While I was eyeing up Phineus, he returned the favour openly. I refused to be put off and kept on looking. He was physically strong, a man who had put in hard effort of some sort. Impressive legs, and his right arm stronger than the other. Prosperity showed. He was better groomed and more smartly turned out than many who arrange mules and ships. Even so, there was a well-worn air about him. He had three missing front teeth, though that applied to many people.
His survey of me would be equally two-sided. I was a Roman, but unlike most men who journeyed abroad, looked neither wealthy nor a slave. I had arrived with Aquillius, yet there was distance between him and me; I had given the order that sent Aquillius ambling off, which he had accepted as from an equal, or near equal. It would be clear I felt differently. When the amiable quaestor waved goodbye, I did not return his gesture.
I was wearing a loose brown tunic, good Italian boots, a belt with a Celtic buckle, a slightly fancy dagger in a Spanish leather scabbard. These were surface adornments; I came with more subtle trappings. skills which no slippery businessman should take for granted. I looked my age, thirty-five that year, and as tough as I would ever be. I had been around; I hoped it showed. I sported an Aventine haircut and an Aventine stare. I was ready for anything and would take no nonsense.
'So you are the special investigator!' Phineus said, keeping it light, keeping it well-mannered. 'You are very welcome. I cannot tell you how glad I shall be when you solve what has happened and free us from its shadow.'
He had to be a conniving rogue, yet he lied to me with sonorous, deep-voiced sincerity.
XXXI
'I heard you had gone to Cythera.'
'Oh – some other man took that group!' Phineus spoke dismissively; I could not decide whether he was looking down on the man, the group, or both. Maybe the other escort had pinched the Cythera commission from under Phineus' nose – and with it, the tips.
We were walking. The bar had been too intimate; neither of us wanted this conversation to be overheard by its nosy keeper and residents. Corinth had plenty of squares and colonnades to stroll in. We made our way to the main forum. It was so grandiose I for one felt anonymous there. But those multiple shops, arranged in neat sets of six or so, bunched along every facade of the frieze-bedecked piazza, could be full of ears. Corinth must have its version of Roman informers – if nothing else there would be street spies put in place to report to the governor on the activities of cults like the Christians.
'I need you to give me some background,' I said.
'Background on my clients?' Phineus enquired meekly.
'On your operation first, please. How long have you been running these escorted trips?'
'Since Nero's Grand Tour. That was the first big year for visitors; I could see things could only get better.'
So he had been on the road with tourists for the past ten years. I put him at close to forty. 'What did you do before that, Phineus?'
'This and that. I come from the south.'
'Of Greece?'
'Of Italy!'
'I've been there.' I had been to Croton, home of the original wrestling champion Milo. I found the south hostile to Romans, its towns full of staring eyes and resentful faces. Helena's first husband came from Tarentum and he was bad news. My tone automatically went sour. 'What part?'
'Brundisium.' A port. Always liable to produce men with low morals. A major embarking point for Greece, however, so a good home for a man who had ended up arranging travel.
I gave up on his past. 'Who decided to set up an overseas consultancy? Is the business yours, or do I need to know about higher management?'
'It's mine.' He sounded proud. Judging by the current tour, customer satisfaction was not his goal. That saved him feeling depressed when he reviewed his lack of praise from clients; it was enough for him to count up his bank balance.
'You call it Seven Sights. So I guess you go to all of them?' I tried showing off. 'The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – you go to Babylon?' Phineus laughed contemptuously. 'So you offer to go, and hope nobody asks for it… the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pharos and Library at Alexandria, the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza.'
'I try to avoid Halicarnassus too,' Phineus told me, confidentially. 'That's halfway to Hades.' When it came to remote exploration, he liked a soft life, it seemed.
'Still, you've had clients scribbling Tiberius was here on some of the best cultural hotspots.'
