Murder in Megara

by Eric Mayer

  He had heard the rumors about his father—his real father. He had been a child when his father had abruptly, shockingly, inexplicably simply ceased to be where he had always been. His mother told him that John—for he had been named after his father—had died. Only later, when he was old enough to go off alone with his friends out of his mother’s sight and hearing, had he heard the rumors. That his father, beset by financial difficulties, had escaped by way of the rock.

  The boy who told him had merely been repeating what he’d heard his parents say. Neither he nor John were sure what “financial difficulties” were, except that from the tones with which older people said the words they guessed they must be very terrible indeed. John had imagined his father pursued up the rock by hideous dragon-like creatures. He had had many nightmares about it.

  Later, when he learned more about people’s ways, he decided the story was probably nothing but malicious gossip.

  He increased his pace and cut inland to visit the temple. There was no breath of wind and no sounds save for the occasional cry of a gull and the crunch of John’s boots in the grass. The drowsy peace of a day of honest work nearly completed seemed to be settling over the parched landscape. Theophilus’ murder seemed far away, a half-remembered dream.

  John shook his shoulders in irritation. Not a dream, he told himself, a nightmare, and here he was mooning around as if he were a lovestruck youth attempting to write a poem to his beloved and had all the time in the world to wait for inspiration.

  He stepped into the temple. He dared not kneel but stood facing east. “Lord Mithra, Lord of Light,” he prayed, “This was once a holy place. I have no other, despite its desecration by the body of Theophilus, in which to petition Thee that I be guided to the truth and so continue to serve Thee, slayer of the great bull.”

  Afterward he inspected the ruins but could see nothing of interest aside from a small pink flower emerging from a crack in the marble floor. There were only the excavations and piles of dirt around the sides and back of the ruins. The dirt might have revealed footprints before it had been trampled over by the crowd that had gathered during the night. Now it was too late.

  He continued on his journey and crossing a rise arrived at Petrus’ house. The blacksmith was unloading a wagon in the packed earth yard by his forge.

  Petrus came toward John, slapping grime off his hands on the long leather apron that seemed attached to him as a second skin. “I’ve just come from your house, sir. I’d have given you a ride if I’d seen you along the road.”

  “I walked along the ridge.”

  “It offers a fine view of the sea but very hot on a day like today. Will you honor me by sharing a jug of wine? My throat feels as if I dined on rust this morning.”

  John readily agreed and soon the two men were sitting on a green-stained marble bench under a large pine, surrounded by the fragrance of the fallen pine needles that cushioned their feet. It was near sunset. The shadow of the pine stretched away, impossibly elongated, across the dirt yard, over the wagon, over wagon wheels lying against a stack of metal rods, losing itself in a mass of dead weeds beyond.

  “No, sir, I saw nothing,” Petrus said in response to John’s questions. “As you see, my house is shielded by the rise there, and I certainly heard nothing suspicious.”

  It was true. Though nearby, the temple could not be seen. Neither could the monastery, which was even closer. The land had the peculiar characteristic that although mostly fields and meadows interspersed with small orchards and vineyards it did not offer many unobstructed vistas due to its low hills and depressions. It would be surprisingly easy to creep up on someone who felt safe because of the apparent openness of his surroundings.

  “You live alone?”

  “I do, sir. There was a girl, but she preferred to marry a rich man and so…but I hear she has grown shrill and is never satisfied with what he buys her. Perhaps I had a fortunate escape after all. A man who lives alone may boil his eggs as he wishes, as they say.” He spread big, calloused hands and smiled.

  “It appears so, Petrus. What do you know about Theophilus?”

  Petrus’ good-natured face clouded. “Too much, sir, and that’s a fact. I made a gate for him, a large gate. After it was installed, he refused to pay for it. Naturally I took my case to law. Bribery must have been involved since I lost. After that I refused to do any further work for him.” He paused and gave a wide smile. “I did however insure that Megara knew he couldn’t be trusted to pay his debts. It was the least I could do to protect others, but not, as I am sure you will agree, a reason to stab him in the back, even though that was what he had more or less done to me.”

  “Indeed.” John did not add that in his opinion there were a number of valid reasons to put a blade into his stepfather even if he couldn’t condone such an act. It was not surprising his mother had allowed him to be sent off to Plato’s Academy. He might have been executed for murder if he had remained at home.

  “This gate was made some time ago when Theophilus still lived near you?”

  “That’s right, sir. Before he sold the farm.”

  “Did you see him after he went away?”

  Petrus’ expression turned as black as his apron. “Once. At the monastery. I was returning some cooking utensils I had repaired and Theophilus was there. He told me he had been doing odd jobs for the abbot. I asked him if he was being paid to carry them out and reminded him of his debt and he just laughed. Well, you know what they say, sir. Small debts make debtors, large ones make enemies.”

  “I understand how you must have felt,” John told him. “Let me ask about another matter. The work being done at the temple. How did it come about?”

