The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  "Yes?" I asked.

  He put his knuckle to his lips and stared off into space, working on the phrasing of what he was about to tell me; I recognized the signs. "When the improbable passes over into the impossible, the wall of truth has been breached," he said.

  "I can't write it down," I told him. "Very nice, whatever it means, but I can't write it down."

  "But it doesn't have . . . yes, I suppose you're right. See if you can remember it to include it in my collection of aphorisms for the young."

  "Yes, sir," I told him.

  Our next guest stomped in and declared "Decurion Carlus to see Investigator Quintilian as directed!" and then came to attention, standing as rigid as a marble column before the makeshift desk. He was a big man — not tall, but big in every other dimension. His arms were as big around as a wrestler's thighs. It would take two normal men with their arms outstretched to encompass his chest. His neck was so thick that his head seemed to emerge from it instead of being supported by it. His nose was flat, his ears were small and hugged the side of his head, and an ancient scar that ran from his chin to his right temple made his face look lopsided.

  "Sit down, Decurion Carlus," my master said, gesturing towards the chair Carlus stood next to.

  The massive decurion lowered himself gingerly into the chair. "I am here about the lad who got killed last night," he said.

  "Septius?" Quintilian asked.

  "That was his name, yes."

  "Do you know how he died?"

  "I do not, unfortunately. He was a good lad. Wanted to be a legionary. Would have made a good one, too; intelligent, cool-headed, took orders well. The last I saw of him, he was chasing a ghost." A plain, matter-of-fact statement, with no more emotion behind it than if he'd said, "The last time I saw him he was eating a fig."

  "Ah," Quintilian said. "When and where was this?"

  "At the start of second watch. I had assembled the guards to post them — relieving the first watch, you know — when a figure that looked a lot like Julius Caesar, from the busts and coins and such, you know, appeared above us —"

  "Above you?"

  "On this sort of balcony. Our guard room was Nero's music room, or some such, and there's this small balcony sticking out of one wall. Well, this apparition, or whatever, starts yelling about the Ides of October, or some such. I pay it little attention, as I have to get my men posted. And besides, the way I figure it, if I act like it don't mean anything, why then the lads won't take it seriously. They'll think it's some sort of joke, like. Otherwise, if they take it serious, well, it could mean trouble. Most of the lads are from the northern provinces, and they're a superstitious lot."

  "You don't believe in ghosts?"

  "I don't know about that," Carlus said. "But I don't believe they've got any business interfering with my men, when I'm trying to get them posted for guard duty."

  "A sensible attitude," Quintilian said, nodding.

  "Well, I give the men an 'eyes forwards', and start marching them to their posts, when young Septius, who was in there repairing some lacings on his sandals, suddenly jumps up and says, 'That ain't no ghost! I'll see about that!' and goes racing out of the room. I don't know what got into him. Maybe he saw something that I didn't."

  "That could be. Do you know where he went?"

  "He was heading towards the stairs to the balcony when last I saw him. When I got back from posting the guard, he was gone, and I didn't hear any more about him until somebody came in this morning and said they'd found him dead."

  "What did you think?"

  "I didn't think it was no ghost. What use would a ghost have in stabbing a man to death? Not the way of ghosts at all, from what I hear."

  Quintilian smiled. "What use, indeed," he said. "You've been a big help, and I thank you."

  "A nice lad," Carlus said. "Sorry about whatever happened to him. You bring that ghost forward and my lads and I will take care of him good."

  "I'll try to do just that," Quintilian told him.

  We saw several more people in the next hour or so, but they added nothing to what we already knew. Of course, as far as I could see, what we already knew added nothing to what we already knew. On reviewing that sentence I can see that it makes little sense, and Quintilian would chastise me for writing it and tell me to write, clearly and concisely, exactly what I mean. What I mean is that we had interviewed over a dozen people, and learned that the ghost of Julius Caesar appeared at times, gave a doleful warning about the Ides of October, and then disappeared. Which is what we knew before we interviewed the first person.

