The Mammoth Book of Classical Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  was all the same: what men imagine as ‘chaos,’ that jumble of elemental stuff, a lifeless heap, with neither Sun to shed its light, nor Moon to wax and wane, nor earth poised in its atmosphere of air.

  If there was land and sea, there was no discernible shoreline.

  no way to walk on the one, or swim or sail in the other.

  In the gloom and murk, vague shapes appeared for a moment, loomed

  and then gave way, unsaying themselves and the world as well.

  It was, of course, a tricky matter in the Emperor’s palace to find the true owner of the ivory-handled dagger – the presumed murder weapon. Ovid sat in the murder room for an hour thinking of nothing but that. And finally determined that was the thing to do.

  Nothing.

  For the time being, at least.

  He hid the knife away in his own quarters, but took the only other article he had seized – the victim’s overflowing purse – and dropped it almost too casually in front of Augustus as he sat at his work table dashing off letters to officials halfway across the world.

  ‘No robbery, this, my lord,’ Ovid said.

  Augustus was not unimpressed as he fondled the purse. But then: ‘Chancellor’s office for safekeeping, my boy,’ he said with dismissive ingratitude (or so the suffering poet believed). ‘And I knew that much all along,’ he chided just before Ovid could safely reach the door.

  He now began a different phase of his investigation. He would trace Marcellus’ every move for the final three days of his life. Everyone he spoke to, everyone who saw him. Everything he ate. Or drank. Everywhere he went. Everything he did.

  All this, Ovid expected, would lead to nothing. And everything. Some would just get annoyed. Or enraged at his prodding questions. But someone somewhere along the line would get nervous. And make a mistake. Hopefully a big one.

  Marcellus had been killed on Friday, so Ovid used the previous Tuesday for his starting point. The hard part was beginning at the logical place, with the grieving widow, Camilla. She was a small, dark woman – nondescript at first glance. But her intense manner, the sound of her voice, the way she moved when she spoke, unmasked a raw, compelling beauty.

  ‘You’re really looking for the killer?’ she said. ‘So you don’t have so far to look.’

  Ovid shook his head. ‘My Lady, I assure you –’

  ‘So what’s a poet doing investigating a murder anyway?’ She snorted and tossed back a glass of wine with the aplomb of a teamster. ‘Ah, wait a minute. That’s right. You’re that poet. So . . . I see. You’re just . . . going through the motions, as they say.’

  She downed another glass and offered Ovid a refill, but he waved her away. Actually, he hadn’t touched his first round, though not from any abstemious sentiments. He was simply afraid this widow might do . . . anything.

  ‘My Lady, I need your help badly. We have little enough evidence now. So I’m hoping, sincerely, that by tracing your husband’s movements in those last days we can uncover something that will solve the case.’

  She studied him a long moment, then slowly finished her wine and poured another. Mercifully, she gave up offering the poet any more.

  ‘They were hectic days for him,’ she began last. ‘Just back from the front. I saw little of him, actually. We had breakfast together Tuesday – he had oysters and boiled asparagus, in case you’re interested. Then he was off to the Forum. He returned so late that night and left so early Wednesday I hardly saw him. We finally had late supper Wednesday night . . .’

  She trailed off, staring wistfully.

  ‘Did he say anything that might give some clue to . . . any trouble he was having?’

  She ignored him, evidently basking in her reverie. He tried to imagine what she saw: the great times of a blazing life with a famous man. Or, more likely, some tender moment. Some gesture she loved, some little thing he did that he himself was hardly aware of. The poet waited patiently, then started, gently, to repeat the question, but she cut him off, replying at last: ‘We talked of friends and family. The private conversation of a private man – a contented man and his devoted wife. He explained, as always, what was keeping him so busy, and it was predictable. A crush of ceremonial duties and personal tributes. His triumphal march and the games in his honor were to be on Sunday. Then we were going to his father’s estate at Tivoli for time together. I didn’t mind. He’d been away three months, so I could wait a few more days. The dutiful wife, you know. Of course I didn’t expect him to be murdered . . .’