  “Oh that, sir? It was begun by order of the previous owner. The foundations need shoring up before what remains of the building collapses, so I’ve been told.”

  “It seems odd to spend money on such a task, considering how the rest of the estate has been neglected.”

  “I gather the ruin is of interest as a monument to former beliefs. Apparently the former owner was interested in antiquities and after all, who can fathom the reasons for the fancies of rich men? They swim in a different sea from the poor, as they say.”

  Senator Vinius interested in antiquities? So far as John knew, the late senator hadn’t taken an interest in anything older than race horses and nubile prostitutes. Then again, perhaps the gossips underestimated the range of his tastes.

  John finished his wine, stood, and placed the cup on the bench.

  Petrus rose also, somewhat unsteadily since he had drunk most of the contents of the jug. “Dusk is creeping in. May I respectfully suggest, sir, given recent events it may be folly on your part to be wandering around in the dark?”

  “You are of the opinion I am not safe here?”

  “You may not be, sir. Theophilus wasn’t.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  John sat in the temple, contemplating the broad silver finger the moon had laid across the sea.

  Strange to contemplate the earthly road that had led him from Megara as far as Bretania and Egypt, to Persia and Constantinople, and then back again to his starting point.

  Unfortunately, the silver road did not point to any solution to his difficulty in grasping the thread that would ultimately lead to useful information. He sensed those on the estate he had interviewed were concealing knowledge. But how could he be surprised? They would be anxious about being punished for their blatant robbery of the absent former owner more than assisting him with anything they might know of Theophilus, even though to do so might serve to soften whatever justice was to be meted out. Meantime he was little further along in his investigation.

  He saw very little likelihood of gaining any help from anyone in Megara, even assuming they had knowledge of an event that had happened away from the city.

  He listened to the ratcheting of insects, the occasional
distant barking of a dog, and tried to get his thoughts to march in order. It had been less difficult in Constantinople, where at this time of night he would be sitting in his study, sharing his cogitations with the girl in the wall mosaic and drinking what his friends termed his “foul Egyptian wine.”

  He thought back to his conversation with Cornelia before she fell asleep and, restless, he had come to the temple to attempt to think of a plan of campaign.

  “I am so sorry we came here of all places. If I had known—” she had said wistfully.

  “It was inevitable,” he had replied. “After ordering the books for all my estates examined, this was the one place Justinian would not expect to be able to sell for a high price. And given it was Theophilus who sold the family farm, he must have inherited it from my mother. So with both of them dead, that closes another avenue to possible enlightenment to me.”

  There was certainly light, and to spare, out here. The cold clear moonlight washed a landscape sculpted of marble. Trees and bushes might have been monuments to the dying year.

  His thoughts wandered back to his mother. Was there anyone left on her side of the family whom he could consult?

  It was unlikely, what with the passage of time, and given she was her parents’ only child. She had belonged to the curial class, one formed from respectable, well-to-do townspeople. Not that it had been as comfortable as it seemed, for over the years the class accumulated too many responsibilities for civic works, administration, and tax collection, though admittedly, Justinian had sought to lift the burden from them with officials such as the City Defender.

  John’s tutor, Antigenes, had once informed his students that, in the old days, if a person was of this class, they had a choice of fattening their finances in various ways—not spoken about too loudly—or trying to carry out their duties honestly, resulting in financial ruin.

  John’s grandfather had been of the latter sort.

  Cornelia had asked him why, in that case, anyone in that position would act in an honest fashion.

  “Integrity. Pride,” John had answered. “The position ran in families for generations. It was a great Roman tradition. My mother used to tell me how my grandfather wore a formal toga when performing his civic duties. Unfortunately, pride and integrity won’t pay for the necessities of life. My father might only have owned a small farm but his income was better than that of my mother’s family. She had insisted I had tutors, saying my father would have approved. I was hardly more than an infant when he died.”

  And then she had remarried and Theophilus had taken his father’s place and John’s world changed into one much darker. For his stepfather mistreated everyone. In John’s opinion someone was bound to kill Theophilus in due course. Had not he himself threatened to carry out the act often enough?

  Was there anyone in Megara who remembered hearing of those threats? If so, it was certain the City Defender would know all about them by now.

  But if not, who remained in the city who would recall those long ago days and perhaps shed light on at least the beginnings of a road leading to the culprit?

  Chapter Seventeen

  John was returning to Megara.

  He had dressed in a plain blue garment whose only decoration was a thin gold stripe at the hem, one chosen to indicate the more formal nature of the calls he intended to make when he arrived at his destination.

  Provided, that was, he could locate Leonidas and Alexis, two friends from his schooldays.

  Mithra had granted his earlier prayer for guidance.

  As John sat contemplating the sea the night before, he had suddenly recalled them as possible sources of information about what had happened to his family after he left the area.

  A thin smile quirked his lips as he remembered Antigenes, the severe old stoic who conducted classes the three had attended and was wont to wax particularly sarcastic in several languages at their tortoise-like progress in their studies.

