All Roads Lead to Murder

by Albert A. Bell

  I dismissed Damon to go clean himself up and was contemplating my next step when I heard angry shouts erupting from the small dining room. Tiberius Saturninus ran out, followed by two men whom I did not know. One of the men—a former soldier or gladiator, to judge from his bulk and scarred face—dived for Saturninus, caught his foot and tripped him. Saturninus landed at my feet and grabbed the hem of my tunic like a suppliant.

  “Gaius Pliny, help me!”

  The man who had tripped him pounced on Saturninus, grabbing the neck of his tunic and lifting Saturninus to his knees. “There won’t be much left to help by the time we get through with you, you thieving scum.”

  “Gaius Pliny, I beg you! Help me!”

  “Hold on!” I barked. “What’s going on here?”

  “We’re going to teach a lesson to a cheater,” the other man said from the doorway where he still stood. He reminded me of a particularly bad teacher in my hometown, one whom I’d had the good fortune to avoid. He was about forty. His dark hair had a slight curl to it. His face might have been called handsome if it hadn’t been frozen in a perpetual sneer.

  “What do you think he’s done?” I asked.

  “He switched the dice. Put in some of his own.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He had been losing steadily until a short time ago.”

  “So you can use your crooked dice, but if he tries the same trick, it’s cheating?”

  “There’s nothing crooked about these dice. Would you like to try them?” His sneer tried to turn into a smile.

  “I’d sooner throw my money in a slop jar,” I said. “How much did he win?”

  “Twenty tetradrachmas,” the second man said. “He dropped most of it when he ran, but there’s still a few in his hand.”

  I reached down and pried the coins out of Saturninus’ hand. Tossing them to the second man, I said, “Here’s your money back. Now, get out of here.”

  “It’s not that easy,” the man said. “He tried to cheat us. He hasn’t paid the penalty for that.”

  Saturninus choked back a whimper.

  “Do you have any writing material?” I asked.

  The second man looked at me in surprise. The other man released his grip on Saturninus, who sank back to the floor in a heap. The burly gambler went back into the dining room and returned with a small wax tablet, which he handed to me. It had a series of numbers written on it. I used the blunt end of the stylus to smooth the wax and began to write.

  “This is my promise to pay you another ten tetradrachmas, in return for your guarantee to leave this man alone. Present it to my servant Trophimus.” I pressed my signet ring into the wax.

  The gamblers looked at one another. The sinister-looking man nodded once and they left.

  I took Saturninus’ hand and helped him off the floor. He tried to pull his hair over his bald head with his other hand.

  “Thank you, Gaius Pliny. I’m very grateful for your help.” He said it, but his voice and face belied his words. “I’ll see that you’re repaid.”

  “How do you expect to do that? You’re already deeply in debt to your wife’s brother, Gaius Sempronius.”

  His twisted mouth showed his disappointment that I knew his secret. “That’ll be taken care of. I have a patron in Rome. He paid off all my debts before I left for Syria and assured me he would do so again when I returned.”

  “You’re fortunate to have such a generous friend. What does he expect of you in return?”

  “What every patron expects of a client—to do what I’m told.”

  “Who is this patron?”

  Saturninus shook his head. “Merely saving my worthless life doesn’t entitle you to know that, Gaius Pliny.” He started toward the stairs, then turned around and took a step back in my direction. “Could you see your way to . . . lending me a little money?”

  * * * *

  I dreaded the prospect of eating dinner in the inn’s dining room but felt I must. How else could I investigate what happened after I left the evening before? There was no entertainment offered this evening, much to my relief. A somber mood hovered over the inn. Tacitus and I sat at the table he had occupied the previous evening and conversed quietly in Latin. A serving girl, one Tacitus hadn’t bedded yet, brought us some fish and a pitcher of wine.

  “When I left last night,” I said, “Cornutus was at the table under the fresco of Baucis and Philemon. Did he stay there the rest of the evening?”

  Tacitus nodded. “Marcellus joined him.”

  “Was anyone else at the table with them?”

  “Just their servants.”

  I surveyed the room, concentrating on Cornutus’ table. It was in the center of three tables placed along that wall. There was room behind it and on either side for servants to stand while they waited on their masters.

  “It would have been virtually impossible for anyone to walk up to the table and poison their food or wine,” I observed.

  “I’m still not convinced he was poisoned,” Tacitus said. “What makes you so sure?”

  I took a deep breath, trying to contain my impatience. I felt like a teacher going over a lesson again with my slowest student. “The condition of his body tells me that he died early in the night. That’s what I showed you up in his room. The only logical conclusion is that he was given something in his food or drink.”

  “As bad as this stuff tastes,” Tacitus said, “the extra flavor of a little poison would almost be welcome. Certainly hard to detect. But how could it be administered, with all those people around? You can’t just lean over and sprinkle something on someone else’s plate, or whip out a vial of something and pour it into his wine.”

  I had no answer to that.

  Tacitus looked smug. “Didn’t you say that, if your theory doesn’t fit the facts, you have to change your theory? Isn’t it time you started looking for someone with a knife?”