  The muscles in her neck throbbed. She was plainly distraught, and Ovid waited for the tears. But her eyes stayed as cool and dry as a desert in December. He studied her: the graceful arch in her neck, the happy dimples in her cheeks, the slightly pouty lips. And those dark, unfathomable eyes: fiery but without anger, pitiless but not bitter. Cold but not cruel. Not surprisingly, he swiftly decided she was quite wonderful. And, as well the gods knew, Ovid knew women. But more about that later.

  Despite protestations of being merely a compliant wife, Camilla had no trouble providing him (albeit after some prodding) a detailed guide to her late husband’s closest friends and associates. And with that Ovid was off to the Forum himself in search of one Gallius Novo, influential senator and, save the Emperor, Marcellus’ most important mentor and benefactor. After just missing him several times, he finally caught up with him in the late afternoon at one of the rowdy new taverns on the fringes of the Campus Martius. Novo was with another friend, A vitus Lollianus.

  ‘You’ve come to the right place, poet; to know us is to know Marcellus Gaius.’ Novo was a great, red-faced bear of a man who boomed out his reassurance with a robust invitation to join them in a glass of wine. ‘We were with him every minute of those last days,’ Novo declared.

  With that Ovid was of a mind to dismiss his claims. But then with a horrible wink and uproarious laughter Novo put in, ‘Well, not every minute,’ so the poet joined them anyway. And though both men were drunk and loud and prone to digress, they seemed to grasp the details of the business in hand and managed on the whole to tell their story with reasonable clarity.

  Starting on Tuesday morning, Novo had escorted Marcellus to the Senate, where they listened for hours to syrupy praise from scores of windy senators. It was quite an ordeal, for though the speeches were sincere enough, the sheer extravagance of their praise, not to mention their length and repetitive detail, were based more on politics than merit.

  ‘. . . the greatest triumph since the inimitable Julius . . .’ ‘. . . a victory worthy of the gods . . .’ ‘. . . your name linked forever to the greatness of Rome . . .’ ‘. . . Marcellus, savior of the empire . . .’

  Of course each time Marcellus’ name was mentioned, it was in conjunction with Augustus – as if he owed his very existence, as well as all measure of success, to the Emperor himself. The trick, the hope, was that each man’s words would be repeated for the ruler’s facile ear, thus gaining favor at court. Truth be told, their hopes were futile, for it was an old game by now and a tired one – a game which Augustus, now sixty-eight, had stopped playing long ago.

  There followed an award ceremony on the Campus, then a bestowal of Jupiter’s blessing at the temple that ruled his house. That evening came a formal dinner at the palace, then a ribald gathering at one of the more fashionable bath houses – ‘Not for your official report, I trust,’ Novo interjected.

  On Wednesday Novo hosted a luncheon for his friend at his Palatine town house, and that evening Lollianus had Marcellus join two dozen key senators and ministers for an informal gathering at his house just across the hill.

  ‘He left early to join his wife,’ Lollianus said. ‘I know because I rode in the carriage with him, dropped him at home.’

  Thursday came another Senate ceremony – the formal announcement of the triumphal march and games on Sunday. Then a variety of informal get-togethers, some of them involving serious discussions of affairs of state. Late that night, as Marcellus was about to go home, a summons a
rrived from the Imperial palace.

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘A good six hours after dark, about midnight I’d say,’ Novo answered.

  ‘Who was it from, could you tell?’

  ‘Well, that was the oddest part. It wasn’t clear. It didn’t seem like it was from Augustus. It certainly didn’t bear his seal; I know that mark, believe me. But he can’t be ruled out, either.’

  ‘And . . . Marcellus went, I presume.’

  Both men squinted at him as if he had to be from someplace very far away to pose such a question.

  ‘And do you know, did he go home at all that night?’ He somehow hadn’t gotten a clear answer from Camilla, and now both men claimed they simply didn’t know.

