'He didn't pa.s.s on details. As a friend, he was angry about Heliodorus tormenting you. He only spoke to ill.u.s.trate what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d the man had been,' I muttered, trying to soften the atmosphere.

Phrygia was still in a huff. 'He was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d all right.'

'I'm sorry. Don't upset yourself- '

'I'm not upset. I saw exactly what he was. All talk - like most men.'

I glanced at Chremes, as if appealing for help to understand what she was saying. He lowered his voice in a useless attempt at sensitivity. 'According to him, he had some information about a relative Phrygia has been trying to trace. It was a trick, in my opinion -'

'Well, we'll never know now, will we?' Phrygia blazed angrily.

I knew when to retreat. I let the subject drop.

I savoured some nuggets of meat in a hot marinade. Evidently the tattered appearance of the troupe as a whole belied how well its leading players lived. Phrygia must have invested lavishly in peppers while she travelled around, and even in Nabataea and Syria, where there were no middlemen to pay if you bought direct from the caravans, such spices were expensive. Now I could understand more fully the mutters of rebellion amongst the stagehands and musicians. Frankly, given the meagre cut I was awarded as playwright, I could have gone on strike myself. I was developing a fascinating picture of my predecessor's situation during those last days of his life. At Petra he had been a marked man. Davos had told me previously that he he had given Chremes an ultimatum to dismiss the scribe. Now Phrygia said she had done the same, despite the hold Heliodorus had tried to apply using the whereabouts of her missing child. had given Chremes an ultimatum to dismiss the scribe. Now Phrygia said she had done the same, despite the hold Heliodorus had tried to apply using the whereabouts of her missing child.

Having taken over his job and gained some insight into his feelings, I almost felt sorry for Heliodorus. Not only was he badly paid and his work hated, but his career with the company was firmly under threat.

The atmosphere had relaxed enough for me to speak again. 'So really, by the time you hit Petra, Heliodorus was on his way out?'

Phrygia confirmed it. Chremes was silent, but that meant nothing.

'Did everyone know that he was being given the heave-ho?'

Phrygia laughed. 'What do you think?'

Everyone knew.

I found it interesting. If Heliodorus had been so visibly under threat, it was highly unusual that somebody had snapped. Normally, once a troublemaking colleague is known to have attracted attention from management, everyone else relaxes. When the thieving cook is about to be sent back to the slave market, or the dozy apprentice is to be packed off home to mother at last, the rest just like to sit back and watch. Yet even with Heliodorus on the hop, somebody still could not wait.

Who could hate him so much they wanted to risk all by killing him when he was leaving anyway? Or was it a case where his very leaving caused the problem? Did he possess something, or know something, that he was starting to use as a lever? If I go, I take the money!...If I go, I tell all If I go, I take the money!...If I go, I tell all... Or even, If I go, I If I go, I don't don't tell, and you'll never find your child tell, and you'll never find your child? The issue of the child was too sensitive to probe.

'Did anyone owe him a debt? One they would have to repay if he left?'

'He wouldn't lend a copper, even if he had one,' Phrygia told me.

Chremes added in a morose tone, 'The way he drank, if his purse ever contained anything, it all went on the wine.' Thoughtfully, we both drained our goblets, with that air of extreme sense men acquire when discussing a fool who can't handle it.

'Did he owe anyone himself?'

Phrygia answered: 'No one would lend to him, mainly because it was obvious they would never get it back.' One of the simpler, and more reliable, laws of high finance.

Something niggled me. Tranio lent him something, I believe?'

'Tranio?' Chremes laughed briefly. 'I doubt it! Tranio's never had anything worth borrowing, and he's always broke!'

'Were the clowns on good terms with the playwright?'

Chremes discussed them happily enough. 'They had an on-off friendship with him.' Again I had a sense that he was hedging. 'Last time I noticed they were all at loggerheads. Basically he was a loner.'

'You're sure of that? And what about Tranio and Grumio? However they look on the surface, I suspect both of them are complex characters.'

'They're good boys,' Phrygia rebuked me. 'Lots of talent.'

Talent was her measure for everyone. For talent she would forgive a great deal. Maybe it made her judgement unreliable. Even though Phrygia shivered at the thought of harbouring a murderer, maybe a usefully talented comedian with the ability to improvise would seem too valuable to hand over to justice if his only crime was eliminating an unpleasant hack who couldn't write.

I smiled pleasantly. 'Do you know how the Twins were applying their talent when Heliodorus went up Dushara's mountain?'

