HS02 - Days of Atonement (44 page)

His hand fell heavily on my shoulder.

‘Take a hard look at this cemetery, Stiffeniis. How many of these children—lights of their mothers’ lives, those pious inscriptions say—were victims of culpable lack of care, or something worse? Forty per cent, more, perhaps, did
not
die. They were killed, but no Prussian magistrate appears ever to have investigated these deaths. They are statistics. Nothing more. Can you see this place in a darker light, now?’

His grip relaxed. ‘What point are you trying to make?’ I asked. ‘That note slipped under my door. This lugubrious setting. Tiny seeds sown, but never harvested. Prussian statistics, domestic fatalities. What has any of this to do with the killing of the Gottewald children?
Those
children’s throats were slashed open, their bodies were mutilated. Their father died far away in the East, and as for the mother, well . . . They do not enter into your statistics.’

Lavedrine took a step closer. ‘Do you remember our pact, Herr Procurator? You and I, no one else?’

‘I do, indeed.’

‘Very well, then. I brought you here to tell you what I have discovered, and how these statistics relate to the news.’

‘I am pleased to hear it,’ I said.

In answer, he said not a word. Nothing. His mouth formed that thin ironic smile that was so typical of him, and it persisted for longer than was comfortable.

‘I am waiting, Lavedrine,’ I hissed. ‘What did you find?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied at last. ‘There is no trace of Bruno Gottewald in the French archives. Not a single mention of his name. No one has heard of him. He is not listed as a spy. A French spy, at any rate. If Bruno Gottewald and his children were exterminated for that reason, his fellows in Kamenetz made a huge, tragic mistake.’

As he spoke, an icy coldness closed upon my heart like the clamp of hard frost at the start of the Prussian winter. I might have remained there, stunned and helpless, until the first warm breath of spring, a maelstrom of panic swirling in my mind, sucking my hopes down into black hopelessness.

‘Are you certain?’ I asked, throwing my last vain hope into the arena.

‘Poor Hanno! Your theory is as dead as these poor
chiccolini.
’ He chuckled. ‘But don’t be so downhearted! I did find one scrap of information that might be useful. It’s not much, but it is a curious coincidence. You’ll never guess who
has
been in touch with the French authorities, and on more than one occasion.’

‘Who?’ I asked helplessly.

‘Our old friend, Leon Biswanger,’ he said, and chuckled again. ‘Do you recall? So frightened of Prussian nationalists that he did not wish to speak to us? Well, it seems that he has been writing letters to the French general quarters in Königsberg.’

‘Is that where you’ve been?’

He nodded.

‘What did he write to them about?’

He began to search about in his pockets. ‘I made a rough copy of one of his missives,’ he said, pulling out a sheet of paper, shaking it open in the wind, which blew more boldly as darkness fell. ‘Here we are. I had to be quick, they would not leave me alone for long, but you’ll get the gist of it.’

. . .
in the light of recent political developments,
I read,
in particular, the recent ratification of the Treaty of Tilsit, I wonder whether it may be possible, your Excellency, to name a date at which, I am certain, all men in Prussia will rejoice in being free . . .

I quickly read the rest, then returned the paper to Lavedrine’s waiting hand.

‘If you have no more urgent business on your plate,’ he said, ‘we should speak with the man. Biswanger may be afraid of the power that we wield, but he has told us less than the truth.’

If Lavedrine thought to dazzle me with the light of this discovery, he was mistaken.

‘Is there any point?’ I asked. ‘He will plead personal reasons tied to business, no doubt. He might have written on behalf of Aaron Jacob, or some other Jew.’

‘A man like Biswanger?’ Lavedrine laughed. ‘Strike dead the goose that lays the golden egg? Aaron Jacob is too valuable an asset.’ He shook his head. ‘I am convinced that this should interest you, Herr Procurator, as much as it puzzles me. Do you have anything better to do in the next half-hour?’

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘One thing, since we are here.’

The Gottewald children had been buried in the newest part of the cemetery.

As if to confirm what Lavedrine had said about infant mortality in Prussia, we found two other fresh graves nearby which had been filled in since the massacre, and an open pit with planks around it and a mound of earth, which might have been dug in preparation for a funeral the next day. There was not much to see: three identical white slabs, each one bearing the name of a Gottewald child, the age, and the year, 1807. An identical inscription had been carved on each of the stones, as if the stonemason had been taxed to find sufficient verses for three children, though I suspected that the epitaph had been chosen by Dittersdorf. It had the sort of lofty aristocratic air so typical of him:
Hoc est, sic est, aliud fieri non licet
.

‘It is a fact,’ I translated. ‘It is self-evident. And could not be otherwise.’

‘Plain words to cover a mystery,’ Lavedrine muttered. ‘Now, are you ready to visit our industrious undertaker?’

Outside the cemetery gate, we walked towards the centre of the town. Only then, I forced myself to say, ‘So, Lavedrine, you have been to Königsberg.’

‘A city you know well,’ he replied.

I believed I knew what he was thinking.

‘A beautiful town,’ he went on with enthusiasm. ‘The Venice of the Baltic, they call it. An exaggeration, of course, but it is a fine place. An important administrative centre, too. I wondered whether they might have some general information that would be of use to us. By chance, those ugly statistics about infant mortality that I quoted earlier turned up in the town hall. In a sense, Stiffeniis, I have to admit, I did deceive you there.’

‘Really? How?’ I asked reluctantly.

