The Mammoth Book of Classical Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  ‘Theodore is with Anna. In the main reception hall. Euthymius has been wandering about in an agitated state. He says he needs to talk to you.’

  ‘Later. I doubt the attendant has much of value to say. Too flighty. What about Gaius?’

  ‘Ah . . . our reluctant recruit . . . he has taken up residence in one of the sitting rooms and has granted an audience to a selection of Theodore’s wines.’

  ‘Taking up where we forced him to leave off, in other words. I’m surprised the man has such a good practice at the court.’

  As John’s eyes grew accustomed to the soft darkness he could distinguish the pale glow of Anna’s white and yellow flowers against the black masses of their leaves.

  ‘You asked Hypatia to meet us here?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anatolius gave a sudden oath. ‘A thorn,’ he explained, putting his wounded hand to his mouth.

  ‘You should learn to curse in Egyptian, as I do.’ John smiled thinly. ‘You run less risk of offending.’

  Anatolius plucked a white rose from the bush. ‘It is a mystery, isn’t it, that beauty can hurt so? If only I were a poet!’

  ‘You don’t need to be a poet to appreciate beauty – or to see irony.’

  ‘Look, here is a beauty more stealthy than the rose.’ Anatolius indicated a tall plant with pale delicate flowers. ‘This is one of Anna’s yellow plants. I have heard it called Hecate’s flower. Hypatia’s name for it I can scarcely pronounce. Its root can produce a deadly poison. Is it something like that you suspect?’

  John touched one of the leaves. ‘Such things are certainly no secret to anyone who gardens.’

  ‘But I understand in smaller quantities it is effective against fevers and relieves the toothache. And I am told it can even be used in aphrodisiacs.’

  ‘Yes. In Egypt it is sometimes added to what they call manzoul.’

  ‘You know of such things?’

  John laughed, softly. ‘Ah, my friend when I was in Alexandria there was a girl, Cornelia. I had no need of manzoul then.’ John’s tone was matter of fact. He had long since come to terms with his affliction. ‘Hypatia would be able to tell you how to make it, I’m sure. It’s a mixture of oils with spices and honey added to sweeten it. They swear by it in Alexandria. In fact madams quite often keep a supply on hand in case certain of their clientele need its assistance. Of course, they also charge double for such cases, or so it is rumored.’

  ‘Besides that, thieves use it to render chickens unconscious, the easier to make off with them.’ It was Hypatia, who had been listening in the shadows. She spoke in Egyptian. ‘You know the customs of my country, Lord Chamberlain.’

  ‘I hope the information I have been giving Anatolius was correct.’ John replied in the same tongue. He noted wryly that this was the second time he had been surprised in the thickly-grown garden Anna had so diligently cultivated.

  ‘Indeed. And you speak my language passably.’

  In the dim moonlight Hypatia’s tawny skin appeared much paler than it had inside the house. Her large eyes were black wells. John could understand why Anatolius had been attracted to the girl.

  ‘I am sorry to have to question you at this hour.’

  ‘No one will sleep tonight.’

  ‘It must have been a shock, the Lady Anna’s death.’

  ‘Don’t think badly of me. I haven’t been able to cry for her. I know it makes no sense, but I can’t seem to stop crying for her poor Nefertiti. That was what she called her cat.’

  ‘You’ll cry for your mistress soon enough. How long have you been here?’

  ‘Four months. I am new to your country.’

  ‘You arrived in time to help with the spring plantings.’

  ‘She loved her gardens. A day never went by when she didn’t pull on her gloves and work the earth.’

  ‘But you assisted in other ways?’

  ‘That is so. I helped her with her toilette.’

  ‘I see you helped her dress for tonight?’

  ‘Oh, the master told you?’ The question was without guile.

  ‘Her hair is dressed after the Egyptian manner or as it was, as I recall, when I lived there. But wasn’t that Euthymius’ job?’

  ‘That is true. But my lady Anna liked to talk with me. We shared interests.’

  ‘You were friends?’