'Oh stop it, Falco! They never did it.' I had definitely offended against Phrygia's code of company behaviour: good boys never did bad things. I loathed that kind of shortsightedness, though in the world of informing it was nothing new.

'They were packing their bags,' Chremes told me, with an att.i.tude that suggested he was being more impartial and reasonable than his wife. 'Same as everyone else.'

'Did you see them doing it?'

'Of course not. I was packing mine.'

According to this weak theory the entire group would have alibis. I did not bother to ask where he thought Davos, Philocrates and Congrio might have been. If I wanted to be bamboozled, I could ask the suspects individually in the hope that the murderer at least would be inventive in his lies. 'Where were you staying?'

'The others were in an indifferent rooming house. Phrygia and I had found a slightly better place.' It fitted. They always liked to pretend we were one big share-alike family; but they preferred to have their comforts. I wondered if Heliodorus had ragged them about this sn.o.bbery.

I remembered Grumio saying something. 'According to Grumio, all a clown needs are a cloak, a strigil and oil flask, and a wallet for his takings. On that basis, a clown's trappings could be flung together pretty rapidly.'

'Grumio's all fantasy,' Chremes mourned, shaking his head. 'It makes him a wonderful artiste, but you have to know it's just talk.'

Phrygia was losing patience with me. 'So where is all this getting you, Falco?'

'It's filling in the picture helpfully.' I could take a hint. I had been munching their wonderful t.i.tbits until I could hold no more. It was time to go home and make my tent companions jealous by happily belching and describing the goodies. 'That was quite a feast! I'm grateful...'

I made the usual offers of they must come over to us sometime (with the usual underlying suggestion that all they might get would be two winkles on a lettuce leaf), then I turned to leave.

'Oh, just tell me one more thing. What happened to the playwright's personal property after he died?' I knew Heliodorus must have owned more than Helena and I had acquired with the play box.

'There wasn't much,' said Chremes. 'We picked out anything of value - a ring and a couple of inkstands - then I gave his few rags to Congrio.'

'What about his heirs?'

Phrygia laughed her dismissive laugh. 'Falco, n.o.body in a travelling theatre company has heirs!'

Chapter XLIV.

Davos stood behind the tree under which he had pitched his tent. He was doing what a man does when it's night, when he thinks there is n.o.body about, and he can't be bothered to walk further off into open countryside. The camp had fallen silent; so had the distant town. He must have heard my feet crunching up the stony track. After quaffing my share of my amphora, I was in dire need of relief myself, so I greeted him, walked up alongside, and helped water his tree.

'I'm very impressed with your Hercules.'

'Wait until you see my b.l.o.o.d.y Zeus!'

'Not in the same play?'

'No, no. Once Chremes thinks of one "Frolicking G.o.ds" farce, we tend to get given a run of them.'

A huge moon had risen over the uplands. The Syrian moon seemed bigger, and the Syrian stars more numerous, than those we had back home in Italy. This, with the restless wind that always hummed around Abila, gave me a sudden, poignant feeling of being lost in a very remote place. To avoid it, I kept talking. 'I've just been for a meal with our gregarious actor-manager and his loving spouse.'

'They normally put on a good spread.'

'Wonderful hospitality... Do they do this often?'

Davos chuckled. He was not a sn.o.b. 'Only for the right strata of society!'

'Aha! I'd never been invited before. Have I come up in the world, or was I just lumbered originally with the backwash of disapproval for my scribbling predecessor?'

'Heliodorus? He was asked, once, I believe. He soon lost his status. Once Phrygia got the measure of him, that was the end of it.'

'Would that be when he claimed to know where her offspring might be?'

Davos gave me a sharp look when I mentioned this. Then he commented, 'She's stupid to look!'

I rather agreed with that. 'The child's probably dead, or almost certainly won't want to know.'

Davos, in his dour way, said nothing.

We finished the horticulture, tightened our belts in the time-honoured manner, casually stuck our thumbs in them, and sauntered back to the track. A stagehand came by, saw us looking innocent, immediately guessed what we must have been doing, got the idea himself, and vanished sideways behind somebody else's tent looking for the next tree. We had started a craze.

Without comment, Davos and I waited to see what would happen, since the next tent was clearly occupied and a desperate pee tends to be audible. A m.u.f.fled voice soon shouted in protest. The stagehand scuttled guiltily on his way. Silence fell again.

