HS02 - Days of Atonement (49 page)

‘The great problem,’ I said, remembering the poor results that had failed to amuse the children, ‘is that we must be extremely quick in our operations. Each of us must do his bit, and in the exact sequence. Then, we’ll have no more than a minute. Oh, I forgot to mention my own role,’ I added. ‘I will see to the curtains.’

‘Let’s get on with it,’ Lavedrine urged from the cold floor. ‘My knees are beginning to ache.’

Helena looked at me and smiled conspiratorially.

I drew the curtains tightly closed. As I bent and took a piece of paper from the envelope in my bag, I warned both of my assistants to be at the ready. Using a metal pin, I hung the paper on the wall over the mark that interested us. ‘Cover it up, please,’ I said, and Lavedrine placed his square of black card exactly over the paper hanging on the wall.

I stood up, pulled back the curtains, and let light into the room.

‘One moment,’ I warned them, waiting as the sun began to slide from behind the clouds that covered it. ‘Helena, hold up that mirror. Its reflection must shine precisely on that square of black card that Lavedrine is holding. One more second . . . Another . . . And a third . . . Lavedrine!’

At the sound of his name, Lavedrine pulled back the black card, exposing the paper hanging on the wall to the sunlight reflected brightly in the mirror. Then, I began to count slowly: ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .’

As I reached ten, I closed the curtains as tightly as I could manage. ‘Lavedrine, cover the paper again with your card, please. Helena, put down that mirror, and light the candle on the dresser.’

She was nimble, striking the flint I had brought, lighting the stub of candle I had provided for the purpose. As she stood beside me in the gloom, the candle cupped in her hands, the flickering flame lent a waxy orange glow to her smooth rosy cheeks.

‘You can remove the paper from the pin, Lavedrine,’ I said. ‘Now, we must be very quick. The instant candlelight shines on the paper, the picture will begin to turn entirely black. Are we all ready? Good, let’s see what we have obtained.’

I took the paper from Lavedrine, and held it close to the candlelight while they crowded at my shoulders. There, inscribed on the darkening paper, were two indistinct grey letters and some other formless stuff. The coating of silver chloride was less uniform than it ought to have been, but a vague image had formed.

‘I can just make out a large
H
,’ Lavedrine read. ‘A second capital
H
is repeated here, perhaps, in the middle of the sequence. But I can’t make sense of the rest.’

Before he had finished, the ciphers disappeared, eaten up by the unstoppable chemical reaction of silver chloride when exposed to light. I held the blackened piece of paper in my hands. Nothing was visible.

‘Do you think the murderer left his signature?’ Helena suggested.

I remained quiet, fearing that my experiment had been more ridiculous than useful.

‘Why leave a signature?’ Lavedrine quizzed. ‘What could this double
H
mean? If it means anything at all . . .’

‘I hoped for something sharper,’ I mumbled.

Having seen the letters form, I had been praying they would tell us something. Anything, which might have linked them to Kamenetz.

‘Don’t take it so hard,’ he comforted me. ‘You tried. Two
H
s are better than none. Is it your fault if English science is not so perfect as the English claim?’

Half an hour afterwards, Helena and I were riding back to town in the coach. The pale winter sun was swallowed by black rain-clouds which came rushing in from the coast. I ought to have been grateful for the few rays of sunlight that had allowed me to attempt the experiment, but I was sorely disappointed by its failure.

The coach pulled up in town, and I helped Helena down onto the cobbles.

Lavedrine dismounted, tied up his horse, and came to join us.

‘You made some interesting discoveries,’ he complimented Helena.

‘But what do they tell us?’ she replied, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. ‘She might have been preparing to move. To another house. Or another town. When we leave a house, we burn or throw out all the rags and rubbish. Only one thing makes me doubt it.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Those saplings freshly planted in the garden. When we want to put down roots, we Prussians often plant a tree,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It is almost as if she wanted to stay there for ever, but could not . . .’

Lavedrine turned to me. ‘Well, Herr Procurator. Do you still think death came calling from Kamenetz?’

I held his gaze. ‘You still believe that the answer lies in that house.’

‘Perhaps we have
both
been looking in the wrong direction,’ he conceded.

I felt my heart lurch. I knew what he was about to suggest. He did not speak to me, however. He turned to my wife. ‘I must carry your husband off with me for a day or two, Helena,’ he announced.

Could I object to what he was about to propose?

‘Where are you taking him?’ she enquired, her eyes wide with surprise.

‘Königsberg,’ he said, his eyes flashing into mine.

 34 

I
HAD READ
reports of Kant’s last will and testament in the newspapers.

Apart from the dubious pleasure of picking over the bones of a famous person who had recently died, there was not very much that was of interest to anyone, including myself, who had known him better than any man alive at the end. His material possessions had been sufficient to ensure his comfort. He had his plate, his silver, his household linen—he even had a deal of money held as savings in a local bank. But what concerned him most, it seemed, was the question of his papers.

From his youth onwards, Kant had been a voracious reader and hoarder of books and pamphlets. As his own ideas began to gain credence throughout Prussia, then greater authority in the wider world, he wrote on almost every subject that ever interested man, as well as covering many arcane topics that no man before himself had even known existed. And in every case, he had published his findings, or assembled the material for a publication which, for one reason or another, had not materialised.

