Death Ex Machina (12 page)

“One last question then. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted your brother-in-law dead?”

“No.”

“Had he any enemies?”

“None that would murder,” he said shortly. “And now I must go.”

“WELL THAT WAS a waste of time,” I said as we walked away.

“No it wasn’t, Nico,” Diotima said. “We told a family they were bereaved. Now they’ll collect Romanos and he won’t lie alone.”

“We’ll have to interview them again,” I said. “But not until they’ve had a chance to calm down. The next question is, which persona did the killer intend to kill?”

Diotima looked at me oddly. “What do you mean, Nico?” Diotima said. “Nobody could have mistaken Romanos for someone else.”

“No, but there were
three
men in the same body,” I said. “There was Thanatos the character in the play—”

“You mean someone was trying to kill
the character
?” Diotima said. “What sort of a crazy person would do that?”

“Characters kill other characters,” I said.

“Characters aren’t real, Nico,” Diotima said. “Real people kill other real people. They don’t kill fictional people.”

“Then why did the killer choose to kill Romanos as if he were Thanatos?” I said. “There are so many easier ways to kill
a man than hanging from a god machine on a stage, in the dead of night, with two guards close by.”

Diotima chewed at her lip while she thought about it. “The method does sound rather dramatic,” she conceded. “Or it’s a crazy person. Go on.”

I said, “Then there’s Romanos the actor. That’s how he’s best known to men in Athens. Was this a professional quarrel that turned violent? Then there’s Romanos the metic who lives in a crowded house in Melite. Nobody at the amphitheater even knew he had a family in Athens, that’s how secretive he was.”

“Nico, you’re talking about motive.”

“All right. But which of those three men did the killer intend to strike down?”

SCENE 16

THE ACADEMY

I
T’S A STRANGE case when you know who the body is, but aren’t sure which man died. Was it Romanos the actor? Or the character he played? Or perhaps because of his life outside the theater?

Diotima’s point that it came down to motive was true, but the three different identities of Romanos were so extreme that we felt we had to begin with this question: who was Romanos that someone would want to kill him?

Diotima pointed out that Phellis had fallen in exactly the same situation as we had found Romanos dead, and both men had been dressed as the god of death.

“It’s almost as if the play was unlucky,” Diotima said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed. “Whoever heard of an unlucky play?”

Diotima shrugged.

I said, “Besides, we know that Phellis was brought down by the saboteur.”

“Do we?” she asked. “Is the saboteur the same person as the killer?”

It was my turn to shrug. “We’ll have to find out.”

“What do we make of the woman who drugged the guards?”

“I think they saw the killer.”

“So do I. But it might have been a man.”

“They said it was a woman.”

“Nico, actors pretend to be women all the time.”

Romanos might have walked to his place of execution, but
more likely he had been carried—perhaps they knocked him out first, or perhaps he was drunk—either way there would have to be at least two men; one at each end. This idea caused us to knock on the door of every house close to the theater, in the hope that someone had seen a body being carried down the street.

It turned out there had been at least seven. The people of Athens hadn’t waited for the Great Dionysia to start before the dionysiac parties had begun. All across the city, symposia had raged through the night. Exhausted drunk men had been carried home by their slaves.

The heavy intermittent showers that had soaked Diotima and me had forced everyone to rush from place to place between spells of rain. Witnesses saw many incapacitated men on the street at the same time, and to an observer at night, there was no difference between a man who was dead drunk and a man who was dead.

It occurred to me that the perfect time to carry a body through the streets of Athens was on a party night.

Whatever, it meant there was no useful witness, and if someone
had
seen something, they would have been too tipsy themselves to be a reliable witness.

We abandoned the search and decided instead to question Sophocles. After all, he was the author of this tragedy.

Sophocles lived in the deme of Colonus, which lay to the northwest of the city. I sent a slave runner with a request to visit him, and received an immediate reply that Sophocles had gone to the local gymnasium to relieve the tension of the disaster, and that I was to see him there. His local gymnasium was the Academy.