'And they do it! Latninus saw this monument and was amazed… Septimus had a good shit at this inn, and enjoyed the barmaid. All right for them, Falco, but I have to return to those places. Last thing I want is furious temple priests who know that my previous customers defaced five-hundred-year-old pillars. Come to that, last thing I want is bitter barmaids who remember my old customers as lousy tippers!'
'You hand out hints on etiquette, surely? 'Be discreet; pay what the bill demands; don't brag about the Circus Maximus or the new Flavian amphitheatre…'
''Pee when you can; don't steal votive offerings; souvenir-sellers want you to barter; money-changers don't. Never forget, Athens was a world-wide power when Romulus was sucking milk from the wolfie. – Oh yes. Doesn't stop the bastards standing before the monument at Thermopylae, when their hearts ought to be broken, and sneering, 'But Leonidas and the Spartans lost. '
'Doesn't stop them continuously moaning?' I threw in.
Phineus favoured me with a caustic glance. 'Now what have you heard, Falco?'
'No Games at Olympia?'
He sucked air through the hole between his front teeth. 'They have no idea!' he shook his head mournfully. 'Great gods, Falco! Don't these fools know about the old story? – one man used to threaten his slaves that if they misbehaved, their punishment was to be sent to the Olympic Games.'
'That bad?'
'Worse! Oh I have taken tours there during the contests. Then you get some moaning! It's a nightmare. Even if they think they know how it will be, they reel when they come up against the actual experience. They can't move, they don't see anything, they get bitten by flies and are laid low, they sweat like pigs in the heat, they collapse from dehydration, they are robbed by incense-sellers and street entertainers and prostitutes.' All this was now familiar. I was unimpressed by the blather. Phineus glanced at me to see how I was taking it, then carried on insistently. 'They are packed so tight, people faint away. Once I get the men into the stadium we are stuck there until closing time. The Games are violent events, long days of being squashed together under a baking sun, tumult all around.'
'And you cannot take women?'
'I wouldn't take women even if I could!'
We had stopped in front of the southern stoa, a long colonnade cut from the rock on two levels. Above us reared the Temple of Apollo, hundreds of years old, on its spectacular bluff. It had a long and serenely confident array of the wide, slightly squat Greek columns with which I had become familiar at Olympia; to me, not so refined as our taller Roman temple pillars. Helena always said Apollo was handsome enough, but she wouldn't invite him home to dinner. He would be bound to bring his lyre with him and would want to start a music contest. Like Nero, Apollo was known to sulk and turn nasty if he was not allowed to win.
'So, Phineus,' I said quietly. 'Does your prohibition against women date from the year you took Marcella Naevia and her missing niece?'
Phineus breathed out, puffing his cheeks. 'That again!'
''Again, nothing. It never went away.'
'Look, Falco. I do not know what happened to that girl. I really do not know.' The way he said it almost implied there were other things he claimed not to know, where some different measure of truth applied. I wondered what they were.
'And Valeria Ventidia, the bludgeoned bride?'
'How could I know anything about her either?'
He and I cooled off below a statue of a prowling lion, taking shelter from the sun's glare in the shade of its enormous pl
inth. A tattered stall was selling drinks. Without comment on Phineus' last remark, I bought two cups of honeyed wine. Well, it passed for wine. We stood to sip them, so we could return the beakers afterwards.
'I was with the men,' Phineus reminded me. 'I had taken the men to a mock-feast of victory. When the bride died,' he insisted.
I sampled my drink again, longing for more familiar street fare. 'And when the girl went up the Hill of Cronus, where were you then, Phineus?'
'Gods, I can't remember!' His voice was low and full of irritation. I lifted my mouth from the sticky cup, and gazed at him. He must have had an answer at the time – and I wanted to hear it. 'It was the last day,' he remarked, in his dismissive way.
Young Glaucus had told me the programme. As Phineus and I moved on, towards the Forum's massive triple entrance arch, beside the huge complex of the Peirene Fountain, I counted off the events. Day One: swearing in competitors, contests for heralds, sacrifices, orations. Day Two: Equestrian events (chariots and horse races, the pentathlon. Day Three: sacrifice of the hundred oxen to Zeus, foot races. Day Four: the contact sports – wrestling, boxing, pankration.'
