Dog-Headed Death: A Gaius Hesperian Mystery

by Ray Faraday Nelson

  “Yes, sir!”

  Demetrius had to be led out by the elbow, shuffling like a drunken man.

  * * * *

  Gaius Hesperian tendered the polite condolences customarily due a grieving widow, bowing, speaking gently.

  Adrastia stood before him, listening with a frown, most impressive in her elaborately embroidered pale blue gown; her long white fingers, rings glittering in the sun, lightly touched her throat as a curious expression of annoyed impatience gradually appeared on her face.

  His little speech proving too long for her, she gave a toss of her head that set her long black hair flying, then cut in: “I don’t know who killed the old fool—certainly nobody can say I did it—but if you ever catch him, I want you to thank him for me… for all of us!”

  Daphnis looked up in surprise.

  Hesperian raised an eyebrow. “Thank him?”

  “Of course,” she said firmly. “If he hadn’t died when he did, he’d have brought ruin on us all. Whoever may have thrown that spear, it’s the Christians who are at fault here. It’s the Christians who seduced him with false promises of immortality into taking a position that—well—forced us all to consider the man who had once been, as you put it, a loving husband and father… forced us all to consider him our enemy, a menace to our whole way of life. I’m young, centurion, but I’ve noticed one thing. When a man speaks of rising to the level of a god, it’s always a prelude to his descending lower than a beast.”

  Daphnis laughed, but Hesperian silenced him with a glare. Optio Mannus reflected that this woman, with her artful tongue, would not have been out of place back in Rome, at the court of Nero.

  “Not all criminals, sir,” she went on, “steal at knife-point or attack people in the streets. The more successful ones steal with words. With words they make off with not only a man’s money, but with his mind as well. His mind, sir! They leave their victim a raving madman who throws his cloak and tunic to beggars and runs naked through the streets, screaming that the end of the world is at hand!”

  Even sober Mannus was unable to suppress a smile at the sight of this determined young lady waving her finger under the centurion’s nose.

  Hesperian nodded. “I know, I know. There are Christians in Rome too. Not long ago they started a fire, so I’m told, that burned down a large part of the city. I was away from Rome at the time, but that’s the official story.”

  “’You see?” she cried. “Of all the disgusting and disreputable cults hatched from the perverted Jew mind, this is the worst! How can Nero allow it to continue?”

  “Nero is a merciful emperor,” Daphnis said, straight-faced.

  “Of course,” she said, turning to the handsome clerk. “But must his mercy extend only to criminals and madmen? What about respectable citizens? Are they to be left unprotected against these wolves who come to take advantage of an old man’s failing mind to strip him of everything he owns?” She faced Hesperian again. “If it weren’t for that dear sweet killer, you know where I’d be? I’d be in the streets, begging for my supper and sleeping under bridges with the filthy Jewish war refugees!”

  Optio Mannus thought it much more likely she’d be in some high-class whorehouse, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  “Madame Adrastia,” Hesperian said, trying to cut off her tirade.

  “The Christians! The Christians are to blame!” she shouted.

  “Silence!” commanded the centurion, then, more softly, added, “Could you pick up that spear for me, please?”

  She looked down at it for a moment with infinite distaste, then bent over and gingerly lifted it a couple of feet off the walkway. Thunk! The point fell and bounced.

  “Ugh! Ugly thing,” she said with a shudder, and dropped it. She wiped her delicate white hands on her robe.

  Daphnis grinned openly.

  “Please, my dear,” said Hesperian. “I have a few questions about your husband’s death.”

  “Of course,” she answered.

  Her version of the story agreed in every detail with those of the others, and when she went on to describe the death of Rophos, that story too agreed with the story told by the others. The agreement was, if anything, almost too perfect. “And I never went near the kitchen that day,” she finished. “That’s more than can be said for Serapion.”

  “And during the murder of your husband? Where was Serapion then?” Hesperian asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t see him?”

  “How could I? I was in my room with Demetrius and the maids.”

  “How neatly it all seems to fit together.”

  “Odd that you should say that The man who questioned me in the previous investigation used almost exactly the same words.” There was a certain smugness in her voice, as if she was daring Hesperian to find some flaw in her story. “But if there’s anything else I can tell you…”

  “No, my dear,” Hesperian said thoughtfully. “You’ve already been more helpful than you probably realize. You can go now, but as you leave, tell them to send in Serapion.”

  As she strode away, her pert little bottom had a defiant, almost triumphant swing to it.

  * * * *

  Serapion refused to be led into the garden, but marched proudly in, head high, a few steps ahead of stolid, plodding Mannus. The young aristocrat stopped before the now-seated Hesperian almost like a soldier at attention and Hesperian, looking up at him, blinked in the sun. The sun was higher now, above the red tile roof of the villa.

  Hesperian shaded his eyes with his hand, took a deep breath and began: “Your honesty can save everyone much anxiety and uncertainty, my friend. Whatever you’ve done, you’re not ashamed of it, are you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then tell me the truth. You killed them, didn’t you?”

  Serapion didn’t answer.

