The Pericles Commission

by Gary Corby

  “What do you mean?” Diotima asked, alarmed. “Are you in danger?”

  “No, quite the reverse.” I told her of the Polemarch’s offer, what it would mean for Pericles’ investigation.

  Diotima chewed her lip. She said doubtfully, “I don’t think you should do it, Nicolaos. I don’t trust the Polemarch.”

  “I don’t see a problem. He wants me because he thinks I have ability.”

  “Maybe he isn’t making the offer to have you working for him, but to stop you working for Pericles. It doesn’t sound genuine to me.”

  I had had the same thought, but I didn’t need Diotima reinforcing my own fears.

  “So you don’t think he’s judging me by my ability.”

  “Yes, he is. He might be worried you’ll do too good a job for Pericles.”

  At least that was a more pleasant way of looking at it.

  “You make the offer sound like some sort of bribe.”

  “Yes, precisely. I wonder what he has to hide?”

  A man passed by. He paid us no attention, but it put me in mind that we were in a somewhat exposed position to be discussing such things.

  “I must return to my family, and you’d better get back inside that house.”

  Diotima hesitated. “Uh, didn’t your father warn you not to come near me?”

  “I think the way your mother phrased it was that she is willing to risk your death if there’s a chance of avoiding Rizon.”

  Diotima grimaced. “I think I agree with Mother for the first time in my life. I’ll be done by lunch. Bring the box to me at home, in the afternoon. Pericles can’t have me at his house, and no one can accuse us of adultery if I’m being chaperoned by my own mother.” We both laughed.

  Diotima continued. “But give me a few hours first to get some rest, I’m going to be exhausted.”

  “Why exhausted? You don’t start the purification until dawn.”

  “If you had to spend the night in the same house as Stratonike, would you go to sleep?”

  “Good point.”

  12

  I was woken early next morning by the house slave. I groaned, rolled over, and opened one bleary eye to peer through the window. It was still dark outside, not even dawn.

  “What is it?” I mumbled. “Go away.”

  “Messenger for you,” the slave said quietly to avoid waking my brother.

  I groaned again, pulled on my tunic, and shuffled down the corridor, trying not to step on the planks that I knew creaked, through the courtyard and into the vestibule.

  The messenger was a young slave boy. His hand was shaking when he handed over a piece of torn papyrus and he stuttered the words, “Fr-fr-from the new mistress.” On it were scribbled two words: Come quickly. The finger marks where Diotima had held the papyrus were marked out clearly in drying blood.

  I grabbed the slave boy by both shoulders and shook him. “Is she alive? Is she hurt?” I demanded.

  But he fainted, and even slaps to the face could not bring him around. I let the fool fall to the floor and snatched the sword Sophroniscus had presented to me when I’d commenced ephebe training. It’s illegal for a citizen to carry a sword through Athens except on military duty, but I wasn’t going to worry about that now.

  I ran all the way and crashed through the door. Fortunately it was unbarred, because it never occurred to me to check. If it had been locked I would have broken my shoulder. The silence in the house was ominous. I saw bloodied footsteps leading both up and down the stairs to the women’s quarters. I bounded up and pushed through the upstairs door with my shield arm forward and my sword in ready thrust position.

  But there was no one to attack me. Blood lay everywhere. The floorboards were awash with it. Blood spattered two walls and lay across the couches. One of the nurses was slumped back across a couch, the wide, red streak of a deep slash wound in her forehead. I saw it had been either a sword or something like a butcher’s cleaver wielded by someone who hadn’t hesitated to kill brutally. The other nurse lay along the opposite wall, curled into a ball. The pool of blood thickest about her middle told me I didn’t need to look any closer. Stratonike lay on her back in the middle of the room, her head thrown back and her throat slashed open. Most of the blood pooling on the floor came from her.

  Diotima was in the middle of the room, like an island rising out of a sea of blood. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and forced a tiny smile. “I’ve had a lot of bad days recently. I wouldn’t mind having a good one for a change.”

