Death Ex Machina (28 page)

“Has it occurred to you, Nicolaos, that you don’t have to find the actual murderer of Romanos?”

“What?” I said. No such thing had occurred to me at all. “I don’t understand, Pericles.”

“It’s simple. We need a solution. If this death had happened anywhere else, no one would care. But it happened in the Theater of Dionysos. The purpose of your investigation is to clear the theater of the
miasma
of desecration. The only reason we have this problem is the ritual pollution.”

“The theater is considered a temple to Dionysos,” I said. “Therefore any crime committed within is desecration. Yes, Pericles, I know this.”

“Just as your original assignment was to purge the theater of a ghost—even though we all knew perfectly well you would do no such thing—so your assignment now is to purge the theater of the taint of murder.”

“Which we do by finding the murderer,” I said.

“Except that it isn’t necessary to find the killer in order to clear the theater,” Pericles said smoothly. “We must consider the practicalities here, Nicolaos. If the Great Dionysia can’t proceed it will be a disaster for Athens.”

“What are you suggesting here, Pericles?” I said.

“Only that to earn your commission you need merely follow
the forms to demonstrate good faith in finding a criminal. Any criminal will do.”

“Do you have someone in mind?” I asked him.

“If you feel that a death is necessary to expurgate the miasma, then another metic would be your best choice,” Pericles said. “What about one of the Phrygians?” he suggested.

“But I don’t know that they did it!”

“Is that a problem?” Pericles asked. “The Polemarch himself has told you that if the killer is a citizen, then the penalty for murdering a metic would be a fine, or at most exile for a few years.”

“There’s also the charge of impiety,” I pointed out.

“Yes, that would certainly lead to a death sentence,” Pericles conceded.

I must have displayed my horror, because Pericles said, “Listen, Nico, we must consider which is the greater disaster for Athens: a failed festival, with all its international repercussions, or the death of one man who wasn’t even a citizen. The good of Athens may demand a curtailed investigation. I think you can see that.”

The problem was, I did see that.

But I also saw that I couldn’t abandon the victim. For if Pericles, and Lysanias, and Sophocles, and everyone else was right when they said that our plays were as important to Athens as a diplomatic mission, then Romanos had died in the service of Athens as surely as any soldier who fell in battle.

I couldn’t
not
find justice for Romanos, even if he had been a conniving blackmailer.

And as for framing another metic, because it was convenient …

“I can’t do that, Pericles.”

“Then you had better bring me a better solution. Quickly. The public feast is set for two days hence. I want this fixed by then.”

SCENE 33

THE STRANGE TENANT

I
RETURNED HOME WANTING to rant to my wife about my difficult boss. Instead I walked in to find my mother-in-law paying a social call.

Diotima and her mother, Euterpe, lay on dining couches in the courtyard. From the various empty small food bowls dotted about, I deduced the visit had been going for some time. My own mother, Phaenarete, had absented herself. The house slave told me as I entered that she had been called away on an urgent delivery, by which he meant a baby. Whether this was strictly true I didn’t know. Phaenarete and Euterpe rarely got on, though they had worked at opposite ends of the same business.

My father, unsurprisingly, was shut away in his workshop. It was his natural place, but in any case it would never occur to him to entertain visiting ladies.

That left me to join the ladies and be polite, when what I really wanted to do was shout in frustration. Luckily it seemed the visit was nearing an end. Euterpe had come to hear the latest on the investigation.

“All of Athens is talking about it,” she told me excitedly. I took this to mean
she
was talking about it.

As I sat, Diotima was winding down from a minor tirade that women were not permitted to act.

“I know what you mean, dear,” Euterpe said. “I’m sure you would have made a fine actress. I myself was excellent.”

“But you don’t know how to act,” Diotima said to her mother. “You’ve never acted in your life.”

Euterpe looked at her daughter in some surprise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear. A courtesan has to please her clients, does she not? Well let me tell you, if there’s anything that a woman of my former profession is an expert at, it’s making a man feel he’s special, even when he isn’t. Also that he has the biggest dong since Heracles. Every man thinks he’s hung like Heracles. You wouldn’t believe how much acting ability that requires with the average man.”

