Critique Of Criminal Reason Part 28

I sat down on the bed and looked at him. A large padded dressing had been draped over the left side of his face. It was held in place with bandages. He shifted on his chair and fixed his good eye on me. He made a better impression than he had the first time we had met, the deformity of his face hidden by the medical dressings.

'I'm glad to find you better, Lublinsky.'

'Better than the last time, you mean?' His attempt at a smile appeared like a horrible distortion on his lips. 'You're right, though. I feel at home here. In a soldiers' hospice they've seen worse faces than mine. They don't baulk away from such revolting things, if you catch my drift.'

'We must talk, Lublinsky.'

He shifted in his seat again, showing only the bandaged side of his face. Clearly, he was not going to let me forget what he had been subjected to. Even so, I did not mean to harm him further. My only wish was to extract the truth and so conclude my investigation.

'I've told you all I know,' he said.

'Not all, Lublinsky,' I replied. 'Not everything. Anna Rostova is dead. But you know that for a fact already.'

He sat up stiffly. 'Do you believe that loss of sight has given me greater powers of vision? I have not learnt that trick yet.'

I noted this change of att.i.tude. There was a sarcastic bitterness about him. A desperate vein of dark humour had ousted the timidity which marked him out at our first meeting. And yet, fear of what I could do to him was there. Resentment too. It seemed to charge his being, as if he lacked strength of character to master it. Well, I thought, I have played on his fear of my office once before, and I mean to do so again.

'You've told me but half the truth,' I began. 'I want to hear the rest. How did you manage to escape from this place last night?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he protested in that mewling nasal voice, raising the back of his hand to wipe the spittle from his lips.

'You know nothing of the murder of Anna Rostova?'

'Must I answer such a question?'

'I think you must, Lublinsky.'

'You know the answer, then.'

'Yesternight you swore to murder her,' I insisted.

Lublinsky turned full-face, and brought his good eye to bear on mine like a man-of-war coming around broadside and lining up its heavy cannons. There was something majestic in his manner of doing so which surprised me. I realised then that his life had changed. He had altered since our meeting the night before. I had expected a mutation, but I was not prepared for the nature of it. There was, as I have mentioned, majesty and dignity, but they were the majesty and the dignity of malevolence. Lucifer after the Fall. There was no evidence of self-disgust, no sign of repentance, nothing to denote the agony of a tortured Christian conscience. Had I been able to remove the bandages from his face, I doubt I would have found the features I had come to know. There was evil in him, and he made no attempt to suppress it. He appeared capable of any act, any offence, any degradation, and I felt myself defenceless before him.

As he stared at me in silence, his eye seemed to gleam and swell with evil pride. I could not tell what was going through his mind. I only knew that I would not like it. He did not flinch or look down as he had done the first time that Koch had called him into my presence.

'You killed her,' I said quietly. 'What have you to lose by admitting it?'

He held his silence for some moments.

'I was here in the Infirmary, Herr Procurator,' he said with a bitter-sweet smile. 'Anna saw to that.'

'She was seen with a man last night in a tavern out at Pillau,' I pressed on. 'They were coupling, Lublinsky. Rutting like wild animals. Is that her power of attraction over you, too?'

'Over me, Herr Procurator? Me? Over you, I would have thought!' he rattled off angrily. 'I've seen the way you ogled her. Me? With half a chance, you'd have given her a length! In spite of what she is. For that reason, maybe.'

I swallowed hard before I spoke.

'Do not accuse me of your own sins. I am a happily married man!'

'That's what they all say,' he replied with a dismissive shake of the head. 'Then they hand over the coin and unb.u.t.ton their pants. A wife is only a wife. Anna was something really special.'

'It does not change the fact that you murdered her last night.'

Lublinsky did not reply immediately.

'Let's say, for just one moment, that you are right, Herr Procurator,' he said at last, and he was taunting me. 'What b.l.o.o.d.y difference does it make? Whoever killed her, G.o.d will forgive the deed. That man did the world a favour.'

