Now we took a proper look at him. He was probably clean but he needed a shave. Under the stubble, his face was devoid of character. He had a limited range of expressions: he could look up, down, to the left and to the right. His mouth never moved and his eyes had no animation. A kind person would say grief had wiped him out. I was never that kindly.
Helena and I finished eating first. As Statianus ravenously continued, Helena began the softening up process, first asking about Aelianus. Between mouthfuls, Statianus told us how they had become friends at Olympia. Aulus seemed to have expertise in tragic situations and persuaded Statianus to trust him. He sympathised with the way Statianus had been hounded by the quaestor during the investigation into Valeria's death. When the group were taken to Corinth and put under house arrest, Statianus could not bear to face Aquillius again; he despaired and decided to bunk off to Delphi as a last resort. Aulus tagged along.
'So where has he gone? Why did he leave you?'
'I don't blame him. He thinks this is a waste of time. There's nothing to do here except wait, month after month, while the organisers at the temple give out the questions, always to other people. Aulus said my connections aren't good enough ever to get a chance at the oracle. But I can wait. I do a bit here at the gym. Sometimes I run.'
'Yes, we know you can run!' I snarled wryly. 'You use the training tracks here at the gym?' The sports facilities were on two levels, with a washing area between them. The lower building appeared to be a palaestra, with the usual large courtyard and side rooms for boxing practice. When I bought the food I had seen that the upper building had an indoor covered running track for use in hot or otherwise inclement weather, with an open-air colonnade at the back; both tracks extended a whole stadium's length. 'Aulus is pretty athletic. Did he practise with you?'
'Yes, but being stuck here bored him. He tried to persuade me to abandon the oracle, but I am adamant. I need the gods' help to find out what happened to my wife.'
A raw note had entered his voice. We let him alone for a few minutes. Eventually Helena took him back to the beginning of his marriage, asking how Valeria had been chosen as his bride. Statianus confirmed that prior to the wedding the couple hardly knew each other. Valeria's mother had been a friend of his own mother's years before.
'She was respectable, but she came cheap?' My frankness grated. Statianus steadied, as if he recognised he was up against a fiercer interrogator than he had encountered so far. Aquillius Macer had stubbornly thought him guilty, but lacked push; even Aulus would go easy on a fellow aristocrat – he rarely used charm, but had a snobbish politeness with his own level of society.
Impatient with my rudeness, Helena leaned towards Statianus. 'We met your mother in Rome. She is thinking about you, missing you. She wants you to come home and be taken care of.'
He let out a very small humph. I guessed he realised Tullia Longina thought he should get on with his life – which meant a speedy remarriage.
I let Helena continue the interview. More sympathetic than me, she drew from Statianus his version of what had happened to his wife at Olympia. It mostly matched what we had heard. Valeria wanted to meet Milo of Dodona, in order to hear a recitation. They had quarrelled about that; her husband admitted that they quarrelled frequently.
'Were you in love with your wife?'
'I was a good husband.'
'None of us can ask for more,' Helena assured him gravely.
She had more. She had much more, and she knew it. She pressed my hand briefly, as if she thought I was about to erupt indignantly.
They discussed the fatal evening. Statianus had dined out with the men; he came back and found Valeria missing, went out again to look for her. Nobody else took any interest; he searched alone. He could not find her. 'Did you go to the palaestra that night?' Helena asked.
'No. I have cursed myself for that, a thousand times – but it was a private club. They had people on the doors to deny non-members admittance. If I had gone, I might have saved her.' If he had blundered in on the killing, he might have been bludgeoned to death too. 'When I did go there the next morning…'
He could not continue. Helena, who was tougher than she looked, calmly described for him how he had found the body; the hostile superintendent ordering him to remove it; carrying his dead wife back to the group's tent; screaming for assistance. He seemed surprised we knew it was Cleonyma who first came out to him. 'A good woman,' he said briefly. We sensed how stoically she must have responded to the ghastly scene.
