Murder in Megara

by Eric Mayer

  “You also said he was a dangerous man.”

  “I am familiar in dealing with dangerous men!”

  Cornelia stared at him, speechless. Then she shook her head from side to side and gave a thin laugh. “Oh, John, a heartbeat ago you were explaining to me why you were a suspect. Now you are telling me it’s not even necessary to investigate. And there’s something else I’ve been worrying about. How do you know you weren’t the intended victim?” Her voice rose.

  John stood. “Always losing your temper or asking unanswerable questions, Cornelia.” He put his hand on her shoulder and bent to kiss her furrowed brow. “Or both. Of course I had thought of that possibility.”

  “Goddess! You appear remarkably unconcerned,” she snapped back.

  “I didn’t want you to worry. We’ll talk about it later today. Now I have retired from my official duties—”

  “An involuntary retirement!”

  “Indeed. But an estate owner must direct his men as to the tasks to be undertaken and the sun tells me I am already late in attending to that. You wanted me to be a farmer. That’s what I am now. You should be pleased.”

  As he turned his back to leave Cornelia picked up her uneaten bread. Rather than throwing it at him she dunked it in her wine and forced a mouthful down.

  ***

  The day became as hot as the morning sun had promised. Cornelia uncrated a set of silver dishes and pondered whether she and John should begin using the triclinium for their meals. Situated on the ground floor, it was more convenient to the kitchen. Hypatia would not have to carry plates of food up the stairs.

  She went to look over the triclinium where the crudely rendered waterfall in one corner caught her attention. It’s as if we were logs in a river, helplessly carried toward destruction, and about to go over a raging torrent like that, she thought. Helpless and nobody willing to throw a rope to rescue us. Nor wanting to, which was even worse.

  Then she began to notice the satyrs hiding in the painted bushes, and the peculiar, childish drawings of stranger beings apparently added to the wall murals more recently. They made her uneasy, even in the daylight. Was there a story behind them?

  She went across the courtyard and to keep busy began to check the amphorae of oil stored for market. Most were empty. The bundle of vegetation Hypatia had tied together was still hanging into the amphora in which the dead mouse had been found. What was it Hypatia had said she had used, coriander?

  She began to consider what needed to be purchased in the market for the week, although she wasn’t certain how the trip into Megara could be made safely. Corinth was less than a day’s journey. Would it be better to take a wagon there for supplies, a larger city where no one would pay any attention to a few strange faces? Or perhaps Athens, just a bit farther?

  Perspiration ran down her sides, tickling her ribs. Suddenly she decided she needed to bathe. It wasn’t just her sodden clothes or the gritty dust from the courtyard that had stuck to her. It was everything that had happened recently. The hatred of the city. Murder. The City Defender barging into their home, poking into every corner.

  The bath was on the ground floor. In contrast to the triclinium its mosaics featured a city scene which gave the user the impression of bathing in a public fountain in a forum. Perhaps the artisans who had decorated this country house had indulged their senses of humor at the expense, in both senses of the word, of the owner.

  The hypocaust was not working, but on a day like this tepid water would be a relief. She left her clothes in the cramped vestibule and went down the steps into the pool. It was not large, but larger than the one in John’s city house. The dome overhead was blue but sooty from lamps that burned in wall niches during the evenings. She couldn’t tell whether the vague white shapes flying in the mosaic overhead were intended to represent clouds or angels.

  Angels, she eventually decided, given a domed church dominated one side of an open square, just as the Great Church loomed over the vast plaza of the Augustaion near the imperial palace in Constantinople. There was even a stylite on a column, getting a clear view down into the bath, along with numerous classical Greek statues, marble sculptures rendered in miniature with tesserae.

  Cornelia sluiced herself down and pushed dripping hair away from her face. As she stretched out her arms, letting the air play luxuriously over her wet body, she noticed several carefully detailed pedestrians facing in her direction.

  “Go ahead, don’t bother moving. Stand there and stare if you must. I don’t care. On a day like this I’d happily bathe in the Hippodrome on race day if I could feel cool!”

  She reached up and toward the dome and writhed sensuously, a move from long ago days when she’d danced after leaping from bulls for a living. “There, are you happy or would you like more?”

  “More, definitely,” came a voice from the doorway.

  “John! How long have you been standing there?”

  “Hardly an instant!” He marched naked into the room and down into the water. “Before you say anything, Cornelia, yes, I will investigate this wretched matter. Now let’s say nothing more about it and just sit together for a while and enjoy the scenery!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The cooling effect of the tepid bath didn’t last as long as it took John to interview Peter. By the time he left the room where Peter remained in bed, although now propped up on pillows, he felt as sticky and uncomfortable as he had before.

  The old servant seemed confused. His memories of the previous night were at some points fragmentary and at others nonexistent. He paused often, fumbled for words. Except for the accident and the likelihood he was still suffering from the shock of it, John would have suspected he was being evasive.

