Last Act In Palmyra mdf-6

by Lindsey Davis

  'I most certainly do remember: loading the bloody waggons. We had no stagehands with us, if you recall. Chremes had issued his orders like a lord, then taken himself off to fold up his underwear.'

  'Were you loading up alone?'

  'Assisted in his pitiful manner by Congrio.'

  'He can't help being a flyweight.'

  Davos relented. 'No, he did his best, for what it was worth. What really got up my nose was being supervised by Philocrates. Instead of shifting bales with us, he took the opportunity to lean against a pillar looking attractive to the women and passing the kind of remarks that make you want to spew.'

  'I can imagine. He drove me wild once by standing about like a demigod while I was trying to hitch my damned ox… Was he there all the time?'

  'Until he fixed himself a bit of spice and went up among the tombs with the skirt.' The frankincense merchant's wife; he had mentioned her to Helena.

  'So how long did the lading take you?'

  'All bloody afternoon. I'm telling you, I was doing it as a one-man job. I still hadn't finished the stage effects – those two doorways are a trial to lift on your own – when your girl came down the hill and word whizzed round that somebody was dead. By then the rest of our party had assembled to watch me struggling. We were supposed to be all ready for the off, and people were starting to wonder where Heliodorus was. Someone asked Helena what the corpse looked like, so then we guessed who it must be.'

  'Any idea where the Twins were while you were piling up the waggons?'

  'No.'

  He made no attempt to offer possibilities. Whether they were under suspicion or in the clear, Davos left it up to me to judge them. But I did gather that if they were accused, he would not care. Another case of professional jealousy among the players, presumably.

  Probably the Twins would give each other alibis. That would land me in the usual situation: none of the known suspects actually available to do the deed. I sighed gently.

  'Davos, tell me again about the night Musa was shoved off the embankment at Bostra. You must have been walking behind him?'

  'I was right at the back of the queue.'

  'Last in line?'

  'Correct. To tell the truth, it was such a god-awful night I was losing interest in drinking in some dive with the Twins, knowing we would have to walk back through that weather just when we had got dry and warm again. I was planning to peel off unnoticed and scamper back to my own tent. I had been dropping behind stealthily. Two minutes more and I would never have heard your Nabataean shout.'

  'Could you see who was near Musa when he was pushed?'

  'No. If I'd seen it I'd have told you before this. I'd like to get the villain sorted,' Davos chortled, 'so I can avoid being plagued by questions from you!'

  'Sorry.' I wasn't, and I refused to give up. 'So you won't want to tell me about the night Ione died?'

  'Dear gods…' he muttered good-humouredly. 'Oh all right, get on with it!'

  'You were dining with Chremes and Phrygia, and Philocrates was there too.'

  'Until he bunked off as usual. That was quite late. If you're suggesting he drowned the girl, then judging by the time we all heard the news after you got back from the pools, he must have sped there on Mercury's wings. No, I reckon he was with his dame when it happened, and probably still hard at it while you were finding the corpse.'

  'If there ever was a dame.'

  'Ah well. You'll have to check with him.' Once again the disinterested way he threw it back to me seemed convincing. Killers looking to cover their own tracks like to speculate in detail about how others might be implicated. Davos always seemed too straight for such nonsense. He said what he knew; he left the rest to me.

  I was getting nowhere. I tried the hard screw. 'Somebody told me that you liked Ione.'

  'I liked her. That was all it amounted to.' it wasn't you who met her at the pools?' it was not!' He was crisp in denying it. 'You know damn well that was my night for dining with Chremes and Phrygia.'

  'Yes, we've been over that rather convenient tale. One thing I'm asking myself is whether your party at the manager's tent was a set-up. Maybe the whole gang of you were in a conspiracy.'

  By the light of his camp fire I could just make out Davos' face: sceptical, world-weary, utterly dependable. 'Oh stuff you, Falco. If you want to talk rot, go and do it somewhere else.' it has to be thought about. Give me one good reason to discard the idea.'

  'I can't. You'll just have to take our word.' Actually, Davos giving his word seemed fairly convincing to me. He was that kind of man.

