Tacitus laughed. “What do we know about that sort of thing?”
“I’ve had some experience in legal matters,” I reminded him, sounding more defensive than I intended. “I was on the Board of Ten Judges last year.”
“Only as the most junior member,” Tacitus shot back. I think he’s still jealous because he lost the year that he was a candidate for the same post. “You never dealt with anything as serious as a murder case. And this sounds like a particularly brutal and bizarre one.”
“It’s all a matter of observing closely and questioning everything,” Observation and inquiry—those were the principles upon which my uncle had based my education. He believed that decisions in criminal cases should be based on evidence gathered by rational observation, not on a speaker’s ability to sway a jury. That was how he educated me, and that was why I thought I could take charge of this situation.
Leaving Tacitus to get dressed, I was on my way back to Cornutus’ room when I encountered the older of the two men whom I took to be Jews.
“I’ve heard talk that someone has died,” the man said. His kind eyes inspired trust. Of course, I upbraided myself, I had been favorably impressed with our nobly named innkeeper, who turned out to be nothing but a pimp for his own pubescent daughter. What did I know about character? Better to be suspicious of everyone, like Tacitus.
“Actually, someone has been killed,” I corrected him.
“Oh, my. Is there anything I can do? I’m a doctor.”
“It’s a little late for your services, sir,” I said, meaning to dismiss him. Then inspiration hit. “But could you accompany me while I examine the body? It’s in here.”
“By all means. I’ll do whatever I can.”
“We didn’t make introductions when you joined our party,” I said. “My name is Gaius Pliny.”
“So I heard yesterday. Are you related to the author of the Natural History?”
“He was my uncle and adoptive father.” Modesty prevented me from adding that he was one of the most respected scientific minds of our day. His Natural History is the standard work on phenomena of nature.
He bowed slightly. “I’m honored to make your acquaintance, young Pliny. My name is Luke.” Receiving such deference from a man old enough to be my grandfather made me slightly uncomfortable. I had done nothing on my own to earn it.
“Well, Doctor Luke, brace yourself for a horrible sight.”
We entered Cornutus’ room and stood together beside the bed. The room, typical of any public lodging, contained nothing but the bed and a chair, over which a slave had draped a clean tunic for his master to put on this morning. Cornutus lay on his back, his arms at his sides. A great gash, beginning below his navel, ran up his chest. His viscera had been pulled out of the lower chest cavity and lay, still attached, on his stomach, to the great delight of the flies. His eyes were closed, mercifully. The open eyes, staring but unseeing, bothered me most about the few dead bodies I’ve seen. What puzzled me about Cornutus’ face was the serene expression, his mouth even turned up a bit at the corners, as though he had passed from a pleasant dream to oblivion.
“At the risk of stating the obvious,” Luke said, “it wasn’t an accident or suicide.”
I failed to appreciate his attempt at humor, if that’s what it was. The day was already promising to be hot, and the room had been closed up all night. The stench was so strong I felt as if someone was forcing it down my throat. And something was coming back up. I looked around for the chamberpot. Failing to find it, I dashed to the window just in time. It was small, but it served my immediate need.
“Death’s corruption takes some getting used to,” Luke said gently when I turned back around. “Shall we proceed with our examination?”
I nodded, wiping my mouth and wishing for something to drink. Something strong. The body would have to be burned very soon. Anything we might learn from it would be gone. I had to do this. I could do this. My uncle had taught me how.
Whenever my uncle’s slaves or soldiers under his command were injured or killed, he made careful notes about the appearance of the wounds and the bodies. Given the several days required to complete the Roman funeral process, my uncle observed how bodies change over time after death. The congealing of the blood, the stiffening of the limbs, all happens at a fairly predictable rate, depending on factors such as the temperature, covering of the body, whether it’s been in water, and so on. In cases involving an assault he also learned that he could determine what type of weapon had been used and from what direction and angle the wound had been inflicted.
I had done more than merely read about his investigations. A few months before he died, he allowed me to assist him while he determined that a slave had died from poisoning, not from drowning. Faint discolorations around the mouth suggested a particular type of poison. My uncle drove a thin-bladed knife into one of the man’s lungs and inserted a hollow reed. He discovered that there was no water in the lung. That meant the man was already dead before his body was put into the water. I could still recall his summary of the situation: ‘Simply because a body is found in water does not mean that the person drowned. Appearances should not always be believed. A murderer often tries to conceal his crime by staging things to create a scene, just like a playwright.’ That slave’s wife and her lover—another slave—had killed the husband and tried to make it look as though he drowned accidentally. The lover admitted everything, trying to shift the blame onto the wife. Both were executed. Less educated people regarded my uncle as some sort of sorcerer, but he insisted he was merely making rational observations.
I had seen him do it, and I could do it.
A knock sounded on the door and one of my slaves stuck his head in. “My lord, Cornelius Tacitus asks to speak with you.”
“Yes,” I said impatiently, “it’s all right. Let him in.”
“You said to admit no one, my lord.” The fellow was mocking me, I realized, but what else could he do? Owners of slaves often act as though we expect them to read our minds. Do exactly as I tell you, but figure out when I intend for exceptions to be made. And if they do act on their own initiative, we usually punish them for it.