  I helped her downstairs and called for slaves, but the only one there was Achilles. He told me the others had run. I couldn’t blame them, but I was angry they’d left Diotima behind. I was torn by priorities. I had to get Diotima back home to her mother’s house, but I didn’t dare leave the scene upstairs. There was no telling what might happen while I was gone. I had to find out who had done this and how Diotima had managed to survive. That would have to wait, though. Diotima wasn’t yet fit to talk.

  “Oh yes, I am,” she protested in gasps, when I said as much to Achilles. I had ordered him to escort Diotima home. The two of us had wiped her face, but fixing her soiled and bloodied dress was a problem we couldn’t solve without a female slave. “Anyway, this is my home now.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “You’ve only just moved in, and that was supposed to be for the night only. I didn’t think you’d become proprietorial.”

  “That was before someone dared to murder my household. I could have been in there!”

  “Why weren’t you?” I asked.

  “Remember the last thing I said to you last night? I resolved I was not going to spend a night in the same rooms as a mad-woman who had danced around her husband’s grave. So I walked about the house. I walked a lot. I looked into every nook and cranny. There was nothing else to do. I know this house as if I’ve lived in it. This place belongs to me now. Me, Nicolaos. I am mistress of this house.”

  Aha. Diotima had finally found somewhere she could be free of Euterpe. Granted, it had a few disappointing features. It was recently vacated by a murdered man-her father-it housed a violent lunatic, and to possess it, she would have to marry a loathsome creature. But even with these domestic inconveniences it was a place away from her mother, and that counted for a lot with Diotima.

  “I realized, I don’t know when, I couldn’t stay awake all night. I could barely stay on my feet. So I slipped into Father’s bedroom and slept in his bed. I barred the door so the slaves wouldn’t discover me in the morning. I thought I would slip back into the women’s quarters before dawn.”

  “The door to the women, did you bar it behind you?”

  “No. Stratonike was out cold. The nurses’ sleeping draft worked.”

  “So anyone could have walked in.”

  “The house was shut up tight.”

  Achilles spoke up, “If I might say, sir, the young mistress is quite right. I checked the doors myself before retiring, front and back. All was barred as it should be, sir.”

  “Windows?”

  “Downstairs shutters locked, sir.”

  Diotima said, “And besides, Nicolaos, remember I was walking the house for half the night. If someone had broken in I would have known for sure.”

  “Who found the bodies?”

  Diotima shuddered and went pale again. “I did, when I returned before dawn.”

  “Wait here.”

  I had left Diotima and Achilles as much to give myself a moment alone as to investigate. While I was out of sight I took the time to lean against a wall and feel sick. I was shaken by what had happened here. I stayed until my stomach had settled, then continued my work.

  I went around the doors, front and back, and every window. Every bar but the front door’s was in place. None showed the least sign of cracking.

  “When you sent the messenger to me, did you have to unbar the front door?” I asked on return.

  “Yes sir, I noticed that particularly,” Achilles said.

  I looked a
t him closely, unsure whether he understood the implication of what he said.

  I said slowly, “I should think the person who did this was a man. It must have required strength.”

  Diotima asked, “What do you think happened?”

  “You heard no screams?”

  “None. But then, by the time I fell asleep I was dead to the world, utterly exhausted.”

  Achilles said, “It may help you to know, sir, the old master Ephialtes had special work done to the women’s quarters. The workmen made double walls and pushed cloth within the gap. I think they did the same to the floor. One couldn’t hear what happened within.”

  “Why in Hades would they do that?” I asked, astounded.

  “It was on account of the old mistress, sir. For when she was having one of her…turns. She could scream fit to wake the dead. The neighbors complained, sir, and the slaves couldn’t get a night’s rest.”

  “I see.” That would explain why no one heard anything. And even if they did, everyone would assume Stratonike was having one of her screaming fits. What a beautiful opportunity to murder someone.