  Hesperian sighed and went on. “Accept the gratitude of your entire family. Accept my admiration too, because, while I can’t approve the breaking of the law, I can admire a gentleman too proud to lie. You killed old Odysseus, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  Hesperian frowned, and slapped his swagger stick against the palm of his hand. “Then I presume you can prove that at the time of the murder you were somewhere else. Everyone else seems able to.”

  “No.” Serapion’s triangular face reddened slightly.

  “Where were you then?”

  “In my room, alone.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you like. It’s the truth.”

  “And the previous investigator accepted that story?”

  “Of course. He knew I was a gentleman.”

  There was a note of falseness in Serapion’s voice. Mannus could hear it plainly.

  “At least he knew you were a man of wealth,” Hesperian said coldly.

  “Do you want money too?” demanded the young man with contempt.

  “Did you give money to the previous investigator?”

  “It was an experiment I wanted to find out if Roman officials are really as corrupt as everyone says they are.”

  Mannus grinned openly at Daphnis, who smiled feebly and lowered his eyes to the scroll he was working on. It seemed to Mannus that Hesperian had once again triumphed, and that Daphnis had as good as lost the bet already. Mannus could almost taste the wine… nothing but the finest Falernian. And let it be a red wine, but not too heavy.

  Hesperian ignored the insulting implications of Serapion’s remark. “Sabella claims you said you’d rather see your father dead than a Christian.”

  “I don’t deny it.”

  Point by point, Hesperian ran down the list of incriminating evidence that had so quickly piled up against the young Memnon. Serapio
n denied nothing, made no effort to defend himself, except that several times he repeated, in the tone of a parent explaining something to a retarded child, “But I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Finally he added impatiently, “And they tell me, Roman, that you’re testing people’s skill with the pilum.” Serapion bent over and picked up the weapon with the hand of an expert. He pointed to a wooden ram-headed sphinx at the far end of the garden. “I can spear that sphinx right between the eyes. Watch!”

  He raised the pilum to eye level, holding it perfectly balanced, stepped back, and extended his left hand. His form was perfect, worthy of an Olympic athlete.

  With a grunt, Serapion hurled the pilum. It hissed faintly as it flew, and there was a resounding, solid thunk as it lodged in the ram’s head… right between the eyes. Serapion gave a little laugh, half pride and half nervous exhilaration.

  Hesperian looked up at him, trying to appear unimpressed. “My friend, don’t you realize you might as well have driven that point between your own eyes? That throw may well kill you.”

  “Kill me? Only my body, Centurion.”

  Serapion turned on his heel and strode out and, though he had not been given permission to leave or even asked for it, no one made a move to stop him. Optio Mannus said softy to Hesperian, “I think we have our man, sir, and it’s not yet noon!”

  Centurion Gaius Hesperian glanced up at the sun but did not reply.

  * * * *

  “Let me go, damn you!” shouted Hathor, struggling in the grip of the guard who was dragging her into the garden.

  He held her firmly but somewhat awkwardly as he thumped his chest and gave Hesperian a stiff-arm salute. “Ave Caesar!”

  “Ave Caesar,” replied the centurion. “Now what’s the trouble with her?”

  “She was eavesdropping on you, sir.”

  “Why didn’t you stop her?” Hesperian demanded. Then, when the soldier did not answer, he went on. “You’re allowing them to come and go as they please. They’re talking to each other, comparing notes, listening in on us here. By the gods, soldier, I expect some semblance of discipline!”

  “I… I didn’t know the Memnons were prisoners,” the poor soldier stammered.

  There was a tense pause, then Hesperian sighed and said more agreeably, “And so they’re not… except, of course, that they can’t leave.”

  The soldier saluted and departed.

  Hathor stood before the Romans, a defiant tilt to her chin, and without waiting for Hesperian to begin questioning her, announced: “My brother is lying.”

  Hesperian raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “He was not alone in his room, as he claimed,” Hathor said. The faintest of breezes stirred in the garden, but it was enough to press the sheer white gown against her body. Mannus licked his dry lips and, almost embarrassed, looked away.

  “Someone was with him?” Hesperian prompted.

  “I was with him!” Hathor said with a toss of the head.

  “Really? Then why didn’t he tell us that?”

  “He was protecting me.”

  “From what?”

  “I have… a lover.” She lowered her gaze and began toying with her gown, near the waist.

  “Go on, my dear.”

  “No one must know, you see. And Serapion was… was bringing me a message.”

  “From your lover?”

  “From my… lover.” She seemed to find it difficult to use the word “lover,” as if it made ugly something that was not ugly to her.

  “And you expect us to believe that your brother would risk his life to protect your secret?”

  “Of course he would!” Once again she was proud and defiant. “But I can’t let him!”

  “Such nobility,” muttered the cynical Daphnis.

  “All right then,” Hesperian said, sitting back with an air that seemed to say that at last he was getting somewhere, “Tell me the name of this lover of yours.”

  “I won’t! I don’t have to.”

  “Oh, but you do.”

  “I won’t tell, and Serapion won’t either. He knows how to keep a secret, and so do I. We’d rather risk being tried as murderers than tell.” She looked so fierce that Hesperian almost burst out laughing.