I passed through the agora on my way to the Dipylon Gate, which was the closest exit to Colonus. In the agora all was chaos. Chaos was the agora’s usual state, but today’s chaos was different from the norm. Today, the market stalls had not been
raised. Instead, slaves were hard at work hammering together long planks to make tables and benches for the party to come. Women strung chains of flowers between poles that the men had raised. Children carried baskets of flowers for the women or ran between the legs of the adults. Dogs followed their masters or ran with the children. People smiled as they worked, even the slaves. Men and women laughed and sang songs in praise of Dionysos, the god of wine and the harvest.

I followed the Panathenaic Way northwest from the agora and on through Ceramicus. This was the deme where the potters worked, and it showed in the large clods of clay dropped here and there, and the men working with their hands behind their wheels, in workshops that were open to the road. None of them looked up as I passed. Nor did the people here seem as interested in the Dionysia as other parts of the city. Perhaps it was because they were too busy making money.

These men were famous throughout the world, because only they knew how to paint their handiwork with red figures on a black background. The red figure pots of Athens were one of our biggest exports. A “ceramic” jar could command an outrageous price in places where the potters weren’t as talented as ours.

Every second house had a serving hole cut into its front wall, with a wooden door that opened upward to form an awning for the women who served behind the counters. They hawked the wares that their husbands and sons had made in the workrooms. In Athens, every business is a family business. Even mine. Diotima was as much a part of my work as I was.

Ceramicus was also home to another place where business was booming: the city’s cemetery. I passed it on the right, and reflected that soon Romanos would be cremated here.

The other side of Ceramicus backed onto the double portal of the Dipylon Gates, the widest way in and out of Athens. Despite this, there were so many people coming into Athens that I had to step back and wait for the tide to ebb.

I passed the time with one of the guards at the gate. He swore at the visitors and told them to hurry along, talking to me between the cuss words.

“Most of this is people coming for the party,” he said to me.

“Then why are they all coming from outside?” I asked.

“They’re camping outside the city walls.” He spat on the ground, narrowly missing a tourist. The tourist scowled but took one look at the unhappy guard and decided to make nothing of it.

The guard said, “Have you seen what the inns are charging for a bed?” He spat again. “If it were me, I’d be sleeping on hard ground too, if I had to pay a week’s wages for one night.”

“And then a lot of them will stay for Dionysia.”

I looked back at the crowd entering Athens. The sight of all those happy people made me nervous.

Outside the gates was the deme known as Outer Ceramicus, not as salubrious as Inner Ceramicus, but close enough that it did good business with passersby. Outer Ceramicus gave way to groves of olive trees, sacred to the goddess Athena, and orchards, all within a walled park. The fruit was free for the picking and I didn’t hesitate.

I had arrived at the
akademia
—the Academy. The Academy housed the city’s third, newest, and most glorious gymnasium. Many years before my time it had been a run-down hovel. Then a nearby stream had been diverted to irrigate the land, and now it had become an earthly vision of the Elysian Fields.

The path to the gymnasium was lined with statues, and fountains fed by the stream. Three of the statues had been made by my father. I stopped to admire them as I passed.

The gymnasium was a thing of beauty, one of the first buildings in Athens to be made of marble and painted in bright reds and blues and yellows to contrast with the fine green grass. In the morning, with the sun at my back, it shone.

The wide entrance opened into a quadrangle lined on all
sides with porticoes. Right away the sweet aroma of olive oil hit my nose, barely masking the musky odor of heavy sweat. Which was how the Academy always smelled, because every alcove in every portico about the inner courtyard was filled with naked men, fresh from exercise, all anointing themselves with oil.

Men looked up as I entered to see if I was someone they knew. This was a place where men came to socialize as much as to exercise. I wasn’t a regular at the Academy; the habitués didn’t recognize me and returned to their own affairs. I didn’t see Sophocles, nor did he hail me. I would have to wander around to find him.