'I am not interested in your opinions of Divine Justice,' I snapped. 'Nor am I interested particularly in the murder of Anna Rostova last night. The only thing I want from you is an admission of the truth.'

The pupil of his eye dilated, and I was faced with a dark, imponderable hole. 'What are you talking about, sir?' he said with a flash of exasperation. 'The truth about what?'

'I want to know what you really saw and did when you went to examine those murdered corpses in the streets with Kopka.'

Lublinsky swivelled towards the window and studied himself in the gla.s.s. A dense fog had swept in from the sea with the turn of the tide. It had suffocated the wind and banished the sleet, transforming the world into a silent milky void.

'I've told you that before,' he snarled. 'I saw what I drew.'

'I've seen your sketches, Lublinsky,' I said. 'They are incomplete.'

'What do you want from a soldier? I'm not an artist. I said that to the odd old gentleman, but he didn't seem to mind. He had money to throw away. I just did as he asked.'

'You didn't draw the footprints that the killer left on the ground beside the bodies,' I accused.

'Which footprints?'

'In the case of the first murder, you sketched in what you found around the body, including footprints bearing a knife-cut in the shape of a cross. But you did not trace out those marks in all the other cases.'

'Satan leaves no prints,' Lublinsky said with a bitter laugh. 'His cloven feet don't touch the ground.'

'Do not joke with me,' I flared with anger. Had he really omitted the footprints from his later drawings, or were there none to be seen? 'You believed that Anna Rostova was the culprit. And when the killings continued, you convinced yourself that she had committed them all. She was a witch sacrificing human lives to her demons. You chose to consort with her to cure your face. So, you covered the tracks that she had left behind her. That is why you drew no more prints. You thought that they would lead to her.'

A noise like shifting gravel rattled from Lublinsky's throat. He was laughing. 'That needle must have entered my brain,' he said. 'I don't follow you, sir. How could I have done such diabolical things? Kopka was with me.'

'Kopka is dead, and the dead cannot speak. You killed him, didn't you?' I hissed. 'He must have guessed what you were up to, that you were covering up for a criminal. Rather than denounce you, he tried to desert from the regiment. But you chased him, and you brought him back. You were the capturing officer the report talks about, Lublinsky, were you not? Kopka was made to run the gauntlet, while every man in the regiment, yourself included, tried to crack his skull open with a stick.'

'Deserters know the score,' he growled. 'It's no easy thing to leave the Prussian army. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d got what was coming to him.'

'How very convenient for you, Lublinsky.'

'You cannot frighten me, Herr Procurator,' he replied boldly. 'I've nothing left to lose. If you wish to believe that Anna Rostova was the murderer and that I was her accomplice, you're free to do so. If you think that I connived at Kopka's death, dream on. But you'll not put those words into my mouth. You won't get me to confess...'

I played my final card. G.o.d help me, I had no alternative.

'You are proud to be a soldier, are you not?'

'It was my life,' he grunted. 'I'll be cast off now, I suppose.'

'A dishonourable discharge,' I added, 'a barebacked whipping out of the regiment. Then civil charges to face. Complicity to murder, obstruction of Justice, theft from a corpse. You are going to pay in full for Anna Rostova's crimes, as well as for your own. You won't find much in the way of sympathy in any prison. An officer who's betrayed his trust? The lowest of the low. Sentence? Life. With forced labour and reduced rations. With a bit of luck, you may survive a year or two. I want you to suffer, Lublinsky. And to make quite sure of it, I will condemn you to serve out your time in a...military prison!'

'You can't do that!' he roared, the enormity of the threat opening up before him. He would be hated and brutalised by his guards, reviled and tormented by his fellow prisoners. Each moment of every day he would be hounded and harried by a heartless pack of wild dogs.

'Can I not, Lublinsky? You know the legal code by heart, I suppose? I can condemn any man to the sentence I think most fit. Article 137 of the Penal Code. You go where I decide to send you.'

There is no such article, but Lublinsky was not to know. I p.r.o.nounced this threat like a pagan G.o.d who knows no pity for the creatures under his jurisdiction. And like a deity devoid of all Christian compa.s.sion, I obtained what I insisted on having. He blubbered for a moment, but then he found his voice. His mutilated tongue began to squawk in fractured measures.

