See Delphi And Die (5 page)

IX

We all paused to accustom our eyes to the lamplit gloom, after the noonday glare outside. Then we simply gasped with awe. It seemed only fair. The great Phidias had intended that we should.

There were other statues; the temple interior was an art gallery. They were wasted. All we could do was to stare up at Zeus, utterly smitten. From fourteen yards high, his head skimming the rafters, he seemed to be gazing down on us. At the steps of his throne stretched a glimmering pool, a rectangle of olive oil in which the Father of the Gods was cleanly reflected. Its moisture helped preserve the ivory of the chryselephantine colossus, though temple priests also burnished it with more oil daily. We were aware of their presence. Moving about discreetly, they tended their charge, supposedly all descendants in an unbroken line from the craftsmen who had worked for Phidias.

I had heard about this statue all my life. I could not now remember how and where I first read of it or was told of it. I had known what it would look like, the massive seated god, bearded and crowned with olive branches, his robe of gold adorned with creatures and flowers, his sceptre topped with the gold eagle, the winged figure of Victory in his right hand, the ebony and ivory throne adorned with precious stones and vibrant painting.

So many things in life are disappointing. But sometimes life confounds you: a promised Wonder of the World lives up to your hopes.

Helena and I stood for a long time, hand in hand. I felt the warmth of her bare arm alongside mine, the faint tickle on the top of my foot from the hem of her long gown. Helena was as cynical as me, but she knew how to give herself up fully to the enjoyment of great things. Her thrill became part of my own.

Eventually she dropped her head briefly against my shoulder, then told the excited youngsters that they could climb up to the higher level. Left alone, Helena and I turned a little towards each other and remained there together for a few more moments.

At length we walked quietly outside to the dazzling sunlight in the sanctuary, still hand in hand.

X

We paused on the steps until our breathing returned to normal. Our skin felt clammy with the mingled effects of incense and fine olive oil droplets.

Barzanes had failed to find another group. Although we had already tipped him, he hovered near us. He must have seen hundreds of awestruck spectators returning from their visit. He watched us approvingly.

Helena went off quietly to see the temple priests. We had had no sighting of her brother Aulus and if he was still here, we needed to track him down. If he had travelled away from Olympia, he would have left a message at the main temple, to be picked up by anyone who came after him. Aulus had his own assured style; he must have been certain I would rush out to Greece in response to his letter home.

Aulus would have given the priests money, but I made sure Helena could pay them another gratuity. It would be expected. Best to keep in with them. Zeus was indifferent to mortal men, but priests were easily slighted and in a sanctum like this they wielded enormous power.

I moved down the steps and joined our guide again.

'Did you enjoy your visit?' he asked.

'We are stunned!'

'Do you believe in the gods?' Barzanes now seemed more subdued. It was an odd thing to ask so abruptly.

'Enough to have cursed them, many times.' I recognised that he was trying to throw me off balance; I had met it before in my work. His attitude had changed; I wondered why. ' I believe in human endeavour. I am impressed by the statue of Phidias as a great feat of craftsmanship, devotion, and imagination... I believe,' I said softly,' that most mysteries have a logical explanation; all you have to do is find it.'

I left him to work out what mysteries I meant.

I gazed around the Altis, where the ancient temples, tombs, and treasuries were bathed in light beneath a monochrome blue sky of deep intensity. The cockerel who woke us this morning was still crowing in the distance. Somewhere nearer, a bullock bellowed, hoarse with anxiety. 'We did the tour. Now let's you and I talk about my mission, Barzanes.'

'Your mission, Falco?'

It was Falco now. Among my group I had been 'Uncle Marcus' or 'Marcus Didius'. So while we had been inside the temple, someone had told the guide my third name. Olympia seemed deserted, but I had been noted. Somebody had known in advance that I was coming. Presumably, too, rumour had whistled around on sweet little wings to proclaim why.

Maybe a god had betrayed me; I doubted it.

