Last Act In Palmyra Read online

  ‘Of course you’re the expert on women, Marcus Didius!’ Helena had popped back without us noticing. ‘Don’t underestimate our guest.’

  I thought a faint smile crossed the Nabataean’s face.

  Helena, who always knew when to change the subject, then soothed Musa adroitly. ‘Your host carries out intrusive work; he forgets to stop when he comes home. There are plenty of other aspects to investigate. Marcus spent some time last night trying to ask Ione’s friends about her life.’

  Musa ducked his head rather, but said, ‘I have found some information.’

  He sounded shy about his source, so I demanded cheerfully, ‘Was this while you were sitting up all night comforting Byrria?’ Helena threw a cushion at me.

  ‘The girl who played the tambourine,’ said Musa patiently, as reluctant to name the corpse he had seen naked as he was to specify his informant, ‘had probably been connected with Chremes the manager and with Philocrates the handsome one.’

  ‘I expected it,’ I commented. ‘Chremes exacted a routine dalliance, probably as the price of her job. Philocrates just thought it was his duty as a seducer to go through the orchestra the way a hot knife skims a dripping pan.’

  ‘Even Davos probably liked her, I am told.’

  ‘She was a likeable girl,’ Helena said. There was a trace of rebuke in her tone.

  ‘True,’ Musa answered gravely. He knew how to handle disapproval. Somebody somewhere had taught him when to look submissive. I wondered if by chance the sister he lived with in Petra was like any of mine. ‘It is suggested that Ione was most friendly on a regular basis with the Twins.’

  Helena glanced at me. We both knew that it must be Byrria who had made these suggestions. I reckoned we could rely on her information. Byrria struck me as observant. She might not like men herself, but she could still watch the behaviour of other girls curiously. The others may even have talked freely to her about their relationships, though they were more likely to avoid a woman with Byrria’s reputation, thinking her stuck-up and sanctimonious.

  ‘It would fit,’ I answered thoughtfully. ‘The Twins were both at Petra. Both of them are already on our suspects list for killing Heliodorus. And it looks as if we can straight away narrow the focus to one, because Grumio was making the Gerasenes crack up with laughter by insulting their neighbours all night.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Helena sounded regretful. ‘So it seems to be Tranio!’ Like me, she had always found Tranio’s wit appealing.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I conceded. Somehow I never trust solutions that appear so readily.

  Instead of breakfast, which I could not fancy, I went out for an early prod at the personnel. First I cleared the ground by eliminating those who were least likely to be involved. I soon established that Chremes and Phrygia had been dining together; Phrygia had invited their old friend Davos, and for most of the evening they had also been joined by Philocrates. (It was unclear whether Chremes had deliberately brought in the arrogant actor, or whether Philocrates had invited himself.) I remembered seeing this group sitting quietly outside the manager’s tent the night before, which confirmed their alibis.

  Philocrates had had a later appointment too, one he readily mentioned. He was proud to tell me he had been chalking up a success with a female cheeseseller.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Know where to find her?’

  ‘Ask a sheep.’

  However, he did produce a couple of ewe’s milk cheeses -one half-eaten - which I accepted at least temporarily as proof.

  I was ready to tackle Tranio. I found him emerging from the flute-girl Afrania’s tent. He seemed to expect my questions, and struck a truculent attitude. His story was that he had spent the evening drinking and doing other pleasant things with Afrania. He called her out from her tent, and of course she backed him up.

  The girl looked as if she were lying, but I was unable to shake her. Tranio had an odd appearance too - but a strange expression won’t convict. If he was guilty, he knew how to cover himself. When a winsome flautist declares that a man with all his faculties has been bedding her, any jury tends to believe it’s true.

  I looked Tranio straight in the face, knowing these defiantly flashing dark eyes might be the eyes of a man who had killed twice, and who had attempted to drown Musa too. An odd sensation. He stared straight back tauntingly. He dared me to accuse him. But I was not ready to do that.

  When I left them I was certain that Tranio and Afrania were turning back to each other as if to argue about what they had told me. If it had been the truth, of course, there should have been nothing to argue about.