Diotima stared at her mother openmouthed in shock.

Euterpe didn’t seem to notice. She added enthusiastically, “I’m especially good at faking orgasms. Would you like to see one?”

“Thanks anyway, Mother.”

Euterpe shrugged. “The fact is, my daughter, if it’s ability to fool men that you’re looking for, then I’m one of the best actresses in Athens.”

As Euterpe stood to depart, she added, almost absent-mindedly, “Not that there’s any need to, now that I’m married to your new father.”

“Of course not, Mother,” Diotima agreed primly, as she escorted her mother to the door. “You and Pythax have married for love.”

Euterpe looked surprised for a moment, then said, “Why, that’s so, dear, but it helps that when it comes to sex, there isn’t much to choose between your new father and Heracles.”

I heard the door open and shut, and Euterpe’s departing merry laughter.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER dinner, Diotima read the manuscript that Euripides had given us. I don’t think she intended to, but she always read everything within reach, and she did it out of habit.

When she was finished she put down the scroll and said, “I hate to have to say it, but his writing is very good.”

“You mean that dysfunctional little creep really can write?”

“I’m afraid so,” Diotima said. She rolled the scroll backward from the end. She looked down at the words printed there in Euripides’s crabbed hand. “His stories are great, his characters are fantastic, his phrases are …” She groped for the right word. “Divine.” She frowned. “But there’s something odd. In every story, he progresses the plot very well. The tension builds. I was desperate to find out what would happen next, and then, every time, right before the climax, a god descends from the machine and wraps up everything. It leaves you dissatisfied with the story.” Diotima looked up at me. “It’s like he doesn’t care how his story ends.”

I shrugged. “If he thinks a god from the machine is going to solve the problems of we mortals, then more fool him.”

Diotima said, “Do you think he’s involved, Nico?”

“He’s weird enough,” I said. “But a killer? I don’t know. Not many killers write plays.”

Diotima put down the scroll. She hesitated, then said, “Nico, I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve caught Romanos out on one fabrication already, or we think we have,” she said.

I nodded. “Romanos didn’t recommend one of his own family for the third actor role, and then didn’t tell them what he’d done. It might not technically be a lie, but I follow you.”

Diotima looked unhappy and said, “Plus he was a blackmailer.”

“It doesn’t exactly instill sympathy for our victim,” I agreed.

Diotima said, “I wonder, is there anything else Romanos might have lied about?”

“Do you have something in mind?” I asked. I took her idea seriously, but I had nothing to suggest.

She gave an uncertain shrug, which was unlike her. “I’ve been thinking over everything I ever heard him say,” she said.

Knowing Diotima’s memory, she could probably quote his every conversation verbatim.

She went on, “It’s only an idea, but that night, when we three sheltered from the rain …”

She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Romanos said he was on his way home.”

“He probably was.”

“Yes, Nico, but Melite is almost due west of the Theater of Dionysos. We met him in the agora, which is almost due north.”

Romanos had lied. Diotima was right.

Diotima hammered home the point. “He can’t have gone to the agora to shop on his way home,” she said. “It was late at night.”

“Right.”

“And he can’t have been out for a pleasant stroll on the way. It was pouring rain. He would want to take the fastest route.”

“What a silly, trivial thing to lie about,” I said.

Diotima nodded. “All he had to say was that he was on his way to a party, or to visit a friend, and we would have been none the wiser.”

I said, “Keep in mind that at that stage, we didn’t know where he lived, and had no reason to care.”

“I thought so too. So maybe he wasn’t lying.”

“What?” I said, perplexed. “You just proved to me that he did.”

“It’s what you said a moment ago, Nico. A lie for no reason makes no sense. Maybe he really was on his way home, but not to Melite.”

Diotima’s idea hit me then. Perhaps Romanos had a second home. One that his family didn’t know about.

“This is a lot to build on one small slip of the tongue,” I cautioned her.

“Yes, I know. That’s why I was hesitant to mention it, but …” she trailed off.