The slave stood aside and Tacitus entered the room. “By the gods!” he gasped, his hand clutching his nose and mouth.
I was determined now to ignore the stench and show myself a better man than Tacitus. “It would be useful if we had someone to take notes for us. Could you do that?”
Tacitus nodded, went out and returned momentarily with a pen, ink, and a few pieces of papyrus. He seated himself in the chair, which he scooted close to the window. Not that it helped. There was no movement of the air, inside or outside, just oppressive humidity and the stench of death. Breathing in here was like trying to breathe underwater.
“Doctor, why don’t you begin?” I said, stepping back from the bed and wishing that the room was large enough to get away from the stench. But it would have to be as large as an amphitheater for that.
Cornutus’ strigl lay on the floor. Luke picked it up. “It’s convenient for us that he was fastidious enough not to use the strigls from the public baths. Anyone concerned about cleanliness and good health should follow his example.”
I glanced at Tacitus, but he was too busy trying to keep from vomiting to notice.
Luke used the curved piece of metal to probe around in the hole in Cornutus’ chest. “The initial blow was delivered with great force, striking upward,” he said, thrusting in the air with the strigl. Something from it splattered on me. “It reminds me of wounds I’ve seen on victims from the arena. The blade of the instrument must have been rather fine and extremely sharp. The edges of the wound aren’t ragged.”
I was pleased to hear Luke making those kinds of observations. I felt as though he and my uncle would have been comfortable with one another.
“Does it appear to you, sir, that Cornutus made no effort to resist?” I asked. “The body seems to be in what I would call a position of repose.”
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br /> Luke ran his eye over the body and nodded. “I agree. The arms are down by his sides, his legs straight out. That does strike me as odd. Even if he was asleep and didn’t hear his attacker come in, when the blow was struck, there should have been some reaction, some instinctive clutching at the point of the pain.” He put his hands on his chest and bent double. “Like that.”
“Well, he was quite drunk,” Tacitus said from his chair under the window. “He and Marcellus drank steadily until well past dark.”
“Did he argue with anyone?” I asked.
“No, he and Marcellus acted like the greatest of friends. They largely ignored everyone else.”
“Did you notice anything the least bit unusual about his behavior?”
“One thing did strike me as a bit peculiar. When Gaius Sempronius left to take the innkeeper’s daughter upstairs, Cornutus said to him, in Latin, ‘If she were my daughter, Sempronius, I’d kill you. You know that, don’t you?’”
That wasn’t helpful. I didn’t want to know whom Cornutus had threatened to kill, just who might have wanted to kill him. “How did Sempronius react?”
“He sneered and pulled the girl closer to him.”
“How did Cornutus get up here?” Luke asked.
“Marcellus and a slave practically carried him up the stairs.”
“Do you think he would have been capable of defending himself if he were attacked?” Luke said.
Tacitus shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was dragging his feet, he was so drunk.”
“But he was a large, vigorous man,” I objected. “Even in a drunken stupor, I think he would have jerked his knees up and tried to resist.”
“I agree,” Luke said. “That would be the most likely reaction.”
I turned to Tacitus. “You said that Marcellus and a slave carried Cornutus up here. Whose slave was it?”
“One of Cornutus’. The one with the ears.”
I nodded. We had speculated during the journey about what keen hearing the fellow must have, with auditory appendages of that size. If he could flap them, he might fly.
“Did they both return to the dining room?” I asked.
Tacitus shook his head. “Only Marcellus did. He drank several of the locals under the table. He seemed quite jovial and was very generous about buying drinks.” His sheepish expression told me he had benefitted from that largess himself.
“So, to the best of our knowledge, Marcellus and Big-Ears, the slave, were the last two people to see Cornutus alive,” I summarized. “We’ll need to determine whether they left the room together and where the slave went.”
Tacitus drew himself up in horror. “Surely you don’t suspect that Marcellus might have had something to do with his death.” For all his disdain for aristocratic women as bedmates, he could be very defensive about the honor of the upper class.
I tried to placate him. “I’m not suggesting that he brought Cornutus up here, shooed the slave out of the room, and cut this poor man’s heart out on the spot. For now I’m just observing. You can’t always tell what’s important until you reflect on it and fit things together in various ways. It’s like putting a mosaic together. When you look at all those pieces scattered on the floor, you wonder how the workman will ever make sense of it.”
An idea must have hit Luke. His face lit up. “Was Marcellus wearing the same clothes when he came back downstairs?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” Tacitus replied. “He was only gone for a very short time.”
Luke placed his index finger on his nose and his thumb under his chin. We all have our thinking positions; I presumed this was his.
“Part of the problem,” he said slowly, “is that we don’t know exactly when Cornutus was murdered. It seems highly unlikely it was early in the evening. This sort of vicious attack would best be made in the very late hours, between midnight and dawn.”
“We’ll have to talk to the people in the rooms on either side of this one,” I said, “to see if they noticed any unusual noises during the night. My room is across the way. I didn’t hear anything—aside from you and that servant girl.” I glared at Tacitus. His room was next to mine.
