HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  Sergeant Koch raised a large iron ring and let it drop against a small lych-gate set into the gigantic defensive wooden door. A heavy bolt was drawn noisily, a Judas-window slid back, and a pair of needle-point eyes scrutinised us from within.

  ‘Procurator Stiffeniis to see Doctor Vigilantius,’ Koch announced.

  The peephole closed with a metal clang, the door was thrown open, and we stepped into a small inner courtyard.

  ‘Wait here,’ the guard announced, and we were left to dally in the cold for some minutes. In the centre of the courtyard, two tall soldiers in shirtsleeves were labouring with spades beside a long wooden box. With such an abundance of fresh snow covering the city, I asked myself, what was the point of storing it in boxes?

  ‘General Katowice!’ Koch hissed suddenly, and I turned to see a cluster of officers in blue serge striding purposefully in our direction. ‘He’s the commander of the garrison,’ Koch added in a whisper.

  With some trepidation I braced myself to meet the general, and found myself confronted by a person of less than average height and wider than average girth. He also had abominably black teeth, and a huge white moustache which swept over his upper lip and red cheeks. Crossing his short arms over his massive chest, he formed his wrinkled forehead into a frown, then flashed his head to the left in a singular gesture which brought a long white braid of hair whipping through the air to rest along his arm like a snake on a branch. High-ranking officers have never ceased to wear their hair in the style made fashionable by Frederick the Great.

  ‘Stiffeniis?’ the general barked, offering his tubby hand.

  I had to smile with relief. Here, it seemed, I was expected.

  ‘I will not waste your time, except to say I am glad you’ve come,’ he began, his beefy hand playing with the hilt of his sword. ‘The city is in turmoil, as you know. These murders! The King wants to tidy the matter up without delay. It is clear to me what’s going on.’ He leaned too close for comfort, reeking of garlic and other nameless half-digested things. ‘Jacobins!’ he said. ‘There, that’s your answer.’

  ‘Spies, sir?’ I asked.

  General Katowice placed his hand on my arm. ‘Exactly! I want to know where they are hiding!’ he said with some agitation, the white tress now dangling wildly on his chest. He looked more like a barbarian chieftain than a Prussian general. ‘Never trust a Frenchman! They’re cunning devils led by Satan himself! Napoleon would give his left arm and leg to seize the fortress of Königsberg. I have my forces strategically placed in and out of the city. They’ll strike without mercy. A word from you, a word from me. That’s all it takes.’

  He placed his right hand on my left shoulder, looked straight into my eyes, then tightened his hold. ‘If you find anything that looks French, smells French, I want to know of it. Rhunken suspected a foreign plot against the nation, but proof was lacking. Which tied my hands, of course. If you can track them down with more solid arguments, I’ll persuade the King to take the initiative. We will strike before they do. All may depend on you. Any questions?’

  The first that came to mind was more than sufficient to start a flood. What was I doing there? But I did not ask it. Nor did General Katowice wait.

  ‘None? Good man! Now, they’re expecting you, I believe.’

  The general and his staff marched off to the left, while a corporal stepped up before us from the right and saluted. ‘Follow me, gentlemen,’ he said, spinning on his heel and marching away.

  Was that the motive for the murders, a Jacobin plot to undermine the peace in Königsberg and in Prussia? I followed in a daze. We thundered along a dark corridor, through a large empty hall which echoed to the noise of our steps, passing beneath a low arch which led into a maze of gloomy corridors until we reached a narrow door cut into a damp grey wall.

  ‘This way,’ the corporal said, as he took a flaming torch from a ring on the wall and skipped lightly down a stairwell which spiralled into the bowels of the earth. The smell of mildew was sickening. Our guide’s torch fought a guttering battle with the pitch darkness.

  ‘Aren’t the offices above ground?’ I asked Koch.

  ‘So they are,’ he replied.

  ‘Why are we going underground, then?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir.’

  We might have been descending into a crypt.

  ‘This is a strange place for a meeting,’ I said, my anxiety mounting. ‘Where are you taking us, Corporal?’

  The corporal stopped, glanced at Koch, then at me, his brutish face topped by a battered tricorn hat and framed by a tattered wig which had not seen powder in a month. ‘To see the doctor, sir,’ he replied brusquely.