  When the last person had been interviewed, Quintilian rose from his seat and began pacing back and forth across the room, his head down, looking at the floor in front of him. I scurried over to the side of the room and sat on the floor, my back against the wall, to keep out of his way. My mentor thinks best in motion, and I try to do nothing to disturb his thinking.

  He stayed in motion for some time, gesticulating in strange and wonderful ways as he paced, grabbing thoughts and ideas from the air and assembling them into various patterns, until he found one that made sense out of the facts of the case. He had explained this to me many times, and I had watched him perform this magic in many different cases, usually shortly before the start of a trial. I say "magic" because, when I try a similar process, all I grab is thin air, and all I get is a headache.

  Finally he stopped pacing and sat down. "If something is impossible," he said, "why then, it is impossible. Discard it, and you are left with the truth."

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  He turned, seeming a bit surprised to see me squatting there against the wall. "It means I see a way to catch a ghost."

  I shuddered. And, mind you, I'm not at all sure I believe in ghosts. But after the stories we had just heard . . . "Is that wise?" I asked.

  "Not only wise, but necessary," he told me. "It will require a long strand of wool, and, just in case, a man with an axe." "Pardon me?" I said.

  "That centurion — Sabatinus — should be waiting somewhere outside the door. Fetch him for me."

  I went into the corridor and beckoned to the centurion, who was sitting on a chair he had acquired from somewhere, talking with two of his troopers. Sabatinus fairly trotted into the room. "It's approaching dinner time," he said. "I would like to let my men go for their meal, if you can spare them for an hour or so."

  Quintilian pushed himself to his feet. "Let us wind up this business," he said, "and then, no doubt, your men will be able to feast."

  "Ah!" Centurion Sabatinus said. "Then, honourable Quintilian, you have been able to make some sense of the stories you have been listening to?"

  "Send one of your men for an axe," Quintilian told him, "and have him meet us at the anteroom where that poor lad was found dead."

  Sabatinus sent one of his men off to find an axe, and he led the rest of us back to the door to the anteroom. Which was a good thing as, with all the twists and turns we took in this gigantic maze of a palace, I doubt whether we could have found it on our own.

  "You wait out here," Quintilian told us. "I don't want you disturbing the air in the room." And with the final comment, "I could be wrong, but I think not," he went inside the little room by himself.

  We waited. We could hear pounding, tapping and thumping from inside for a while, and then my master stuck his head out the door. "I need more light," he said. "Bring me some lamps."

  Sabatinus's men scattered about and found four lamps, returning with them about the same time as the trooper who had gone for the axe rejoined our little band. Quintilian took the lamps inside the room and closed the door. We waited some more. This time there was nothing but silence from inside the room.

  Quintilian opened the door. "Come in," he said. "We won't need the axe. Well, perhaps we will need the axe; bring it along."

  We followed him back into the room. "Well, I'll be —" Centurion Sabatinus said.

  At first I didn't see anything different, except for
the circle of oil lamps burning on the floor, casting their varied shadows on the walls. And then I saw that what I had taken to be a shadow was actually an opening in the side wall. Starting at the floor, it was about two feet square, and seemed to lead into some sort of tunnel. The part of the wall that had concealed the tunnel had opened inward, and was now flat against the tunnel's side.

  "Did you know there were secret passages within the palace?" my master asked Sabatinus.

  "There was a secret exit," the centurion told him. "It was the way that Nero escaped the mob that was hunting him, after hiding for a day. We have closed it up. How did you find this one?"

  "Logic said there had to be an entrance to this room aside from the two doors. Even a ghost couldn't take a body through solid walls."

  "But a man could have passed the guards without attracting much attention," Sabatinus said. "Besides, in the middle of the night, there was a good chance the guards would be asleep — or at least dozing."

  "Yes, and a man might chance it. But I doubt whether a man carrying a body would feel the same. So the most logical answer was that there's a hidden entrance to this room. At first I tapped all the walls, but I couldn't detect any difference in sound. So then I pulled a strand of wool from the hem of my toga and lighted the end from one of the lamps. It burned with a thin wisp of black smoke. I slowly moved it about the room, near the walls, until I saw the smoke deflected by a slight draught. After some experimentation I found that the panel unlocked by pushing in on a leaf in the wall painting, and then I could slide it open. So I didn't have to call on the axeman."

