Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 11/01/12

by Dell Magazines

  "Are you sure you want to go in?" Lysander paused at the entrance to the storeroom to light an oil lamp. "We haven't cut them down yet."

  We? As far as Iliona could tell, there was no one else here. In the hush, she could smell vinegar, honey, and olive oil, and when he lifted the lamp to light the way through the archway, she noticed that the air was hazy with flour.

  "Yes." She nodded. "I'm sure."

  She wasn't. Far from it. But if she'd gone with Lysander one month before, maybe these women would still be alive. Facing them was the least she could do.

  "Your frown tells me something strikes you," he said, setting the lamp on the shelf.

  "The distance between them." It was the first thing she'd noticed. After the obvious. "The spacing between each noose is almost identical."

  "Not almost." He held up both hands so that his thumb-tips met, then splayed his fingers. "Exactly three spans between each rope, just like last time."

  "You didn't tell me that at the temple."

  "I believe you were busy."

  Chip, chip, chip. He wasn't going to let her forget her refusal to help, and frankly, she didn't blame him. "Still no witnesses?"

  "The farm doesn't employ many labourers, and those they do live in huts in the hills."

  "But three women," Iliona said. "I mean, look at them. They're hardly pale, puny creatures."

  The grandmother had arms like a blacksmith's, the mother's legs were like tree trunks, and even the girl, not yet fourteen, was a strapping young thing.

  "They wouldn't be mistaken for Athenians, that's for sure." He almost smiled. "However, one thing is certain." The smile hardened into a grimace. "I won't bore you with detail, but if there's one thing I know, Iliona, it's death. These poor bitches were alive when they were hanged."

  Yet there were no scratched fingers, from where they'd clawed at the rope. No dishevelled clothing. Just dolls hanging, three in a row. All evenly spaced. "He drugged them," she said.

  "That would be my guess." Lysander rubbed at his jaw. "After which he either dragged or carried them here to the storeroom, but if you look around, the herbs on the floor to deter vermin are intact."

  "More likely they've been brushed back into place."

  The killer was as she'd suspected. Tidy to the point of obsession. Worse, he was cunning, careful, and intelligent with it. She cast her eyes over the various sacks and amphorae lined up round the storeroom. That was what Lysander had been doing when she arrived. Untying, unstoppering, sniffing, and testing. Hence the fusion of smells in the air. He obviously hadn't found anything pertinent, though. More a question of thoroughness than anything else.

  "Aah." Her mouth pursed in compassion as she picked up a small wooden daisy among the dried stalks of rosemary, tansy, and lemon balm beneath the daughter's feet. "This was probably her lucky charm, which fell out of her clothing when—"

  "Let me see that!" Lysander snatched at the lantern for a closer look, and then swore. A short, sharp, vicious expletive.

  "What is it?" she asked, because suddenly he was scrabbling around beneath the other two bodies, swearing harder than ever.

  "I found a carved rose on the floor of the first house," he said. "Right below the mother, but—" more expletives "—didn't give it a thought."

  He held out two more carved flowers, one from under each of the other bodies in the storeroom. A daisy, a rose, and a lily. "How could I have been so stupid?"

  His anger pulsed through the windowless room as if it had substance and form.

  "How could you have imagined it was anything other than trivial?" she replied. "I also dismissed it."

  But Iliona was not the Krypteia. The Krypteia don't make mistakes . . .

  "I need to revisit the first scene," he spat.

  As it happened, the house had hardly been touched in the month since its occupants were ferried across the Styx to the land of the shades. In no time, he'd recovered two more wooden flowers among the strewing herbs on the floor.

  A daisy, a rose, and a lily.

  The moon was full, dulling the starlight, as Iliona stood in the clearing in the hills. Twinkling silver far below was the river whose god she served, and whose annual floods brought wealth and plenty. It took an hour to cross the valley by foot, but three days to travel its length on a horse. Through olive groves, barley fields, paddocks, and vineyards. A tranquillity that was now broken, thanks to one man. A monster.