  By their accounts of the festivities and fun one could easily believe that Rome was an idyllic place of ambitious but fair-minded men who craved wealth and power but nonetheless lived primarily by a code of mutual trust and honor. It was hardly the truth, of course. Double-dealing and betrayal were often as not the order of the day. Even the admirable and popular Marcellus Gaius had known men he distrusted and who in turn conspired against him. It was, it seemed, the way of the world, especially in public life. Even poets knew that. Ovid surely did.

  Thus as dusk fell and Gallius Novo in particular became very drunk, he decided to stay with these men, to laugh at their jokes, even to tell a few himself (if he could remember any). And with gentle urging to take them through it all again – through the formal bombast of those three days and the (arguably unmentionable) vulgarities of the nights. To pry loose something that would point to someone that would lead somewhere which would begin somehow to identify . . . who again? Oh, you know who, Ovid told himself with an inner smirk. And then he drank more wine.

  I’m an exile’s book. He sent me. I’m tired. I feel trepidation approaching his city – kind reader, lend a hand!

  Have no fear, I won’t turn out an embarrassment to you: no instructions on love, not one page, not a syllable . . .

  See what I bring: you’ll find nothing here but lamentation . . .

  Ovid was vulnerable. Which is to say a case could be made against him. If one wanted to because one was his enemy. Or as a threat because one wanted something from him.

  ‘When she saw the mark of a body on the flattened grass,’ he had written just the other month,

  her leaping heart beat within her fearful bosom. And now midday had drawn short the unsubstantial shadows, and evening and morning were equally removed. Lo, he returns from the woods and scatters spring water on his glowing cheeks. Anxiously, she lies hid; he rests on the wonted grass and cries, ‘Come breeze, come tender Zephyrs!’ When the name’s pleasing error was manifest to the hapless woman, her reason returned and the true color to her face. She rises, and speeding to her lover’s embrace stirred with her hurrying frame the leaves that were in her way.

  So went but a tiny portion of a book the poet called The Art of Love, and there were blushing faces and some outraged lips as it began to circulate in the weeks before the murder. It was one thing, some said, to write that earthy tome of years ago. What was it again? Oh, yes, the . . . Metamorphoses. But this . . . This was different. This was so . . . blatant. So . . . well, filthy, they said.

  Besides, it wasn’t just what he wrote. It was how he lived – that man and all those . . . women. By the dozens, so the rumors proclaimed. Thus his reputation was unsavory, to say the least – though only among those who didn’t know him. Those who did found him a gentle man – bright, pleasant, interesting. Clear of mind and fair of heart.

  All those women (and over the years there had indeed been more than a few) adored him, evidently, because he was that rarity: a man who truly liked them, truly enjoyed their company. Loved having them around, loved listening to them talk. About some kitchen mishap. Or a dazzling new outfit. Or some entrancing new shade of lip rouge or style of silk just off an elephant train from India. All the things that most men found so silly, even loathsome, kept our poet amused by the hour.

  Ovid of course had been a favorite of the Emperor’s for many years, and partly because of that he was acquainted with a host of distinguished Roman men. But he frankly found it something of a chore to be in their company for long. Whiling away the hours talking and drinking with them held little appeal. He simply didn’t see the point, unlike the majority of men who apart from sex cannot wait to escape their wives or mistresses in search of masculine companionship.

  Thus, Ovid was in the truest sense a ladies’ man. He was also, sad to say, a scandal of what might be called the chronically nascent sort: which is to say, a scandal-in-waiting. It was a lingering sore that had been lanced at long last a few weeks before – and at the worst possible time: just days after the first copies of his ‘love book’ (as everybody was calling it) had gone into circulation.

  A woman of especially noble birth and connection had been seen leaving his rooms in the black predawn hours. ‘Relax. Stay awhile. Wait till after breakfast, no one will notice you then,’ he had implored her. But feeling sudden pangs of remorse she felt compelled to return at once to her twit of a husband.

  The shock waves were mighty indeed from that transgression. The sniping took an ugly turn, with vicious new remarks reaching his ears daily. He was accosted and threatened by a friend of the cuckold in the highly public confines of a bath house, and, horror of horrors, someone even offered a thinly-veiled innuendo on the Senate floor.