'Tullius Statianus, did you kill your wife?' Helena asked.
'No.'
Helena held his gaze. He stared back with only a tired look of defiance. He had been asked the same question too many times: he would not rant in outrage at it. He knew he was the chief suspect. Presumably by now he also knew there was no direct evidence to arrest him.
'This must all be very hard for you,' Helena sympathised.
'At least I am alive,' he replied harshly.
I took up the questions, tackling him again about his relationship with Valeria. He knew I was probing for a motive. Like all relationships, theirs had been complicated, but it sounded as if they were realistic about their fate. Although they had scrapped all the time, they had one thing in common: both had been put into the marriage for other people's convenience.
'Would you have divorced? Was it that bad?'
'No. Anyway, my parents would have opposed a divorce. Her relatives, too, would have been disappointed.'
'So you reached an accommodation?' Helena suggested. He nodded. It seemed the couple were resigned. In their social circle, if they had given up on this marriage, both would only have been shunted into new ones – which could have turned out even worse.
Later, Helena and I discussed whether Statianus had hated the situation more than he now said. Did the prospect of nagging parents force him to decide that killing Valeria was his only way out? I thought sticking with her was the easiest option – and he liked the easy ones. Having met his mother, Helena felt that if he really wanted out, he could have got around the opposition eventually. So she believed the marriage would have lasted. 'At least until one of them found somebody who offered more love.'
'Or better lovemaking!'
'Ah, that would definitely count,' Helena agreed, smiling.
While we were with him at the gymnasium, I tested Statianus as hard as possible. 'So would you say you had learned to tolerate your wife -and she felt the same?'
'I never would have harmed her.' It did not answer my question, and when he saw I was dissatisfied, he snapped, 'It is nothing to do with you!' I could see how this attitude would have upset Aquillius.
'Statianus, when a young woman dies a brutal death, all her relationships become matters of public record. So answer me, please. Was Valeria more restless than you were?'
'No, she didn't like Olympia, but she was happy with me!' His frustration was showing. 'I don't know who you are, Falco – I trusted Aelianus and that's the only reason I'm talking to you.' Now self-pity took over. 'I shall never get through this.'
'That is why you should talk to me. By finding the truth, I help people contain their pain.'
'No. As soon as I saw my wife there dead, I knew everything was over. Everything has changed for ever. Whoever he was, the man who took her life – when she had enjoyed no life to speak of – also ruined mine. If I go home, I know my brothers and my parents will not understand. I have to carry this alone. That is why I stayed in Greece,' Statianus said, answering one question that I had not asked yet.
Helena and I were silent. We understood. We even understood his certainty that nobody he knew would ever truly share his devastation. His misery was genuine.
For the first time, Tullius Statianus had revealed his heart. We saw why Aelianus had been sure he was not the killer. We too believed him innocent.
Belief was not proof.
We had reached a natural break. Statianus complained he was tired; he had eaten so much he must be ready for
a nap to sleep it off. I wanted to ask more questions, to gauge his thoughts about the others on the trip who must become suspects if we decided he was innocent, but I agreed to defer it. He told us where he was staying – a dismal inn, though he said it was no worse than the places to which Phineus took his clients. In fact, Phineus had told him where to stay. I noted that he spoke of Phineus with routine disparagement.
He promised to meet us tomorrow; I arranged to collect him from his inn. He seemed perfectly willing to talk to us now, and I wanted to extract everything I could from him while we had him in Delphi, separate from the group. Then I would take over from Aulus the task of persuading Statianus to give up on the oracle. But that could wait overnight. There was no rush.
XLIII
Next day, when we went to pick up Statianus I felt my first pangs of doubt. His lodging house was a dingy hole. I could see why he would not want to hang around there. Even so, when the landlord said the young man had gone out for some exercise, it worried me.
'He's gone running. Try the gymnasium.'
This could be the start of a long search. We had let Statianus fool us. We had failed to win him over; he was ignoring the arrangement to meet. Neither Helena nor I said it, but both of us reconsidered. Was Tullius Statianus not an innocent man, as he had convinced us, but guilty and a superb actor?