  “You don’t need to be concerned, master. The Lord was watching over me. I have tried hard to remember everything and I finally recalled that while I lay in the bottom of the pit I dreamed that an angel in robes emblazoned with golden crosses stood watch over me.” A look of bewilderment crossed his face. “Before that I could only remember the nightmares that came afterward. I must have been safely at the monastery by then, nearly awake and feeling my bruises.”

  Hypatia had stood in the doorway looking on with disapproval, her arms folded. “Perhaps his memories will come back when he has recovered, master,” she offered when John had given up his questioning.

  There didn’t seem to be anything to be learned that hadn’t been divulged earlier when Peter arrived home. Peter had left the house in a dark humor. Hypatia followed but failed to find him. Peter fell into a pit and was rescued by a monk from Saint Stephen’s Monastery who had ventured onto the estate to see what the commotion at the temple meant. Peter had remained at the monastery for hours, explaining why neither the City Defender’s men nor the workers sent out by John had located him.

  “You haven’t recalled anything you didn’t tell me this morning, Hypatia? Nothing has come back to you? Perhaps some detail you forgot due to your concerns for Peter?”

  “No, master.”

  “You are sure you saw no one else on the estate while you were searching for Peter? You didn’t hear anyone?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  John heard a hesitancy in her voice. “This isn’t just about Theophilus. Whoever murdered him probably meant, at the very least, to drive us out of Megara. For all we know Peter was also attacked. We’re assuming he fell into the pit by accident but he can’t actually recall how he got there so we cannot be certain.”

  Hypatia glanced over her shoulder into the room where Peter was lying and lowered her voice. “I talked to Philip, master. You know the watchmen were out and about as usual. I asked him if he had seen Peter, but he hadn’t. I’m afraid Peter would misinterpret matters if he knew about my talking to Philip.”

  “Where did you and Philip have this talk?”

  “He was patrolling the ridge overlooking the sea, not
far from the temple.”

  “He hadn’t noticed anyone?”

  She shook her head.

  “I will have to question him. He might have seen something after you parted.”

  Hypatia glanced nervously back into the bedroom again and John’s gaze followed hers. Peter lay with his eyes closed, looking old and frail.

  “If Peter remembers anything else, let me know. He may be more inclined to speak to you. And be careful and aware of your surroundings, Hypatia. Pretend you’re back at the palace.”

  “You think Peter’s in danger?” Her dark eyes widened as she grasped John’s meaning. “If someone attacked Peter or pushed him into that pit, because he saw something…”

  “We need to be alert to every possibility.”

  He went back out into the oven of the courtyard. Why had she been so reluctant to mention speaking with Philip? Why would it upset Peter? Did she have something to feel guilty about? He had to remind himself that he was investigating a murder, not his servants’ domestic affairs.

  ***

  Philip, son of John’s tenant farmer Lucian and head of the estate watchmen, was sitting half-asleep on a bench outside his father’s dwelling when John arrived. The foliage of a fig tree planted by the door provided welcome shade, and bees buzzing around a row of hives nearby added a somnolent note to the day.

  Perhaps it was the particular angle of the sun casting dappled shadows across the bench through the leaves of the fig tree that made John remember his youth, when on such a day he would be studying, seated at a bench under a tree at Plato’s Academy, and much further back, when his mother would be singing in a sunny kitchen as she performed whatever mysterious and necessary domestic rites mothers carried out in kitchens. He forcibly pushed his memories back into the past and hailed Philip as he approached.

  The young man rubbed his eyes and stood. “Sir?”

  Not for the first time Philip’s dark-haired handsome looks reminded John of his friend Anatolius back in Constantinople. Or rather, the younger version of his now gray-haired friend. John winced inwardly. How cluttered with the past one’s mind became. Whichever direction one turned, there was the past, always getting in the way. He was almost pleased when a light breeze sprang up, carrying the unappealing stench of pigs, a smell he recalled well enough but for which he harbored no nostalgia.

  Philip wrinkled his nose. “My father has had great success with swine, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “You were on duty overnight, Philip?”

  A nod.

  “Did you see anything of the dead man?”

  “No, sir. If I had I should have informed the City Defender.”

  “Hypatia says you weren’t far away when she spoke to you.”

  “She mentioned our meeting? Quite by chance, it was. She asked if I had seen the elderly servant she works with. She was out searching for him. It was unwise of her and I told her so. You can’t see the temple from that spot. You know the land there, all low hills and shallow depressions.”

  “The moon was bright last night.”

  “You can only see the temple from farther along the ridge in the direction of the monastery. I turned back before that point because the grounds curve away from the sea there. I wasn’t patrolling the far end. I’ll question the watchman who takes that section.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “Only the monks singing.”

  The young man’s father emerged from the house, squinting against the sunlight. Lucian was one of the fattest men John had ever seen and at Justinian’s court, thronged with the obscenely wealthy and well fed, he had seen some very obese men indeed. The farmer wobbled a few steps forward, then stopped and inhaled the odoriferous breeze. “Ah. You know what that is, sir? That’s the smell of good money.”

