'Do you think I am exaggerating?' Jachmann smiled a wan smile. 'Martin Lampe was discharged from the army, Kant was in need of a personal servant. At the time, it was a happy coincidence. Kant is incapable of the simplest household task; Lampe was taken on to remedy the omission. Why, he couldn't even put his own stockings on! Kant's daily life was arranged by this rough-and-ready soldier. When the Professor gave instructions to be called at five o'clock each morning, Corporal Lampe obeyed that order to the letter. If the master attempted to snooze after the hour had struck, the servant pitched him mercilessly from his bed like a lazy child. And Kant thanked him for it. He needs the sort of inflexible discipline which only a mother, or a man like Martin Lampe, can provide.'

He stopped to wipe his nose.

'Why drive him off after a life of dedicated service?' I insisted.

'He represented the greatest danger to his master,' Herr Jachmann snuffled into his handkerchief. 'Martin Lampe had become...irreplaceable.'

I studied Jachmann's pale face. His lips trembled, his eyes were feverish. He seemed to be terrified of Martin Lampe himself. 'But how was he a danger, sir? I do not comprehend you.'

'Do you know Gottlieb Fichte?' he asked abruptly. He did not wait for me to answer. 'Fichte was one of Kant's most promising students. When his doctoral thesis was published, many people believed that Kant had written it. They thought he had used the name of Fichte as a convenient pseudonym, but there was no truth in the rumour. Fichte often went to visit him, and the professor had always greeted him with friendly warmth. But after that thesis was published, a degree of coldness and animosity crept into their intimacy. Philosophical thought had shifted direction. Sentiment, Irrationality and Pathos were the new keywords. Reason had had its day; Logic was long out of fashion, and Immanuel Kant was set aside. Then, Fichte published a stinging attack on Kant for no apparent motive, accusing him of intellectual idleness. And a short while after, as bold as bra.s.s, he appeared at the door, saying that he desired to speak to his former mentor.'

'Did Kant receive him?'

'Of course he did. You know what he's like. He declared himself keener than ever to talk to someone capable of formulating new concepts. But Martin Lampe saw the affair in a different light.'

I considered this for a moment. 'Lampe was only a servant. What could he do about it?'

Jachmann ignored my objection. 'Fichte wrote to tell me what had happened that day,' he went on. 'He'd been frightened for his life, he said.'

He sank back on the pillow as if he had no energy left.

'What did he tell you?' I pressed without allowing him a second's pause.

Jachmann placed a flannel to his mouth, breathed in deeply, and the cloying smell of camphor wafted through the room. 'Leaving Kant's house that evening, Fichte found himself alone in the lane. It was dark and foggy, and he thought that someone might be following him. He quickened his pace, but still those footsteps dogged his own. There was no one to whom he could turn for help. And so, at last, he turned to face the stalker.'

'Did he recognise the person?' I asked.

Jachmann nodded. 'He did. It was Immanuel Kant.'

For a moment I thought the fever had possessed his reason.

'Not the amiable Kant that Fichte had left at the house,' Jachmann went on. 'This was a demon, a terrifying parody who looked like Kant, dressed like Kant. He ran at Fichte with a kitchen knife, and would have slit his throat if the younger man had not been so nimble. Fichte recognised him then. He saw that it was not Professor Kant, but the aged domestic who had poured tea for them both in subservient silence half an hour before in Kant's own sitting room.'

'G.o.d help us!' I exclaimed, wondering whether Martin Lampe's madness had begun that night.

'Fichte described him as the evil personification of his master.'

'Why did you not tell me this before?' I asked.

Herr Jachmann stared at me in silence for some moments. 'What good would the knowledge have done you?' he replied coldly.

'Did Kant ever learn of the incident?' I corrected myself.

Jachmann jerked beneath the sheets as if an adder had nipped him. 'Do you take me for a complete fool, Stiffeniis? There was a catastrophic overlapping of personalities in that house. The servant had become the master.'

'So you dismissed him,' I concluded.

'I fobbed Kant off with the notion that he needed a younger man. Then, I wrote to you, Stiffeniis, asking you to stay away from him. I wanted Kant to live out his mature years in peace. Professor Kant needs to be guarded from the world. He must avoid unsettling influences like yourself and Martin Lampe. Age has taken its toll on the stability and lucidity of his mind.'

