient punishment for you.’

There, he had said it.

He sighed again. ‘We did not find his body. My men searched the water. Some swimming, some throwing grappling-irons from boats. They covered pretty much the whole of the bay, but they did not find a trace of him.’

‘I saw his body in the water,’ I insisted, remembering that wicked tool of Edviga’s firmly planted in his chest. ‘Then, I lost sight of him, and saw him no more. It was dark, the water was deep, the current strong.’

Les Halles raised his hand to stop me. ‘I was puzzled when the soldier brought me news last night that you had galloped off to Lotingen, Stiffeniis. He told me that you had killed the assassin. Then, he said that you feared for your family. It all seemed a sight too convenient. The murders solved, the killer killed, though not the mystery of why he chose to mutilate them. The bodies of Dr Heinrich and his housekeeper, but
not
the corpse of the murderer himself.’

I sat up stiffly in my seat.

‘You think that I let him get away. Is that it? And that I told you a neat tale to put an end to the affair! Why would I do such a thing, les Halles?’

‘Because you are afraid to hand a guilty Prussian over to the French authorities. Has that not been your greatest fear from the very start, monsieur?’

‘Last night on the beach,’ I said, ‘I failed to tell you something. Not from any reticence, but to avoid wasting precious time. Regarding something that I saw in Königsberg, something which explains the motive behind the murders, as well as the mutilations to which the victims were subjected.’

I told him of my investigation in the city. I described the statue that Gurten-Vulpius had been working on. I also told him how I had led myself to believe that the true identity of the man that I was seeking was that of Dr Heinrich of Nordcopp.

‘Everything seemed to fit,’ I said. ‘Vulpius’s medical and scientific interests matched everything that I had seen in Heinrich’s house in Nordcopp. His landlady in Königsberg described a man who might have been Dr Heinrich’s brother. Even the smell of wax and plaster of Paris was the same.’

‘Tell me more about this strange wax figure,’ les Halles interjected.

I recounted what I had seen: the
écorché
modelled on the body parts that Gurten had stolen from the corpses; the fact that features still to be added corresponded exactly with the anatomical pieces which had been removed from the bodies of Kati Rodendahl and Ilse Bruen.

‘There was a gaping hole in the centre of the statue.’ I swallowed hard. ‘
That
was what he was after. I thought I knew where he might try to procure a pregnant womb. In Nordcopp, from Edviga. But I was wrong. Helena was his real object.’

‘Amber did not come into the equation, then?’ les Halles enquired, rubbing his knuckles hard against his brow.

‘Not directly,’ I replied. ‘Gurten believed that he was creating a prototype of a Prussian woman that our scientists and doctors would one day manage to produce. He thought that the human
species could be improved—like cows, or horses—by selective breeding. His female ideal was based on the women of the coast. Physically strong, and fiercely independent. “As beautiful as any goddess,” he said. Now, this is where amber comes into it. He saw a potent symbol: the repulsive insect at the heart of the beautiful amber nugget. If an implacable, primitive heart could be implanted in a well-developed Prussian body, who could hope to oppose or stop them? Gurten’s nationalism outstrips any other brand of fanaticism.’ I thought for a moment, then I added: ‘It was the most dangerous brand of all. According to him, amber offers us a vision of a long-lost Paradise on Earth. The Garden of Eden, it is widely believed by amber collectors, once existed on these shores. The creatures living in that Paradise were fierce, aggressive. They were not influenced by vague ideas of Good and Evil. The only thing that interested them was life, survival. That was the lesson that Gurten drew from amber.’

Les Halles sat in silence.

Then he began to rub his nose, as if some doubt had struck him.

‘That’s all well and good,’ he said at last, ‘but why did he focus on you? Why try to steal your unborn child, Herr Stiffeniis, rather than anyone else’s? I do not think I am far from the truth if I assert that you must have represented something very particular to him. Now, what do you think
that
could have been?’

I had told the Frenchman more than he needed to know. I had served Johannes Gurten up on a plate. I did not mention the Kantstudiensaal. Nor did I hint what Kant might represent for our Prussian nationalists. Of pages stolen from the university library, speaking of the monstrosity of those primitive creatures trapped in amber, I said not a word. Nor did I tell him of the parallels that the philosopher had made with the black heart pulsing beneath my outward show of moral principles. I told him that I had been taken prisoner in Rickert’s house, but not what Gurten-Vulpius and I had said to one another.