  “Sir? May I ask a question? I haven’t seen the room. I thought the old mistress must have taken to the old nurses and then killed herself. Isn’t that what happened?”

  I looked at Diotima meaningfully. She nodded. “Achilles was downstairs when I screamed and ran for help. He didn’t go up.”

  I looked at his bare feet. The crippling scars were there to be seen, and not the slightest trace of blood. They were perfectly clean. Very well then. “Achilles, it is most unlikely that your old mistress killed herself.”

  “Oh dear, sir.” I left them again and stepped outside into the street. The sun’s rays were strong now; the day had begun. There was a single set of bloody footprints going out the door and down the street. I squinted and studied in hope, but it was easy to see they’d been left by the boy who’d come to me. The back lane was even worse, the only obvious prints were my own from the night before. If an outsider had killed the women, he’d left without dripping blood, a feat I considered to be impossible.

  Was Achilles capable of this? There were two other men slaves; they’d been among those who’d run. But the slaves had left no blood in their wake. Achilles was clean.

  Hmm. He was clean. So was everyone else who’d left the house except the messenger boy. Diotima was the only one covered in blood, and I refused to believe she could have committed this crime. I returned once more to Diotima and Achilles.

  “Where do you wash yourselves in this house?”

  Achilles said, “The men slaves douse themselves back of the slave quarters, sir. The women do the same only they have a large basin they sit in, and there’s a screen for them. The master liked to use the baths at the gymnasium, of course. The old mistress and the nurses had water carried to their quarters. I believe there’s a copper tub.”

  Diotima nodded. She had a bit more color in her face. “The tub’s in the room beyond the bodies.”

  “Did you look there?”

  “This morning? No.”

  I went first to the corner behind the slave quarters. It was as Achilles described it. There was not a drop of blood to be seen. Also, it was perfectly dry. Whoever had killed the women hadn’t washed themselves here. Next I went back up the stairs, took a deep breath, and opened the door. I stepped through as quickly and gingerly as I could, trying not to step in the mess. I had to jump over the largest pool. Fortunately it was almost dried. The room beyond held beds, three chests, a cupboard, and a tub. One of the beds had metal rings bolted to the wall above it. There was stout rope hanging from the rings. I guessed this was where Stratonike slept. She was probably tied when she was being particularly difficult. The other two beds would be for the nurses. All three had been slept in.

  I looked closely at the tub and the floor between the tub and the door. Not a drop of blood to be seen, and these too, were dry. This was rapidly becoming irritating. My fine theory as to how the murderer managed to leave clean was being destroyed by lack of evidence.

  I put that aside for the moment and considered another question: how had the bodies ended in the common room? Had they been dragged from their beds? No, that was inconceivable. There was no blood in the bedroom. Had they been knocked unconscious in bed and then dragged? But then why didn’t attacking the first woman wake the others?

  So all three women had left their beds, and willingly walked to the common room to be murdered, like lambs to the slaughter. My imagination rebelled. I thought of the big, strong nurses with their muscled arms. I thought of the homicidal Stratonike. Any one of them would have scared me in a dark alley. All three together would be like facing the Furies. I shuddered to think what would happen to any man who took them on all at once.

  Stratonike’s arms were bruised, but there was no telling if that was the work of the murderer or the nurses handling her during the funeral. I could see from the stains that the blood had poured from her throat down both sides of her neck. She must have been lying as she was now when she died.

  How could the killer have persuaded her to lie still while he cut her throat? She might have been mad, but she wasn’t that far gone. Besides which, Stratonike was the homicidally inclined of the three. Why hadn’t she fought? The answer came to me immediately. Diotima had said the sleeping potion had put Stratonike out completely. Looking down at her now, I could see her face appeared calm and peaceful, possibly for the first time in many years.

  So if Stratonike was unconscious, why would anyone bother to murder her? The two nurses might have been disturbed by an intruder and walked into the common room to investigate, but that didn’t explain the death of their mistress.