  Alexis was the son of a church official and by far the most blasphemous boy of John’s acquaintance, which was to say very blasphemous indeed. Leonidas’ father worked in the offices of the tax collector. Thinking on it as he approached Megara it occurred to John that he and his two friends could be described as representing the base supporting local society: religion, administration, and agriculture.

  Compared with the capital, Megara was small, though still large enough that John did not to expect to accidentally run into two men he had not seen in almost forty years, particularly Antigenes, who had been old when he taught the boys. However, since John knew the location of his house and had no notion where Leonidas and Alexis might have gone, he decided to begin his search in the narrow street leading from the thoroughfare called Straight, not far from the town walls.

  Were Antigenes still alive he would no doubt fail to bat an eyelid when John told him he had risen to the rank of Lord Chamberlain, but rather content himself with observing in lugubrious fashion that he was not at all surprised that John held the position no longer, given the wretched state of his Latin.

  Whether or not Antigenes was still residing in Megara berating his flesh-and-blood inferiors or was hectoring the shades in Hades, the house where his classes had assembled was gone, leaving a vacant site filled with charred timbers and blackened stones overgrown by weeds and vines.

  John stood and stared at the gap where the house had been, trying to reconcile his lively memories with the empty desolation that remained.

  He recalled a verse Antigenes was fond of quoting to the effect a man’s days were as grass and he flourishes like a flower, but the wind passes over him, and he is gone and his place no longer knows him.

  Those old Israelites were the first stoics, the teacher had invariably assured his pupils, none of whom had any real inkling of what the composer of the psalm was writing about, and who would have been surprised to realize then that someday the ancient words would make altogether too much sense to them.

  So, John thought, it seems I must continue searching those places the wind has passed over and seek the past that is gone.

  The next place to look, from a logical point of view, would be the house, situated not far away, where Alexis had lived with his parents. He was unlikely to have remained there but his parents might be alive, or perhaps other relatives now residing there would know where Alexis had gone. Since his father had been a church administrator, John could inquire about the family at the church but he preferred to avoid officialdom if at all possible.

  Unlike their old tutor’s home, Alexis’ brick house still stood along the narrow dirt street running parallel to the city wall. During John’s boyhood, large gardens reaching to the wall behind two- and three-story houses attested to the prosperity of the owners. John saw the change as soon as he came to the head of the street. Many of the houses were shells, invaded by tangles of what had been ornamental trees, now unpruned and rampant. Most of the rest of the buildings were in disrepair. A few skinny-ribbed dogs slunk in the shadows and such pedestrians as were in evidence matched the dogs.

  Justinian had expended huge sums in rebuilding the center of the city, but despite a grand new theater, forums, monuments, and administrative complexes, Megara, like many provincial towns, remained underpopulated and had begun decaying around its edges.

  A sickly sweet perfume emanated from the open door of Alexis’ old home. John entered. A fountain featuring a chubby cupid still stood in the atrium, its presence more appropriate now that the house was, obviously, a brothel. A girl clothed in what appeared to be a scarlet shadow leapt from one the couches arranged against the walls and trotted coltishly over to him, reaching him at the same time as a stout middle-aged woman in thick makeup who emerged from a nearby room.

  “I am so pleased to be visited by a gentleman of such refinement,” the latter smiled, giving a bow. “I can tell by your manner that you are not the sort of ruffian with whom we are normally
burdened, sir. What is your desire?”

  “I wished to see the fountain again,” John said with perfect truth. “A friend and I once tried to raise frogs in it.”

  The madam’s visage continued to smile indulgently, as if to say we see numerous men with deranged humors here, and as far as we are concerned their money is as good as the next man’s. “A fine aristocrat such as yourself may desire something out of the ordinary. As it happens, little Theodora here is newly arrived with us. A virgin I have been saving especially for just such a one as you, excellency.”

  “Hmmmmm,” said Theodora, looking John up and down, which for her, being very short, was a long way up. “Mmmmm. I imagine you would be different than one of them smelly old dock workers.”

  “Very much different,” John agreed. “However, having seen the old fountain I will be off. First, however,” he addressed the madam, “could you tell me who owned this house before you?”

  She frowned and gave him a suspicious look. “Are you a tax collector?”

  “No. I am simply looking for an old acquaintance.”

  “So you say. All the former owners I know about ran the same kind of establishment as I do.”

  “You don’t want me then?” Theodora put in.

  “Apparently not,” sniffed her disappointed employer. “You are very much different from a dock worker, you claim. You flatter yourself, excellency.”

  “I am just speaking the truth,” John told her before exiting hastily.

  ***

  The observer waited in the dark doorway of a half-collapsed house until the tall, lean man in the dark tunic emerged from the brothel. The former Lord Chamberlain looked up and down the street before walking off briskly. The observer waited a short time, then slipped out of his hiding place and followed, keeping close to the house fronts and occasionally sliding into doorways, alert to every movement of the man he was following.