Murder in Megara

Chapter Forty-nine

John sensed a chill in Leonidas’ house as soon as he stepped through the doorway. It seemed to radiate from the walls themselves. One might imagine that, were Leonidas and Helen to leave, the house itself would remain unhappy in their absence.

Helen, holding a cleaning rag, had stood stolidly in the doorway as if she intended to block John from entering. But she stepped aside and followed him into the room where Leonidas fussed at his work. He was attempting to reattach a small piece of gold leaf to what John recognized as the dome from the Great Church model-only barely recognized, since one side of the dome had been crushed.

Leonidas looked up and gave John a bleak smile. “Earthquake.”

Helen snapped her cleaning rag. “A dusting accident,” she declared.

John suddenly pitied his old friend. “I apologize for intruding. Do you recall telling me a man was watching the house from across the street before the City Defender’s men arrived?”

“Yes. I found it innocent enough at the time but in retrospect I suppose the City Defender was having me watched.”

Helen sniffed. “Thanks to you suddenly having high-ranking officials from the emperor’s court visiting, since no one paid any attention to you before. Why would they?”

John was silent. Responding to Helen would simply embarrass Leonidas further. Instead he continued to address his friend. “Can you tell me what the fellow looked like?”

“Short. That I remember.” Leonidas turned the gilded dome upside down and stared into it as if he might find a memory hidden there. “That’s all, John.”

He looked so defeated, gazing into the ruined dome of his carefully constructed church, that John regretted ever coming back into his old friend’s life, and beneath that regret another, even darker thought tried to force its way forward against John’s resistance.

“A gap in his teeth?” John asked. “Does that jar your memory?”

“He was standing on the other side of the street.”

“He did have a gap in his teeth,” Helen said. “You could see it clearly across the street if you were looking. Well, perhaps not exactly, but there was something wrong with his mouth. I was keeping a close eye on him to remember the face in case it was necessary.”

“Thank you. I won’t disturb you further.”

Leonidas set the dome on the table and started to rise. “You aren’t disturbing us, John.”

But Helen was already opening the door for his departure.

***

At the entrance to the Temple of Zeus John found Matthew lurking as usual.

“Back for further enlightenment?” The self-styled guide greeted John with a gap-toothed smile.

“Indeed. I expect to learn quite a lot from you. Let us go inside this time.”

“Alas, I have been barred from-”

John cut him off by showing his blade. “Luckily I have a very sharp pass.”

“I would never have taken you for a robber,” Matthew grumbled as John escorted him past the towering pillars and into the presence of the god.

Looking down from an enormous height, Zeus’ ivory-skinned face shone and his golden hair sparkled in the sunlight against a sky bluer and deeper than the sea. From his neck down to his feet, however, he was a chunk of half-formed hardened clay and gypsum.

John folded his arms, concealing his blade from any who entered the temple. “For a man who has been standing around waiting to regale visitors, Matthew, you seem oddly out of breath. Are you certain you weren’t running to get here before me?”

“If you want my money ask for it. Don’t mock me first. Perhaps you think learned men such as myself get rich educating travelers? You will see you are mistaken.” He started to reach into the folds of his tunic beside his belt.

“Stop!” John ordered. “I know how to use a blade and mine is already out.”

Mathew raised his arms slightly from his sides and showed John his palms. “My purse is in my belt.”

“I also know you are not a guide,” John told him. “You are an imperial spy sent by Justinian to watch me, and perhaps deal with me, if we might put it that way, if and when it suits the emperor’s purpose.”

Matthew showed John the gap in his teeth. “Don’t flatter yourself. Justinian didn’t send me to Megara to keep an eye on his former Lord Chamberlain. Naturally, when you arrived, I was ordered to check on you now and then. It was only prudent. My task here is to look into corruption. How the locals divide the spoils isn’t typically a matter of imperial concern, but when the malfeasance becomes so widespread that it reaches all the way to the provincial governor, as I believe it does, then the emperor begins feeling it in the treasury.”