  Centurion Sabatinus nodded. "Very logical," he said.

  "Let's see where this doorway leads," Quintilian said.

  "Wait," said Sabatinus. "I'll go first — that's my job." Pulling his gladius from its scabbard, he held the short sword in front of him in his right hand and an oil lamp in his left, and crawled head-first into the tunnel. Quintilian followed, and then the three troopers, each with one of the oil lamps, and the last carrying the great double-bladed axe that he had brought. I followed in the rear, and glad of it. I am not made for fighting. And yet nothing could have stopped me from following along to see the end to this ghostly mystery.

  After a short distance the tunnel turned to the left, and then rose steeply some six or eight feet and continued on. A little way further — it's hard to judge distance when you're crawling — the ceiling rose and it was possible to walk upright. There was a steady breeze blowing through the tunnel; I could feel it on my face, and it made the flame in my lamp flicker.

  The tunnel went down again, and then turned to the left, and we could see light ahead of us. After a few moments we came to a room, octagonal in shape, perhaps twelve or fourteen feet across, lighted by a sort of covered skylight, so that light came in from the sides but not from directly overhead. There was a table in the room with a pitcher of water and a mug, and there, on a chair by the table, sat Julius Caesar. His toga was soiled, and his fringe of hair was dishevelled, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Several laurel wreaths hung from pegs on the wall.

  "Don't kill me," Caesar screeched, throwing himself under the table and cowering as we entered the room. "Please don't kill me! It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my idea. Don't kill me!"

  A quarter of an hour later we all stood before Vespasian and his son in the audience hall that the emperor — excuse me, the general — used for state business. "Secret passages," Vespasian said, "running all through the palace. Who could have guessed?"

  "Apparently Nero had them constructed as the palace was being built," Quintilian told him. "He used workers from the far provinces and then sent them home again, so the work would stay secret. That's according to our ghost, here." He indicated the soiled Caesar, who was doing his best to stand straight and unafraid, despite the leather restraints with which he had been bound, still not convinced that he was not about to be beheaded.

  Vespasian nodded. "I suppose, knowing Nero, I should have thought of something like that," he said.

  "If you want to put stock in the sayings of the Sybil," Quintilian said, "you could take her first two lines:

  The past returns through the wiles of men It is not hard to die as referring to the hidden passages. 'It is not hard to die,' should remind us of the day Nero spent hiding in this palace, and we should have asked ourselves just where it was that he hid."

  Vespasian nodded thoughtfully, and then turned his attention to the ghost. "I await your story impatiently," he said.

  Caesar fell to his knees. "My name, so it please your honour, is Lysidamus. I am from the island of Crete. I was brought here as a child and sold to a company of touring actors. It was never clear which of them actually owned me, and I suppose it didn't matter. I was eventually given small parts to play, usually girls or women. When my voice changed, I played the insolent slave, or on occasion the young lover —"

  "Let's get to the part where you're hiding in secret passages in this palace," Domitian interrupted.

  "Yes, your honour. Of course, your honour. The emperor Nero saw me in a production of Plautus's The Boy From Carthage — I played the boy — and immediately purchased me and made me a freedman. I joined the imperial troupe of actors, and became Nero's voice coach. For when he played parts in Greek. He spoke Greek with a terrible Latin accent. I became adept at not quite telling him that."

  "Get to the secret passages," Domitian said.

  "Yes, your honour. The hidden corridors were used by Nero to spy on his enemies and, I suppose, his friends. There are tubes in the walls that can be uncapped and, if you put your ear to them, you can hear what is being said in the room outside. On that horrible day when the people turned against him, he hid at first in the secret rooms. I went with him, but when the next day he fled the palace, I remained behind. I have been living in these secret places ever since, coming out only for food and to, ah, borrow clean garments."