The connection that Herr Jachmann had made between Lampe and myself distressed me. He still resented my short-lived intimacy with his former friend, and made no secret of his opinion. He viewed us both as a danger to Immanuel Kant.

'Soon after I dismissed him,' he went on, 'I made another discovery. It was most distressing. Lampe had a wife! He'd been married for six-and-twenty years, and no one knew of it.'

'But he'd been living in Kant's house...'

'Night and day. For all those years.' Jachmann shook his head. 'Marriage was strictly forbidden in the terms of Lampe's employment.'

He relapsed into a moody silence.

'Does Lampe know anything of philosophy?' I asked.

Jachmann shrugged. 'What does a footsoldier know of such things? He could read and write, I suppose, but a fixation had taken hold of his mind. Kant's work cannot proceed without my help, he told me one day. And on more than one occasion I found him sitting in the kitchen, leafing through his master's published works. G.o.d knows what he made of them! As he left the house for the last time, he warned me that Kant would never write another word without his a.s.sistance. The prophecy was all too true, I'm afraid.'

'Did you hear anything more of him afterwards?' I asked.

Jachmann seemed to swell with rage.

'I have little or no contact with Kant these days. Even so, I did everything in my power to make sure that Lampe was kept away from the house. I shudder to think that he has disobeyed my prohibition.' He looked at me with feverish eyes, rheumy tears trickling down his cheeks. 'Is Frau Mendelssohn quite certain of her facts?'

'She saw him leaving the house. Just yesterday. She told me so.'

'Find him, Stiffeniis,' Jachmann cried. 'Find that man before he does any more harm.'

'Do you have any idea where he is, sir?'

Jachmann stared at me like a hawk. 'The wife will know. She lives...they are living,' he corrected himself, 'somewhere near Konigsberg. I do not know exactly where. I never felt the wish to learn anything more about him. And now, Stiffeniis' he leaned forward stiffly and offered his cold, damp hand to me 'you must excuse me. I am grateful for all that you have done to help Professor Kant.'

I noted the stinging sarcasm in his voice as he p.r.o.nounced the last phrase.

'I will do everything that I can to prevent Martin Lampe...'

I halted, afraid that I might have said too much, but Jachmann was not listening. He had taken up his towel again from a small porcelain basin and had placed his head beneath the tent to inhale the fumes. Clearly, my visit was at an end.

I left the house, caught a two-wheeled cab at the end of the street, and told the sleepy driver to take me to the Fortress. I had not slept all the night, but that was the last thing on my mind as I rushed up to my bedroom. Where was Lampe? Where was his wife? I could not use the gendarmes to locate them. No one must ever know the connection between Lampe, those murders and Professor Kant. I closed the door behind me and felt like a house-fly trapped in a bottle. I buzzed up and down, hopelessly b.u.t.ting my nose against the gla.s.s, although the opening was there, if I cared to look for it. If I dared... The solution was all too obvious. There was one person I could ask about Martin Lampe: Professor Kant himself. He must know where the man was to be found. But could I ask him without revealing my reasons for seeking Lampe out?

A sharp double rap at my door sent this thought scuttling for the darkest corner like a fugitive sewer rat.

A bleary-eyed soldier stood before me when I opened up, his fist raised to knock again. 'An urgent message, sir.'

'What is it?'

'Downstairs, sir. A woman's asking for you.'

I was expecting no one. Had Helena, for some reason, taken it into her head to come to Konigsberg? Just as she had gone on impulse to visit Ruisling and my brother's grave the week before?

'Says her name's Frau Lampe, sir,' the soldier added.

I hurried down the stairs, greatly relieved and thanking Providence. G.o.d works in mysterious ways, they say. And how truly impenetrable they are! Hope surged in my breast in that moment. But that n.o.ble sentiment was no more than the final step on my long slide to perdition and delusion. The messenger had brought me the key to a closed vault that I had been trying in vain to enter. I could never have foreseen the horror awaiting me once the key had turned.

Chapter 31.