  “We’ll have to do that. But the knife didn’t kill him. He wasn’t beaten or strangled or suffocated. He was poisoned. And how else could it have been done, if not here? He was fine when we were in the bath. A few hours later, he was dead. This is the only time someone could have given him a poison.”

  Tacitus slapped the table. “The baths! Remember, Marcellus sent his slave to get us some wine. The girl who brought the wine handed Cornutus the first goblet, Marcellus the second one, and the rest of us—including those two Greek fellows—picked our own.”

  “But that was too early. And it was a slave girl from the baths, not Marcellus’ slave, who brought the drinks.” Once again I found myself wishing for my uncle’s notebooks, so I could refresh my memory about poisons and their effects. My memory is keen, but I had been away from them for over a year. Some details were not as sharp as they should be.

  Tacitus shoved his plate away. “It was only an hour or so before dinner. There are such things as slow-acting poisons. I think this fish is one of them.”

  “Whether you accept my theory or not,” I said, “at least help me get some information to prove or disprove it. Are you certain only the two of them were at the table? Neither of them left for any long period of time?”

  “Yes, that much I can attest to.”

  There was a start. But my inquiry was complicated by the fact that I couldn’t ask anyone else if they saw what might have been a poisoning. Everyone thought Cornutus was killed with a knife. The slaves had spread the word all over the inn and, from there, all over town. Local gossip probably had him hacked to bits or skinned alive by now. It might be better to let the poisoner think he was off the hook. If he thought no one suspected, then he might get careless, not cover his tracks as well. The knifer was the one I had to appear to be looking for. But was I looking for one killer or two? What were the chances that two people could both have a motive for killing Cornutus and both decide to strike on the same night? On the other hand, why would one person use two methods of murder?

  And what if someone had meant to kill me?

&nbs
p; I went over to the table shared by the philosopher Lysimachus and the two small-town emissaries. The three of them seemed to have gravitated to one another, probably because no one else could stand to be around such pompous jackasses.

  Lysimachus beamed at my approach. “Please, join us, Gaius Pliny.” He scooted down on the bench he occupied, with his back to the wall.

  “Thank you, Lysimachus. I won’t take much of your time.” I wanted to make it clear I was not settling down for the evening. “I’d just like to ask if any of you saw any argument last night or noticed anyone who seemed to be angry with Cornutus.”

  The two emissaries shook their heads and quickly assured me that they saw nothing the previous evening.

  “What about you, Lysimachus? Did you see anything?”

  The philosopher stroked his long, white beard in a downward motion. “Did I see anything? How can I answer that question? Can I know for certain that anything I see is real? Seeing relies on sense perceptions, and sense perceptions can only bring knowledge of what is impermanent and transitory. As the divine Plato says, ‘Have sight and hearing any truth in them?’ What I saw, if anything, might not have been real. What was real, I might not have seen.” He made an ‘on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand’ gesture with his hands and then folded them in his lap.

  Rhascuporis and Orophernes were obviously mightily impressed with this display of philosophical clap-trap. I was frustrated that he was dodging the question.

  “I see you’ve imbibed deeply of the Skepticism of Plato’s Academy,” I said, prompting a diffident smile and a wise nod on his part. “And you’re able to regurgitate it undigested, like a man who has drunk wine that is too rich for his stomach.” The analogy wasn’t quite perfect, but it served to wipe the smug smile off his face.

  “Let me ask you again, Lysimachus, did you see anything at dinner last night to make you think someone was angry at Cornutus?”

  “This is where I was sitting last night, young sir. From here, as you may observe, I could not see most of the dining room because of this pillar. All I could see was the table where that big German fellow, Carolus, was sitting. Studying his face for an entire meal is no aid to digestion, I can tell you. I think he was very angry about something.”

  “What sense perceptions led you to that conclusion?”

  He ignored my jibe. “His face was contorted most of the evening, and he virtually attacked his food with his knife.”

  Might Carolus have attacked something else last night? I filed that information away in my head, thanked Lysimachus, and returned to the table which Tacitus and I were occupying. His enamorata was giving him particularly attentive service.

  “This is Pamphile,” Tacitus said. “You met her this morning.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry there wasn’t time for proper introductions,” I said, as if there ever could be proper introductions between us. I did at least notice her face this time. She had an upturned nose and a small, cupid’s-bow mouth. Her black hair glistened.

  “What can I get you, sir?” she asked, bowing slightly.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions about last night.”

  She didn’t exactly blush. “Well, I figured Cornelius Tacitus had told you all about it by now. Don’t you men share the details of your conquests?” Her demeanor said she wouldn’t mind if we did. It would be good advertising for her, I suppose.

  I did blush. “No, I was referring to what happened here during dinner last night.”

  “Oh, it was very busy, very noisy. People ate and drank a lot. And Tacitus was being very nice to me. What is it exactly that you want to know?”

  I hadn’t really made myself clear, had I? “Did you notice that man last night?” I pointed to Marcellus.

  “Yes. Him and the poor man who was eating with him, the one who got killed last night.”