'I am trying to imagine how it can be.' To begin with, my voice was quiet but heavy. 'Travellers come here, just like us. Like us, they must all be overwhelmed by their experience. This is a place where humankind is at its finest - nobility of body, allied to nobility of spirit.' Barzanes was about to interrupt me, but he held back. 'Athletes and spectators assemble here as a religious rite. To honour their gods. To dedicate themselves to high ideals. Offerings are left in the olive groves. Oaths are sworn. Training, courage, and skill are applauded. Guides exalt that spirit to the travellers...' My voice hardened. I had a message to send to the establishment here. 'And then - let's imagine it, Barzanes - somebody in this holy place shows his barbaric nature. A young bride, barely two months married, is murdered and dumped. Tell me, Barzanes, are such things understandable? Are they common? Do the gods in Olympia accept this cruel behaviour - or are they outraged?'

Barzanes lifted his uneven shoulders. He remained silent, but he had dallied to speak to me and there must be a purpose. Perhaps it had been decided by the priests that this issue should be cleared up at last.

I knew better than to hope for it.

'The group in question was brought by an outfit called Seven Sights Travel. Regulars on the circuit. A fellow called Phineus leads them.'

At last Barzanes nodded and spoke up. 'Everyone knows Phineus.' I gazed at him but could not detect his opinion of the man.

'They must have been shown around the site,' I said. 'It would have been part of their deal, because this year they certainly were not here for the Games. Phineus must have booked a local site guide. Was it you, Barzanes?''

Barzanes came up with the kind of weak excuse I had heard in so many cases. 'The guide who took that tour is no longer here.'

I scoffed. 'Run away?'

Barzanes looked shocked. 'He has finished for the season and returned to his village.'

'I guess that will be a very remote village, very many miles away... So did he talk about this group, at the end of the day, when you guides were sitting together gossiping? If not, did he comment on them, after the girl was dead?'

Barzanes smiled gently.

Helena Justina came out from the temple, carrying a scroll. After a quick glance at what was going on, she positioned herself within earshot, while pretending to engross herself in the letter.

I was not giving up. 'Tell me what happened, Barzanes.'

'Pilgrims come here constantly. Exercises, sacrifices, prayers, consultation of oracles - even out of season we hold recitations by orators and poets. So tours of the Altis are regularly provided.'

'But any guide would remember a tour where someone who took part was later brutally murdered. How many were there in the Seven Sights group?'

Barzanes decided to co-operate. 'Between ten and fifteen. There was the usual mix: mostly persons of some age, with a few young ones - adolescents who kept wandering off. One woman kept asking silly questions and a man in the party gave her answers, wrongly.'

'Sounds typical!' I smiled.

Barzanes acknowledged it. 'Unfortunately so. Afterwards, the guide could not even remember the bride and her husband. They had made no impression.'

'So they were just listening quietly, subdued by the unfarmliarity of travel... Or had they worn themselves out in the marriage bed?' I grinned. Barzanes gazed at the footpath.

'They were sleeping in tents, Marcus!' Helena broke in. 'Barzanes, would a group like the Seven Sights not stay at the Leomdaion?'

'If no persons of rank were in occupation, it would be allowed. But only if they paid. Otherwise their organiser would bring tents, or hire them. Much cheaper. Phineus would know how to do it. If the intention is to visit many festivals, he will carry his own equipment in the baggage train.'

I wondered if the newly-weds had understood this limitation when they booked in. I could imagine the toothless agent in Rome, Polystratus, 'forgetting' to mention that the tourists would be camping. 'Barzanes, those good people wanted to be enthralled by your special site. Olympia owes them respect for their tragedy. So what happened to them?'

The guide shifted his feet. 'Among hundreds of people travelling around Greece, there will always be deaths, Falco.'

'We are not talking about heart attacks caused by sunstroke or overeating at feasts.'

'Valeria was battered to death, Marcus.' Helena's voice was cold. Aulus must have supplied this information; it did not match the bland details we had heard from the mother-in-law back in Rome. 'Juno, Aulus says she was killed with a weight.'

'A weight?'

'A long-jumper's hand weight.' Young Glaucus would have to tell us more about these implements.

'Her head was smashed with it.' Barzanes knew that all right.

I scratched my chin, thinking. What had happened to Valeria Ventidia - a ferocious attack, not far from her companions, with the body left in open view - bore little resemblance to what had apparently happened to Marcella Caesia three years earlier - unexplained disappearance, then discovery only much later, in a remote spot. The foundation for our visit was that these two women's deaths were linked. Not that discrepancies would stop me investigating both.

'Barzanes, we were told the girl's body was discovered 'outside the lodging house.' But if the party were camping, that doesn't fit. I cannot believe she was beaten to death in public, within a few feet of her companions. They would have heard the disturbance.'