  "Three, almost four, years?" Vespasian asked, incredulously.

  "I believe so. One loses track of time in, ah, my situation." "Why did you stay?"

  "At first through fear, I thought the subsequent emperors would just as soon eliminate all memories of Nero, and I was one of those memories. And then because I really had no place else to go."

  "You've been listening to what goes on here for all that time?" Domitian demanded.

  "Oh, no!" Lysidamus said, sounding shocked. "I never took the caps from the listening tubes. That wouldn't be right."

  "And just when did you become a ghost?" Vespasian asked.

  "It must be over a year ago now. I was, let's see, in the pastry kitchen, I believe. Someone walked in on me while I was gathering a few pastries to take back to my lair. I raised my arms in fright, and much to my surprise, he was more frightened than I. He raced from the room screaming that he'd seen a ghost — Great Caesar's ghost, to be precise. And, of course, when the others came in to see, I was back in the wall."

  "Great Caesar's ghost?" Quintilian asked. "Even that first time?"

  "That's what the man said — yelled. I did not realize how much I had come to resemble the great Gaius Julius with the passage of time. I still thought of myself as the young lover. But I decided to take advantage of this chance resemblance and never leave my hidey-hole without wearing an imperial toga and a laurel wreath, and dusting my face with a little flour."

  Domitian glared at the sad little man. "Sneaking into the imperial palace," he said. "That's a serious offence."

  "I don't know if we can get him for that," Vespasian said, smiling. "After all, he was here before we were."

  "Yes? Well, what about that 'Ides of October' nonsense?" "I don't think he's responsible for that," Quintilian said. "Are you?" he asked Lysidamus.

  "Well, I —"

  "I mean you did it, of course, but you're not responsible for it."

  "Yes," Domitian said, "but murdering that lad . . ." Quintilian turned back to Domitian. "Oh, that he didn't do."

  "Then what did he do?"<
br />
  "He was discovered," Quintilian said. "Weren't you?" He leaned over Lysidamus. "Weren't you?"

  "Yes, yes."

  "By whom?" asked Vespasian.

  "I don't know his name. He caught me about a month ago, while I was making my nightly foray for a loaf of bread, and ever since I've been living in fear. He told me that, were he to turn me in, I would be instantly executed. But he said he had use for me. He explored the secret ways and found places for me to appear. He told me what to say. Last night, when a young lad almost caught me he — he took away the lad's little knife, and jabbed at him with a long stiletto that he kept concealed in his toga. I think he killed him."

  "You don't know?"

  "He told me to go back to my room. I went."

  "He did kill the lad," Quintilian told Lysidamus.

  The actor burst out sobbing and fell to the floor. "What a pity, what a pity," he cried. "And he was such a handsome lad!"

  "Who did this?" Vespasian asked.

  "I swear, I don't know his name," Lysidamus sobbed. "He wears a senatorial toga."

  "His name is Marius Trabitus," Quintilian told Vespasian. "He is a senator."

  "Trabitus?" Vespasian repeated. "Why, I know him. He told me he actually saw the ghost, I remember. He has been spending a lot of time in the palace. He knows of my intention to move, and has an interest in taking the building over to turn it into an I-don't-know-what. Some sort of forum, or such. Or so he told me."

  "I think you'll find he's associated with one of the groups you mentioned that has its own ideas about who should be emperor," Quintilian said. "Perhaps he thought that if he made enough noise about the 'Ides of October', some superstitious guardsman or courtier would think the gods were giving him instructions?"

  "And why do you name this Trabitus as the instigator?"

  "And as the murderer of young Septius. He would have been better served by keeping the youth's body hidden. Ghostly appearances are one thing, who knows about ghosts? But a corpse lying in a room has to have arrived there somehow. I knew it was he when he told me of seeing bloody wounds on the ghost of Caesar; an obvious, ah, exaggeration. Why would he make such things up were he not involved? And then he told me that little knives are no defence against ghosts. But nobody knew that lad had a knife, since the sheath was concealed under his body until I turned him over. Bring Trabitus here and let our actor friend identify him."