What would become of it all when he was dead?

This dilemma had assumed vast dimensions in the final decade of his life, the newspapers revealed. Of course, his three greatest works, the
Critiques
of Pure and Practical Reason, and of Judgment, had all been published, not only in German, but in various other languages as well. Lesser essays, written when he was a young professor still struggling to make his way, had appeared in studious journals and in more ephemeral magazines, and he had jealously conserved one or more copies of them, depending how widely the article had been taken up and reported—at second, third, or fourth hand, both at home and abroad. ‘A man cannot stop others stealing his ideas,’ Kant was recorded as saying, ‘but he can keep a jealous eye on the fruits of his labour.’

There was a mountain of books, manuscripts and papers; if they were not to end up on a bonfire, a home must be found for them. The obituary notice in the
Königsbergische Monatsschrift
mentioned that Kant had left a sum of
money to pay for a ‘suitable person to oversee the classification, and draw up a catalogue of the philosopher’s papers and published works’. A qualified archivist had been found in the person of Arnold Abel Ludvigssen. The name was not entirely new to me, though I knew it only in connection with Professor Kant, who had never been short of acolytes. Many students had progressed from one side of the teacher’s lectern to the other under his tutelage, and I felt certain that Ludvigssen must be one of them, a bright fellow who had attracted Kant’s attention by his diligence, a scholar who had been rewarded for his lesser talent with a few crumbs from the great man’s table.

More to the point, I thought I knew where Ludvigssen might be located.

It was almost seven o’clock when we arrived in town.

‘The curfew hour,’ as I reminded Lavedrine.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he replied. ‘I have my papers with me.’

‘And I have mine,’ I confirmed. ‘But will a letter from Mutiez, or a passport signed by Dittersdorf, hold any power in Königsberg?’

‘Do not trouble yourself,’ he assured me. ‘I will be the Dante to your Virgil. Just tell me which part of this
Inferno
you intend taking me to visit next.’

We were stopped almost immediately by a squad of French soldiers as we made our way through the dark, deserted city, heading in the direction of the university. Lavedrine had predicted correctly. His impeccable passport and high rank were more than sufficient to guarantee our freedom of movement. The soldiers apologised, saluted, and wished us good night without asking to see my humbler papers. Ten minutes more, and we stood before the university library, a tall building in the perpendicular Gothic style with high pointed windows, stained-glass tracery, flying buttresses, and horrid gargoyles. It was deathly silent, and seemed a fitting place for learned tomes to sleep while waiting for a reader.

Lavedrine thumped heavily on the door with the iron knocker.

When nothing happened, he hammered even more determinedly.

Above our heads, a window on the first floor rattled, then swung open.

The dark shadow of a head looked down.

‘Closed for the night,’ a grumbling sort of voice called out. ‘Open at six in the morning. You lads should be abed. Only a cat can read in the dark.’

‘We are looking for Herr Ludvigssen,’ Lavedrine shouted up. ‘Do you know where we can find him?’

A grumbling sort of laugh echoed off the walls. ‘He’ll be where he is always to be found.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘The Old Goat,’ the voice cried, then the window crashed shut again.

Lavedrine turned to me. ‘An inn, do you reckon?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I think it would be wise if we retraced our steps towards the town centre.’

While doing so, we were stopped by patrolling French troops once more. Again, Lavedrine’s papers passed muster. Again, mine were of no interest to them. The corporal saluted and began to beg pardon for stopping and questioning us, but Lavedrine cut him short.

‘Do you know a place called The Old Goat?’

It was a two-minute walk.

When we pushed open the door and strode into the bar-room of the inn, it was getting on for half past seven. With the exception of four young men dining at a table in the far corner close to the fire—student lodgers, in all probability—the place was empty. Our entrance did not go unnoticed, however. Any man who walks the streets after curfew with impunity is a man to be feared. There are only three alternatives. He is a soldier, he is French, or else he is a criminal caught out in an act of wrongdoing. As the door swung closed, all eyes turned quickly. The young men looked away just as quickly, but the landlord standing behind the bar was a braver sort. He bent down and came up holding a cudgel, which he slapped three times in the palm of his hand.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he called. ‘What can I do for you?’

Lavedrine walked across the room, set his foot on the bar-rail, rested his elbow on the counter. ‘Two steins of frothing beer would make a good start,’ he said.

The landlord, a big strong fellow with muscles bulging through his shirt, stared at him for a moment. Then, laying the cudgel down on the nearby bar-top, he placed two beer jugs under the tap of a barrel, and gave a twist to the stopper, glancing at the rising level of the ale, then back to us again in quick succession. He did not say a word until the steins were full.

‘Here you are,’ he said, placing one beer on the bar, then the other, using his left hand only. His right hand hovered close to the cudgel, a solid black stick with a number of splinters missing, as if it had been used, and recently, for smashing pates. ‘You know that there’s a law at night in Königsberg, do you not?’ he asked.

‘In Königsberg alone?’ Lavedrine replied, lifting up the jug and drinking through the grey froth that hid the liquid. ‘In the whole of Prussia, surely.’

As he pronounced the last two words, he did so with a marked rolling of the ‘r’.