  ‘Are Rome’s morals not in shambles enough without our most scholarly denizens, ostensibly dedicated to the beautification of the world, sinking to the low behavior of some freedman or ponce?’ inquired one Decius Curio, scion of one of Rome’s most ancient families and another friend of the aggrieved husband.

  It was then that Ovid, becoming seriously alarmed, sought the personal protection of Augustus.

  ‘Fix it all up for you; nothing to worry about. Don’t give it another thought,’ the Emperor had told him in his most reassuring manner (a manner, it should be pointed out, that was known to have sent defeated and trembling generals out of his presence and back into battle aglow with renewed fervor and confidence).

  Well, he’d fixed it, all right. The sniping stopped, well enough. But the next thing he knew he was neck-deep in this murder thing. As the ‘detective,’ no less, and with all the pitfalls inevitable to the case. And he honestly didn’t know where it might lead. Or end. As he had recently written (though in another context):

  What a fire was in thy maddened heart! Soon, she would come, that Aura, whoe’er she might be, and thine own eyes would see the shame. Now dost thou regret thy coming (for thou could’st not wish to find him guilty). To commend belief there is the name and the place and the informer, and because the mind ever thinks its fears are true.

  Indeed, Ovid’s fears – and his belief in them – grew by the hour.

  A starless, moonless night. Ovid in his unlit rooms. Alone. He has listened to the stories of the drunken men, the senator Gallius Novo and his friend Avitus Lollianus. They have laughed about the bombast and boredom of the days, and cried over a touching night-time episode or two.

  ‘No one had any reason to take his life, I’m sure of that much,’ said Gallius Novo, and his friend nodded in solemn agreement.

  But as poor Ovid, sitting in the pitch blackness, thought it all through he realized that without even knowing it they had implicated someone. Not once but again and again this man’s name had come up. Not in any terribly dramatic way. But in his glum, standoffish, even scowling manner, the man in question seemingly posed a stark contrast to everyone else who had seen Marcellus Gaius in the final hours of his life.

  Unluckily, the man was a formidable figure in his own right, so the question of the moment was what would the poet do about that. He continued to sit and think.

  ‘Platter and loincloth’ was the ancient rule for searching a man’s home. That is to say, if a man stood under a cloud and you wished to search his quarters, you could enter wearin
g only a loincloth and carrying only a tray – to ensure that you couldn’t plant evidence in an attempt to impeach him falsely.

  It is a harsh rule, Ovid thought glumly, glancing at himself in the mirror. At twenty, possessing a kind of sylphic comeliness, he wouldn’t have minded. Now, at fifty, he cringed a little at his own reflection. He would do it, nonetheless. He had decided: he would search the palace apartments of no less than Tiberius Drusus, son of the Emperor’s wife by a previous marriage. And, by the way, the other heir apparent.

  And even though the ancient law technically required Tiberius to admit him, once he agreed to abide by the platter-and-loincloth rule, he felt it best to seek more palpable authority for an action that many would consider thoroughly outlandish.

  ‘Tiberius!’ Augustus exploded when Ovid saw him shortly past daybreak. ‘You suspect Tiberius?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘It makes sense, of course. They were rivals, always have been. Never liked each other. Oil and water, they were. Together, but never mixing. Always disagreeing.’ The king of the world paced off the room, shaking his head, muttering. ‘But . . . murder?’

  ‘It’s horrible, I know, My Lord. But there are indications . . .’

  Augustus whirled on him, his face dangerously set. ‘Indications? For a search? But what about evidence?’ At least that was what Ovid expected him to say – and by rights those should have been just the words he chose. Instead, as if abruptly remembering something important, he eased the look on his face and said: ‘Well, fine, then. I’ll swear you in as delator, investigator, loan you a few guardsmen and you’ll search the place in your skimpies, eh?’

  Augustus laughed and Ovid smiled thinly.

  ‘Oh come now, it’s not that bad, my boy.’

  ‘Oh no, sir, not at all. I was just . . . admiring your –’

  ‘Ah, I see. You thought I would have forgotten the ancient rank. But no, it was drilled into me as a boy, that one and all those long-ago titles and forms.’