HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason Read Online Free Page B

I presumed from the fact that Lublinsky and Kopka had been present on both occasions) failed to confront these vital questions?
    A deafening crash of thunder followed by a blinding flash of lightning put an end to my meditations, and to Koch’s dozing. He sat up as if he’d been struck by a bullet, his first impulse to reach for his wig with one hand, his second to make the sign of the cross with the other.
    ‘Good God, sir!’ he grumbled loudly. ‘Nature was created to plague the affairs of men.’
    ‘It is only water vapour, Sergeant,’ I smiled. ‘Electrical discharges in the heavens. That is all. An eminent fellow citizen of yours once wrote a pamphlet on the subject. Nothing exists, he said, which the laws of Science cannot explain.’
    Koch turned to me, his grey eyes flashing with unmistakable indulgence. ‘Do you believe that, Herr Stiffeniis?’
    ‘Indeed, I do,’ I replied.
    ‘I envy you your certainty,’ he murmured, bending to pick his hat up from the carriage floor where it had fallen. He brushed the brown velvet, and set it on the crown of his head with care. ‘No mysteries exist for you, then, sir?’
    I could not ignore the vein of incredulity with which he expressed his doubts.
    ‘I have always tried to follow the pathways of rationality to their logical conclusions, Herr Koch,’ I answered.
    ‘You do not admit the possibility of the Unknown, the Unthinkable?’ He had a trick of sounding capital letters where there ought to have been none. ‘May I ask what you do, sir, when you find yourself face to face with the Inexplicable?’
    ‘I do not mean to suggest that human reason can explain and justify every human action,’ I said with barely contained annoyance. ‘There are limits to our understanding. What is unknown, as you call it, remains so for the simple reason that no one has chosen to explain it for the moment. I would call this qualified ignorance, not a defeat for Enlightened Science.’
    Lightning flashed again and his pale flesh turned silvery blue against the rushing backdrop of dark trees and fleeting drops of rain, framed by the window pane.
    ‘I hope the honour falls to me of taking you home when this affair has been successfully resolved,’ he said, leaning close. ‘I pray sincerely that I am wrong and you are right, Herr Stiffeniis. If not, God spare us all!’
    ‘You seem to doubt my capacity to plumb these murders,’ I returned with acid irritation.
    ‘I would not dare so far, Herr Procurator. Indeed, I think I begin to understand why so much hope has been placed in you,’ he said, and looked away.
    I rubbed my nose, and took the plunge. ‘My concerns are practical ones, Sergeant Koch. No mention is made in these reports of the cause of death. What am I supposed to do? Divine the nature of the weapon with which the victims were killed? The passage from life to death is not merely a religious question. It is a hard and fast fact, and there are very few facts here,’ I said, holding up the papers in my hand and shaking them. ‘I don’t know how you go about your business in Königsberg, but we in Lotingen believe that if an egg has disappeared, someone has stolen it.’
    Sergeant Koch ignored this barb.
    ‘I’ve no idea what you may have read in those reports,’ he said.
    ‘Have you seen the bodies, Koch? Do you know how they died?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘So, even you, a trusted employee of the police, have no idea how these people were killed? Doesn’t the population talk of such things? Were the victims stabbed, strangled, beaten to death?’
    ‘You mean to say no mention is made of the weapon used?’ He looked genuinely surprised. ‘I can understand the need for discretion, but the fact that even you have not been let in on the secret’s hard to credit, sir. The town’s full of rumours, as you can imagine.’
    ‘What sort of rumours, Koch?’
    ‘I hardly dare speak of such things to a rational thinker like yourself, sir,’ Koch replied with an