Never. He was not bright enough.
Still, he was jumpy enough to do something stupid.
I knew Helena wanted to see a building in the sanctuary they called the clubhouse. It contained fabulous ancient paintings of the destruction of Troy and the descent of Odysseus to Hades. Lovers of art had to see these famous pictures. I sent Helena off there, saying that when I found him I would extract Statianus from the gym and bring him along.
He was not at the gym. By the time I reached it, I had faced up to my anxiety. When I could not find him, I was not surprised. I feared that he had done a bunk. But where could he go?
Clearing my head, I stood in the central courtyard. I had searched both the gymnasium tracks, indoors and out, and the palaestra; I had even inspected clothes on hooks in the dressing room, in case I recognised his white tunic. Finally I stopped for a good curse, a lively event which took place in the washing area. There was a big pool in the middle of the courtyard. Against the far wall were about ten individual basins, fed with water through lions' heads. After venting my rage there, I turned away towards the exit.
Somebody was watching me.
My spine tingled. I was suddenly aware of my surroundings. A couple of men were bathing in the pool after their endeavours on the track. Their splashes joined the melodious trickles from the waterspouts. From the palaestra came the low thunking sound of sand-filled punchbags being rapidly hit. I could hear music too. The gymnasium was haunted by flautists and lyre-players, as well as teachers, orators, and poets. One voice seemed to be delivering a scientific lecture, though the speaker sounded slow and the room he was using echoed hollowly as if he had only a small audience.
The man who was watching me stood nervously in a doorway. I stared him out. I knew from his stature that he was more likely to be one of the entertainers than a dedicated athlete, even an amateur. He was pale, thin, and nervous-looking. An unsatisfactory sky blue tunic hung awkwardly on his shoulders as if it was still on a pole at a market stall. Scrolls poked from a battered satchel slung across his pigeon chest.
When I glared at him, he dropped his gaze. I kept mine level.
'See something you like?' I challenged. I made it sound as if he had best answer me, damn fast, or something he certainly would not like would happen. 'I'm looking for Tullius Statianus. Do you know him?'
Words came out in a pathetic bleat. 'I try to avoid him.' Now that was a surprise.
The men in the pool had stopped splashing about and were listening. So I led the stranger out of doors, where I could interrogate him in confidence.
'The name's Falco. Marcus Didius Falco. I am a Roman, representing the Emperor, but don't let it worry you.'
'Lampon.'
'You a Greek, Lampon?' He was. He was also a poet. I should have known from his weedy behaviour. I was a spare-time poet myself; it gave me no fellow-feeling for professional writers. They were unworldly parasites. 'So, my versifying friend, why are you hiding from Statianus – and what made you stare at me?'
He seemed glad to confide. So I soon found out Lampon was not just any old poet. He was a poet I had already heard about – and he was very, very scared.
Earlier this year he was at Olympia, where he was hired one night by Milo of Dodona. Milo set him up to give a recitation to Valeria Ventidia, hoping she would then nag her husband and fellow-travellers to sponsor Milo's statue. Lampon knew Valeria had been killed that night; recently he heard that Milo was dead too.
'You are right to be nervous,' I told him bluntly. 'But telling me is the best thing you can do.' Lampon, being a poet, inclined to both cowardice and doubt. 'I'm your man for this situation, Lampon. You tell me everything – then trust me to look after you.'
He was easily convinced. Eagerly, he told me all he knew.
Lampon and Milo had waited in vain for Valeria to show. Then they spent most of that night getting drunk. Milo was miserable over his failure to attract sponsors, and Lampon pretended the wine helped him to be creative; like most poets, he just liked it. Together, they gulped down many flagons. Since both athletes and authors have a lot of practice with wine, they nonetheless remained awake. So Lampon could now vouch for Milo of Dodona, who did not leave his presence until dawn; Milo could not have killed Valeria. Alive, the mighty Milo could have given the same alibi for Lampon. Despite Milo's death, I was prepared to exonerate the scribbler anyway. I knew about poetic recitals. I knew all about turning up with your scrolls but finding no audience. While drink would be a natural solace, killing a girl who failed to show was not worth the effort for a poet.