Frau Lampe was younger than I had expected. She could hardly have been forty-five years of age. Standing in the corridor outside the guard-room, her face was finely sculpted by the dark shadows. The flickering lamplight cast a waxen gloss on her pale skin. A thin shawl of grey worsted material covered her head and shoulders in meagre defiance of the rigours of the weather. Although she looked worn and tired, there was something timeless and beautiful about her appearance. She might have been a gypsy girl begging on a street corner for coins. Glancing up at me with a look of the most intense concern, her large black eyes glinted with unexpected directness into mine.

'Procurator Stiffeniis?'

'You must be Frau Lampe,' I said.

She bowed her head in reply.

'You'd better come out of the cold,' I said, and led her into a little room that was used as a rule by the officer of the night-watch.

'Thank you, sir,' she said with an eagerness which took me by surprise as I struck a flint to the wick of a candle. I imagined there could be only one reason for her coming: she had decided to confess all that she knew about her husband and his crimes.

'I should have come before, sir,' she began. 'It concerns my husband.'

I waved her to a chair and sat myself behind the desk.

'I know who your husband is,' I said.

Her eyes opened wide with surprise. 'Do you, sir?'

'I have heard his name mentioned many a time in connection with the affairs of Herr Professor Kant.'

Frau Lampe looked down, as if to hide her face. Her dignified bearing seemed to diminish like a sail when the wind suddenly drops. It was the work of an instant. At the mention of Kant's name, a change came over her.

'You know Professor Kant, then?' she murmured.

'Indeed,' I said, 'I have that pleasure...'

'Pleasure?' she interrupted sharply. 'I know him too, sir. Like a cripple knows his withered limb.'

Her words were like a blasphemy spoken aloud in a church. 'You had better tell me what you've come to say, Frau Lampe,' I said gruffly, managing with an effort to control my temper.

'You think me rude, I suppose?' she replied, looking me squarely in the face. 'Professor Kant may well be a friend to you, sir, but me and my husband know the darker side of his character. It's no lack of respect, but the fruit of bitter experience.'

Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable in the presence of that woman. There was a calm determination in her manner which I did not know how to handle or direct.

'I doubt that you've come merely to express your rancour towards Professor Kant,' I continued hastily. 'Very well, then. What brings you here?'

'Professor Kant is the cause of all my husband's troubles, sir,' she replied. 'That's why I've come.'

'If you have something to say to me as a magistrate,' I urged her, 'then say it at once. The fact is that I need to speak to your husband, Frau Lampe. Do you know where I might find him?'

She raised her coal-black eyes, a pitiful, tragic expression like a stain on her handsome face. 'That's just it, sir,' she said, and her voice broke into a sob. 'I've no idea where Martin is. He disappeared the night before last. I came to report him missing, and they told me to ask for you. But you are investigating murders, sir,' she said, mopping at her tears with her shawl. 'Why did they tell me to speak to you? Has something happened to him?'

Was there some further aspect of the case that escaped me? Sergeant Koch had been murdered the previous afternoon, so the killer was still at large. What the woman had just told me cast doubt on my suspicions regarding her husband's involvement in Koch's death. She had placed his disappearance almost twenty-four hours before the murder of my a.s.sistant. Might something tragic have happened to Lampe as well? Or had he come out of hiding solely to commit another crime? There was still a chance that Lampe was innocent. But then a more cynical idea took hold, and I studied the woman's face attentively. Did she possess the skill to act the role that she appeared to be playing? Might she be trying to provide an alibi for her husband?

I stood up with decision.

'I need to search your home, Frau Lampe.'

If he was hiding there with her connivance, I would catch him off his guard. If he were not, I would have the opportunity to scour the house for evidence that might be used against him.

To my surprise, Frau Lampe stood up and prepared to leave without a moment's hesitation. 'I'll do anything if it helps you to find Martin, sir,' she said, forcing a weak smile, following me in silence out of the gate to where a police coach was parked. I woke the driver with a shake, and we climbed aboard.

'Tell him where to go, Frau Lampe,' I ordered, and she gave the coachman an address in the Belefest village area.

'Will seeing the house help you to discover where he is?' she asked uncertainly as the vehicle gathered speed. 'I've searched it myself from top to bottom. He left no note, and nothing at all's been carried away, sir.'

'It is normal police procedure, Frau Lampe,' I replied in the vaguest terms. 'There may be some clue that you have missed.'