I couldn’t walk straight across the sunlit inner yard because it was divided into training patches, each a shallow square pit filled with sand, five paces by five, where a man could exercise or two men could box, or wrestle, or practice the martial art called
pankration.
At this time of day the patches were all in use.

I didn’t expect to see Sophocles among the trainees and so wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t find him. I did however see my best friend, Timodemus. He stood by one of the patches, where two men fought a practice bout. They traded blows while Timodemus watched them with a jaundiced eye and barked instructions.

Timodemus was one of the best pankration fighters alive, famous for his victories in competition against other cities. He had recently retired from active fighting and moved with his new wife to a house not far from here. Now every day he came to the Academy, where he commanded outrageous fees as a coach.

Timodemus saw me and waved. He shouted, “
Chaire
Nico! Greetings! Have you come for a practice round?”

I shook my head and called back, “I’m on business. Do you know where I can find Sophocles?”

Timo shrugged and returned his attention to his students. He probably didn’t even know who Sophocles was. My friend had no interest in plays, or philosophy. But he was really good at hurting people.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a wiry old man, shorter than me, with a friendly expression and not much hair. I knew him. This was Lysanias, one of the elders of Athens, who had helped me on a previous case. He was also unbelievably good at throwing quoits.

He said, “I thought I heard you, young fellow. How are you? Have you come to practice your quoit throws?”

This was the way of the gymnasium. As soon as you walked in, everyone who knew you would stop to talk, would demand your attention, if only for a moment, would invite you to stay for half a day or the whole day.

I had to shake my head regretfully, because I liked Lysanias and would gladly have spent time with him. “I’m sorry, sir, I’m here on business. I’m looking for Sophocles.”

“He’s in the next courtyard,” Lysanias said. “I saw him come in. I will show you to him. Then I will sit down with you and listen shamelessly to your conversation.” He led me by the arm. As we walked he said, “I know you, Nicolaos. If it is you who has work, should I take this to mean Athens is in dire peril? Is our city on the verge of destruction?”

“Only our reputation for staging plays,” I said. Somehow Lysanias had managed to miss what had happened, probably because he spent all his time in exercise. Though he was an old man, I would not want to face him in combat. I explained to Lysanias what had occurred, that the theater was polluted by murder, and that the Great Dionysia could not proceed unless the terrible crime was avenged.

Lysanias wasn’t a man to worry about trifles, yet at my words he looked stern and said, “This is more serious than you seem to think, young man.”

“I’m already aware how bad it is, sir.”

“Are you? How many people come from abroad to see our plays?”

“Hundreds?” I guessed. “Perhaps thousands?”

“Certainly more than a thousand,” Lysanias said. “Every bed in every inn is full. Private homes are renting out their spare rooms and people are camping outside the walls.”

“Yes,” I said. “The guards at the gate told me.”

“Have you ever been to the home of a man who proved to be a buffoon?” Lysanias asked. The question seemed to come from nowhere.

“Why, yes, I have,” I said, thinking of some of my father’s friends. Every now and then he dragged me along to visit his cronies.

“And what did you think of those men?” Lysanias asked. “Did you think more, or less, of them?”

“Why, less,” said. “No one respects a buffoon.”

“Precisely. Now what of a man you visit, who proves to be a man of culture and dignity?”

“Then that would be someone I respect,” I said.

“Yes,” Lysanias said. “Now, young man, think of all these people who have come to Athens to be entertained by us, to see our plays, which are the best in the world. If we cannot show the plays because of murder, if everyone sees we cannot keep our own actors alive in our own city, if we must send all those people home having admitted we can’t stage a play, then how will we appear to our visitors?”

“We’ll look like buffoons,” I said.

Lysanias nodded. “You understand. I will add this: that it is easier to attack an enemy whom you don’t respect. But it is harder to feel animosity against someone who shows competence in all things.”