  Mind you, Brutus and Cassius probably seemed decent, dependable and harmless until somebody offended them.

  I clapped Davos on the shoulder and was off on my way when another point struck me. 'One final thought. I've just had an odd conversation with Chremes. I'm sure he was holding back on me. Listen, could he have known anything significant about the playwright's finances?'

  Davos said nothing. I knew I had got him. I turned back, square to him. 'So that's it!'

  'That's what, Falco?'

  'Oh come on Davos, for a man whose timing is so tight onstage, you're lousy off it! That silence was too long. There's something you don't want to tell me, and you're working out how to be uncooperative. Don't bother. It's too late now. Unless you tell me yourself, I'll only press the matter elsewhere until someone gives.'

  'Leave it, Falco.'

  'I will if you tell me.'

  'It's old history…' He seemed to be making up his mind. 'Was Phrygia there when you had this strange chat?' I nodded. 'That explains it. Chremes on his own might have told you. The fact is, Heliodorus was subsidising the company. Phrygia doesn't know.'

  I gaped. 'I'm amazed. Explain this!'

  Davos sounded reluctant. 'You can fill in the rest, surely?'

  'I've seen that Chremes and Phrygia like enjoying the good life.'

  'More than our proceeds really cover.'

  'So are they peeling off the takings?'

  'Phrygia doesn't know,' he repeated stubbornly.

  'All right, Phrygia's a vestal virgin. What about her tiresome spouse?'

  'Chremes spent what he owes to the stagehands and the orchestra.' That explained a lot. Davos continued glumly: 'He isn't hopeless with money, but he's scared that Phrygia will finally leave him if their lifestyle gets too basic. That's what he's convinced himself, anyway. I doubt it myself. She's stayed so long she can't leave now; it would make all her past life pointless.'

  'So he put himself in hock to Heliodorus?'

  'Yes. The man is an idiot.'

  'I'm starting to believe it…" He was also a liar. Chremes had told me Heliodorus spent all his cash on drink. 'I thought Heliodorus drank all his wages?'

  'He liked to cadge other people's flagons.'

  'At the scene of his death I found a goatskin and a wicker flask.'

  'My guess would be the flask was his own, and he probably drained it himself too. The goatskin may have belonged to whoever was with him, in which case Heliodorus would not have objected to helping the other party drink what it contained.'

  'Going back to Chremes' debt, if it was a substantial sum, where did the money come from?'

  'Heliodorus was a private hoarder. He had amassed a pile.'

  'And he let Chremes borrow it in order to gain the upper hand?'

  'You're brighter than Chremes was about his reasoning! Chremes walked right into the blackmail: borrowed from Heliodorus, then had no way to pay him back. Everything could have been avoided if only he had come clean with Phrygia instead. She likes good things, but she's not stupidly extravagant. She wouldn't ruin the company for a few touches of luxury. Of course, they discuss everything – except what matters most.'

  'Like most couples.'

  Obviously hating to dump them in trouble, Davos blew out his cheeks, as if breathing had become difficult. 'Oh gods, what a mess… Chremes didn't kill him, Falco.'

  'Sure? He was in a tight spot. Both you and Phrygia were i
nsisting that the inkblot should be kicked out of the company. Meanwhile, Heliodorus must have been laughing up his tunic sleeve because he knew Chremes could not repay him. Incidentally, is this why he was kept on for so long in the first place?'

  'Of course.'

  'That and Phrygia hoping to extract the location of her child?'

  'Oh she'd given up expecting him to tell her that, even if he really knew.'

  'And how did you find out about the situation with Chremes?'

  'At Petra. When I marched in to say it was Heliodorus or me. Chremes cracked and admitted why he couldn't give the playwright the boot.'

  'So what happened?'

  'I'd had enough. I certainly wasn't going to hang around and watch Heliodorus hold the troupe to ransom. I said I would leave when we got back to Bostra. Chremes knew Phrygia would hate that. We have been friends for a long time.'

  'She knows your value to the company.'

  'If you say so.'

  'Why not just tell Phrygia yourself?'