Unused to speculating on crimes, the guide looked vague.

'She wasn't killed near the tent. Her husband discovered her, Marcus.' Helena was still skimming through her letter. 'He found her dead at the palaestra, then he carried the corpse back to the camp. Witnesses saw tears streaming down his face. He was hysterical and wouldn't leave her. He had to be separated from the corpse almost by force. But the big issue in the investigation was whether Statianus seemed like a distraught husband or a deranged killer.'

'The magistrate released him,' I reminded her. 'Though release is not always exoneration.'

The story was taking a dark tone. I began to see why Aulus had been intrigued when he met the group. And I wondered whether Tullia Longina, the mother-in-law in Rome, had told us the truth as she knew it, or toned it down. Nobody who knew these details could call Valeria's death an 'accident'. Was Tullia Longina minimising the horror to seem more respectable, or had Statianus lied in his letter to his mother? I did not necessarily condemn him for that. Any boy has to fib to his ma from time to time.

'Most people decided there was no proof - but the husband must be guilty,' Barzanes commented.

'Easy option.' My voice grated. 'Best for everybody here that the foreigners brought their own killer - and then took him away with them. The establishment can forget all about it.'

'You're being rude,' Helena reproved me softly.

'It was sacrilege!' raged Barzanes. Which told us for sure just how the sanctum priests viewed it - and why they wanted a cover-up.

Unfortunately we were then interrupted. Our youngsters came pelting out through the temple porch behind us. They had glowing faces, still enthralled by the Statue of Zeus.

'We saw the god's face right up close!' Gaius was bursting with excitement. 'The statue is made from enormous sheets of gold and ivory - it's hollow with a huge support of wooden beams inside.'

'Full of rats and mice!' squealed Albia.' We saw mice running about in the shadows!'

'Nero tried to steal the statue.' Gaius, the natural leader of this little group, had found another guide and grilled him. 'But the god let out a huge burst of raucous laughter so the workmen fled!' Like me, Gaius avoided spiritual explanations. He lowered his voice tactfully. 'It may have been the supports shifting, after the workmen disturbed them.'

I looked around. In the turmoil of their arrival, the tour guide Barzanes had made good his escape. I reckoned if I tried to find him another day, he would be missing from the site.

Cornelius had a brisk attitude to wonders. 'So, Uncle Marcus! This is a grand place here - so where will you be taking us to next?'

XI

'I am increasingly impressed by my brother!' Back at the hostel, Helena studied his letter more carefully.

'In good Roman homes,' I pointed out to Albia, 'nobody reads correspondence on their dining couch. Helena Justina was brought up in senatorial style. She knows the evening meal is reserved for elegant conversation.'

Helena ignored us. Her father read the Daily Gazette over breakfast; otherwise, in the Camillus household meals were a chance for family rows. So it had been in my own family. We, however, never read on our couches because we could not afford couches; nor did we own scrolls. The only time anybody ever sent us a letter, it was the one from the Fifteenth Legion that said my brother had been killed in Judaea.

'Aulus has changed,' said Helena. 'Now that he is a scholar, suddenly his letters are full of fine detail.'

'Has he gone on to Athens like a good boy?' Never mind fine detail. I wanted to establish whether I was off the hook with his mother.

'Afraid not, darling. He has joined the sightseeing tour.'

'Oh wicked Aulus!' Nux looked up, recognising the growl I used for reprimanding her. As usual she wagged her tail at it.

'He has given us a list of the people in the group, with his comments on them,' Helena went on. 'A map of where their tent was, showing how it related to the palaestra. And a heading for notes on the case - but no notes.'

'Tantalising!'

'He says, sorry, no time - with actually, no bloody ideas! scribbled afterwards, using a different pen nib.'

'That's the old Aulus. Slapdash and unapologetic.' All the same, I would have liked to have him here, to insult him to his face. We were a long way from home. Evenings, by starlight, are when you yearn for the familiar places, things, and people. Even a rather brusque brother-in-law.

'He seems to have equipped himself with a very nice traveller's writing-set,' Helena mused, inspecting the handwriting. 'How useful for his studies - if he ever starts.'

'Unless his inkpots have stupendous seals, the ink will dry out while he's travelling. If he's very unlucky, it will leak over all his white tunics.'