  Just then, a heavy clumping and clattering of steel-tipped boots sounded loudly on the staircase above us. Our guide raised his torch, lighting up the two soldiers I had noticed working in the courtyard above. They came hurtling down the stairs, manhandling a large box between them. The weight of it seemed to drag them downstairs faster than they wished to go, and we had to push ourselves up hard against the wall to escape being crushed.

  ‘Has he come yet?’ our guide called after them.

  As the labourers stumbled past, I saw how very tall they were. Frederick the Great had set the fashion, visiting every corner of the continent in the search for new pieces to add to his collection of giant soldiers. Now, they flocked to Prussia. Those two were excellent specimens. Even so, they groaned beneath the weight.

  ‘Dunno,’ the soldier at the front cried back over his shoulder. ‘Get a move on, Walter!’

  ‘Are they being punished?’ I asked the corporal as the darkness gobbled them up.

  ‘They’re just obeying orders, sir,’ he replied, and cantered on down the stairway.

  At the bottom of the shaft, a square skylight shone above our heads. The corporal looked up, an expression of bemused terror on his face. The full moon was perfectly framed by the window high above.

  ‘Strike me blind!’ he cursed. ‘Right on bloody time!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.

  The corporal looked at me, his expression tense. ‘That doctor’s very keen on details, sir,’ he murmured. ‘He said the moon would appear from the clouds, and there it is!’ The fear written on his face was childishly comical. ‘Better not keep him waiting, sir,’ he said, proceeding quickly on his way towards a door at the far end of the corridor, which opened into a large, empty store-room. It was cold in there, extremely cold. The other two soldiers were hard at work shovelling snow from the box onto a black tarpaulin cover.

  ‘Well, Koch…’ I began to say, vapour forming an ectoplasm in front of my face as I spoke.

  ‘You are just in time, sir,’ a haughty voice accused at my back.

  I turned and gaped. I seemed to have been addressed by one of the age-encrusted ancestral portraits hanging from the walls of my father’s country house. It was the style of his wig that impressed me. Grey curls cascaded from the crown of his head in undulating waves on either side of a long, gaunt face. Large, snow-white hands held a huge cloak of shimmering black velveteen clasped tightly to his body.

  ‘My name is Vigilantius,’ he announced rather stiffly. ‘Doctor Vigilantius.’

  He did not offer his hand or make any sign of welcome, but swept past me, his black cloak billowing and rippling out as he drew close to the waiting soldiers. There was only a hand-span of difference in height between him and the lesser of the two giants.

  ‘I hope you have followed my instructions to the letter.’

  It was not a question, though one of the men stood forward. Wiping his forehead on his sleeve, he said: ‘All as you ordered, sir.’

  ‘Let us begin in that case,’ he said, his attention directed at the labourers, who were sweating despite the cold.

  ‘Begin what?’ I demanded in a loud voice, stepping forward to assert my authority before Koch and the soldiers.

  Vigilantius arched his bushy eyebrow and stared back defiantly at me, but he did not answer my questio
n.

  ‘What are we doing in this dungeon?’ I insisted.

  ‘I am here to enter the Spirit World,’ he said quite plainly, as if the place truly existed and might be found by any sharp-eyed person on the mappamondo. Before I could speak, he turned on Koch as if he meant to eat him.

  ‘Who are you, sir?’ he said, like a lizard snapping up flies.

  ‘Sergeant Koch is my assistant,’ I shot back.

  The doctor made a face, but no objection. ‘He’ll remain, then. These two men are needed for the first part of the operation. Corporal,’ he said, throwing out his forefinger like a dart, ‘be gone!’

  Our guide hurried out of the room without a backward glance.

  ‘Bring our guest over here,’ Vigilantius ordered sharply.

  Instinctively, I took a step backwards, thinking that they meant to lay hands on me. From the other side of the room, with a tortured shriek like a hunting horn in the hands of a novice, the labourers began to push the snow-covered tarpaulin towards where we were standing.

  A wave of anger swept over me. Was he trying to make a fool of me? Did my authority mean nothing to this vulgar showman? I had been designated by the King to take charge of the case. If anything were to be done, I would decide.

