The Mammoth Book of Classical Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  He was present at the king’s banquet. Even if he’d been missing, I’d not have liked it, for I’d been summoned to Heiron’s board before. This time, as previously, I was welcomed in the way of a performing dog or valued chariot-horse, and questioned with great condescension about the siege engines and the ship. Well, there was one who didn’t condescend, and he was the Roman ambassador, Tetricus. Haughty as Priam and cold as stone, that one, and didn’t even condescend, just addressed me as though I was not even alive, showing in every gesture and word how Romans think of slaves. Instrumentum vocale, they call us – the tool that talks.

  The Carthaginian, Hartho, was more hearty, but I didn’t take to him, either. I reckoned there was treachery under the bluff surface. It didn’t seem to fit that any of them would be behind the mishaps we’d suffered, though. Our king was firmly on the Roman side, and they had broken the Carthaginians’ fleet years ago; they had nothing to worry about in naval matters. Carthage? Right enough, they would like to remove Archimedes from the king’s favour and gain his services themselves, but then it wasn’t likely they would try to injure him. Even if they did, Romans or Carthaginians, they’d take more effective measures than dropping a rolled awning on the man, surely?

  Archias? A little man, jealous of Archimedes, might try to injure him. I could believe that. I could also believe he’d try such a half-baked method. He wouldn’t try to spoil the Syrakosia’s launching, though. That would redound to his own discredit.

  I looked over that noble gathering. Lysander the playwright was talking to Tetricus about the ceremony to honour Poseidon that would be held at the ship-launching – and holding forth about some sculptures he’d made for the occasion. Hartho was ogling a flute girl, while Archias flattered the king until he nearly yawned with boredom. All much as usual, and I couldn’t say which of them, if any, was guilty. I only knew that I’d paid for eating the rich viands prepared by the king’s Persian cook. In full.

  Archimedes asked my opinion later, and I’ll say this, he listened with care, as one man to another. I hadn’t a thing to give him but speculation, though, not even sharp suspicions. It would have pleased me to think Archias the one, but only because I did not like him.

  ‘You do well to have our launching mechanism guarded day and night,’ Archimedes told me. ‘Let that continue. For the Syrakosia herself, assign two dozen, Phanes, between sunset and dawn, and let them patrol her in four watches, six men to a watch; one of your trusty workmen and five soldiers. The ordinary quayside guards will do by day.’

  I protested. I had to. ‘Master, I can think of a dozen places in that ship that need watching all hours! The incendiary missiles for the catapults – all that sulphur and naphtha – it shouldn’t be left aboard if we think someone means harm!’

  ‘Excellent, Phanes.’ He sounded happy, on my oath. ‘Have it removed, and take any other precautions you think are required. But my express command is that the guards’ numbers be as I’ve stated.’

  He knew something, or had divined something I couldn’t perceive. I had worked for him long enough to know the signs.

  You’ll conceive the care I took and the sleep I lost, sweating. I understood Archimedes’ order to leave the ship all but unguarded by day. Nobles of the city and visiting dignitaries were all over her, making comments and wagers, and we couldn’t bar them, or question them. We knew pretty well which ones were out-and-out spies, but that wasn’t a matter for concern. A spy couldn’t learn much aboard the Syrakosia, except that as a fighting ship she’d be useless. He was welcome to that intelligence for me. I was perturbed for Archimedes’ honour and my precious skin.

  He himself was often aboard, talking to the men who came to see around the curious vessel. I wished I knew what he was up to. Did he suspect someone? If so, whom? And why?

  He arrived at dawn on the day of the launching. First he wandered the length of the upper deck, then moved around below the vast, lead-sheathed hull, peering and frowning. I had plenty to occupy me, or I’d have joined him to learn what he was about, but the next time I saw him he was walking the deck with Lysander. The playwright looked worn out but cheerful. Taking leave of Archimedes with a laugh, he set out – I supposed – towards his home. I noticed him stumble as he went.

  ‘He’s about early, sir.’

  ‘He confessed he spent the night in revelling and has not yet been to bed.’ The master shrugged. ‘He assures me he has made large wagers on the complete success of the launching. It would appear he found no dearth of men to accept. So much for the power of Archimedes’ name.’