The next thing Lampon told me was even more important. 'The girl had a better offer!'
'You saw the better offer?'
Lampon looked shamefaced. 'I never told Milo.'
'Did you tell anybody else?'
'I went to the tents with Milo next day. He wanted to know why she hadn't come. He could never tell when people just weren't interested in him…' Clearly the poet was more experienced.
'What happened at the tent?'
'We were told she had been killed. Milo was shocked – and nervous, in case he got the blame. A couple of men talked to him, then they sent him away. While they were in conversation, I saw an elderly man on his own. He looked ill; he was taking medicine, sitting on a folding stool in the shade. I spoke to him.'
'Medicine?' Turcianus Opimus.
'Something strong,' said Lampon, with a faint note of envy. 'He was looking dreamy. Maybe he took a few too many swigs. I mentioned that I had seen the girl with someone; he smiled a lot and nodded. I never found out what he did about it.'
'Nothing, apparently. But it gave you a clear conscience… So tell me about Valeria and the man. What were they doing when you saw them? Were they up to no good?'
'Nothing like that. He was leading her into the building, as if he had just offered to show her the way.'
'Did she look worried?'
'Oh no. Milo and I were leaving the palaestra when I saw her, and I wanted a drink, not hours of reading. We were outside and it was fairly dark. I grabbed Milo and pulled him in another direction before he spotted her.' Leaving Valeria to her fate.
'You had no reason to think the girl was going into the palaestra against her will?'
'No. Well,' added Lampon, 'she thought she was going to find us.'
'If you had believed she was in trouble, you would have alerted Milo?'
'Yes,' said Lampon, with the unreliable air of a poet.
I took a deep breath. 'And who was this man with her? Do you know him?'
That was where the poet let me down, as poets do. His head was filled up with shepherds and mythical heroes; he was u
seless at noticing modern faces or names. When I begged him to provide a description, all he came up with was a man in his forties or fifties, solidly built, wearing a long-sleeved tunic. He could not remember if the man was hairy or bald or bearded, how tall he was, or the colour of the tunic.
'You've seen Statianus here, I take it?'
'Yes, I was in a complete funk when he turned up. I thought he was after me.'
'The poor bastard only wants the truth. Was it him at Olympia?'
'Definitely not.'
'Would you know the man again?'
'No. I don't take much notice of the old-timers.'
'Old-timers?'
'I assumed that was how he could get admittance to the palaestra – he looked like a retired boxer or pankration exponent, Falco. Didn't I say so?'
'You omitted that telling detail.' A detail which not only cleared Statianus, it exonerated all the other men touring in the same group. Well, all except one. 'Do you know the Seven Sights Travel operator, Phineus?'
'I think I've heard of him.'
'Would you know him by sight?'
'No.'
'Well, he's a heavily built man, who conceals his past, so he could have been an athlete – and he has missing teeth. Lampon, you're going to come with me to Corinth, when I leave here, and tell us if you've seen Phineus before.'
'Corinth?' Lampon was a true poet. 'Who is going to pay my fare?'
'The provincial quaestor. And if you vanish, or mess up your evidence, he'll be the man who throws you in a cell.'
Lampon looked at me with troubled eyes. 'I can't appear in court, Falco. The barristers would shatter me. I go to pieces if I'm shouted at.'
I sighed.
XLIV
Lampon looked queasy but he agreed to follow orders. He gave me one more suggestion. According to him, Statianus not only ran at the gym; he liked to climb up to the official stadium. The stadium lay about as high as could be, above the sanctuary of Apollo, where the air was even more refined and the views were breathtaking. Statianus had been heard to say that he went there to be alone and to think.
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