  In the two weeks since the second murders, the general had been pushing hard for Lysander to step down. His incompetence had led to a reign of terror, he'd stormed to the Council, and Iliona could only imagine the grief and despair that was churning inside him. With his family wiped out, anger was all he had left.

  Which was better, though? For the secret police to be led by a man whose impulses were driven by blinding emotion? Or an honourable man, who would not baulk at blinding her with pitch before throwing her into the Torrent of Torment? She stared at the rugged tracks crisscrossing this red, stony land like white scars in the moonlight. Smelled the pungent moss under her feet. Listened to a stream frothing its way downhill, over the rocks. With their dark cliffs and secret caverns, these mountains were at once dangerous, beautiful, treacherous, and magnetic. No different from Lysander himself.

  But how do you define beauty? The scent of dog rose had suddenly become cloying. The sight of daisies made her feel sick.

  She listened to the music made by the squeaking of bats and the soft hiss of the wind in the oaks. If only she could unravel the significance of those flowers! Of the spacing between the nooses! Of choosing three women of the same family . . .

  A twig snapped. She looked round. Knew that, if he wanted, he could have crept up and not made a sound. The smell of wood smoke and leather mingled with the aromas of moss and wild mountain sage, and in the moonlight his eyes were as hard as a wolf's. She wondered how Lysander had found her hiding place. And whether he'd seen the deserter she'd just helped to escape . . .

  "Would you believe my orders—" he leaned his back against a tree trunk and folded his arms over his chest "—are to identify and protect every household that fits the pattern for the killings."

  An impossible task. Sparta currently had three thousand warriors scattered all over Greece, every last one of them landowners, and given that they were all aged between eighteen and thirty, probably two thirds had widowed mothers and daughters living at home. Their sons, of course, would be in the barracks, while the older men, retired veterans, were either working their own farms or employed in auxiliary military work. Obviously people were keeping an eye on their neighbours, while remaining vigilant themselves. But spring was a busy time on the land. The helots who worked it needed close supervision, or they would rise up and rebel, or take off.

  "The general hates you," she said.

  "He holds me responsible."

  "Either way, he's engineered it so that you will either fail in your efforts to protect every woman in Sparta, or be forced to disobey orders."

  His lip twisted. "Providing I can put a stop to this murdering sonofabitch, the Council will forget that I challenged their authority."

  The deserter . . . Fifteen years old . . . Was he already lying in a gully with his throat slit?

  "The moon," Iliona said, wondering if Lysander's dagger was still warm from the boy's blood. "The moon has three phases. Waxing, full, and waning."

  "Three women!" He jerked upright. "Also waxing, full, and waning!"

  "Exactly. And all killed at the new moon." Iliona dragged her eyes away from his scabbard. Straightened her shoulders, and swallowed. "Suggesting the daughters might be the key."

  "To what?"

  "I don't know," she admitted. "But how in the name of Zeus did he manage to drug them?"

  "That second family," Lysander said slowly. "He had to have drugged them out in the courtyard; otherwise he would have strung them up from the beams in the kitchen like the first three."

  "You think the killer might have b
een a guest?"

  Whoever he was, he was a coward who craved power. And could only get it when his victims couldn't fight back.

  "Our investigations haven't turned up any visitors, and don't forget the first trio. Not many guests are entertained in the kitchen." Lysander clucked his tongue. "Not at the general's level."

  "What about woodcarvers?"

  "What about them? There are hundreds inside the city alone, and none of them sells flowers like the ones placed under the bodies. As a trade, it fits your theory of precise, intelligent, and tidy. Then again, every man and boy who's ever owned a knife—which is everyone—has had a go at carving at some stage."

  Needles and haystacks, needles and haystacks.

  Would this monster ever be caught?