'And race-in-armour,' Phineus added. Pedantic bastard.
'Day Four would be particularly trying for any women present, I imagine. Penned up, with nothing much to do, waiting for their male companions to come home, knowing the men would talk obsessively about blood and battery.'
'The way I see it,' Phineus said, pompously and without much sympathy, 'if these rich women agree to accompany their men on an athletics tour, they must know what they are letting themselves in for.'
'I think my wife might say, all women underestimate what men will impose on them!'
We were at the fountain now. We stood on the busy flight of steps, buffeted by people coming and going from the pools. It had six dramatic arches above gloomy cisterns, which lay some way below the level of the modern Forum. I wondered if that represented the old foundation level, before the brutal destruction wreaked in Rome's name by Corinth-conquering Mummius. 'Marcella Naevia is well travelled, I am told, but she and her young niece may have known little about the world of sport. Perhaps they were not prepared, Phineus. Was the aunt single, married, or widowed?'
'She was trouble,' said Phineus. 'Always raising protests. Always having a go.' A typical Seven Sights client, then.
'She took against you?' It was a guess, but accurate.
'She did.'
'Why?'
'Absolutely no idea.' I could have provided suggestions. Once more he closed off. Once more I waited. 'The woman was unreasonable.'
'The woman lost her niece, Phineus.'
'Nobody knew the girl was dead. She could have run off with a one-legged sprinter, for all anybody knew.'
'Do virgins run off with athletes or otherwise frequently on your tours?'
Phineus laughed coarsely. 'No, they usually just end up pregnant. My job is to spot the bulge in time to ship them back to Rome before they actually have the child – then my company washes its hands of them!'
'That must save you a lot of trouble,' I said. He took it as a compliment.
After a while, we moved down the wide fountain stair ourselves, into its water-cooled open courtyard. The pools were still below our level, reached by a few further steps. We could hear the water cascading from six lion-headed spouts. Overshadowed by the enclosing walls, we trod carefully on the wet slabs. I glanced up to admire the elegantly painted architecture, then reminded Phineus of where we left off. So – Day Four, three years ago; what happened, Phineus?'
'The men had a really good day at the contact sports, then I had arranged to take them to a feast.'
'You can't get them in to the official winners' banquet, presumably? The Prytaneion is reserved for competitors. So you fixed up an alternative – like the one you arranged this year for the current group?' That would be a dreary night with execrable refreshments, according to the angry group member Sertorius. 'Any good?' I could not resist the chance to be satirical.
'Of course. Then next morning, the bloody girl went missing, her damned aunt raised an outcry, and just when we were due to leave, we spent a day fruitlessly searching for darling Caesia. I'll never forget. It was bloody pouring with rain.
'She had vanished overnight?'
'The aunt reported it when we were ready to go. I think she waited until morning.' Phineus saw me looking sideways. 'In case darling Caesia had just found herself a boyfriend and wanted to stay with him.'
'Did you have any reason to think that she had?'
'Found a boyfriend? I wouldn't think so. She was a prim little mouse. Jumped, if anybody so much as looked at her. Didn't seem to like men.'
That was new. Inaccurate too. Her father had said there was an episode with a man at home in Rome. 'You thought she had no experience?'
'She hid behind the skirts of older women on the trip.' Hid from what, I wondered.
'Who was making advances?'
'Nobody.' Phineus looked annoyed. 'Don't twist my words. I never said that.'
I changed tack. 'Did you meet her father – afterwards?'
Now it was Phineus who jumped. 'Why? What's her father said, Falco?'
'Touchy! It was a straight question.'
