Free HS02 - Days of Atonement by Michael Gregorio Page A

Prussian dwarf to be guilty of slitting the throats of children and abducting women. Are you of the same opinion, Stiffeniis?’
    Was Lavedrine convinced that I would defend Durskeitner despite the evidence, simply because he was a Prussian, like myself?
    ‘One thing is certain,’ I said. ‘You do not believe in the thesis that you have just described. Some sixth sense leads you to deduce that Durskeitner is not like other men, but it does not tell you whether he is the murderer. Nor that he has carried off the mother.’
    Lavedrine bunched his cheeks and let out a sigh.
    ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I wish this sixth sense were a thousand times sharper. I might have solved a hundred crimes that have puzzled me.’
    ‘If Durskeitner is innocent, I’ll be surprised,’ Mutiez interrupted.
    ‘Remember what I have told you: there is purpose here,’ Lavedrine went on. ‘He kills animals for meat and skins. This is not senseless butchery. More to the point, he has not deflowered them afterwards. If Durskeitner, the dwarf, protects and nurtures the young, why in God’s name would he murder three children?’
    Lavedrine seemed to be engaged in a furious debate with himself, as if he had thought the argument through, but feared he might have reached the wrong conclusion.
    ‘To possess himself of the mother,’ I replied. ‘To rape and kill her.’
    Lavedrine shook his head, and looked around in silence, as if he might have missed some clue that would throw a shining light upon the matter. ‘It makes no sense,’ he murmured. ‘No sense at all. There is something here that does not fit. Something incompatible with what we have seen at the Gottewald house. They are such different places . . .’
    ‘If I may say a word,’ Mutiez interposed. ‘If she is dead and buried, she’s somewhere here. With your permission, I’ll have a squad brought up with spades. If we can find any sign of freshly turned soil, or leaves that have been shifted, we’ll be well on our way to ending this mystery.’
    ‘It will take time, but something may come of it.’ He turned to me. ‘What’s your opinion, Stiffeniis?’
    I nodded, my mind empty of any alternative proposal. ‘I’d like to finish sketching,’ I said. ‘Then we should speak to the prisoner.’
    ‘While you are busy, Mutiez will send for reinforcements, then he and I will make a more complete search of the hut and outlying land. We can send back anything of interest with the soldiers and make a more thoroughanalysis when we get back to town. Does that suit you?’ The memory of Kant’s macabre ‘laboratory of crime’ flashed through my mind: the human heads floating in glass jars, their clothes stored in boxes, a folder of drawings recording the exact position in which the dead bodies had been found. Lavedrine would have loved that harrowing place.
    ‘Very well,’ I said.
    We divided our tasks, working for little more than an hour. I finished my drawings—seven sketches of the interior and exterior of the hut—while they went through the contents of two tin chests, finding nothing except for bits of clothes, worn-out shoes, and a rusted knife broken off at the hilt. Then, we retraced our path through the forest led by one soldier, while the others remained behind to guard the hut.
    A phrase Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written jangled in my head.
    He spoke of the ‘delicious inebriation’ he always felt while wandering in the woods near Paris. That morning, I had felt the violence that Nature can hide. I had had my fill of woods. My only desire was to return to my home, and the comfort of my wife and children.

 
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    F RANZ D URSKEITNER WAS being held in Bitternau Fortress.
    I stood with Count Dittersdorf by a window on the first floor, looking out on a courtyard on the northern side of the building. As we spoke, we watched French soldiers down below transporting bloody carcasses on their shoulders from a cart to the kitchen. Another man was pushing a