I finished it for her. “Either Romanos lied for no reason, or he told the truth and has a second home. You’re right, Diotima. I just don’t know how to prove it.”

“We’ll have to look for a house.”

“How? They don’t normally come with names inscribed in the walls.”

Something else occurred to me. “The Polemarch told me that metics aren’t allowed to own houses in Athens.”

Diotima nodded. “That’s true. In the days before she married Pythax, my mother had to have my birth father keep our home in his name.”

“We’re looking for a rental home then.”

That turned the task from impossible into merely very difficult.

“It can’t be too far away,” Diotima said. “Romanos was running through the rain to get home.”

“It can’t be outside the city walls!” I said in sudden revelation. “When we saw him, the gates had already been shut for the night.”

“We know it’s north of the agora, because that’s the direction he was headed,” Diotima added.

What had seemed impossible suddenly looked doable.

“Anything else?” Diotima asked.

“The city is full to overflowing with visitors,” I said.

“So?”

“I wonder if the landlord knows that his tenant is dead?” I said. “If he does, he’ll be the only man in Athens with a room to rent. He could make a killing.”

IT TOOK A day of door-knocking, but we found the place by pretending to be visitors to Athens for the Dionysia. We were directed from house to house, at each one asking if there
was a room that might be available, even if a local currently rented it.

Romanos had rented a room in the upper storey of a house owned by a man who needed some extra cash. When we told him that his tenant was dead, his shoulders slumped.

“I needed that money,” he said. “I got kids and not enough work.”

“You can rent it to the Dionysia crowd,” I said. “There are hundreds of people camped outside the walls, maybe thousands. I’ll bet there’s a family out there that would pay you plenty.”

He brightened. “Say, that’s a good idea. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Do you mind if we take a look at the room?”

“No way,” he said at once.

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s not your room for a start.”

“We only want to look at the things Romanos kept there,” Diotima said.

“His things don’t belong to you either,” he pointed out.

Of all the landlords in Athens, Romanos had to rent a room from the only honest one. Remembering the landlord’s comment about needing money, I said, “What if we were to
buy
those things from you?”

That put a different complexion on it. I could see the thoughts running through the landlord’s mind. I decided to help him out.

I said, “If a tenant doesn’t pay his rent, or if he never returns, the landlord’s entitled to sell whatever belongings remain, to pay for back rent. Right?”

“That’s the law,” the landlord agreed.

“Well I’m pretty sure Romanos won’t be returning,” I said. “So he owes you rent, right?”

“That’s true.”

“I’m offering to buy the things that you’d be allowed to sell anyway,” I said. “That’s logical, isn’t it?”

The honest landlord decided it was logical. We agreed a price that made me wince. I made a mental note to add it to the bill I sent Pericles.

The landlord showed us up to collect our new belongings. He didn’t even stay to watch what we took.

Diotima and I pulled on a rough wooden door that opened into a rough wooden room. There was a bed, a table, a chair, and a chest. It wasn’t the sort of place you invited friends to for a sophisticated symposium.

“I wonder what Romanos was doing here?” Diotima asked.

“Maybe he wanted the privacy,” I said, thinking of the crowded house the Phrygians inhabited.

We had bought everything inside the room that wasn’t furniture. So far, that came to nothing, but for some ceramic cups and plates on the table and an old lamp that smelt of rancid oil. A single small, shuttered window looked out over the street. The shutter squeaked when we opened it.

“It’s dismal,” Diotima said.

“Yes,” I said. “But if I was a bachelor in a house full of families, I wouldn’t mind somewhere like this where I could get away from everyone else.”

“It must be a man thing then, because I wouldn’t,” Diotima said. She looked at me quizzically. “
You
don’t have a place like this hidden somewhere, do you Nico?”

“No,” I said. I’d spent long enough trying to get Diotima into my home. I wasn’t about to escape now that I’d finally succeeded.

We continued the search. There were a chamber pot pushed under the bed. Diotima found it. It was half full. The contents sloshed over her hand when she pulled it out.