Any minute now, Helena and I would move from missing Aulus to missing our children. To sidetrack that, Helena showed me the list of participants in the travel group Aulus had drawn up for us.

Phineus: organiser; brilliant or appalling, depends who you ask. 

Indus: Seems to be disgraced (Crime? Financial? Politics?) 

Marinus: widower, looking for new partner; amiable cove

Helvia: widow, well-meaning = fairly stupid

Cleonymus and Cleonyma: come into money (freedmen?) (awful!)

Turcianus Opimus: 'Last chance to see the world before I die'

Ti Sertorius Niger and mousy wifey: ghastly parents; him very rude

Tiberius and Tiberia: horrendous children, dragged by parents

Amaranthus and Minucia: Couple; running away? (adultery?) (fun folk)

Volcasius: no personality = no one wants to sit with him

Statianus and Valeria: Newly-weds (one dainty and dead/one dumb and dazed)

'Rude, but lucid!' I grinned.

We all agreed they sounded dire, though Helena's conscience made her suggest that Volcasius, with whom nobody wanted to sit, was perhaps only shy. The rest of us guffawed. I pictured this Volcasius. bony legs, always in a very large hat; a man who ignored local customs, offended guides and hoteliers, had no sense of danger when boulders were falling down rain-sodden mountainsides, always last to assemble when the group were moving on - yet, sadly, never quite left behind.

'Smelly,' Gaius contributed; he was probably correct.

'Like you are, Gaius!' muttered Cornelius.

Every group of people thrown together by accident contains one creep; we had all met them. I pointed out how fortunate my companions were that I had assembled our party on scientific lines, omitting anti-social loners in large hats. They guffawed again.

'A man like that could be the killer,' Helena said.

I disagreed. More likely he himself would be murdered by someone he had driven crazy with his odd behaviour.

As Helena stacked our foodbowls neatly, she asked, 'I wonder where they have all trotted off to? That's one thing Aulus doesn't say.'

'Sparta.' I knew this from the Tracks and Temples tour itinerary I had pinched from Polystratus. I went to fetch it from my baggage pack, to double-check. One thing was certain: my personal group was not going to Sparta. Helena and I had a pact. She hated the Spartan attitude to women. I loathed their treatment of their inferiors, the Helots. conquered, enslaved, maltreated, and hunted down by night as sport by belligerent Spartan youths.

I had brought other lists among my note-tablets. One was a roll-call of the tour Marcella Caesia took three years ago, the names given to me in Rome by her father. I lined up his research against our new list, but apart from Phineus there were no matches.

'So the mystery is solved: we want Phineus!' declaimed Albia.

Informers are more cautious; most of us have made mistakes over naming suspects too fast. I explained that Phineus would be crazy to be so obvious, that it now looked as if the two dead women had met dissimilar fates, probably at the hands of different killers - and that accusing Phineus was too easy.

'Simplicity is good!' Albia argued. She waved her wrists and posed her head elegantly, as if she were modelling Roman fashions under Helena's tutelage.

'If you accuse an entrepreneur unwisely, it's a very simple lawsuit for defamation.'

'Then you could defend us in court, Marcus Didius.'

'I only chase achievable compensation; I won't go bankrupt! I could just as easily mess up my life by becoming a trapeze artiste. Danger, thrills, and  -'

'Going up in life,' capped Gaius.

'See more of the world, joined in Cornelius, catching on fast.

'In all its ups and downs!' I quipped. Helena shot us a look implying none of us had reached formal manhood.

After we stopped giggling, I explained that we had to find solid evidence, using mundane investigation techniques. All the young people lost interest. This would be how it felt to run an educational leisure tour, with reluctant adolescents hating the culture. Bored young people might start plotting mischief - though not, I thought, actual murder.

Albia was annoyed that I had dismissed her theory, but she did support me next morning when I went to reconnoitre the spot where the Seven Sights tour had camped. Helena wanted to come, but was unwell; Greek food had struck her down. After breakfast Albia and I walked quickly southwards from the Leomdaion along the embankment formed by the great retaining wall of the River Kladeos. The Kladeos was a hesitant trickle, wandering among bulrushes, though no doubt in flood it became dramatic.

Jumping fleas pinged around our feet. The air was thick with vicious insects.