‘I have no idea,’ I lied.

He narrowed his eyes and peered at me.

‘You know me well enough by now, Herr Magistrate. You know that I am a practical man, a mechanical engineer. I do not easily follow certain ways of reasoning. A mind like Gurten’s, well, I . . . I hardly know what to make of it.’ He waved his hands at a swarm of midges that might have been a manifestation of the strangeness he was talking of. ‘If I thought I might be able to persuade the emperor to wash his hands of Prussian amber, I wouldn’t hesitate one moment. Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’d think we had violated sacred ground, and that the local gods and devils had risen up as one to protect it. The Spanish have got their claws into us, but they might prove nothing in comparison to these fiends of yours.’ He shook his head again. ‘I’d have had a hard job believing you, sir, if not for what one of my men dragged out of the sea.’

It was my turn to frown. Had he been hiding something from me?

‘You said that you did not find a corpse . . .’

‘Not Gurten’s, no. But we found what Gurten showed to you, claiming that it was your son.’ He turned away and cursed beneath his breath. ‘What sort of a devil would think to play such a vicious trick on his neighbour? It would have been kinder if he had tried to murder you.’

‘What was it?’ I asked, hardly expecting an explanation which would diminish the horror of what I believed I had seen.

Les Halles leant forward over the table. ‘A badger, Stiffeniis. A badger cub that he had skinned. It made a fair pass for an unborn child.’ He sat back more easily. ‘The man was an illusionist, a mighty cruel one. He had set his heart on one thing: he wanted to break yours.’

He stared at me in silence. He expected me to make some comment.

I stared back, said nothing.

‘He almost managed. Isn’t that true?’ He breathed out with such force and for so long that he must have risked a collapse of his lungs. ‘When I saw that gruesome thing, I realised something terrible was happening. Having seen it, I can comprehend the folly that you have just described, including this mad desire to make a
statue based on the anatomy of his victims. How long has it been going on? How many women had to die?’

I shook my head. ‘The deaths of Kati and Ilse only came to light because their mutilated corpses were found. Two more were found in Königsberg. God knows how many other victims there have been.’

I spread my hands wide in a gesture of helplessness.

‘Or where the body of Edviga lies,’ he added. ‘If he killed her, too.’

‘Impossible to say.’

He pushed his empty cup towards me. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve anything stronger to offer me?’

I went across to the pantry. Lotte kept a bottle of sloe gin there for emergencies. I remembered her opening it the day the news arrived that the battle of Jena had been lost. I placed the flagon on the table, pulled out the stopper, half-filled his cup, and pushed it over to him.

His large square hand closed around it like a vice.

‘Let me ask you something,’ he said, and drank it off in a single draught.

I raised my palms, as if to say that I was at his service, ready to try and cope with him and his doubts.

‘When you told the soldier that your family was in danger,’ he began, his eyes sparkling bright, ‘you thought that he’d been here already. That he had killed your wife, your child, and whoever else was in the house. Very good,’ he said, running his finger first around the inside of the cup, then licking it. ‘So, why do you think he
didn’t
do so? What was there to stop him?’

For an instant I was tempted to tell him that Edviga had saved my wife. But I did not do so. I would have set him on her trail. Then again, if he discovered that I had lied to him once, he would believe that I had hidden other facts from him.

‘Gurten-Vulpius was human,’ I replied. ‘He was not the demon that you seem to think. Obviously, he could not be in every place at once. He left Königsberg long before I did. I had to free myself, walk all the way to DeWitz’s workshop, see the statue, then find
myself a horse. A common hack from the coaching-inn, as it happens. He had a couple of hours’ lead on me, I’d guess. When he arrived in Nordcopp, he killed those people at the doctor’s house. Perhaps . . .’ The idea took shape as I said it. ‘Perhaps he had not even been to Lotingen at that point. He may have wished to kill me first. To clear me out of his path, so to speak. That trick with the dead badger was meant to stun me, and render me defenceless. It almost worked. Having killed me, he would then have made his way to Lotingen and obtained with great tranquillity what he was really after. My wife would have been entirely at his mercy.’

As I spun this fantasy to hide Edviga’s role, I wondered whether it was a true reflection of what Gurten had actually done. In reverse, of course. He had come too late to Lotingen. The child had been delivered prematurely. Had he returned to Königsberg to show me what he had actually achieved, then followed me to Nordcopp to punish me for what he considered to be my treachery?