  ‘She was my mistress,’ Hypatia was almost curt. ‘Anyway, the master sometimes helped out in that line too. I had other tasks also. I made perfumes and unguents for her hands, cosmetics, things like that. Sometimes, I would brew potions if she had ailments of the throat or – ’ she hesitated for a second, ‘– feminine problems such as ladies sometimes have.’

  ‘I have heard that there was tension between man and mistress?’

  Hypatia looked at the starry sky and John saw a fleeting reflection of the sickle moon in the depths of her eyes.

  ‘The master adored her. Anything she wanted, he would ensure it was hers. He waited on her like a handmaid. This very morning, since it was their special day, he did her toilette himself. He was an expert, of course. My lady told me that the court dandies expect their tonsor to stick as many patches to their faces as any woman would wear. But my lady had lovely skin.’

  John wondered if the departed gentlewoman had also told her beautiful young servant that the ladies of the court joked that none of them would have taken as a lover a man as homely as she? ‘I know about his devotion,’ he said, ‘but, between husband and wife, there should be more.’

  ‘My mistress loved him with all her heart. She was sad that there were no children to bear the family name, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Had the master grown cold to her?’

  ‘Sometimes, after awhile, those who cannot are afraid to try.’

  ‘I noted many of the banquet tidbits were those which the superstitious believe will inflame a man.’

  Again the girl nodded. ‘She had prayed to Venus that she would be fruitful, and then she dreamed –’ the husky voice faltered and the dark wells of her eyes brimmed salt.

  John nodded, ‘Yes, I do understand. And tell me, did you brew anything to assist her? Peter had cooked a meal for passion, and Venus’ flowers were all over the bedroom. It would seem –’

  ‘Yes. She asked me if I could make something. To encourage him.’

  ‘It was manzoul? Perhaps you erred in measuring the ingredients?’

  ‘I am not so careless. Besides, the manzoul was never finished. I brewed the potion yesterday, in my room. I knew there wouldn’t be time this morning. There was the kneading of the sweetmeats, in which the potion was to be placed. But when I went to the kitchen to make them, there wasn’t enough honey left.’

  ‘Peter had stewed dates in honey. Wasn’t there more in the house?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Lady Anna instructed Euthymius to buy some. He always spends an hour or two at the market in the afternoon. The mistress preferred that I help finish her toilette. The master had been assisting earlier, but she was so nervous, she went out to the gardens and pulled weeds. Her hair came undone and I had to dress it all over again. The mistress was pleased. It was a new style for her. She even gave me a goblet of her wine. And afterwards I went out for a walk in the garden and – I found poor Nefertiti.’

  ‘Where was this?’ John asked gently.

  ‘Just over there, in the corner, by the statue of Eros. It was like some terrible omen. It must have been an omen. I had no idea that – that –’

  Hypatia could hold back tears no longer. She bowed her head, John placed his arm around her shoulders and felt her shaking. Now, he suspected she was crying for her mistress. Tears, John thought, not the water in Theodore’s clocks, were the truest measure of this day.

  Nearly a third of the summer night’s short hours had passed by the time John’s interview with Hypatia ended. As he passed through the colonnades and re-entered the house with its guttering lamps and dripping clocks, his mind refused to settle but fluttered and drifted, a butterfly in a w
indswept garden. It was his way. He did not find his way step by step, but leaped, sometimes blindly, often to the wrong places. His leaps sometimes took him places plodders could never reach. In the course of his official duties as Lord Chamberlain he clung to the rigid details of court ceremony, while his mind wandered freely.

  Now he wished he had the night-time hours of winter, longer than those of the summer, for the Romans insisted on twelve equal hours of night and day. It was an amazing audacity, that man would try to fit to a procrustean bed, time, which could not be seen, or heard or felt.

  On his way out of the garden, where he had left Hypatia and Anatolius, he had passed the patch of freshly spaded earth where the cat had been buried. Had it been an omen, that the cat was found dead at the base of the statue of Eros?

  Or a warning?

  The perfume of roses met John when he entered the reception hall. Theodore had had Anna’s body placed on a couch between two pillars near the back of the room, away from the lamplight. An enormous bunch of roses sat in a vase atop a nearby table. A few petals had fallen on to the inlaid tabletop. John picked up a petal, its sweet silkiness sliding through his fingers.