  There were plenty of brothels among the harbour area. The noble Lysander was known to be active among them, too.

  ‘Well, he’s at the right end of those bets, sir.’

  ‘He will be if we make haste!’ Archimedes’ eyes were bright and intent. ‘Phanes, bring caulkers with mallets, wood and oakum, this minute, and join me beneath the hull. I have things to show you. Run!’

  I ran as ordered, and had three caulkers on the spot a little later. Archimedes’ face was pink, but he’d found his stately manners again, and only by a clipped, curt way of speaking did he show any part of his colossal anger.

  ‘Observe, my Phanes.’ He pointed to the ground below the great launching-cradle. ‘Wood shavings and scraps of lead, both spiriform – the castings of a drill or large awl. Here, here, and again here. What does this suggest to you?’

  It didn’t suggest anything at first. One finds all kinds of refuse underneath the hull of a ship that has just been built. Then I looked closely, and saw how the wood and lead shavings were entwined together.

  ‘Hades, master! Someone has been drilling holes in the bottom of the twentier – since her hull was covered in lead!’

  That meant long after any honest drilling could have been necessary, for the lead covering had been the final stage, a thin hammered sheath to repel barnacles and worms.

  ‘Just so.’ Archimedes bent low and pointed. His finger quivered with passion. ‘See here, and here as well! Those specks of white powder are salt. Someone has drilled those mischievous holes, plugged them with hard salt, and then smeared paint on the outside, paint grey as lead, to hide his work.’

  I didn’t know if the paint had been necessary, but I saw the purpose of the rest. ‘Once the twentier is launched and takes the water, the salt will start to dissolve –’

  ‘And the harbour will enter by half a hundred jets. Yes. Find the holes and plug them, my invaluable Phanes; no time is to be lost. The launching takes place in a few hours.’

  I asked no more questions. We worked like desperate ants, first finding those holes, then ramming dowel wadded around with oakum into them, until it fitted tightly. Jerry-work, yes, but it would save the launching from disaster. Once it was over – this I swore by Tarnus and the Earth-Mother – the master was going to explain to me how he had known.

  Well, the ceremony went off finely, with the king and his priests making sacrifice to Poseidon, and the whole city gasping in awe as Archimedes turned his windlass – alone – and the immense bulk of the Syrakosia obediently took to the water. Then she lumbered about the harbour, moved by her multiple banks of oars, hurling six-talent balls and smoking masses of sulphur from her catapults, with the Tyrant of Syracuse beaming on the quayside. The city looked upon Archimedes more than ever as a wonder-working magician, and I stopped sweating for the first time in days.

  Back in the workshop, I asked, ‘How did you know?’

  He was beaming more broadly than King Heiron had done. He had immortal qualities and a mighty mind, but for all that, he enjoyed being right as much as the next vulgar clod – and I was the only one he could really tell.

  ‘Partly, it was knowing the king’s court, and those who frequent it, but chiefly logic and ratiocination. Pure, strict reason clarifies all things, Phanes, in life as in mathematics. It all proceeded from the first two events.’

  ‘The crane and the awning, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Both partook of
the banal and petty, yet both showed a knowledge of mechanics. Agents of another nation who wished to disgrace me would try to make me appear guilty of treason; who wished me merely slain, would use a dagger. I therefore posited that the culprit was one individual man, with some of an artisan’s or engineer’s cast of mind. It was at any rate a strong working hypothesis.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I hypothesized further. His acts with the crane and the awning amounted to little more than schoolboy malice.’ Not to me they didn’t, by all the gods! That crane had almost killed me. ‘Poorly conceived acts. Yet it appeared both were aimed at me. Again I took this for my working hypothesis.’

  ‘Then you were on the lookout for one man, sir, acting for himself, just for his own gain?’

  ‘Until further knowledge contradicted the idea. And someone in court circles. Nothing certain was likely to emerge unless he went further. Therefore, I had the ship lightly guarded. No guard at all would make him suspicious, while, if he could not evade the slight precautions I did take, he was not worth troubling about.’

  ‘But how did he drill so many holes in the Syrakosia without being seen?’