  Two weeks later, when the new moon scratched her silver crescent in the sky, Iliona found her answer. In a house deep in the artisan quarter, three more women were found dangling, with the same flowers under their feet. The daisy, the rose, and the lily. Now the terror was palpable. These were not exalted citizens. Landowners and farmers. They were tradespeople. The family of a humble harness-maker, who was away in Thrace, supporting the cavalry.

  But that wasn't the worst of the matter. Three days before the moon was due to rise, the women brought in supplies and barricaded themselves indoors. No one had been allowed in, they wouldn't even open the shutters, and the alarm was only raised when their neighbour, an Egyptian gem-cutter, could elicit no response. He and the wheelwright broke down the door.

  This, obviously, was the work of no human hand.

  Sparta had angered the gods.

  "Bullshit." Lysander paced the flagstones of Iliona's courtyard, spiking his hands through his long warrior hair. "Complete and utter bollocks."

  While he prowled, Iliona sat on a white marble bench in the shade of a fig tree, surrounded by scrolls of white parchment.

  "I agree."

  The gods controlled the weather, the seasons, human fate, and emotions. That was why they needed to be propitiated. To ensure fruitfulness, justice, victory, and truth, and offset famine, tempest, and drought. True, Deception wove her celestial charms while men slept, as did Absent-mindedness, Panic, and Pain. But so did the Muses, as well as Peace, Hope, and Passion, and the goddesses of beauty, mirth, and good cheer.

  "All the appropriate sacrifices have been made," she continued.

  To Zeus, a ram purified with oak. To Poseidon, a bull, another to Apollo, honey cakes to Artemis, and grain to Demeter. The gods had no reason to argue with Sparta.

  "Also, the Olympians might take life, but not in this way," she added. "They kill, but they do not leave flowers."

  "If we knew what it meant, this daisy, roses, and lily business— Are these my files?" He picked up one of the scrolls littering her bench.

  "Duplicates," she lied.

  There had been too many for her scribes to copy, forcing Iliona to resort to the one thing that always oils wheels in the palace. Bribery.

  "These are reports from the initial investigation," he said, leafing through. "Why are you going through them again—? Ah." He bowed. "You see through the eyes of the blind and hear the voice of the dumb, and no, before you throw another tantrum, I am not mocking you this time. You work your oracles with trickery and mirrors. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye."

  Iliona watched an early two-tailed pasha butterfly fluttering around the arbute. Listened to the fountain splashing in the middle of the courtyard.

  "Suppose," she said, "that the flowers are a smoke screen?"

  "Like the precisely measured distance between the nooses?"

  "Both suggest a ritualistic murder, but suppose that was the killer's intention?"

  "Hm." Lysander looked up at the cloudless blue sky and seconds dragged into minutes. "We didn't question the family of the second victims to check for alibis, therefore no leads were followed up, as we did for the general's women."

  Like a Parthian's bow, this was a long shot, Iliona thought. But suppose there was a cold-blooded killer out there, covering his tracks with a series of murders? If so, how in Hades would they pinpoint which of the nine women was the real target?

  Dusk was cloaking the temple precinct, softening the outlines of the treasuries, gymnasia, watercourses, and statues. Up in the forests, the wolves and the porcupines would be stirring. Badgers and foxes would slink from their lairs. Down by the river, bats darted round the willows and alders. Frogs croaked from the reed beds. As the darkness deepened, Iliona watched moths dance round the flickering sconces, while the scent of rosemary and mountain thyme mingled with incense from the shrine.

  "You were right."

  She jumped. One of these days, she thought, and Lysander would slit the throat of his own bloody shadow.

  "His name is Tibios, and he did indeed serve the temple of Selene. Well done."

  The moon was her starting point. In the old days, long before the Olympians were born, Selene used to be worshipped in her three phases of womanhood. Developing, mature, then declining. In these enlightened days of science and mathematics, only those initiated into the priesthood even remembered this ancient wisdom—suggesting the killer was familiar with the old ways. Whether the murders were ritualistic, or whether his elaborate methods were simply a smoke screen, was irrelevant. It was a base on which to start building.