  'No need to. She would certainly insist on knowing why I was leaving- and she'd make sure she heard the right reason. If she pressed him, Chremes would crumble and tell her. He and I both knew that.'

  'So, I see what your plan was. You were really intending to stick around until that happened.'

  'You get it.' Davos seemed relieved now to be talking about this. 'Once Phrygia knew the situation, I reckoned Heliodorus would have been sorted – paid off somehow, and then told to leave.'

  'Was he owed a large amount?'

  'Finding it would have hit us all very hard, but it was not unmanageable. Worth it to get rid of him, anyway.'

  'You were confident the whole business could have been cleared up?' This was important.

  'Oh yes!' Davos seemed surprised that I asked. He was one of life's fixers; the opposite of Chremes, who collapsed when trouble flared. Davos did know when to cut and run in a crisis (I had seen that when our people were in jail at Gadara), but if it were possible, he preferred to face a bully out.

  'This is the crux then, Davos. Did Chremes believe that he could be rescued?'

  Davos considered his answer carefully. He understood what I was asking: whether Chremes felt so hopeless he might have killed as his only escape. 'Falco, he must have known that telling Phrygia would cause some harrowing rows, but after all these years, that's how they live. She wasn't in for any surprises. She knows the man. To save the company she -and I – would rally round. So, I suppose you are asking, ought he to have felt privately optimistic? In his heart, he must have.'

  This was the only time Davos actively sought to clear another person. All I had to decide now was whether he was lying (perhaps to protect his old friend Phrygia), or whether he was telling the truth.

  Chapter XLV

  We never did put on a show at Abila. Chremes learned that even when the local amateurs had finished impressing their cousins we would still be waiting in a queue behind some acrobats from Pamphilia.

  'This is no good! We're not dawdling in line for a week only to have some damned handstand boys wobble on ahead of us-'

  'They were already ahead,' Phrygia put him straight, tight-lipped. 'We happened to arrive in the middle of a civic festival, which has been planned for six months. Unfortunately, no one informed the town councillors that they needed to consult you! The good citizens of Abila are celebrating the formal entry into the Empire of Commagene – '

  'Stuff Commagene!'

  With this acid political commentary (a view most of us shared, since only Helena Justina had any idea where Commagene was, or whether well-informed men should afford it significance), Chremes led us all off to Capitolias.

  Capitolias had all the usual attributes of a Decapolis town. I'm not some damned itinerary writer – you can fill in the details for yourselves.

  You can also guess the results of my search for Sophrona. As at Abila, and all the other towns before, there was no trace of Thalia's musical prodigy.

  I admit, I was starting to feel bad-tempered about all this. I was sick of looking for the girl. I was tired of one damned acropolis after another. I didn't care if I never saw another set of neat little city walls with a tasteful temple, shrouded in expensive scaffolding, peeping Ionically over them. Stuff Commagene? Never mind it. Commagene (a small, previously autonomous kingdom miles to the north of here) had one wonderful attribute: nobody had ever suggested M.

  Didius Falco ought to pack his bags and traipse around it. No, forget harmless pockets of quaintness that wanted to be Roman, and instead just stuff the whole pretentious, grasping, Hellenic Decapolis.

  I had had enough. I was sick of stones in my shoes and the raw smell of camels' breath. I wanted glorious monuments and towering, teeming tenements. I wanted to be sold some dubious fish that tasted of Tiber grit, and to cat it gazing over the river from my own grubby nook on the Aventine while waiting for an old friend to knock on the door. I wanted to breathe garlic at an aedile. I wanted to stamp on a banker. I wanted to hear that solid roar that slams across the racecourse at the Circus Maximus. I wanted spectacular scandals and gigantic criminality. I wanted to be amazed by size and sordidness. I wanted to go home.

  'Have you a toothache or something?' asked Helena. I proved that my teeth were all in working order by gnashing them.