  Lucian’s voice boomed out, deep and resonant, as if his massive, bulging figure was as hollow as an untenanted tomb inside. “Don’t be hard on my boy,” he continued. “It’s too bad intruders got onto the estate but the property lines are long and the watchmen few.”

  Philip shot a look of consternation at Lucian. “Father, please!”

  “There’s some truth in what he says,” John replied. He didn’t add that he had attempted to engage more watchmen but found no one willing to work for him.

  Lucian broke in before John could say more. “You’ll be asking me if I saw anyone wandering about last night. Not that they’d try to get to the temple from this end of the estate. More likely to come up the path from the shore. I can’t tell you, since I was abed, like all laboring men should be at that time of night.”

  John ignored the remark. Lucian seemed altogether too jovial. With some that was their humors, with others their mask. “You’ve been a tenant here for years. Do you know anything about the dead man?”

  Lucian scrunched up his face, the movement highlighting multiple jowls and chins. His eyes were large and brown. In a different sort of man they might have been described as sensitive. Was a handsome man like his son buried under the years of accumulated flesh? “Theophilus left the area some time before I got here, sir. All I know I heard in Megara. His farm was at the other end of the estate and he never farmed it properly. Sold it to Senator Vinius. The senator had owned it for a while before I started renting this property.”

  Surely Lucian was aware of the gossip and knew that Theophilus was John’s stepfather? Was he pretending not to know or did he simply think it better not to mention it? “Do people say what he has been doing since then?”

  “He hired himself out as a laborer. Imagine that! But he hasn’t been in Megara for a long time. Moved, he did, sir. To Corinth, or was it Athens? Begging in the street for all anyone knows. What did he do with all the money he got for that farm? Must have squandered it. What I wouldn’t give for a windfall like that. But here I am, working myself to the bone.”

  “Your industriousness is admirable, Lucian. However, when it extends to putting estate land to your own personal use it is a different matter.”

  The accusation clearly took Lucian off guard. “What? What do you mean, sir? I farm my own parcel, nothing more.”

  “Not according to what I have discerned after talking to workers and the manner of cultivation—”

  “Untrue,” Lucian interrupted. “I deny any wrongdoing.”

  “Father!” snapped Philip, who immediately turned to John. “I assure you, sir, if what you say is true it was a mistake. The fences are in bad repair and this past winter we had to burn many of them for fuel.”

  John pointed out that landmarks such as a particular tree would serve just as well to show where Lucian’s land ended. “See that the fences are erected in the correct place as soon as possible,” he ordered Lucian.

  “Certainly, certainly,” Lucian muttered. “Now, if I may excuse myself sir, there are matters to be attended to. A farmer’s labors never cease.”

  ***

  After waddling into the house Lucian stood at an angle to the window, unobtrusively watching John confer with Philip. As soon as John had departed a tall man with a long face crept out of a back room, his soft boots making little sound.

  Diocles, the former overseer, clucked in a scolding fashion. “I heard that conversation, Lucian. Didn’t I tell you to leave those fences alone?”

  Lucian gave a massive shrug. “Fences are easily rebuilt. Philip, attend to it.” He addressed his son who’d just stepped inside. “You don’t have to be too accurate about where you place them either.”

  “You don’t want the new owner angry with you, Father.”

  Lucian didn’t bother to answer. Instead he rumbled at Diocles. “You can’t stay here much longer. If the eunuch sees you it will cause problems for me.”

  “I’d like to hear you call him eunuch to his face,” the other sneered.

  “It’s not wise to be disrespectful to your landl
ord and some things are better left unsaid,” Philip pointed out.

  “You are only polite because you’re after that dark-skinned servant of his.” Lucian smirked. “You’ve been given a job, go and do it.” Turning back to Diocles, he continued. “I want you to leave, my friend.”

  “Impossible. I need to stay on the estate, as you well know, at least until—”

  “Forget that. It isn’t worth the risk.”

  “Why did that fool Vinius have to die?”

  “We all have to die sometime. You should have thought of what might happen if we were burdened with an owner who wasn’t absent all the time.”

  “Easy enough to say now, Lucian. But who could have predicted anyone from Constantinople would come to live in this place?”

  “Not me. I’m a farmer, not a prophet. But I can definitely smell trouble on the way if you don’t get off the estate.”

  “After all I’ve done for you—”

  “It doesn’t look like you’re going to be able to do anything more for me, or anybody else. And your presence here puts us all in danger.”

  “Where is your gratitude? You can’t even put a roof over my head for a few days?”

  “I have put a roof over your head for a while. Now go lodge with someone else you imagine owes you something.”

  Diocles’ heated tone turned to ice. “Is it wise for you to turn me out, considering what I know?”

  Lucian shuffled forward until his enormous bulk was leaning menacingly near to the former overseer. “You’re not going to hang yourself to hang me. I am telling you to vacate this place immediately after dark.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  John traversed almost the entire length of the estate on his way to interview the blacksmith Petrus. For the most part he kept to the ridge along the sea. As he passed within sight of what was known locally as the Rock of Deliverance, he suppressed a shudder. Here, it was said, those disappointed by life came to find deliverance from their woes in the sea.