  From then on, logic prevailed. The new moon was synonymous with youth, implying the intended victim was one of the daughters. But unions between citizens are contracted when the children are still in the cradle, whereas artisan women are free to wed whom they please. At sixteen, the harness-maker's daughter would have been casting around.

  "With nothing else to go on," Iliona said, "the theory was worth testing. I'm just relieved it panned out."

  "Which is why," Lysander said, "my men are holding him in your office."

  Ah. "You have insufficient evidence to bring him to a trial, so you're hoping I will draw a confession out of him."

  "The torture chamber is notoriously unreliable, and besides—" he shot her a sideways glance "—I always believe in finishing what I started. Don't you?"

  She made a quick calculation of what his thugs might find among her records. Surely the Krypteia didn't think she was foolish enough to commit incriminating evidence to paper?

  "The harness-maker's daughter was called Phoebe," he said, explaining on their way across the precinct how questioning friends and family had led to a young acolyte who had been courting her.

  "For a while, it seemed promising. Tibios is handsome enough, and he soon proved himself courteous, attentive, and generous."

  The problems arose when he became too attentive. Too generous. Instead of one bottle of perfume, he would send her a dozen. It was the same with wine cakes and honeycombs. He would present her with several new bath sponges every week. And positively showered her with cheap jewels and trinkets.

  "Phoebe found it overpowering, but endearing," Lysander continued. "It was only when Tibios began to stipulate which tunics she should wear and who she could meet with, and got angry when she refused to comply, that she realized this was not the man she wanted to marry."

  Iliona was beginning to understand. Intelligent, shrewd, and obsessively tidy were the hallmarks of a controlling nature. Men like that don't take kindly to rejection.

  In fact, many don't accept it, full stop.

  "My lady, meet Tibios. Tibios, meet the lady who outsmarted you and secured justice for nine vulnerable women."

  Handsome, certainly. Cheekbones a tad sharp, eyes a little too narrow, but yes. She could see why Phoebe would be attracted to him. Even in shackles, he was cocky.

  "I'm the one who needs justice." The acolyte leaned so far back in the chair that its front legs were off the tiles. "Bearing false witness is a serious crime, but that's what comes when you misinterpret entrails and cloud formations. Or was it rustling leaves and the warbling of doves?"

  "You presume," Iliona breezed, "that you were impo
rtant enough to warrant consulting the river god, but as it happens, Eurotas doesn't concern himself with parasites. You were just sloppy."

  "Sloppy?" The legs of the chair came crashing down. "From what I've heard, the killer left nothing to chance! Nothing!"

  As though he hadn't spoken, Iliona dripped essential oils into the burning lamps, driving out the smells of ink and dusty parchment and infusing the room with sandalwood, camphor, and myrrh. Behind the chair, the guards had merged into the shadows. Leaning against the wall in the corner, Lysander could have been carved out of marble.

  "That last house was barricaded from the inside," Tibios spat. "Tell me how getting past that isn't smart."

  "Well, now, that's exactly what I mean." Iliona picked up an ostrich feather fan and swept it over the shelves as though it was a duster. "You didn't need to bypass their security."

  "That's because the killer's a god. Passing through walls, or changing his shape to an insect and able to slip under doors."

  Tibios was too full of himself to question why a high priestess should be doing her own housework. Or notice that she was so unaccustomed to it that she was using the fan upside down.

  "Alas, Tibios, the truth is more mundane." Swish-swish-swish as though he was secondary to her task. "You were already inside."

  Another shot in the dark, although enquiries at the temple of Selene confirmed that Tibios had been off sick for the three days prior to the murder.

  "You knew this family. You knew their habits and your way around, and so, having hidden yourself in their cellar, how simple to slip a tincture of poppy juice into their wine that night, and then pff! Next you're stringing them up like hams over a fire."