Tacitus looked up from his note-taking and smiled. “What can I say? She was quite . . . earthy.”
“And quite loud. But, as for the time of death, why rely on our assumptions of what could have happened? Cornutus himself might give us some clue.”
Luke and Tacitus looked at me as though I had proposed to raise the man from the dead for a little chat.
“Let me check a couple of things,” I said. Luke stepped away from the bed to make room for me. I steeled myself, clasped Cornutus’ cheeks firmly, and tried to move his head from side to side. It wouldn’t budge. Next I tugged at one of his arms. The cold limb bent but only with some difficulty. His legs reacted the same way. Then I lifted his shoulders and buttocks and examined the parts of his body that were in contact with the bed.
“I would estimate that he’s been dead eight to ten hours,” I finally announced.
Luke looked at me the way the slaves on my uncle’s estate did when he proved that the man fished out of a pond had not been drowned. I felt almost like a sorcerer. Necromancer might have been more appropriate. The credit has to go to my uncle, though. He bequeathed to me some 160 scrolls, his notebooks. He wrote on the front and back of the scrolls, so it’s the equivalent of twice as many volumes. I’ve learned a great deal of what would appear to be arcane science from reading those notebooks.
“How can you say that?” Luke asked, drawing back.
“In some of his unpublished notes my uncle recorded his observations about what happens to bodies after death. The stiffness of the neck and limbs increases for a time, then begins to relax. The neck stiffens faster than the arms and legs. This process is affected by the temperature of the place where the body is lying. The blood also settles on the side of the body that is lowest. It’s not yet the second hour of the morning. His neck is stiff, but his limbs still have some flexibility. The blood has completely settled, as you can see from the discoloration on the lower side of the body. It looks like large bruises. For all those things to have happened in a very warm room, Cornutus must have died long before midnight, probably by . . . the second hour after sunset.”
“But that’s when he was brought up here,” Tacitus objected. “People were milling around. No one could have sneaked in here at that hour and done this horrible thing without somebody seeing or hearing something.” Luke nodded his agreement.
“I entirely concur,” I said. “But that can’t change what Cornutus’ own body tells us. Rational observation may not be convenient because it doesn’t always fit our theories. It’s our theories that need to change. One other thing about the condition of the body also puzzles me—”
Before I could finish, we were interrupted by the din of several voices from in front of Cornutus’ door. Marcellus’ was the loudest, in the way that drunkards sometimes are, without realizing how loud they are. I could tell that my slaves were having difficulty keeping him out of the room. I opened the door and stepped out. Luke followed me, shutting the door before poor Tacitus could escape.
Other people, also awakened by the commotion, were gathering outside Cornutus’ door. The crowd even trailed down the stairs. Gaius Sempronius had spent the night in the room to the right of Cornutus’, as one faced the door. I was appalled to see the innkeeper’s daughter coming out of his room. The child clutched her flimsy dancing costume around her and rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth as she scampered away down the stairs. Sempronius leaned against his door, scratching his belly.
I quickly noted that everyone else in our caravan was also present. The witch and her acolytes huddled together in front of me. She had not assumed the center position in the group. Wherever she stood became the center of a group. Behind them Tiberius Saturninus was combing his hair over his bald pate with his hands. Lysimachus and the two eastern emissaries were easy to spot on my right.<
br />
Had I been traveling for all these days with a murderer? Or had someone else in the inn last night nursed some resentment of Cornutus? What motive would a stranger have had?
“What’s going on?” Marcellus demanded belligerently.
“Lucius Cornutus is dead,” I said without emotion. There was no need to try to evade the truth. The innkeeper had already spread the news like a fire through a peasant’s hay barn. “He’s been murdered.”
A gasp passed through the small crowd. Heads began shaking and people looked at one another in disbelief. Or suspicion.
Marcellus seemed to have difficulty comprehending what I had said. “My friend Cornutus has been murdered? Why wasn’t I informed?”
“You’re not a magistrate or a relative of his,” I replied. “There was no reason to wake you up.”
“But he was my friend,” Marcellus insisted stupidly. “We ate and talked together just last night.”
“And you drank together, I understand.” The reek of alcohol oozing from his pores would have confirmed that even if I hadn’t had an eyewitness account. The front of his tunic bore a large wine stain. I was surprised he hadn’t sucked it dry.
“Of course we drank together,” he said. “That’s what friends do.”
I wanted to ask him if he had ever had a real friend, if he even understood the concept of friendship, except as a tool for manipulating people. Romans have long used the term to express political and social obligations. A ‘friend’ is one who votes for you or whom you’re expected to invite to dinner periodically.
“What sort of shape was your ‘friend’ in when you left him?” I asked Marcellus.
“He was asleep. His slave and I put him in the bed, and we left.”
“Both of you left together?”
He thought for a moment, then realization seemed to flash through the alcoholic haze fogging his brain, like lightning through a heavy cloud. “Why are you questioning me? When a Roman citizen is murdered, you immediately round up his slaves. If you want information, you torture them. Then you put them to death. The law requires it.”
All Roads Lead to Murder Page 3