Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

‘Now whereas the commission of a crime is natural, the task of the detective, like that of the philosopher, is counter-natural, involving the critical analysis of various presuppositions and beliefs, and the questioning of certain assumptions and perceptions. For example, you will seek to test an alibi just as I will aim to test a proposition. It’s the same thing, and it involves a quest for clarity. It doesn’t matter how you describe it, there exists the common intention of wresting form away from the god of Muddle. Of course, sometimes this is not a popular thing to do or to have done to you. It makes most people feel insecure and quite often they resist what we do very strongly indeed.’

Lang sipped some more of his excellent sherry and laid his head back against the antimacassar on his chair.

‘The work we do is often repetitive, going over familiar ground which one has already covered and breaking the stereotypical conclusions which may have been reached by others as well as by oneself. Indeed it is our Sisyphean fate often to be undoing what has already been done so as to grasp the nature of the problem more firmly.’ He looked across at Jake. ‘How am I doing so far?’

‘Well,’ said Jake.

He nodded. ‘Despite Nietzsche’s reservations about the dialectical method, that it is nothing more than a rhetorical play, our inquiry into truth, with its question and answer structure, has its origins in the Socratic form of dialogue. If confusion does arise it is because, to an inexperienced eye, it might seem that we are always looking for answers; but just as often, we are looking for the question. The real crux of what we both do is to attempt to see the anomaly in what appears familiar and then to formulate some really useful questions about it.

‘In its purest form, ours is a narrowly intellectual activity, involving a dialogue with the past. And where we fail it is more often because of some false assumption or conceptual error in that cognitive, explanatory activity of ours.

‘Of course, lack of proof is a recurrent problem with both of our activities. Much of our best work fails because we are unable to prove the validity of our thinking.’

Jake smiled. ‘Yes. And yet it seems to me that I have one great advantage over what you do, Professor. I may occasionally lack proof for my theories. But I can always trick a suspect into confessing. And sometimes, worse than that.’

‘Philosophers are not without their intellectual tricks,’ said Lang. ‘However, I take your point.’

‘Now I see how you managed to make a detective out of Plato,’ said Jake. ‘And how it works as well as it does. I wonder what he would have thought about us.’

‘Who, Plato?’

Jake nodded.

‘Oh, I am sure that he would have approved of you, Chief Inspector. As an auxiliary guardian, in the service of the state, you are pretty much what he suggested.’

‘Except that I’m a woman.’

‘Plato was generally in favour of equality between the sexes,’ said Lang. ‘So I guess that it would have been all right, your being a woman. On the other hand, I don’t think there can be any doubt that he would not have approved of me.’

‘Oh? And why’s that?’

‘A philosopher and a novelist as well? Unthinkable. Plato was enormously hostile to art of any kind. That’s what made writing a novel about him such fun.’

Lang stood up and fetched the sherry decanter.

‘Top you up?’ he asked.

Jake held out her glass.

‘But look here, I’m diverting you, Chief Inspector. I’m sure you didn’t come all this way for a philosophy tutorial.’

‘Oh, but I did, Professor. But not on Plato. I’m interested in Wittgenstein.’

‘Isn’t everyone?’ he said darkly, and sat down again. ‘Well, of course you’ve come to the right place. No doubt you already know that Wittgenstein was a member of this college. So what do you want to know about him? That he was a genius, but that he was wrong? No, that’s hardly fair. But this is too exciting, Chief Inspector. I’m as fond of reading conspiracy theories in the newspapers as the next man, but you’re not going to tell me that he was murdered, are you? That sixty-odd years ago, someone bumped him off? You know, from everything I’ve read about him, he was rather an irritating, punctilious sort of fellow. An ideal candidate for murder.’

Jake smiled and shook her head. ‘No, it’s not quite that,’ she said. ‘But before I tell you, I must ask for your undertaking to treat this matter as confidential. There are people’s lives at stake.’

‘Then consider it given, on one condition. That you tell me about it over lunch.’

‘Well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.’

‘No trouble at all. Mrs Hindley always makes too much, just in case I invite someone back.’

Jake thanked the professor and they adjourned to the dining room where Sir Jameson Lang’s housekeeper served them with chicken broth, Spam fritters with baked beans, and then creamed rice with tinned mandarin oranges. While they ate, Jake told him what she knew: about the Lombroso Program, and of how someone, codenamed Wittgenstein, was eliminating all the other men who had tested VMN-negative. And then, over the coffee, she played him the disc.

Lang listened to the killer’s voice with a look of rapt concentration. Occasionally he noted something down on a pad he had produced from his jacket pocket. And sometimes, frowning with what perhaps was horror, he shook his head slowly. When side one had finished, Jake played him side two. Lang sneered silently at some of the arguments, but when it too was finished he nodded emphatically.

‘Fascinating,’ he breathed. ‘Quite fascinating. And you say that this disc was found in the mouth of his last victim: Socrates?’

‘That’s right.’

Lang pursed his lips. ‘I suppose that could in itself be symbolic.’ He gave a brief snort of astonishment. ‘But the whole case is ripe with symbolism. Only you’re not here to talk about that, are you? I presume you have questions which relate to this fellow’s pretensions to being a philosopher himself. Perhaps even to the extent of believing that he is himself Wittgenstein. Am I right?’

‘Yes,’ Jake admitted. ‘I can see the obvious parody of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. But concerning the content, I need your help.’

‘All right then,’ he said, and glanced down at the notes he had made. Then he got up from the table and opened a box of Havanas, which lay on the sideboard, and from which he took out a silver tube. ‘But first I must have a cigar. I think more clearly when my lungs are clouded.’

Jake took out her own cigarettes, and poked one between her lips. Removing both cigar and its wafer-thin lining, Lang dipped the latter into the fire with which he lit first Jake and then himself. He puffed happily for several moments, walking round the creaking oak-floored room and, from time to time, glancing at his notebook. Finally he sat down once again, removed the Churchill from his mouth, sipped some of his coffee, and then nodded.

‘First, he refers to his brother. Wittgenstein had brothers, one of whom killed himself. That might be significant.

‘Then there is the relation between the covert, hidden aspect of what cannot be said to Wittgenstein’s supposed homosexuality.’ Lang shrugged. ‘The theory that Wittgenstein was an active homosexual has been discounted by all but one of his biographers, an American.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘That he was homosexual is certainly possible. What is more likely is that he was simply asexual.

‘Clearly, as you say Chief Inspector, he seems familiar with the style and structure of the Tractatus. Indeed, I should say that he knows it quite well.