“You are not alone either, are you?”

Matthew answered the question with one of his own. “How did you guess my identity?”

“At the palace one develops a sense for imposters. Besides, do you really think you could follow me around the city without my glimpsing you?”

“I see. Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned about your skills. It is easy to become overconfident and careless spending months in a place full of blind hayseeds.”

“Blind and corrupt hayseeds, you mean.”

Matthew laughed unpleasantly.

John had positioned himself near one of Zeus’ gargantuan feet, some distance from the entrance and facing it, ready to retreat out the back of the temple if any of Matthew’s possible assistants arrived. “Were you loitering outside Leonidas’ house because I had visited him, or because you suspected him of wrongdoing?”

“Both. After sharing a few drinks at a tavern, one of your friend’s colleagues revealed Leonidas’ little collecting hobby. He of course considered it just a harmless amusement.”

“You were investigating Leonidas because you knew I was an old friend?”

“You’d be surprised what I know about you, my former Lord Chamberlain.”

“You can’t learn much by pretending to be a guide for visitors.”

“Not so. It gives me a reason to be out and about and to be curious about matters, if anyone gets suspicious. I say I’m just trying to find a little local color, interesting events, that kind of thing. I’m planning on writing an account of my travels, you see.”

“A believable fable,” John admitted.

“Oh, but I am going to write a travel book. I plan to spend my retirement writing. It’s remarkable the places I’ve visited, what I’ve learned, working for the emperor.”

“I don’t know how much you’ve uncovered about the local situation but apparently not enough to start arresting anyone. I can give you information you may not have, but in return, I want assurance that the proper authorities will be given evidence I have relating to two murders.”

“In Megara the City Defender is the proper authority,” Matthew pointed out.

“I don’t trust him to act in the interests of justice.”

“I wouldn’t be too certain about that. Currently he pleases the provincial governor by turning a blind eye to corruption. But if the governor is dismissed, the man responsible for bringing order to Megara might well be next in line for the position.”

“Nevertheless, I need to be backed by imperial authority.”

“Granted, provided you can tell me something useful.”

“Thank you. I will explain everything to you on the way to Saint Stephen’s Monastery.”

***

Stephen showed John and Matthew into the abbot’s study.

Alexis, startled and annoyed by the interruption, fussed nervously with the manuscripts littering his desk, as if he were unable to quite wake up from his deep studies. “From the emperor, you say? I am honored. If I can serve the emperor in any way I shall be pleased to do so.”

Stephen began to leave but John gestured for him to remain. “This affects you also. If it were not for your help we would not be here.”

The young monk’s expression was so rigidly bland John wondered if he were suppressing a smile.

“So, John, my friend,” Alexis leaned forward across untidy heaps of parchment, “I assume you have not brought Matthew to hear a lecture about ancient pagan religions.”

“Not exactly.”

Alexis had now composed himself. Suddenly the puzzling gap between young Alexis, the prankster, and Alexis the abbot closed and John saw sitting in front of him the same young man who would say or do something utterly outrageous and then smile placidly as if nothing noteworthy had happened at all. The garments Alexis wore, the cross on the wall, the obscure literature, all were part of an elaborate joke. Or was John being unfair?

“Not exactly?” Alexis looked puzzled.

Matthew broke in. “I’m not here for a lecture but I want to know about your involvement with this supposed treasure.”

“If John told you about that, he must have explained it’s nothing but a legend.”

John spoke sharply. “If you believed that, Alexis, why was it arranged for Diocles to put slaves to work digging for it?”

“Diocles? I didn’t-”

“You’ve lied to me enough already. Don’t lie again. You admitted your plan was to get possession of my family’s farm.”

A look of sorrow crossed Alexis’ face. “You’ve been away so long, my friend, you have forgotten who I am.”

“I don’t think so, Alexis. On the contrary, I was wrong in imagining you had changed.”

