Murder in Megara

Chapter Forty

Helen fumbled noisily at the door until Leonidas let her in. She was pale and breathless and burdened with a brimming basket topped with vegetables and a headless chicken.

“You took long enough,” she told him. “I might have dropped the basket. I’ve just seen someone across the street staring at our house.”

“Sorry, I was working on my temple to Zeus. You see, I suddenly thought why should Constantinople and Rome have all the glory? That’s why I’m building this model of our own claim to fame, and-”

Helen stamped her foot. “Will you listen? There is a man across the street keeping us under observation!”

Leonidas looked out. “I don’t see anyone…oh, yes I do. A short fellow. Looks familiar. Now where have I seen him before?”

“I don’t care where you saw him, I want to know what he’s doing over there!”

“Perhaps he followed you home, hoping that chicken would fall off the top of your overloaded basket? Surely he has the right to stand anywhere he likes? Really, you must not fly away with these notions, Helen. Have you seen him there before?”

She admitted she had not. “But he seemed to be staring so intently.”

“Perhaps he can still see that chicken he was hoping to get.”

“It isn’t funny. There’s a look about him I don’t like. What if he’s one of the City Defender’s informants?”

Leonidas continued to stare outside. “We haven’t done anything worth informing about, Helen. He’s leaving now.”

Helen left also, disappearing into the kitchen, emerging before long to flourish a large ladle at Leonidas.

“I told you it was not wise to get involved with your old friend John, and I was right,” she continued. “You always laugh, but I have a sense for these matters. John is a different man now than he was when you knew him, Leonidas.”

He sighed. “He does not seem so very different from the boy I remember.”

“Nonsense!” Helen smacked his arm lightly with the ladle. “He served as Justinian’s Lord Chamberlain for years. Men that high up might as well live on Olympus with the old pagan deities. Who knows what enemies he’s made or what problems he’s brought with him? Problems that could very well come to roost on our roof.”

“I don’t see how that can be. I took great care to copy the records when no one else was in the archives, if that’s what you’re fretting about.”

“You see? You are being dragged into doing things in secret. Secrecy is almost always connected with dark deeds. Have you forgotten your responsibility to me so that you run off to help a man exiled here? A man you don’t even know anymore?”

“I certainly do know my old friend John.”

“Do you? What crime was he exiled for? Did he tell you? You have no notion what he might have been involved in. Satan can see Constantinople from his windows and no doubt enjoys its display of sin and murder!”

“Justinian can do what he wants for any reason or no reason. I can’t imagine John doing anything illegal-”

“You’re thinking of the boy, not the man!” Helen pivoted and stalked off into the kitchen, only to reappear a moment later, a small cloth bag in her hand. “And then there’s this!”

She threw the bag at Leonidas’ feet. Several gold coins fell out and rolled under the table. “I found it when I went to put the fish sauce I purchased away. What do you think you’re doing, hiding money where we keep the fish sauce?”

“I…I…usually I keep it inside the Great Church,” Leonidas stammered in confusion.

“A fine place to keep such a sum,” she said bitterly, “And you never even mentioned you had it either. Who gave it to you and why?”

Before Leonidas could reply there was a burst of knocking on their door, following by a loud demand to open in the name of the City Defender.

***

There was a knock on John’s door also, although it came in the middle of the night. In Constantinople he might have expected it. Here he was taken by surprise. Warning Cornelia not to follow, he dressed and went out into the tiny entrance hall. He had neglected to pull on his boots and the marble tiles were cold underfoot.

In Constantinople the caller would have been a messenger summoning him to see the emperor, or a pair of excubitors with swords, arriving to escort him to less salubrious quarters.

Here the knocker turned out to be a man with a long sharpened stave.

Philip, escorting a surprising trio: Abbot Alexis, the monk Stephen, and Stephen’s mother Helen, the latter red-faced and sobbing.

“My apologies, John,” the abbot said. “But Helen came to me for help because I am, if I may say so without appearing boastful, her husband’s most powerful and trustworthy friend.”

“Indeed,” John said.

“That may be,” interjected Stephen, “but as Mother explained to me, my father’s predicament involves you.”

“I will surely help if I can. What sort of predicament is Leonidas in?”

“Ah! As if you didn’t know!” Helen cried.

Alexis put his hand on her shoulder. “There, now. Leonidas is an upstanding man. The Lord will look after him.” He turned to John. “Our friend has been arrested as being in possession of counterfeit coins.”