'The first time, that morning, I went to see the corpse she'd found. I guessed she was hiding something. Some secret...' His voice was strained, low, and I had to struggle to understand. 'Then, Kopka went for gin. For her, for Anna. She put her spell on me while he was gone. "I'll cure your face," she said.'

'There is nothing new or interesting in this, Lublinsky,' I cut in. 'I want to hear the rest. I want to know about those footprints.'

'Kopka saw them...'

'And you a.s.sumed that the woman had left them?'

Lublinsky shook his head. 'Not the first time, sir.'

'You drew them on that occasion, did you not?'

'I drew what I could recall. It was months afterwards. I was no good at it, but Professor Kant was happy. There were footprints all around that body. On the ground. In the snow,' Lublinsky went on. 'There was a cross on the sole. When I told Anna, she said that cross was the sign of the Devil mocking the crucifixion. It was a sacrilege, she said. So when I saw that cross again, I did not draw it. Nor did I report everything that I found there...'

He paused, and peered into my face, looking for approval. He was offering me something, working to save his miserable hide, just as he had done when he surrendered Anna Rostova into my hands the day before.

'What did you find?' I asked, trying to sound detached.

'A chain,' he said. 'In the hand of Jan Konnen. A watch-chain with a broken link.'

'What did you do with it?'

'When Kopka wasn't looking, I slipped it in my pocket. It was silver.'

'That's theft,' I sneered.

He hesitated for a moment. 'I gave it to Anna. A gift from Satan, she said, and I'd be rewarded 'cause I'd done the right thing. She told me then what she had done. She'd pulled the Devil's claw from the dead man's neck before we arrived. Afterwards, she made me bring her any trifle that I found at the murder scenes. Those things were charged with the power of life and death...'

'If she was the murderer, why didn't she take them herself?' I objected.

'She wanted to tie me to her, sir,' Lublinsky mumbled. 'To make me her accomplice. She promised she'd heal me with the Devil's claw. I had to swear an oath. Tell anyone this secret, she said, and the spell won't work.'

'The second time, you found the same footprints by the body?'

Lublinsky nodded. 'There was that cross-cut again. It was hers, I'd swear, though I didn't see her that time. Her power was growing with each murder, she said. I thought she'd put a spell on Professor Kant 'cause he insisted that I should be sent out. Whenever there was another murder, I had to go and draw it. An' while I was there, I collected the Devil's gifts for Anna.'

I frowned. 'What are you talking about?'

'They all had something hidden in their hands, sir. All of them. Those corpses...I took the objects and I gave them to Anna Rostova like an obedient dog.'

My heart beat fast. A new light shone on what I knew.

'What did you find?'

'A key in the fist of the dead lady.'

Professor Kant had surely been referring to something of the sort when he spoke of the murderer having used some stratagem to induce the victims to fall down on their knees. The list that Lublinsky gave me contained nothing of any import or value. The victims had died clasping ba.n.a.l objects of everyday use, sinister and mysterious by their a.s.sociation only with murder and witchcraft. The chain of Konnen, the key in Frau Brunner's hand, a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton stamped with an anchor in the hand of the third, a groat from the fingers of Lawyer Tifferch.

'I cleaned the bones of the dead for her. I sorted through the muck for Anna Rostova,' Lublinsky went on. 'Like a carrion crow.'

'Did you take the weapon for her, too?'

'No, sir. She must have spirited it away. I never saw her there again. Not once after the first time.'

He stared at me in disbelief, as if awaking from a dream.

'She killed them, but I didn't give a d.a.m.n. Not me. If people dying meant her power was growing, I was glad of it. G.o.d help me! I wanted her to kill again.'

He let out a strange cry, a strangled whimper, and I realised he was laughing.

'I carried a mirror in my pocket,' he said, his shoulders heaving, 'to see my face. Waiting for it to change after each murder. She promised much, but nothing changed. Still the same. Ugly brute...'