“And who is it has tried to help you and your family? The only person in Megara who has sided with you? Still, I cannot regret doing what a good Christian should have done. It would have been better for everyone if you had never returned, John.”

“Particularly for my family. It was not my choice to come back to Megara!”

Despite the angry retort John realized Alexis was right. He had been correct to avoid his past for so many years, a past he had been severed from forcibly and irrevocably. Now he had grievously if inadvertently injured both of his oldest friends.

And the worst damage was yet to come. Perhaps he should leave matters as they were. Why would he want to avenge Theophilus? He’d wanted to kill the bastard himself.

“Stephen,” Alexis said, “light a lamp. I can barely see.” A confusion of long shadows had begun to crisscross the room.

Was the abbot delaying the discussion to give him time to think or trying to break the palpable tension?

It was true, Alexis’ eyesight was not good. Bad enough to mistake John’s stepfather for John at night.

“You surmised the valuables rescued from Corinth were buried at the temple from the contemporary account written on the parchment which Theophilus stole from your collection,” John said, determined to say what he wished he didn’t need to say. “My stepfather was here often enough and you are careless. One night you went out, in part to see how the excavation was going, but also intending to foment rumors about pagan worship on my estate by leaving a basket associated with the rites of Demeter. You’ve spent years studying such matters so you knew how it should look and indeed described that very thing to me.” John’s gesture took in the manuscripts and the scrolls and codices on shelves and in baskets.

“Why do you insist I engaged Diocles to arrange for digging at the temple? Isn’t it just as likely Theophilus did it since he knew where to look?”

“But Theophilus did not put a knife in his own back when he mistook himself for me, Alexis.”

The abbot had been leaning forward into the dim light. Now he fell back into his chair, vanishing into shadow, his expression hidden. “You are accusing me of trying to murder you?”

“Of murdering Theophilus. It was an impulse. You always acted on impulse. There I was, the one thing that stood between you and the treasure, between you and the post of bishop. Or so you imagined with your terrible eyesight. I’m certain you regretted your action immediately but it was too late.”

“John, I can’t believe…I always thought you were a rational young man. Perhaps the life you’ve lived…” His words trailed off into the shadow engulfing him and he might not have been there at all.

“The temple and the blacksmith’s forge are not far from the monastery, meaning both are easily accessible to you in the dark. You must have quarreled with Diocles over the excavations. It’s occurred to me that since I relieved him of his duties he could no longer assist you. He was desperate. Had he sent for you, looking for a bribe to refrain from exposing you to the City Defender?”

“It all sounds so plausible, John, especially considering how I intended to take advantage of your mother’s infirmity, may the Lord forgive me. And, yes, I do admit I wanted the hoard, but as for the rest, I swear I am innocent.”

A hazy cross of light slid around the wall and came to rest on the ceiling above Alexis’ desk. It reminded John of the description of the angel Peter dreamt had guarded him in the pit and the strange lights resembling the Key of the Nile, Hypatia, a pagan, said she saw at the forge. This led John to think of the decorated basket left at the temple and from that to the strips of cloth tied in his mother’s hair.

Stephen sat the church-shaped lantern on the corner of the abbot’s desk and John could see his old friend’s haggard face, every age line accentuated by shadow,

“Yes, Alexis,” John said softly. “I realize now you are innocent.”

***

It was early morning when John knocked on Leonidas’ door. It had rained at last during the night, but the puddles he had walked through on the way from the City Defender’s office made no impression on him. Nor did he hear the waking sounds of the city or notice the smell of wet earth, encased as he was in a shell of regret and sorrow.

Helen ushered him inside with an expression of mixed fury and terror, as was only fitting, he thought. There was, this time, no slightest sign of welcome in Leonidas’ face.

“My friend,” John said. “I asked to be allowed to bring the news to you myself. Your son, Stephen, has been arrested for the murders of Theophilus and Diocles.”