Last Act In Palmyra

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 nobody 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 bloody Zeus!'

'Not in the same play?'

'No, no. Once Chremes thinks of one "Frolicking Gods" 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 snob. '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 muffled 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 bloody 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?'

'Assisted 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 passing the kind of remarks that make you want to spew.'

'I can imagine. He drove me wild once by standing about like a demigod while I was trying to hitch my damned 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 bloody 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 assembled 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 god-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 gods:' 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 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 damn 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 Cassius probably seemed decent, dependable and harmless until somebody offended them.

I clapped Davos on the shoulder and was off on my way when another point struck me. 'One final thought. I've just had an odd conversation with Chremes. I'm sure he was holding back on me. Listen, could he have known anything significant about the playwright's finances?'

Davos said nothing. I knew I had got him. I turned back, square to him. 'So that's it!'

'That's what, Falco?'

'Oh come on Davos, for a man whose timing is so tight onstage, you're lousy off it! That silence was too long. There's something you don't want to tell me, and you're working out how to be uncooperative. Don't bother. It's too late now. Unless you tell me yourself, I'll only press the matter elsewhere until someone gives.'

'Leave it, Falco.'

'I will if you tell me.'

'It's old history:' He seemed to be making up his mind. 'Was Phrygia there when you had this strange chat?' I nodded. 'That explains it. Chremes on his own might have told you. The fact is, Heliodorus was subsidising the company. Phrygia doesn't know.'

I gaped. 'I'm amazed. Explain this!'

Davos sounded reluctant. 'You can fill in the rest, surely?'

'I've seen that Chremes and Phrygia like enjoying the good life.'

'More than our proceeds really cover.'

'So are they peeling off the takings?'

'Phrygia doesn't know,' he repeated stubbornly.

'All right, Phrygia's a vestal virgin. What about her tiresome spouse?'

'Chremes spent what he owes to the stagehands and the orchestra.' That explained a lot. Davos continued glumly: 'He isn't hopeless with money, but he's scared that Phrygia will finally leave him if their lifestyle gets too basic. That's what he's convinced himself, anyway. I doubt it myself. She's stayed so long she can't leave now; it would make all her past life pointless.'

'So he put himself in hock to Heliodorus?'

'Yes. The man is an idiot.'

'I'm starting to believe it:" He was also a liar. Chremes had told me Heliodorus spent all his cash on drink. 'I thought Heliodorus drank all his wages?'

'He liked to cadge other people's flagons.'

'At the scene of his death I found a goatskin and a wicker flask.'

'My guess would be the flask was his own, and he probably drained it himself too. The goatskin may have belonged to whoever was with him, in which case Heliodorus would not have objected to helping the other party drink what it contained.'

'Going back to Chremes' debt, if it was a substantial sum, where did the money come from?'

'Heliodorus was a private hoarder. He had amassed a pile.'

'And he let Chremes borrow it in order to gain the upper hand?'

'You're brighter than Chremes was about his reasoning! Chremes walked right into the blackmail: borrowed from Heliodorus, then had no way to pay him back. Everything could have been avoided if only he had come clean with Phrygia instead. She likes good things, but she's not stupidly extravagant. She wouldn't ruin the company for a few touches of luxury. Of course, they discuss everything – except what matters most.'

'Like most couples.'

Obviously hating to dump them in trouble, Davos blew out his cheeks, as if breathing had become difficult. 'Oh gods, what a mess: Chremes didn't kill him, Falco.'

'Sure? He was in a tight spot. Both you and Phrygia were insisting that the inkblot should be kicked out of the company. Meanwhile, Heliodorus must have been laughing up his tunic sleeve because he knew Chremes could not repay him. Incidentally, is this why he was kept on for so long in the first place?'

'Of course.'

'That and Phrygia hoping to extract the location of her child?'

'Oh she'd given up expecting him to tell her that, even if he really knew.'

'And how did you find out about the situation with Chremes?'

'At Petra. When I marched in to say it was Heliodorus or me. Chremes cracked and admitted why he couldn't give the playwright the boot.'

'So what happened?'

'I'd had enough. I certainly wasn't going to hang around and watch Heliodorus hold the troupe to ransom. I said I would leave when we got back to Bostra. Chremes knew Phrygia would hate that. We have been friends for a long time.'

'She knows your value to the company.'

'If you say so.'

'Why not just tell Phrygia yourself?'

'No need to. She would certainly insist on knowing why I was leaving- and she'd make sure she heard the right reason. If she pressed him, Chremes would crumble and tell her. He and I both knew that.'

'So, I see what your plan was. You were really intending to stick around until that happened.'

'You get it.' Davos seemed relieved now to be talking about this. 'Once Phrygia knew the situation, I reckoned Heliodorus would have been sorted – paid off somehow, and then told to leave.'

'Was he owed a large amount?'

'Finding it would have hit us all very hard, but it was not unmanageable. Worth it to get rid of him, anyway.'

'You were confident the whole business could have been cleared up?' This was important.

'Oh yes!' Davos seemed surprised that I asked. He was one of life's fixers; the opposite of Chremes, who collapsed when trouble flared. Davos did know when to cut and run in a crisis (I had seen that when our people were in jail at Gadara), but if it were possible, he preferred to face a bully out.

'This is the crux then, Davos. Did Chremes believe that he could be rescued?'

Davos considered his answer carefully. He understood what I was asking: whether Chremes felt so hopeless he might have killed as his only escape. 'Falco, he must have known that telling Phrygia would cause some harrowing rows, but after all these years, that's how they live. She wasn't in for any surprises. She knows the man. To save the company she -and I – would rally round. So, I suppose you are asking, ought he to have felt privately optimistic? In his heart, he must have.'

This was the only time Davos actively sought to clear another person. All I had to decide now was whether he was lying (perhaps to protect his old friend Phrygia), or whether he was telling the truth.