  ‘How do you suppose?’ Archimedes asked, a bit shortly. ‘I have tried to teach you to think with your mind like a civilized man, not with your hands like a Celtic barbarian. Did I waste my time?’

  I thought about it, talking as I reasoned my way through. ‘He couldn’t have stolen aboard at night. The guards would have seen him. All right, then. He must have come aboard openly, during the day, and that means he’s a noble or courtier whom nobody would question. He could hide the salt, and a drill or big awl, under his clothes. Then he could conceal himself in any of fifty places until nightfall. Six men patrolling that whole vast ship wouldn’t be likely to catch him!’

  ‘They did not catch him. They heard him, however, more than once. The scoundrel crawled under the floor-timbers of the bilge and went to work. Obviously, it held no water because the ship had yet to be launched. He had easy access to the hull and was out of sight. He could cease working whenever he heard the tramp of feet approach.’

  ‘Yes!’ I grew enthusiastic. ‘I see it, sir! He’d need strong, tough hands to work all night drilling so many holes in ship’s timber. Very strong. The thin layer of soft lead on the outside would be nothing. To go aboard unquestioned he’d have to be a noble or functionary. Noble rank, but artisan’s hands. There’d be few men with both.’

  ‘So it seemed to me. By then I had suspicions of one particular man, but they were still no more than speculation. I questioned your guards by the first light of dawn this morning. Most of them believed the ship to be haunted, but when they described the sounds they had heard (and the parts of the ship from which they emanated) I believed I knew the name of the ghost, and the generality of what he had been doing. When I examined the area beneath the hull, it became certain.’

  ‘I admire your thinking, sir,’ I said, truthfully. ‘My own wits must still be in my hands, though. I’m no closer to knowing who did this.’

  Archimedes stroked his beard. ‘You do not know all, yet. How do you imagine he left the ship?’

  ‘Wriggled out through one of the oar-ports and climbed down?’ I hazarded. And there was another clue. To leave thus unobtrusively, and to hide and work under the floor-planks, too, he’d have to be a lean man.

  ‘I believe he did. Afterwards, he rushed home, hid his tools, washed and donned fresh garments. Then it was that he did something utterly foolish, and confirmed his guilt to me. He literally placed the proof in my hands, Phanes. See.’

  Archimedes showed me his right palm. It carried a smear of grey paint.

  ‘Dark care sits behind the horseman, does it not? He hadn’t yet seen, from the outside, the holes he drilled in our ship. The morning was still too grey and he in too much of a hurry when he escaped. He fretted that a casual glance would discover them if they were not concealed in time. That risk – slight, I think – preyed on his mind. He could not endure it. So he performed the astonishingly silly act of coming back to the Syrakosis at dawn, this time with a small pot of paint which he smeared on the holes as camouflage. He did this while pretending to examine the steering-paddles and keel.’

  ‘Indeed, that was stupid,’ I said feelingly. ‘A few dozen holes over that immense ship’s bottom? As you say, matter, they’d likely have gone unnoticed, except that you were already on to the fellow.’ I shook my head. ‘I wonder at him, whoever he is. His first large, bold, well-conceived stroke of villainy, and he doesn’t know to leave well enough alone.’

  ‘Whoever he is? Do you say you do not know even yet? Think!’

  His voice cracked like a whip. It was an order. I stopped and thought.

  ‘You said he was there at dawn, examining the ship. Only one man – Lysander?’ I said, unbelievingly. ‘He didn’t spend the night among the whorehouses? He was tired, because –’

  ‘I am afraid so. You grow less than coherent, Phanes. Discipline, if you please. It’s good for the mind.’

  ‘Sir, I’ve never looked closely at his hands, but he’s a playwright, not a workman! Isn’t he? If he hadn’t the strength for that job, then he couldn’t have done it, no matter how guilty he looks. Lysander?’

  ‘Who is familiar with machinery. The machinery of the stage. Who was present at the theatre when the awning fell, because a play of his was being performed. Who, besides being a playwright, is an architect and sculptor, used to cutting stone. Who evidently fancies he could take my place as the king’s master of ordnance.’

  Archimedes sighed again.