We stood on the path while the breeze bustled around us. A tent roof flapped. Somewhere in the town a dog howled mournfully. Both of us raised our faces to the wind, absorbing the night's atmosphere contemplatively. Davos was not normally one to chat, but we were two men with some mutual respect who had met at night, neither ready for sleep. We spoke together quietly, in a way that at other times might have been impossible. 'I'm trying to fill in missing facts,' I said. 'Can you remember what you were doing in Petra when Heliodorus wandered up to the High Place?'

'I most certainly do remember: loading the b.l.o.o.d.y waggons. We had no stagehands with us, if you recall. Chremes had issued his orders like a lord, then taken himself off to fold up his underwear.'

'Were you loading up alone?'

'a.s.sisted in his pitiful manner by Congrio.'

'He can't help being a flyweight.'

Davos relented. 'No, he did his best, for what it was worth. What really got up my nose was being supervised by Philocrates. Instead of shifting bales with us, he took the opportunity to lean against a pillar looking attractive to the women and pa.s.sing the kind of remarks that make you want to spew.'

'I can imagine. He drove me wild once by standing about like a demiG.o.d while I was trying to hitch my d.a.m.ned ox... Was he there all the time?'

'Until he fixed himself a bit of spice and went up among the tombs with the skirt.' The frankincense merchant's wife; he had mentioned her to Helena.

'So how long did the lading take you?'

'All b.l.o.o.d.y afternoon. I'm telling you, I was doing it as a one-man job. I still hadn't finished the stage effects - those two doorways are a trial to lift on your own - when your girl came down the hill and word whizzed round that somebody was dead. By then the rest of our party had a.s.sembled to watch me struggling. We were supposed to be all ready for the off, and people were starting to wonder where Heliodorus was. Someone asked Helena what the corpse looked like, so then we guessed who it must be.'

'Any idea where the Twins were while you were piling up the waggons?'

'No.'

He made no attempt to offer possibilities. Whether they were under suspicion or in the clear, Davos left it up to me to judge them. But I did gather that if they were accused, he would not care. Another case of professional jealousy among the players, presumably.

Probably the Twins would give each other alibis. That would land me in the usual situation: none of the known suspects actually available to do the deed. I sighed gently.

'Davos, tell me again about the night Musa was shoved off the embankment at Bostra. You must have been walking behind him?'

'I was right at the back of the queue.'

'Last in line?'

'Correct. To tell the truth, it was such a G.o.d-awful night I was losing interest in drinking in some dive with the Twins, knowing we would have to walk back through that weather just when we had got dry and warm again. I was planning to peel off unnoticed and scamper back to my own tent. I had been dropping behind stealthily. Two minutes more and I would never have heard your Nabataean shout.'

'Could you see who was near Musa when he was pushed?'

'No. If I'd seen it I'd have told you before this. I'd like to get the villain sorted,' Davos chortled, 'so I can avoid being plagued by questions from you!'

'Sorry.' I wasn't, and I refused to give up. 'So you won't want to tell me about the night Ione died?'

'Dear G.o.ds...' he muttered good-humouredly. 'Oh all right, get on with it!'

'You were dining with Chremes and Phrygia, and Philocrates was there too.'

'Until he bunked off as usual. That was quite late. If you're suggesting he drowned the girl, then judging by the time we all heard the news after you got back from the pools, he must have sped there on Mercury's wings. No, I reckon he was with his dame when it happened, and probably still hard at it while you were finding the corpse.'

'If there ever was a dame.'

'Ah well. You'll have to check with him.' Once again the disinterested way he threw it back to me seemed convincing. Killers looking to cover their own tracks like to speculate in detail about how others might be implicated. Davos always seemed too straight for such nonsense. He said what he knew; he left the rest to me.

I was getting nowhere. I tried the hard screw. 'Somebody told me that you you liked Ione.' liked Ione.'

'I liked her. That was all it amounted to.'

it wasn't you who met her at the pools?'

it was not!' He was crisp in denying it. 'You know d.a.m.n well that was my night for dining with Chremes and Phrygia.'

'Yes, we've been over that rather convenient tale. One thing I'm asking myself is whether your party at the manager's tent was a set-up. Maybe the whole gang of you were in a conspiracy.'

By the light of his camp fire I could just make out Davos' face: sceptical, world-weary, utterly dependable. 'Oh stuff you, Falco. If you want to talk rot, go and do it somewhere else.'

it has to be thought about. Give me one good reason to discard the idea.'

'I can't. You'll just have to take our word.' Actually, Davos giving his word seemed fairly convincing to me. He was that kind of man.

Mind you, Brutus and Ca.s.sius probably seemed decent, dependable and harmless until somebody offended them.