  I felt my morning’s investigations were unsatisfactory. More pressing business loomed. We had to give Ione a funeral, and I was needed to arrange it. All I could add to my enquiries was a rapid chat with Grumio.

  I found Grumio alone in the clowns’ tent. He was exhausted and had the grandfather of hangovers. I decided to put the situation to him directly: ‘Ione was killed by a man she was close to. I’ll be straight. I hear that you and Tranio were her most frequent contacts.’

  ‘Probably correct.’ Gloomily, he made no attempt to dodge the issue. ‘Tranio and I are on free-and-easy terms with the musicians.’

  ‘Any intense relationships?’

  ‘Frankly,’ he admitted, ‘no!’

  ‘I’m plotting everyone’s movements yesterday evening. You’re easy to rule out, of course. I know you were delighting the crowds. That was all night?’ The question was routine. He nodded. Having witnessed him on his barrel myself on two or three occasions last evening, that ended it. ‘Tranio tells me he was with Afrania. But did he have a similar friendship with Ione too?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Special?’

  ‘No. He just slept with her.’ Helena would say that was special. Wrong; I was being romantic about my beloved. Helena had been married, so she knew the facts of life.

  ‘When he wasn’t sleeping with Afrania?’ I said dourly.

  ‘Or when Ione wasn’t sleeping with someone else!’ Grumio seemed troubled about his partner. I could see he had a personal interest. He had to share Tranio’s tent. Before he next passed out after a few drinks, he needed to know whether Tranio might stick his head in a water pail. ‘Is Tranio cleared? What does Afrania say?’

  ‘Oh she supports Tranio.’

  ‘So where does that leave you, Falco?’

  ‘Up a palm tree, Grumio!’

  We spent the rest of that day, with the help of Musa’s Nabataean colleagues, organising a short-notice funeral. Unlike Heliodorus at Petra, Ione was at least claimed, honoured and sent to the gods by her friends. The affair was more sumptuous than might have been expected. She had a popular send-off. Even strangers made donations for a monument. People in the entertainment community had heard of her death, though not the true manner of it. Only Musa and I and the murderer knew that. People thought she had drowned; most thought she had drowned inflagrante, but I doubt if Ione would have minded that.

  Naturally The Arbitration went ahead that night as planned. Chremes dragged out the old lie about ‘She would have wanted us to continue…” I hardly knew the girl but I believed all Ione would have wanted was to be alive. However, Chremes could be certain we would pack the arena. The poolside voyeur in the filthy shirt was bound to have spread our company’s notoriety.

  Chremes proved to be right. A sudden death was perfect for trade - a fact I personally found bad for my morale.

  We travelled on next day. We crossed the city before dawn. At first repeating our journey towards the sacred pools, we left by the North Gate. At the Temple of Nemesis once more we thanked the priests who had given Ione her last resting place, and paid them to oversee setting up her monument alongside the road. We had commissioned a stone plaque, in the Roman manner, so other musicians passing through Gerasa would pause and remember her.

  I know that, with the priests’ permission, Helena and Byrria covered their
heads and went together into the temple. When they prayed to the dark goddess of retribution, I can assume what they asked.

  Then, still before dawn, we took the great trade road that ran west into the Jordan Valley and on to the coast. This was the road to Pella.

  As we journeyed there was one notable difference. In the early hours of morning, we were all hunched and silent. Yet I knew that an extra sense of doom had befallen us. Where the company had once seemed to carry lightly its loss of Heliodorous, Ione’s death left everybody stricken. For one thing, he had been highly unpopular; she had had friends everywhere. Also, until now people may have been able to pretend to themselves that Heliodorus could have been murdered in Petra by a stranger. Now there was no doubt: they were harbouring a killer. All of them wondered where he might strike next.

  Our one hope was that this fear would drive the truth into the light.

  Chapter XXXII

  Pella: founded by Seleucus, Alexander’s general. It possessed an ancient and highly respectable history, and a modern, booming air. Like everywhere else it had been pillaged in the Rebellion, but had bounced back cheerfully. A little honey-pot, aware of its own importance.