She nodded eagerly and seemed relieved to hand the business over to me.

A church bell tolled eight of the clock. At this hour, I reflected, looking out of the window of the coach, any other town in Prussia would be wide awake, the workrooms, shops and offices open for trade. But under the arches of the low porticos on either side of the narrow street, all was closed and tightly shuttered. There was not a soul to be seen in Konigsberg, with the exception of the armed soldiers guarding every crossroads. Truly, the city was under siege. And it was all the doing of Martin Lampe. Bonaparte's marauding army posed less of a threat than the enemy already within the city walls. I had to find him. Perhaps then, the city would begin to live again.

After two or three kilometres, the carriage began to slow down, then came to rest at last beside a sad row of dingy little country cottages with sagging roofs of ancient thatch the colour of ash. We were in the village of Belefest, the lady told me as I helped her to climb down into an unpaved muddy lane. There were tall leafless trees on either flank. In the spring and summer, when brilliant green and the brighter tints of hedgerow flowers salvage the world, the hamlet might have made a first impression which was less dreary, grey and depressing.

'You won't find much sign of Martin's presence in the house, sir. My husband and I have lived together so little. Professor Kant could not, would not, get along without him,' she said harshly. There was no mistaking her tone, or her meaning. She did not like Immanuel Kant. His name seemed to burn on her tongue like acid.

The house was tiny, standing at the lower end of the row. A small garden stood before the front door. Poor, I judged, but not dest.i.tute. Then, Frau Lampe explained that she and her husband occupied only two rooms of the place: they had been obliged to let the whole upper floor to lodgers. She opened the door with her key and an overwhelming odour of stale boiled cabbage drifted out. A lamp was brought, the tinder struck in that room, it was never day and soon the humble dwelling was crudely illuminated for me to see.

'May I look around?' I asked, glancing quickly about me, taking in the meagre furnishings. Frau Lampe watched me as I searched the place, opening cupboards and drawers, feeling under every cushion and coverlet, excusing myself as I stripped away the bed and examined the straw mattress for anything that might be hidden inside or underneath it. I found nothing more exceptional in the dwelling than a few cracked mugs and mismatched plates, the dirty old clothes they had used to work in the garden, odd remnants of Martin Lampe's past glories in the army, which consisted of a pair of corporal's epaulettes and a faded, moth-eaten uniform jacket. Inside a chest, washed-out household linen, nondescript rags of clothing, an ancient horse-blanket Lampe had brought back from Belorussia, together with a pair of yellow spare sheets and some faded fineries Frau Lampe had worn when she was younger and had known better days.

'We had much, much more,' she murmured, 'but the p.a.w.nbroker got it all. My first husband, Albrecht Kolber, was the beadle. We were well-to-do, but he died of choleric dysentery.' The widow Kolber had married Martin Lampe nine years after his honourable discharge from the Prussian army, where he had served in Poland and in Western Russia under King Frederick the Great. Without any other trade to his name, Martin Lampe had entered into service as the valet to Immanuel Kant.

'Martin wanted to marry me, and I needed a husband,' she explained flatly. 'We had to wed in secret, of course. Professor Kant wanted only bachelors in his employ.'

I wiped the dust from my hands and turned to face her. My search had told me nothing more than Frau Lampe herself had told me while I was sifting through the material wreckage of her life. First, of her short but happy marriage to Beadle Kolber, then, her impoverished widowhood, and, finally, the new lease of married life she had found with Martin Lampe.

She watched as I turned away from what I had been doing and looked around helplessly. Had some detail escaped my notice? Were Martin Lampe's secrets locked up in his brain and nowhere else?

'I told you before, Herr Procurator,' she said gently. 'You won't find any sign of his presence here. There's nothing worth a bra.s.s half-farthing. Nothing worth a memory.'

'Do you have a hiding-place for money, papers, valuables?'

She shook her head ruefully. 'Everything I own, I wear on my back, sir. You're looking in the wrong place. If you want to know what Martin had on his mind, there's only one place to turn for help.'

'And where is that?'

An air of concern clouded the woman's face, but in an instant the look was gone. 'You say you are a particular friend of Professor Kant's, sir. Why not ask him where Martin is? I'd ask him myself, but I cannot...'