  ‘Stop where you are!’ I shouted, advancing on the soldiers.

  ‘Are you not…curious to know what lies beneath this cover, Herr Procurator?’ Vigilantius asked, a mincing smile on his face. ‘You will obtain no greater help in Königsberg, I promise you.’

  ‘What are you hiding here?’ I demanded.

  ‘Sweep it away,’ he said to the soldiers without answering me.

  As the men removed the snow with their bare hands, I stood simmering with rage. Was this why I had been placed in charge of such a delicate investigation? To be guided, manipulated, frustrated? Had I no effective power?

  ‘Shift him here,’ Vigilantius instructed, and the workmen revealed what had been referred to so obliquely. ‘Now, get out!’

  The soldiers obeyed him willingly, leaving us alone with Vigilantius.

  I drew close and looked down.

  ‘Who was he?’ I asked.

  ‘Was?’ the grating voice challenged. ‘This is Jeronimus Tifferch, fourth victim of the killer terrorising Königsberg.’

  I had seen corpses in France. I knew what the slicing blade of a freshly oiled guillotine could do. But that did not prepare me for the sight of Lawyer Tifferch. He lay on his back in a wholly unnatural position. Trunk curved upwards, knees bent to form a high pointed arch above the table, arms stretched out and reaching downwards. The life seemed to have been ripped out of him. His skin was glassy, unnatural, the ivory-yellow colour of mummified Italian saints. Cheeks sucked inwards, his mouth gaped wide open. He was the picture of puzzled innocence. His hair had frozen stiff, and was so very white I thought it to be ice. A long straight nose led down to a thin pair of twisted black moustaches which Tifferch appeared to have cultivated with more than usual care. His suit was olive green and well cut with narrow gold piping around the collar, hem and buttonholes. Biscuit-coloured stockings hung limply away from slim calves which had contracted with the cold. Both kneecaps were heavy with caked mud. There was no evident mark of death on him. Nothing to explain what had brought Lawyer Tifferch to such an end.

  ‘How did he die?’ I asked, more to myself that to anyone else.

  ‘We will soon discover that,’ Vigilantius replied darkly, as he began to go about his work. It was like a Roman Catholic ritual. I had attended the mass in Rome some years before and been fascinated by the pagan ceremonial that the priests employed there. Placing a hand on either side of the dead man’s face, the doctor closed his eyes and touched his forehead to that of the corpse like a priest consecrating bread and wine at the Offertory. He remained like this for some time, silent and stiff like the dead man beneath him. Suddenly, he began to sniff noisily, wildly at the nose and mouth of the corpse. Sweat rolled down off his brow in a torrent. He quivered violently, all his limbs shook, he seemed to be possessed of a frenetic energy that he could not control.

  ‘Jeronimus Tifferch,’ he intoned in a loud voice. ‘Jeronimus Tifferch. Return from the shadows. I, Augustus Vigilantius, command you…’

  A rattling growl rang to the stony vaults and ran skittering around the room, dissolving in a long agonised howl.

  ‘Someone else is hiding here,’ I said aside to Koch.

  Koch stared back at me. His teeth were clenched, eyes aflame with the firelight from the torch. ‘There’s nobody, sir,’ he said. ‘Just him, us, and the body.’

  Vigilantius swayed wildly back on his heels.

  ‘Let me be. Let me rest in darkness,’ he hissed. His mouth was huge, twisted, formless, the strange disembodied voice sharp, clear. There was an infinite sadness in it which I would not have imagined Vigilantius capable of evoking. His breathing became troubled, laboured, and – my God, I wish to deny it! – his voluminous cloak began to rise up of its own accord like a malignant black cloud which threatened to engulf him whole. Everything happened so fast. We were like men adrift in the middle of a raging torrent or a howling storm.

  ‘Take energy from me!’ screamed Vigilantius, as if an unseen hand were ripping the heart from his body. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am no longer I,’ the voice replied in a shrieking howl, and I felt Koch’s hand grasping at my sleeve for comfort. There was silence for some time, then the wind began to moan and wail again. ‘I am…I…no more…no more…’

  ‘Who took you into the darkness?’ Vigilantius asked calmly, as if it were the most natural question in the world.