  “Then I must assume that it is you who are lying.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “‘Your slave Sabella testified to being with you—in the kitchen—at the time of your father’s death.”

  “I wasn’t in the kitchen. I was in my brother’s room.”

  “Then why did the slave girl tell us you were in the kitchen?”

  “She’s trying to protect me too.”

  Hesperian turned to Mannus. “Did you hear that? This whole family—slaves and all—are right out of some myth of the virtues of Republican Rome.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mannus.

  “The greater the seeming virtue, the greater the hidden corruption,” Daphnis put in suavely. It was a saying he’d picked up in Nero’s court, where Mannus had heard it quoted so many times he was sick of it.

  Hesperian returned to the interrogation. “Hathor, my dear, don’t you realize that if Sabella was lying and Serapion does not support your story, then you yourself must come under grave suspicion? Don’t you realize that?”

  “But… I couldn’t have done it!”

  “Why not, young lady?”

  “Because I loved him. I loved the old man! I could never kill him, not for anything.”

  Daphnis looked up from his writing and stared at her with open disbelief, but Mannus, studying the centurion’s face, saw that Hesperian had taken a liking to the young creature. You old fool, Mannus thought, but said nothing. Mannus knew about Hesperian’s weakness for such females, but had never seen it stand in the way of duty… not until now.

  “I see, I see,” the centurion said. “Well, you may go now.” He dismissed her with a vague wave of his hand.

  Mannus, worried, said, “Aren’t you going to give her the pilum test, sir?”

  “No, no, the pilum’s stuck in that statue over there.”

  “But, sir, I could run and get you a fresh one.”

  “Never mind, Mannus. Look at her.” He gestured toward the white-gowned figure now walking without haste toward the exit from the garden. “Could a delicate young lady like that have the strength or skill to hurl such a weapon?”

  Mannus sighed. “So you believe her?” He was frankly disappointed. “Then I guess that clears Serapion. I could have sworn he was our man.”

  Hesperian was still watching Hathor disappear into the house and seemed not to have heard.

  “Sir, I said that I guess that clears Serapion,” said Mannus gruffly.

  “Oh? What’s that, you say?” Hesperian looked around blankly.

  Daphnis laid down his reed pen on the bench and said disgustedly, “You shouldn’t have been so sure Hathor was unskilled with the pilum. According to the records of the original inquest, this girl was brought up as a boy. She’s as skillful with the pilum as any Roman soldier.”

  Hesperian was surprised and, it seemed to Mannus, dismayed. Musing, the centurion said: “Was she with Serapion, or was she with Sabella after all? Perhaps she was actually with neither!”

  Daphnis turned to Mannus. “You thought Serapion was our man? Wouldn’t it be charming if all the time we were looking for a man, the killer was really…” His lip curled with distaste “…a woman!”

  Chapter Two

  Thanks to the massive stone from which it was built, the Memnon mansion provided, in its inner rooms, a cool shelter from the stifling noonday heat. In one of these dim windowless rooms, a small auxiliary dining room whose walls were decorated with a mosaic mural of Osiris and Mother Isis enthroned in the Land of the Dead, the Memnons gather
ed for a spiritless lunch.

  “No desert?” inquired a concerned Wakar, leaning over the couch where Hathor, together with a gloomy Serapion, reclined.

  “No. No, thank you,” Hathor replied, nervously toying with the golden dung beetle pendant on her heavy necklace. She had been sweating, and the damp white silk of her gown clung to her flesh.

  “And you, Master Serapion?” the eunuch asked.

  “I’m not hungry,” Serapion said, almost angrily.

  The slave offered his basket of assorted fruits to Adrastia, then to Demetrius, but no one showed the slightest interest, in spite of the fact that they had eaten almost nothing during the other courses of the meal.

  “Here, gimp!” the Roman guard standing near the door called out. “There’s one man in this room who still has the belly the gods blessed him with.”

  Wakar limped over and stood submissively while the soldier picked through the fruit, selecting the most attractive to stuff between his broken teeth. With his mouth full, the soldier went on, “Good conscience, good appetite. That’s what they say.” He chuckled, juice dripping from the point of his bristly chin.

  Serapion looked across at the Praetorian with unconcealed disgust, but the other Memnons totally ignored their unwelcome guest.

  Wakar turned to leave.

  “Hey, gimp!” snapped the Roman. “Did I tell you you could go?”

  Wakar stopped, his face in a frozen smile.

  “That’s it, gimp. I’ll take one more bunch of dates to keep me going.” He helped himself. “Now you can go.”

  Wakar bowed and departed.

  Hathor was furious, but she made no outward sign. How dare this swinish Roman bully her slave, the slave who was almost a father to her? She had an impulse to leap to her feet and protest, perhaps even to report the guard to Hesperian. Old Hesperian liked her and might listen to her, might even have the soldier flogged. That would be satisfying! At some other time that is exactly what she would have done, but now she found her usual moral resolution wavering. Was it that remark the soldier had made about good conscience? How much did he know? How much had Hesperian guessed and told this guard in those brief whispered conferences before lunch? There must be something. Why else would this simple soldier grow so bold? How else would he dare?