'This is nothing, Albia. Imagine this place during the Games, when a hundred oxen are slaughtered at one sitting. Don't even try to calculate the quantities of blood involved. Plus hide, bones, horns, entrails, scraps of uncooked or uneaten meat. While the smoke is soaring up to the gods on Mount Olympus, down here the flies are in their own heaven.'

Albia picked her way cautiously. 'I can see why those two Germans we met said they always prayed it would not rain. The ground would become very muddy.'

'Mud and worse!'

We found where the camp had been. Aulus had drawn a clear plan. He was a strong, rough draughtsman, using thick stubby lines, but what he meant was clear enough. We could just about discern pale grass, about the footage of two ten-man army tents. We even found tent-peg holes and trampled hollows where they had had a couple of doorways. For a wide area around, three-year-old detritus disfigured the riverbank, left behind by the spectators at the last Games. But where the Seven Sights people camped, there was absolutely no rubbish.

'The travel company are such tidy people, Falco!' Albia had learned informing irony. 'They have been so careful to remove any clues.'

I planted myself in what would have been the outside approach to the Seven Sights tent, feet apart and thumbs in my belt. It was my favourite belt and this was a useful stance for thinking. The belt had stretched in two places to accommodate my thumbs. 'I doubt if there were many clues, Albia. And I don't credit the Seven Sights party with immaculate housekeeping.'

'Then who did it?'

'Barzanes said the girl had been killed somewhere else and the corpse was just carried here afterwards. Forensically, you might search a crime scene. But here, cleaning up so thoroughly gains nothing.'

'Forensically,' Albia repeated, learning the new word. 'Why then, Marcus Didius?'

'The place was regarded as polluted. Murder ruins the good name of the sanctuary, and maybe brings bad luck as well. So they eliminated all trace of everyone who stayed here with Valeria.'

'The priests?' Albia's grey eyes widened. 'Do you think the priests killed Valeria?' There was heavy derision in my foster-daughter's tone. She had learned on the streets of Londinium to distrust all authorities. I cannot say that attitude had been discouraged by Helena and me.

'Albia, I believe anything of priests!'

We stood in silence, feeling the sunshine and listening to birdsong. Beneath our feet the grass, starved of nourishment while it was covered by tents, was already greening, the blades standing up again stalwartly. Leafy hills surrounded us, thickly covered with olives, plane trees, larches, and even palm trees, above a thick undergrowth of vines and flowering shrubs. The conical Hill of Cronus dominated, waiting for me to tackle other secrets.

With its bright skies, tumbling rivers, sacred groves, and its ancient attributions, this remote spot hummed with fertility and folklore. At any moment I expected some lithe god to hail us and ask if we knew any virgins who might consent to be ravished in the interests of mythology.

'Albia, Valeria Ventidia was not much older than you are. If you had been with that party visiting Olympia, how would you feel about it?'

'Older than we think I am!' Albia could never miss an opportunity to remind herself how little she knew of her origins. She had no birthday We could not say for sure whether she was fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen. 'Aulus made the people sound bad. I would not have liked it.'

'Say you are Valeria and you feel that way. Would you duck out of any organised events?'

'What could she do? Staying in the tent alone might be a bad idea. If some man knew Valeria was there by herself...'

'True. While the male tourists studied sporty things, Valeria and the other women of the party would have been taken around together sometimes.'

'She might not have liked those women.'

'When you travel in an escorted group, you have to live with your companions, Albia, whoever they are. How do you think the women occupied themselves? There are poets and musicians to listen to.'

Albia pulled a face. 'You could look around, like we all did yesterday. Valeria could go out by herself - but that might be a worry.'

'Men might make personal overtures?'

'You know they would do, Marcus Didius.'

True again. A young woman would be an immediate target. Men hanging around a sanctuary alone would be odd types by definition. Groups could be even more threatening. We did not know whether Valeria Ventidia was pretty, but she was nineteen. Wearing a wedding ring would not help.

'If she was spotted alone, she would be thought to be waiting for men's attention. Of course,' murmured Albia slyly, 'Valeria might have liked that.'

'Albia, I am shocked! Valeria was a bride.'

'She married because she was told to.'

'And Aulus says her husband was a dumb cluck!'

Albia giggled. 'Why stay chaste for a man like that?'

Perhaps because in a sanctuary like this, word would soon get around if you did not.