  ‘Murder…murder…murder…’ the wind raged back a dozen times, like a hammer blow repeated over and over again. It echoed and resounded in my brain. In the flickering light, I seemed to see the stiff frozen mouth of the corpse open and close in speech. Vigilantius quivered from head to toe. Mangled words and rent phrases rushed from his lips in an incomprehensible avalanche.

  Then, there was a sharp cry of pain.

  ‘Who did this, Spirit?’ Vigilantius stormed. ‘Who murdered you?’

  I heard the hoot of an owl, the sound of pigeons cooing, the howl of a cat, the wild babbling of a tuneless song, then that wind-like rush again.

  ‘A tongue of flame. A fire at the back of my sku…’ The speech slurred suddenly, then picked up more clearly with a snatching, nasal sibilance which was quite distinct. Was this the true voice of Lawyer Tifferch? ‘Dark…dark…a voice…’

  ‘Which voice?’ Vigilantius shouted against a babble of disconnected sounds like the tuneless mangling of a hurdy-gurdy when the handle is turned the wrong way. ‘Who spoke to you? Describe him, I command you!’

  I saw, or thought I saw, the lips of the dead man move in answer. ‘The Devil’s is a face…no more,’ the corpse said, and silence fell as if a tomb-slab had been dropped in place. Time stood still, but questions rattled in a swirling vortex through my brain. What had I just seen? What jiggery-pokery had I just witnessed? Sweat ran cold along my spine. The performance had certainly been impressive, my heart was still heaving like a bellows. I gasped for air, and had to clear my throat for fear of choking. In that instant, I realised, Doctor Vigilantius was watching me. The real Vigilantius, if anything could be called real in that dark place. Suddenly, his upper lip curled, his black eyes sparkled, and he grinned fiendishly from ear to ear.

  ‘You heard it, did you not?’ he said. ‘The human corpse is the receptacle of vital sensations. My magister, Emanuel Swedenborg, taught me how to tap them long ago. Open your blinkered mind to mystery, Herr Procurator. More illustrious men than you have learnt to see without using their eyes.’

  He took a step towards me, blocking the body from my sight. His sense of his own powers was absurd, unquestioning. Arrogance oozed from his person, sweat rained from his brow, rivulets ran down his face and his neck. ‘Make the most of what you have just been privileged to witness,’ he said, waiting for my reaction, the smile slowl
y fading from his lips.

  I took a step forward.

  ‘Impressive, sir,’ I said, my pulse thumping rapidly. ‘You’ve missed your calling. You should have been an actor. But what remains of the play when the curtain falls?’

  I stared into his eyes for some moments, but he did not reply.

  ‘You have told me nothing useful,’ I went on, my anger mounting. ‘How did this man die? What weapon killed him? And why could he not describe the face of his murderer? You are a ventriloquist, sir, a conjuror. I have heard not a single word of truth from the dead man’s lips. Nor from yours. You are wasting my time, obstructing my investigation. The King will have a report of what is happening here.’

  The necromancer’s coal-black eyes stared defiantly into mine, and that annoying, self-satisfied smile twisted his thin lips once more. ‘What has the King to do with this, Herr Stiffeniis?’

  ‘Surely, you remember him?’ I replied sarcastically. ‘Our monarch? King Frederick Wilhelm III? The person who entrusted this case into my hands? I have his letter of authority here in my…’

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ Vigilantius interrupted, waving his hand in the air as if to dismiss a bothersome fly. ‘King Frederick Wilhelm knows nothing of you, or me. A person of eminence whom His Majesty trusts has promised to solve these mysteries for him. With your help, and with mine. Your letter of authority isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It was signed and sealed by some faceless secretary in Berlin, I’d wager. A pretext to bring you here.’

  My hands began to shake with rage, and I thrust them deep inside my cloak, trying to keep my voice cool and sharp when I spoke. ‘An eminent person? A person whom the King trusts? And this great man has promised the King to solve these murders by means of sleight-of-hand and conjuring tricks. How remarkable! I am eager to meet this Professor of Chicanery. The city of Königsberg could not be in better hands.’

  Vigilantius stared at me in silence, that mocking smile fading into a stiff and brooding glare. ‘You are insulting a great man, Herr Procurator. I hope that I am present when you meet him.’