Last Act In Palmyra

Chapter XLV

We never did put on a show at Abila. Chremes learned that even when the local amateurs had finished impressing their cousins we would still be waiting in a queue behind some acrobats from Pamphilia.

'This is no good! We're not dawdling in line for a week only to have some damned handstand boys wobble on ahead of us-'

'They were already ahead,' Phrygia put him straight, tight-lipped. 'We happened to arrive in the middle of a civic festival, which has been planned for six months. Unfortunately, no one informed the town councillors that they needed to consult you! The good citizens of Abila are celebrating the formal entry into the Empire of Commagene – '

'Stuff Commagene!'

With this acid political commentary (a view most of us shared, since only Helena Justina had any idea where Commagene was, or whether well-informed men should afford it significance), Chremes led us all off to Capitolias.

Capitolias had all the usual attributes of a Decapolis town. I'm not some damned itinerary writer – you can fill in the details for yourselves.

You can also guess the results of my search for Sophrona. As at Abila, and all the other towns before, there was no trace of Thalia's musical prodigy.

I admit, I was starting to feel bad-tempered about all this. I was sick of looking for the girl. I was tired of one damned acropolis after another. I didn't care if I never saw another set of neat little city walls with a tasteful temple, shrouded in expensive scaffolding, peeping Ionically over them. Stuff Commagene? Never mind it. Commagene (a small, previously autonomous kingdom miles to the north of here) had one wonderful attribute: nobody had ever suggested M.

Didius Falco ought to pack his bags and traipse around it. No, forget harmless pockets of quaintness that wanted to be Roman, and instead just stuff the whole pretentious, grasping, Hellenic Decapolis.

I had had enough. I was sick of stones in my shoes and the raw smell of camels' breath. I wanted glorious monuments and towering, teeming tenements. I wanted to be sold some dubious fish that tasted of Tiber grit, and to cat it gazing over the river from my own grubby nook on the Aventine while waiting for an old friend to knock on the door. I wanted to breathe garlic at an aedile. I wanted to stamp on a banker. I wanted to hear that solid roar that slams across the racecourse at the Circus Maximus. I wanted spectacular scandals and gigantic criminality. I wanted to be amazed by size and sordidness. I wanted to go home.

'Have you a toothache or something?' asked Helena. I proved that my teeth were all in working order by gnashing them.

For the company, things looked brighter. At Capitolias we acquired a two-night booking. We first put on the Hercules play, since that was newly rehearsed; then, as Davos had prophesied, Chremes became keen on this horrible species and handed us a further 'Frolicking Gods' effort, so we did see Davos do his famous Zeus. Whether people liked it depended on whether they enjoyed farces full of ladders at women's windows, betrayed husbands helplessly banging on locked doors, divinity mocked relentlessly, and Byrria in a nightgown that revealed pretty well everything.

Musa, we gathered, either liked this very much indeed, or not at all. He went silent. In essence it was hard to tell any difference from normal, but the quality of his silence assumed a new mood. It was brooding; perhaps downright sinister. In a man whose professional life had been spent cutting throats for Dushara, I found this alarming.

Helena and I were uncertain whether Musa's new silence meant he was now in mental and physical agony over the strength of his attraction to the beauty, or whether her bawdy part in the Zeus play had completely disgusted him. Either way, Musa was finding it hard to handle his feelings. We were ready to offer sympathy, but he plainly wanted to work out his solutions for himself.

To give him something else to think about I drew him more closely into my investigations. I had wanted to proceed alone, but I hate to abandon a man to love. My verdict on Musa was twofold: he was mature, but inexperienced. This was the worst possible combination for tackling a hostile quarry like Byrria. The maturity would remove any chance of her feeling sorry for him; the lack of experience could lead to embarrassment and bungling if he ever made a move. A woman who had so ferociously set herself apart from men would need a practised hand to win her over.

'I'll give you advice if you want it.' I grinned. 'But advice rarely works. The mistakes are waiting to be made – and you'll have to walk straight into them.'

'Oh yes,' he replied rather vacantly. As usual, his apparent affirmative sounded ambiguous. I never met a man who could discuss women so elusively. 'What about our task, Falco?' If he wanted to lose himself in work, frankly that seemed the best idea. As a lad about town Musa was hard work to organise.

I explained to him that asking people questions about money would be as difficult as advising a friend on a love affair. He screwed out a smile, then we buckled down to checking on the story Davos had told me.

I wanted to avoid questioning Chremes about his debt directly. Tackling him would be useless while we had no evidence against him for actually causing either death. I had strong doubts whether we would find that evidence. As I told Musa, he remained a low priority on my suspects list: 'He's strong enough to have held Heliodorus down but he was not on the embankment at Bostra when you were pushed in the water, and unless someone is lying, he was also out of the picture when Ione died. This is depressing-and typical of my work, Musa. Davos has just given me the best possible motive for killing Heliodorus, but in the long run it's likely to prove irrelevant.'

'We have to check it, though?'

'Oh yes!'

I sent Musa to confirm with Phrygia that Chremes really had been packing his belongings when Heliodorus was killed. She vouched for it. If she still didn't entertain any notion that Chremes had been in debt to the playwright, then she had no reason to think we might be closing in on a suspect, and so no reason to lie.

'So, Falco, is this story of the debt one we can forget?' Musa pondered. He answered himself: 'No, we cannot. We must now check up on Davos.'

'Right. And the reason?'

'He is friendly with Chremes, and especially loyal to Phrygia. Maybe when he found out about the debt he himself killed Heliodorus – to protect his friends from the blackmailing creditor.'

'Not only his friends, Musa. He would have been safeguarding the future of the theatre group, and also his own job, which he had been saying he would leave. So yes, we'll check on him – but he looks in the clear. If he went up the mountain, then who packed the stage props at Petra? We know somebody did it. Philocrates would think himself above hard labour, and anyway, half the time he was off screwing a conquest. Let's ask the Twins and Congrio where they all were. We need to know that too.'

I myself tackled Congrio.

'Yes, Falco. I helped Davos load the heavy stuff. It took all afternoon. Philocrates was watching us some of the time, then he went off somewhere:'

The twins told Musa they had been together in the room they shared: packing their belongings; having a last drink, rather larger than they had anticipated, to save carrying an amphora to their camel; then sleeping it off. It fitted what we knew of their disorganised, slightly disreputable lifestyle. Other people agreed that when the company assembled to leave Petra the Twins had turned up last, looking dozy and crumpled and complaining of bad heads.

Wonderful. Every male suspect had somebody who could clear him. Everyone, except possibly Philocrates during the time he was philandering. 'I'll have to put pressure on the rutting little bastard. I'll enjoy that!'

'Mind you, Falco, a big-brimmed hat would swamp him!' Musa qualified, equally vindictively.

This clarified one thing anyway: Philocrates spent several scenes in the Zeus play cuddling up to the lovely Byrria. Musa's anger appeared to clinch the question of his feelings for the girl.