'I met him,' stated Phineus. 'I was polite to him. He had lost his child and I sympathised. There simply wasn't anything that I could do to help the man. I know nothing about what happened to Marcella Caesia.' He paused then. I could not tell what he was thinking – but once again I felt there were things Phineus kept hidden. 'Except this, Falco – if Caesia really disappeared the night before we left, this is a certainty: none of the male clients on that tour harmed her. It would have been impossible. All of them were with me all Day Four, from when we left the women in the morning – with Caesia among them, perfectly all right.'
XXXII
It had taken Aquillius and me a long time to find Phineus, and it had been a hard walk. Talking to him had scrambled my brain too. I knew he was bamboozling me. After I left him, I felt unsettled. Looking up at the crag, with its distant temples dreamily far off, I was filled with inertia. I lost interest in climbing the acropolis today.
I went back to the Elephant, learned that Helena had gone shopping, and fell back on an informer's honest standby: writing up my notes. (There are other excuses, less useful, though often more fun.) The good work just happened to occur in the courtyard of the Bay Mare, where eventually I was offered lunch. Since I was occupying their table, it would have been discourteous to refuse.
When Helena came and found me looking guilty with a bowl and goblet, I escaped censure due to guilt of her own. She carefully arranged the folds of her light skirt and graceful stole – a delaying tactic that I recognised. Then she admitted she had been purchasing ancient vases. We could afford these antiquities, for which Corinth had once been famous, but her intention was to export most back to Rome for my father's business. I said what I thought of that. Helena thought I was unfair to Pa. We had a satisfying wrangle about the meaning of 'unfairness', after which, since none of our party was around, we slunk off to our room, threw off our clothes, and reminded ourselves of what life together was all about.
Nothing that is anybody else's business.
Some time later, I remembered to give Helena the letter that Aquillius had brought from her brother.
Our vagrant scholar was as trusting as ever that we would have rushed out to Greece when he whistled. How he guessed we might come through Corinth was not revealed. Aulus wrote a blunt epistle, void of frills; explanations were not his strength. It boded ill for his career as a lawyer, should he ever take it up.
He must have reasoned we would go to Olympia because that was where the deaths took place, then since Corinth was roughly in a line with Athens, we would rest here on our way to see him. He had convinced himself that if we were in Greece we were coming to find him. That he, Aulus Camillus Aelianus the layabout law student, might not be my priority during a murder hunt never struc
k him. There was a time when I disliked this fellow; now I just despaired.
After hoping we were well (a courtesy which meant he must be running short of funds already, he dropped into cipher for a resume. Neither Helena nor I had brought codebooks with us, but apparently Aulus always used the same system and Helena Justina could work it out from just one or two points she remembered. I relaxed on the bed, playing fondly with parts of Helena that strayed within reach, while she frowned over the scroll and cuffed away my playful hands; she broke the code far too quickly for me. I told her I was glad I had never kept a diary with details of liaisons with buxom mistresses. Helena chortled that she knew I kept no diaries (had she looked for them?, and said how fortunate, too, that since she always used an extremely difficult code, I could not read hers. We got down to business eventually.
Aulus had decided Tullius Statianus was innocent. I wondered if that meant Statianus loved hunting and dinner parties, just like Aulus? Playboy or not, the bereaved husband now felt he must take responsibility for solving his wife's gruesome death. Statianus was addressing this not by using our process of logical investigation, but by travelling to Delphi to consult the oracle.
'Oh nuts!'
'Don't be sceptical,' Helena cautioned. 'Many people do believe in it.'
I restricted myself to the scathing remark that many people were idiots.
'Just to be doing something may calm him, Marcus.'
'Doing this will waste his money and drive him crazy.'
We were dealing with travellers who had come to Greece in search of its ancient mysteries, so Statianus' pilgrimage was in character. Even I conceded that he must be deeply shocked and devastated by the classic feelings of helplessness. Aulus had tried to promise our aid, but had to confess the possibility that his letters had never reached us. So the two men had gone across to Delphi together. There they had discovered what is rarely spelt out in the guidebooks: only one day each month is assigned for prophecies – and, worse, only nations, major cities, and rich persons of extreme importance tend to be winners in the inevitable lottery for questions.
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