  ‘They say all roses were white, until your goddess of love walked on them, a thorn pierced her foot and her blood dyed the blossoms scarlet. Isn’t that the legend, Theodore?’

  Theodore was lingering near the center of the hall, facing the couch where his wife lay. It was as if he were afraid to approach her, stranger that she had become.

  ‘You call it a legend,’ he said finally. ‘You’re like Peter, you worship a newer god.’

  ‘Not Peter’s God.’

  ‘Jupiter, Jesus, Mithra . . . the gods change, the world doesn’t.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have done this, Theodore?’

  ‘You really believe Anna was . . . no, I can’t imagine. This is a small household. Surely it might have been an accident? Something tainted?’

  ‘She had eaten nothing. So the servants tell me.’

  ‘I’ve written down all necessary arrangements. In case I cannot carry on tomorrow.’

  ‘I will see to everything if it should become necessary to do so.’

  ‘Thank you, John. You were a good friend to Anna.’

  ‘She had a great spirit, Theodore. I regret I must ask, however, before you retire, can you tell me anything more about today?’

  Theodore continued to direct his gaze toward his wife. ‘What do you wish to know? I was away from the house most of the day. I met Anatolius in the market.’

  ‘Earlier?’

  ‘Anna had planned something special. She was secretive. I helped her with her toilette. Rouged her cheeks, colored her nails and did her hair, that kind of thing. We were in the kitchen so I would have good light to work by. The sun comes in there in the morning. I know many laugh. But, it was my profession to assist all to look their best, and it has served me well. I was most familiar, you understand, with her imperfections and so knew what had to be done. I was better at it than her attendant. Better than her little friend the Egyptian, for that matter. Though Anna seemed much taken with her. Not that I assisted Anna often in that way. It wouldn’t be a manly thing.’

  ‘No,’ agreed John, ‘I can see that.’

  John climbed to the servants’ quarters on the third floor on the opposite side of the house from Anna’s apartments. The old cook, alerted by the creaking stairs, opened his door when John reached it. The Lord Chamberlain wedged himself into Peter’s living quarters, finding standing room between the mattress, whose straw stuffing erupted from one corner, and a rough wooden chest. He placed his feet carefully to avoid an earthenware chamber pot.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Peter, ‘the master attended to the mistress’s toilette in the kitchen. When I said no one comes into my kitchen when I’m cooking, I didn’t mean the master and the mistress. Who am I to order them about? Besides, I hadn’t started cooking. I was cleaning and chopping.’

  ‘How was the mistress?’

  ‘She seemed as well as I’ve ever seen her. There was no need to paint her like that.’

  ‘And her spirits?’

  ‘More than one of your pagan poets was quoted. I tried not to listen, Lord Chamberlain. It was private.’

  A flickering candle on the small chest revealed no decorations apart from a large wooden cross hanging over the worn mattress. Although Peter had embraced cold Christianity in his old age, John guessed the former legion cook had drawn warmer and less demanding mistresses to him in his youth. ‘You don’t approve of the old gods.’ His curiosity was piqued.

  ‘There are no old gods, if you’ll pardon my saying so, excellency. Even though some will worship anything – lightning, a tree, a bull or a cat, the sun and moon or the sea.’

  ‘I understand that you would not eavesdrop, Peter, but surely you could not help seeing? What, exactly, were these preparations that you mention?’

  ‘Exactly? If I’d watched that closely I’d have dumped some of my fingers into the pot with the melons I was chopping. You’ve seen the painted ladies at court, Lord Chamberlain? Well, after she was rouged and such she looked like that. Then she was off straight out to her garden. She thought it would calm her down. She liked to have her hands in the earth. She’ll be part of it now herself, God rest her soul.’

  John changed the direction of his questioning. ‘Is this part of the house used much?’

  ‘Only by the servants. The other rooms were to be for the children. The master had them closed up, finally. The master and mistress haven’t set foot on the stairs for a year or more. Now she never will.’

  The old man made a mystical sign that the pagan John recognized as Christian.