  It fitted, it all fitted. Even Lysander’s lean figure and the wagers he had placed on the success of the launching, in order to make himself seem innocent. Huh! And he’d won them, too, now! Not that it would compensate a man of his conceit for failure.

  ‘This morning I became certain. He allowed me to understand that he had caroused all night and not yet returned home. Yet his clothes were too fresh for that. More damning still, his knuckles were skinned, his hands, tough as they are, were so sore that he winced when I clasped them – and left a trace of grey paint on mine. When I looked into his eyes and told him I knew all . . . his face changed. He might as well have confessed.’

  ‘But you have proof, sir!’ I burst out. ‘You can tell the king!’

  ‘No. I think we may leave it to his own mind. Dark care sits behind the horseman.’

  I wouldn’t have been so lenient. Well, I’m not Archimedes, and he proved right about Lysander’s mind. The dramatist came less and less often to court, pleading ill health. Within a month he fled Syracuse altogether. He ended up in Rhodes, I think, or was it Epirus? I never heard of any more plays by him, but he seemed to prosper well as a builder – as the artisan he didn’t wish to be. And maybe that’s justice.

  THE WHITE FAWN

  Steven Saylor

  Starting with Roman Blood (1991), Steven Saylor introduced the delightful character of Gordianus the Finder, a Roman who, by his own wit and cunning, has established himself as the city’s premier investigator. He lived at the time of Cicero, in the eighth decade BC. Saylor has written many more novels about Gordianus, starting with Arms of Nemesis (1992), Catilina’s Riddle (1993), The Venus Throw (1995) and A Murder on the Appian Way (1996), plus enough short stories to fill several collections. In this story the setting is Rome and eastern Spain, 76 BC.

  The old senator was a distant cousin of my friend Lucius Claudius, and the two had once been close. That was the only reason I agreed to see the man, as a favor to Lucius. When Lucius let it slip, on the way to the senator’s house, that the affair had something to do with Sertorius, I clucked my tongue and almost turned back. I had a feeling even then that it would lead to no good. Call it a premonition, if you will; if you believe that such things as premonitions exist.

  Senator Gaius Claudius’ house was on the Aventine Hill, not the most fashionable district in Rome. Still, there are plenty of old patrician households tucked ami
d the cramped little shops and ugly new tenements that sprawl over the hill. The façade of the senator’s house was humble, but that meant nothing; the houses of the Roman nobility are often unassuming, at least on the outside.

  The doddering doorkeeper recognized Lucius (could there be two men in Rome with his beaming round face, untidy red hair and dancing green eyes?) and escorted us at once to the atrium, where a fountain gurgled and splashed but did little to relieve the heat of a cloudless midsummer day. While we waited for our host to appear, Lucius and I strolled from corner to corner of the little square garden. On such a warm day, the various rooms facing the atrium all had their shutters thrown open.

  ‘I take it that your cousin has fallen on hard times,’ I said to Lucius.

  He pursed his lips. ‘Why do you assume that, Gordianus? I don’t recall mentioning it.’

  ‘Observe the state of his house.’

  ‘It’s a fine house. Gaius had it built when he was a young man and has lived here ever since.’

  ‘It seems rather sparsely decorated.’

  ‘You saw the busts of his noble ancestors lined up in their niches in the foyer,’ said Lucius, his nose tilting up. ‘What more ornamentation does the house of a patrician require?’ Despite his genial temperament, Lucius sometimes could not help being a bit of a snob.

  ‘But I think your cousin is a great lover of art, or used to be.’

  ‘Now why do you say that?’

  ‘Observe the mosaic floor beneath our feet, with its intricate acanthus leaf pattern. The workmanship is very fine. And note the wall paintings in some of the rooms around us. The various scenes are from the Iliad, I believe. Even from here I can see that they’re works of very high quality.’

  Lucius raised an eyebrow. ‘Cousin Gaius does have good taste, I’ll grant you that. But why do you assume he’s fallen on hard times?’

  ‘Because of the things that I don’t see.’

  ‘Now, Gordianus, really! How can you walk into a house you’ve never entered before and declare that things are missing? I can see into the surrounding rooms as well as you, and they all look adequately furnished.’