  “Right, they’re the ones. Did you notice anything unusual about their behavior?”

  “Well, sir, I can’t remember every detail of a busy night like that. I mean, I’ve got lots of customers to look after. I can’t stand around gawking at one table. That one, Marcellus, he was pretty rowdy. The other one, Cornutus, was more quiet like. One thing I do remember, though, is how Marcellus sent one of his slaves to get a wineskin from his own wagon. Said ours was swill. He wanted to toast his friend Cornutus with a vintage worthy of so noble a fellow. Or something high-sounding like that.”

  At least there was no contradiction with what Phrixus and Melissa had told us. “Did Marcellus also drink from that skin?”

  “Of course,” Pamphile said. “He poured some into both cups, his and Cornutus’. I watched him because I was so tired of him insulting our fare. I was hoping he’d choke on his own fancy stuff.”

  Damn! Another witness saying that Marcellus had drunk the same wine he gave Cornutus. Could I be wrong about my poison theory? Or was I looking at the wrong method of introducing it?

  Suddenly, just as an entire forest falls silent when a predator stalks past, so a hush fell as the leader of the group of Ephesian women entered the dining room. Her necklaces, bracelets, and amulets clanked like a camel caravan coming into Damascus. Pamphile’s playfulness evaporated at the witch’s approach, and she scurried away in fear, like one of the little forest animals who was liable to be eaten. I wished I could run, but the witch was advancing straight toward my table.

  VII

  “YOUNG SIR,” THE WITCH SAID, pronouncing it as one word, “I am here to report, in keeping with your request, that my followers and I will be leaving the inn after dark to participate in a religious ritual.”

  I paused, as though considering a request, then said, “I need to know more precisely where you’re going and what you’re going to do.” It was pure bluff on my part. How could I stop her?

  The witch drew herself up to her full height. “There will be a full moon tonight. We are going out in the service of the goddess.”

  Her answer didn’t satisfy me. My uncle taught me that religion is merely a way of keeping slaves and the lower classes under control through fear of punishment extended into the afterlife. I found it difficult to accept that anyone of any intelligence took these rituals seriously enough to go prancing about at night. “What does that service involve?”

  “We do not reveal sacred mysteries to profane ears,” the witch said. “Nor would you want us to. The goddess guards her secrets jealously and wreaks a terrible vengeance on those who transgress the bounds fixed around them.” She swirled her robes around her as she turned away from me. I half expected her to disappear under them.

  “Does that vengeance include having one’s heart cut out?” I said to her back.

  She looked over her shoulder, like a disembodied head floating on a black mist. “There are worse ways to die, young sir. There are worse ways.”

  Watching her make an exit worthy of a Persian queen, I wondered what connection Cornutus could have with these women and their outrageous cult. I turned to Tacitus, who was still cringing at my bold question to the witch.

  “Since those women joined us in Ephesus, have you seen any kind of exchange between them and Cornutus, friendly or otherwise?”

  Tacitus shook his head. “As far as I know, when the witch told him not to hit Chryseis, that was the first time she had spoken to him.”

  “Could his mistreatment of a slave girl be a reason to kill him?”

  “That hardly seems plausible. They couldn’t go around dealing out retribution to every man who raises a hand against one of his female slaves.”

  “No. But could she have some other reason to want him dead?”

  “If she does,” Tacitus said, “she won’t tell us and Cornutus can’t. I’ll be content to let the governor discover it when he gets here.”

  Once the danger had passed Pamphile returned with another pitcher of wine and Tacitus pulled her onto his lap and asked her if she would spend another night with him.

  She kissed him, long and hard. “I’d like to,” she said when they came
up for air, “but I can’t tonight.”

  “Why not?” Tacitus asked with some urgency.

  “There’s something else I have to do.” She wriggled, trying to get out of his grip.

  “I’m not going to let you go until you tell me why you can’t stay with me tonight.”

  The girl’s eyes opened wide in alarm. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

  “Then resign yourself to sitting here the rest of the evening,” Tacitus said, tightening his grip to the point that Pamphile’s discomfort was evident. “And if you keep wriggling, you’re going to be impaled on . . .”

  She slumped against his chest. “All right. I’m going to the festival.”

  “The one that old witch was talking about?” I asked.

  “She’s not a witch, my lord. She’s our high priestess, Anyte. Under the first full moon after the spring equinox, worshipers of Hecate gather on the site of a temple of Artemis in old Smyrna, on the north side of the bay.”

  “If you’re worshiping Hecate,” Tacitus said, “why do it at the temple of Artemis?”

  “Artemis and Hecate are just different names for the same goddess,” Pamphile said nervously, “a goddess of darkness and power. Women come from all over the area for these ceremonies.”

  “What do you do?” I asked her as Tacitus continued to hold her tightly.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said, on the verge of tears. “I’ve said too much already. Please don’t ask me any more and don’t tell anyone that I told you even this much.” She broke Tacitus’ grip as he relaxed it. “I’ll make tomorrow night very special for you,” she promised with another kiss. “For both of you, if you like.” She stroked my cheek.