  For the company, things looked brighter. At Capitolias we acquired a two-night booking. We first put on the Hercules play, since that was newly rehearsed; then, as Davos had prophesied, Chremes became keen on this horrible species and handed us a further 'Frolicking Gods' effort, so we did see Davos do his famous Zeus. Whether people liked it depended on whether they enjoyed farces full of ladders at women's windows, betrayed husbands helplessly banging on locked doors, divinity mocked relentlessly, and Byrria in a nightgown that revealed pretty well everything.

  Musa, we gathered, either liked this very much indeed, or not at all. He went silent. In essence it was hard to tell any difference from normal, but the quality of his silence assumed a new mood. It was brooding; perhaps downright sinister. In a man whose professional life had been spent cutting throats for Dushara, I found this alarming.

  Helena and I were uncertain whether Musa's new silence meant he was now in mental and physical agony over the strength of his attraction to the beauty, or whether her bawdy part in the Zeus play had completely disgusted him. Either way, Musa was finding it hard to handle his feelings. We were ready to offer sympathy, but he plainly wanted to work out his solutions for himself.

  To give him something else to think about I drew him more closely into my investigations. I had wanted to proceed alone, but I hate to abandon a man to love. My verdict on Musa was twofold: he was mature, but inexperienced. This was the worst possible combination for tackling a hostile quarry like Byrria. The maturity would remove any chance of her feeling sorry for him; the lack of experience could lead to embarrassment and bungling if he ever made a move. A woman who had so ferociously set herself apart from men would need a practised hand to win her over.

  'I'll give you advice if you want it.' I grinned. 'But advice rarely works. The mistakes are waiting to be made – and you'll have to walk straight into them.'

  'Oh yes,' he replied rather vacantly. As usual, his apparent affirmative sounded ambiguous. I never met a man who could discuss women so elusively. 'What about our task, Falco?' If he wanted to lose himself in work, frankly that seemed the best idea. As a lad about town Musa was hard work to organise.

  I explained to him that asking people questions about money would be as difficult as advising a friend on a love affair. He screwed out a smile, then we buckled down to checking on the story Davos had told me.

  I wanted to avoid questioning Chremes about his debt directly. Tackling him would be useless while we had no evidence against him for actually causing either death. I had strong doubts whether we would find that evidence. As I told Musa, he remained a low priority on my suspects list: 'He's strong enough to have held Heliodorus down but he was not on th
e embankment at Bostra when you were pushed in the water, and unless someone is lying, he was also out of the picture when Ione died. This is depressing-and typical of my work, Musa. Davos has just given me the best possible motive for killing Heliodorus, but in the long run it's likely to prove irrelevant.'

  'We have to check it, though?'

  'Oh yes!'

  I sent Musa to confirm with Phrygia that Chremes really had been packing his belongings when Heliodorus was killed. She vouched for it. If she still didn't entertain any notion that Chremes had been in debt to the playwright, then she had no reason to think we might be closing in on a suspect, and so no reason to lie.

  'So, Falco, is this story of the debt one we can forget?' Musa pondered. He answered himself: 'No, we cannot. We must now check up on Davos.'

  'Right. And the reason?'

  'He is friendly with Chremes, and especially loyal to Phrygia. Maybe when he found out about the debt he himself killed Heliodorus – to protect his friends from the blackmailing creditor.'

  'Not only his friends, Musa. He would have been safeguarding the future of the theatre group, and also his own job, which he had been saying he would leave. So yes, we'll check on him – but he looks in the clear. If he went up the mountain, then who packed the stage props at Petra? We know somebody did it. Philocrates would think himself above hard labour, and anyway, half the time he was off screwing a conquest. Let's ask the Twins and Congrio where they all were. We need to know that too.'

  I myself tackled Congrio.

  'Yes, Falco. I helped Davos load the heavy stuff. It took all afternoon. Philocrates was watching us some of the time, then he went off somewhere…'

  The twins told Musa they had been together in the room they shared: packing their belongings; having a last drink, rather larger than they had anticipated, to save carrying an amphora to their camel; then sleeping it off. It fitted what we knew of their disorganised, slightly disreputable lifestyle. Other people agreed that when the company assembled to leave Petra the Twins had turned up last, looking dozy and crumpled and complaining of bad heads.