  There was only one possible answer. The purpose of the intruder was to murder Stratonike. The nurses’ deaths were merely necessary because they’d been woken.

  I was quite pleased with myself. I’d made quick progress on these murders, faster than I’d managed with Ephialtes. I had a simple picture in mind.

  The murderer had crept into the bedroom, picked up the comatose Stratonike and carried her into the common room where he proceeded to open her throat. This woke at least one and possibly both nurses, who came out to investigate. They probably saw that Stratonike had left her bed, and thought she was making the noise. So they walked in unprepared for what was happening. The murderer took a swipe at the first nurse from his crouching position over Stratonike. That’s why the nurse was struck in the stomach. She fell to the side. The murderer, now standing, swung at the next nurse, taking her in the head. She was flung onto the couch where she quickly died, spurting blood up the wall.

  The scene was perfect in my mind. It explained the state of every corpse.

  Then the murderer, who must have been dripping in gore, walked out of the room leaving no trace, no track, no drops of blood on the stairs or on the ground floor.

  No, it was impossible. Yet my theory fit so well, I felt I had the right basic idea. So the killer had cleaned himself before leaving. He must have. But there were only two ways he could have done that, and both were pristine dry.

  I set that problem aside once again and considered who would want to murder Stratonike. The nurses sprang instantly to mind. I glanced at their mutilated bodies and decided I could eliminate them as suspects. Who else? Diotima. And she was the only one covered in gore. If Diotima killed the women, it would explain everything and eliminate the need for the killer to be clean. My mind rebelled at the thought and I had to force myself to stay on track. I’d thought at first only a man would have the strength, but could I be wrong? I recalled our race though the city. She was definitely fit. And she loathed Stratonike-with good reason. Would her hatred supply the strength and will to cut her throat? It might…maybe. But if Diotima was the murderer, where was the weapon?

  I choked back my distaste and searched the women’s quarters thoroughly. I didn’t find a cleaver, nor a knife, nor a sword, nor any other weapon. There weren’t even the small kn
ives anyone would have. I supposed that was to be expected, given the presence of Stratonike.

  I returned to Diotima.

  “What took you so long?” she demanded. “I don’t have to ask where you’ve been.”

  My investigation had taken its toll. My sandals were red. I was spattered from my feet to my knees, and my palms were smeared.

  I ignored her comments and asked, “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “Hungry?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Not particularly. I don’t think I’ll be eating meat for a while. I want to see the knives.”

  “I’m coming with you this time,” Diotima said.

  She led me to the kitchen, next to the slaves’ quarters. It looked much like the kitchen of my home, with the oven placed outside to avoid fires and the preparation bench and food stores inside. The knives were hung on hooks. Every hook had a knife.

  Diotima frowned. “How strange.”

  “What is?”

  “The knives are all there.”

  I nodded unhappily. “Yes, I was expecting one to be missing.”

  “No, Nicolaos, you don’t understand, there was a knife missing.”

  That startled me. “Say that again?”

  “Last night, as I wandered the house, I came in here and I noticed there was a knife missing. That one.” She pointed to the meat cleaver.

  I stepped close to the cleaver and stared. “I can see the slightest trace of blood on it, in the crack between the handle and the blade.”

  “Of course you can, it’s a meat cleaver.”

  Achilles coughed. “Excuse me, young mistress, but I think you must be mistaken. All the knives were there yesterday morning.”

  “Nonsense,” Diotima said brusquely. “The cleaver wasn’t there last night.”

  “It was there in the afternoon. I saw it.”

  “Are you sure, Achilles?” I asked.

  “Quite sure, sir. I looked over the kitchen especially because we all expected the new master to stay for the funeral feast.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  Diotima said, “He did. But being the only male family member, it was a depressing affair even by the usual standards. Stratonike was alternating between wailing a cacophony and hysterical laughter. Rizon shouted at the nurses and me to shut her up. He was in a foul mood after what happened at the funeral. He walked up to the nurses and shrieked at them that Stratonike was to be silent or he’d have them beaten.”