He was mad, lost in a world of vain hopes of his own creating.

'It's funny, is it not?' he said with sudden vehemence, his head jerking round at me. 'That woman terrified the city and commanded the King. No one would have given her a second glance if Nature hadn't marked her out. We're two of a kind, we are. Me, with a face disfigured by smallpox. That wild silver hair she had. Those blazing eyes. I wanted her. Even as she plunged that dart in my eye...' He fixed me with that mocking eye of his. 'Did you think to find the answer to your mystery in two such monsters, Herr Stiffeniis?'

There was a claim to omnipotence in his tone, I suddenly realised. He was proud of what he had done. He seemed to think that he and Anna Rostova had held Konigsberg in their hands. And he was right. They had toyed with the authorities, with the police, the King. Professor Kant had been taken in by them. And so had I. Anger burst from me like hot water gushing from a Greenland geyser. All pity gone, I felt the urge to harm him, to repay him for his arrogance.

'You murdered Anna Rostova last night. You convinced yourself that she was the killer.' I struggled to control my voice, caught my breath, checked my anger before I continued. 'You were wrong, Lublinsky. Wrong! Now, how did you leave this room?'

He did not trouble himself to answer. Instead, like some hideous parody of Narcissus, he turned his head towards the winter scene outside the window and studied himself once more in the gla.s.s.

'By means of that window? Is that how you escaped? You're practically alone,' I nodded over my shoulder at the amputee. 'That fellow down there has pain enough. They give him something to help him sleep, I bet. But vengeance is the most powerful painkiller, and your legs are not hampered, soldier.'

'She'll be happy with the Devil she worshipped,' Lublinsky said with bitter intensity.

'She was not the killer,' I insisted coldly. 'Do you hear me? She did not kill those people.'

'I know what I know,' he growled angrily.

I shook my head. 'Those footprints that you saw beside the corpses were not left by Anna Rostova. She played with you, tricked you time and time again. She made you believe what she wanted. She took your money. You were her dupe...'

'Hang me, sir,' he moaned suddenly. 'Kill me. I was a good soldier before black wolves began to howl in my soul. Snap my neck in two. 'Twill all be over in a second.'

I looked at him in disgust. His face was deformed by anguish and fear, as well as ruined by uncaring Nature. Even so, I realised, the surgeon had been right. Lublinsky's soul was blacker still. I rose, grabbed for my hat, and strode from the room without a word or a backward glance.

I saw Anton Lublinsky no more. I had lied to him on that count. In the report I wrote that evening, unable once again to prove what I knew, I glossed over his part in the death of Anna Rostova, concluding that the midwife had been killed by a person, or by persons, unknown. I heard no immediate news of Lublinsky's fate, though when news did eventually come, it was not good. Demoted to a.s.sist in the regimental kitchen after losing his eye, he was subsequently condemned to a military prison for murdering a soldier who had mocked him once too often. There, Lublinsky swallowed broken gla.s.s and slowly haemorrhaged to death.

Outside the Infirmary, I stopped to try and collect my thoughts. I felt depressed, sick at heart, thoroughly dispirited. Perhaps desperate was the most apposite word to describe my state of mind. Where should I turn? What should I do now? If only I could find the courage to resign this thankless task and return to the monotony of my life in Lotingen with my wife and children, I would be taking a step in the right direction. I ought to write to the King, explain my incapacity, and ask to be released immediately from my burdensome duties.

But then, as always in times of doubt, my thoughts turned to Immanuel Kant. How would I justify the renunciation in his eyes? Would he dismiss me as a faint-hearted coward incapable of putting his suggestions to good use? If not for me, I could almost hear him say, Morik, the Totzes and Anna Rostova might still be alive, and Lublinsky might not have lost his eye and his soul.

'Herr Stiffeniis?' a voice sliced through my thoughts. A gendarme had appeared at my side. 'I've been looking all over the place for you, sir,' he said, rummaging in his shoulder-bag. 'I've got a dispatch here from Herr Sergeant Koch. And there's someone...'