HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason Read Free Page A

trifle more harshly than I intended. ‘What ails you, wife? I have no choice. I must go when the King commands it.’
    She looked down at the ground for some moments.
    ‘But murder , Hanno?’ she challenged suddenly, glancing up. ‘You have never dealt with such a heinous crime before.’
    She spoke with fierce passion. I had never seen her in such a nervous state before. She threw herself upon my chest at last to hide the evidence of her weeping, and I glanced quickly in the direction of Sergeant Koch. He was standing stiffly by the carriage door, his expression blank and unchanging, as if he had heard nothing of what my wife had just said. I felt a flash of resentment for the embarrassment she had caused me.
    ‘Wait there, will you, Sergeant?’ I called back. ‘I’ll not be long.’
    Koch bobbed his head, a tight-lipped smile traced faintly on his thin lips.
    I led Helena quickly into the hall. Her manner was restrained and watchful. I cannot say what reaction I had expected from her. Pride, perhaps? Joy at my rapid promotion? She had shown no sign of either.
    ‘The King has called me to Him,’ I argued. ‘A senior magistrate in Königsberg has given His Majesty my name. What would you have me do?’
    Helena looked at me, puzzlement traced upon her face, as if she failed to understand what I had just told her. ‘I…I do not know. How long will you be gone?’ she asked at last.
    ‘I cannot tell,’ I said. ‘Not very long, I hope.’
    ‘Run upstairs, Lotte. Fetch your master’s things,’ Helena cried suddenly, turning to the maid. ‘His carriage is waiting at the door. Be quick! He’ll be gone some days.’
    As we stood in the hall alone, I knew not what to say. Helena and I had been wed four years, and had never spent a single night apart. A special bond of shared suffering tied us, one to the other.
    ‘I am not going off to fight the French!’ I declared with a nervous laugh, reaching out and drawing my darling close, kissing her gently on the forehead, cheek and lips, until the return of Lotte interrupted those brief, welcome moments of intimacy.
    ‘I’ll write every day, my love, and tell you of my doings. The minute we arrive, you’ll have word of me,’ I said with all the bluff sanguinity that I could muster to brighten the melancholy of parting. ‘Kiss Manni and Süsi for me.’
    As I took the travelling-bag from Lotte, Helena threw herself upon me once again and let forth her emotions with a force and intensity I had never known in her before that moment. I thought it was on account of the children: Immanuel was not yet one, Süsanne barely two.
    ‘Forgive me, I am so troubled, Hanno,’ she cooed, her soft voice almost lost in the deep folds of my woollen cloak. ‘What do they want from you? ’
    Unable to reply, unwilling to speculate, I drew back from her embrace, straightened my mantle, threw my bag over my shoulder and walked quickly down the path towards the waiting coach and Sergeant Koch, my head bent low against the blizzard. I skipped aboard the coach with a light foot and a heavy heart.
    As the vehicle slowly pulled away, the wheels crunching on the thick carpet of snow, I looked behind, watching until the dear, slender figure in the white dress was entirely swallowed up by the snowstorm.
    The question that had perplexed Helena now returned to vex and puzzle me. Why had the King chosen me?

Chapter 2
    The coach jolted onwards for more than an hour, and barely a word was said. Sergeant Koch sat in his corner, I sat in mine, both as melancholy as the world through which we journeyed. I stared out at the passing countryside. Bleak villages and isolated farms dotted the landscape here and there, marking out the hilltops and the highway. Peasants toiled in the fields, up to their knees in the snow, to save their stranded cows and sheep. The world was all a massive grey blur, the distant hills blending into the horizon with no precise point at which the earth ended and the heavens