  We had moved north and west to much more viable country that produced textiles, meat, grain, wood, pottery, leather and dyes. The export trade up the River Jordan valley may have reduced during the Judaean troubles, but it was reviving now. Old Seleucus knew how to pick a site. Pella straddled a long spur of the lush foothills, with a fabulous view across the valley. Below the steep-sided domed acropolis of the Hellenic foundation, Romanised suburbia was spreading rapidly through a valley that contained a crisply splashing spring and stream. They had water, pasture, and merchants to prey off: all a Decapolis city needed.

  We had been warned about a bitter feud between the Pellans and their rivals across the valley in Scythopolis. Hoping for fights in the streets, we were disappointed, needless to say. On the whole, Pella was a dull, well-behaved little city. There was, however, a large new colony of Christians there, people who had fled when Titus conquered and destroyed Jerusalem. The native Pellans now seemed to spend their energy picking on them instead.

  With their wealth, which was quite enviable, the Pellans had built themselves smart villas nuzzling the warm city walls, temples for every occasion, and all the usual public buildings that show a city thinks itself civilised. These included a small theatre, right down beside the water.

  The Pellans obviously liked culture. Instead we gave them our company favourite, The Pirate Brothers, an undemanding vehicle for our shocked actors to walk through.

  ‘No one wants to perform. This is crass!’ I grumbled, as we dragged out costumes that evening.

  ‘This is the East,’ answered Tranio.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Expect a full house tonight. News flashes around here. They will have heard we had a death at our last venue. We’re well set up.’

  As he spoke of Ione I gave him a sharp look, but there was nothing exceptional in his behaviour. No guilt. No relief, if he was feeling he had silenced an unwelcome revelation from the girl. No sign any longer of the defiance I had thought he exhibited when I questioned him at Gerasa. Nor, if he noticed me staring, did he show any awareness of my interest.

  Helena was sitting on a bale sewing braid back on to a gown for Phrygia (who in turn was holding nails for a stagehand mending a piece of broken scenery). My lass bit through her thread, with little thought for the safety of her teeth. ‘Why do you think Easterners have lurid tastes, Tranio?’

  ‘Fact,’ he said. ‘Heard of the Battle of Carrhae?’ It was one of Rome’s famous disasters. Several legions under Crassus had been massacred by the legendary Parthians, our foreign policy lay in ruins for decades afterwards, the Senate was outraged, then more plebeian soldiers’ lives had been chucked away in expeditions to recapture lost military standards: the usual stuff. ‘On the night after their triumph at Carrhae,’ Tranio told us, ‘the Parthians and Armenians all sat down to watch The Bacchae of Euripides.’

  ‘Strong stuff, but a night at a play seems a respectable way to celebrate a victory,’ said Helena.

  ‘What,’ Tranio demanded bitterly, ‘with the severed head of Crassus kicked around the stage?’

  ‘Juno!’ Helena blanched.

  ‘The only thing we could do to please people better,’ Tranio continued, ‘would be Laureolus with a robber king actually crucified live in the last act.’

  ‘Been done,’ I told him. Presumably he knew that. Like Grumio, he was putting himself forward as a student of drama history. I was about to enter into a discussion, but he was keeping himself aloof from me now and swiftly made off.

  Helena and I exchanged a thoughtful look. Was Tranio’s delight in these lurid theatrical details a reflection of his own involvement in violence? Or was he an innocent party, merely depressed by the deaths in the company?

  Unable to fathom his attitude, I filled in time before the play by asking in the town about Thalia’s musician, without luck, as usual.

  However, this did provide me with an unexpected chance to do some checking up on the wilfully elusive Tranio. As I sauntered back to camp, I happened to come across his girlfriend Afrania, the tibia-player. She was having trouble shaking off a group of Pellan youths who were following her. I didn’t blame them, for she was a luscious armful with the dangerous habit of looking at anything masculine as if she wanted to be followed home. They had never seen anything like her; I had not seen much like it myself.