  Anna’s room had grown cold. John had found a candle in a hall cupboard and discovered it was notched – another clock. He felt it was wrong somehow to start the hours again in this room where the disarmed clypsedra stood guard. Better for it to remain timeless.

  Nevertheless, he needed light, so he moved around the small space, lighting lamps on the dressing table and in the twin wall niche opposite the clypsedra. Oil hissed and flared up, spilling an orange glow across the tiles and on to plain plaster walls.

  Anna’s apartments were directly opposite her husband’s suite. Looking out of the open second-story window, across the gardens, John could see the black rectangle of Theodore’s window. Ironically, he could just make out the glimmering statue of Eros below it.

  John sighed. It was quite usual for married couples to maintain separate rooms and was as likely to signify a show of wealth as any lack of affection. The poor, in the crowded tenements of Constantinople, had no choice but to share their verminous straw.

  He turned back to the room which looked as plain as its owner. A low wooden bed with turned legs hugged one wall. Anna’s robes still lay across the yellow counterpane draped over the bed. A chest, with an inlaid top, and next to it a simple wooden chair, completed the furnishings.

  Not only had Anna died here, but it was here she had ingested the poison that had killed her so quickly. Of that, John was certain. And yet, she had retired to this room and not emerged. Nor had anyone entered.

  Who had said so?

  John could believe Anna would have retired to her private apartments to await her husband’s return. Theodore had definitely been away from the house. Anatolius’ meeting with him in the market attested to it. Yet Anna had been dying even as Theodore spoke to Anatolius. Euthymius had also been to the market, as usual. And Sophia had not yet arrived. Peter was in the house, cooking, and hadn’t left the kitchen, or so he said. Not that Anna would have accepted anything from him in her room, since, aside from a husband, men were not allowed within a lady’s apartments. Which left Hypatia. Who had been with Anna earlier, who had become a great favorite with her and spent more time with her lately than even Anna’s attendant Euthymius, or so it seemed.

  John wished he could examine the room in daylight. It seemed empty of any clue to what had occurred.
The top of the chest was barren. What had he expected? A crumb, from a secreted sweet? A telltale ring from a wet goblet? The floor was bare, save for the mat beside the bed. Anna’s clothes lay undisturbed. John noticed the pair of gloves draped across the bed’s headboard were rough work gloves, soiled with earth. Her gardening gloves.

  John directed candlelight into the corners. Something glinted. He bent and picked up a pearl-worked brooch.

  He got on his knees to shine the light under the bed. Something near the wall cast an elongated shadow. Flame licked back along the shortening taper, burning his hand. He bit back an oath. The candle hit the floor and went out.

  John put his shoulder to the tiles, reaching under the bed. His fingers slid across grit. There. His fingertips touched something more substantial, pushed it away. He shifted his body, until his ear was against the cold floor, stretching further, straining, until he had whatever it was under his fingers.

  He pulled it out. In the fitful light from the lamps he examined his prize. Embedded in a clump of hair, dust, fingernail parings and dried insect husks, was an apricot pit.

  John smelled pomade over the more subtle, pleasing scents of damp earth and slumbering flowers before he saw Euthymius looming between the columns at the edge of the garden. The Lord Chamberlain had retreated to the steps of Theodore’s private bath house, to be alone, to think, before the night fled entirely. It was more than half gone now, according to Theodore’s accursed clocks. The lady’s chambers might be reserved to the women and the third floor to the servants, but clocks were everywhere, and so was Euthymius, it seemed.

  ‘Lord Chamberlain. I have to speak with you.’

  To John’s discomfiture the big eunuch dropped down on to the marble step beside him.

  ‘You’ve spoken to the others, already, haven’t you?’ Euthymius sounded plaintive.

  ‘Yes,’ John admitted. He probably should have spoken to the attendant earlier, although he doubted Euthymius could add anything to what he had already ascertained.

  ‘It was terrible, finding her like that.’ The attendant’s voice was piercing. John reminded himself that it was not Euthymius’ fault, the eunuch had not chosen to be what he was. Still, John found himself sliding away.