‘Those figures I cited. The incidence of improbable “accidents” among the infant population in Prussia. They are out of date by now. Indeed, they refer specifically to the years 1760 to 1765.’

‘Hardly worth considering,’ I said, as we turned into the square and down into Nogatsstrasse, heading for the bridge and Biswanger’s dwelling.

‘Hardly,’ he agreed. ‘Except for the question of who compiled them.’

‘Who did?’ I asked, not in the least interested.

‘A private citizen sent those figures to a local magistrate all those years ago. Someone who dared to throw back the curtain on a crime which everyone else chose
not
to see. A man who was convinced that there are many sides to crime. Later on in life, he made a name for himself. A name that you know well. Professor Immanuel Kant. As I thought, he
was
interested in violent death. Very interested, indeed.’

 31 

T
HE GHOST HAD
returned.

Would he never leave me alone?

Immanuel Kant called to me once more from beyond the grave, but I closed my mind to that voice, and talked determinedly of other things. As we crossed the river, I told Lavedrine what I had done in his absence, describing my examination of the human remains in the Old Fish Market the day before, briefly mentioning the help I had received from Aaron Jacob. I was careful to say nothing of the portrait that I had drawn with his assistance. Nor did I tell Lavedrine of the additions I had made at my wife’s prompting. What would he say if he were to recognise Helena in that sketch, as I had done?

‘It was not wise to bring that man out of the ghetto,’ he observed.

‘Not wise, but necessary,’ I replied. ‘I hoped that he might discern a similarity between the skull of that woman, and the heads of the children.’

‘Her skull was smashed to pieces!’ he remarked with evident surprise.

‘Indeed, there was too much damage for any meaningful comparison,’ I admitted. ‘Otherwise it might have borne fruit.’

‘Aaron Jacob is full of the strangest notions.’ He shrugged with an indulgent smile. ‘What similarity could there possibly be between the skull of a mother and the heads of her children? I have never heard anything so bizarre!’

We were ten yards short of the house when Lavedrine began to sniff the air.

‘Not a whiff of rotting flesh,’ he observed with a grim smile. ‘Has Biswanger no clients today?’

I rang the bell, but it was not Biswanger who answered the door.

The matron looking out at us was stout, middle-aged, her face the colour of pounded beef. Dressed in a stiff white apron and linen house-cap, the sleeves of her black gown rolled up above her elbows, we might have interrupted her preparations for the evening meal.

‘Yes?’ she said crossly

‘Is Herr Biswanger at home?’

‘My husband is busy,’ she said, folding heavy arms over heavy breasts. She had the same sharp eyes as the undertaker, but a more forbidding manner. ‘If it’s a burial, I can make the necessary arrangements for you.’

The blood drained from her face as Lavedrine informed her who we were.

Without a word, she turned and clattered off on her wooden pattens. Not a minute passed, but she reappeared and asked us to step inside, carefully closing the door to the street. ‘In there, sirs,’ she mumbled, pointing to the room where we had met Biswanger on the previous occasion.

We entered without knocking.

Two persons were with Biswanger: a man whose head and shoulders were hidden beneath a large black cloth, and a pale, plump lady of mature years who was sitting very still in a high-backed chair staring straight ahead.

Biswanger turned, a tight-lipped expression on his face.

‘One moment, I pray you, sirs,’ he called. ‘If we can just settle the pose, this gentleman can get on with his job while I attend to you.’

Lavedrine and I exchanged a glance as Biswanger turned away.

‘Does it suit you now, Herr Rauch?’ Biswanger called out in a loud voice.

Herr Rauch pulled back the black cloth that covered his head and looked up. He bobbed to us by way of welcome, then turned to Biswanger. ‘Have a look for yourself, sir,’ he invited. ‘It will do, I think.’

The young man was tall and thin, with wild, uncombed hair, and spots of paint on his trousers and shoes. Christian Rauch was well known in town as a painter of portraits. He pulled his black cloth further back as he stood up to his full height, revealing a large wooden box which stood on a wooden frame. A camera obscura, fitted up with an adjustable brass lens for focusing; the sort of thing that artists use when preparing a canvas.

Biswanger cleared his throat, then lowered himself to the height of the ground-glass viewing plate. ‘Cover me up,’ he said, and the artist immediately threw the black cloth over the apparatus and the head and shoulders of the undertaker, whose large backside reared up ludicrously in white duck trousers as he manoeuvred himself into a position to see.

The lens was pointing at the seated lady.

Sounds of a huffing, indeterminate nature came from beneath the cloth. A moment later, Biswanger came thrusting out from beneath the black cloth, as if desperate for air.

‘Something’s not quite right,’ he murmured.

He stood back from the viewing-box, clasped his chin in his hand, and looked intently at the figure of the old lady sitting quietly in the chair.

Her cheeks were chubby, the skin was dewlapped and sagging along the line of her jaw. A dimpled chin, a large nose, and two button-bright black eyes completed the picture.

What was missing, I wondered, in Biswanger’s opinion?

The woman was sitting bolt upright, her billowing sleeves resting along the broad arms of the chair, her hands curved over the two turned balls of wood that formed the spindle-ends. She was dressed in a gown of ribbed brown velvet elaborately embroidered with silver thread. A matching bonnet and an old-fashioned ruff completed her ensemble. Large pearls dangled from her ears, the lobes of which were just visible.

Biswanger let out a suppressed cry.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ he said, and left the room, running in his eagerness.