  I told the lads to get lost, in a friendly fashion, then when this had no effect I resorted to old-fashioned diplomacy: hurling rocks at them while Afrania screamed insults. They took the hint; we congratulated ourselves on our style; then we walked together, just in case the hooligans found reinforcements and came after us again.

  Once she regained her breath, Afrania suddenly stared at me. ‘It was true, you know.’

  I guessed what she meant, but played the innocent. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Me and Tranio. He really was with me that night.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said.

  Having chosen to talk to me, she seemed annoyed that I didn’t believe her. ‘Oh, don’t be po-faced, Falco!’

  ‘All right. When I asked you, I just gained the impression,’ I told her frankly, ‘there was something funny going on.’ With girls like Afrania I always liked to play the man of the world. I wanted her to understand I had sensed the touchy atmosphere when I questioned the pair of them.

  ‘It’s not me,’ she assured me self-righteously, tossing back her rampant black curls with a gesture that had a bouncing effect on her thinly clad bosom as well.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘No, really. It’s that idiot Tranio.’ I made no comment. We were nearing our camp. I knew there was unlikely to be another opportunity to persuade Afrania to confide in me; there was unlikely to be another occasion when she needed rescuing from men. Normally Afrania accepted all comers.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ I repeated in a sceptical tone. ‘If he was with you, then he’s cleared of murdering Ione. I assume you wouldn’t lie about that. After all, she was supposed to be your friend.’

  Afrania made no comment on that. I knew there had been a degree of rivalry between them, in fact. What she did say amazed me. ‘Tranio was with me all right. He asked me to deny it though.’

  ‘Jupiter! Whatever for?’

  She had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘He said it was one of his practical jokes, to get you confused.’

  I laughed bitterly. ‘It takes less than that to get me confused,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t get it. Why should Tranio put himself on the spot for a killing? And why should you be a party to it?’

  ‘Tranio never killed Ione,’ Afrania said self-righteously. ‘But don’t ask me what the silly bastard thought he was up to. I never knew.’

  The practical joke idea seemed so far-fetched I reckoned it was just a line Tranio had come up with for
Afrania. But I was hard-pressed to think of another reason why he would want her to lie. The only slim possibility might be drawing the heat away from someone else. But Tranio would need to owe someone a truly enormous debt if he would risk being accused of a murder he had not committed.

  ‘Has anyone done Tranio any big favours recently?’

  ‘Only me!’ quipped the girl. ‘Going to bed with him, I mean.’

  I grinned appreciatively, then quickly changed tack: ‘Do you know who Ione might have been meeting at the pools?’

  Afrania shook her head. ‘No. That’s the reason she and I had a few words sometimes. The person I used to reckon she had her eye on was Tranio.’

  Very convenient. Here was Tranio being fingered as a possible associate of the dead girl just when he was also being given a firm alibi. ‘Yet it couldn’t be him,’ I concluded, with a certain dryness, ‘because wonderful Tranio was doing acrobatic tricks with you all night.’

  ‘He was!’ retorted Afrania. ‘So where does that leave you, Falco? Ione must have been up to it with the whole company!’

  Not much help to the sleuth trying to fix who had murdered her.

  As our waggons came in sight, Afrania rapidly lost interest in talking to me. I let her go, wondering whether to have another talk with Tranio, or whether to pretend to forget him. I decided to leave him unchallenged, but to observe him secretly.

  Helena always reckoned that was the informer’s lazy way out. However, she would not be hearing about this. Unless it was essential, I never told Helena when I had gathered information from a very pretty girl.

  If the Pellans were baying for blood they held their vile tastes well in check. In fact they behaved with quiet manners during our performance of The Pirate Brothers, sat in neat rows eating honeyed dates, and applauded us gravely afterwards. Pellan women mobbed Philocrates in sufficient numbers to keep him insufferable; Pellan men mooned after Byrria but were satisfied with the orchestra girls; Chremes and Phrygia were invited to a decent dinner by a local magistrate. And the rest of us were paid for once.