Death on Delos Read online

  “I’m not sure it helps, Nico,” Diotima said. “There are plenty of innocent reasons to beach here.”

  She was obviously less enthused than I was.

  “What sort of boat?” she asked.

  “A dinghy, from the look of it,” I said. “You can see where the keel starts and ends, and it can’t have been too heavy, or the indent would be much greater.”

  Diotima nodded. “On an island with a fishing village, that’s not a huge help.”

  “Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t want to give away any evidence. I measured the length, width and depth of the marks, using torn strips from my clothing to mark the distances.

  Diotima still held the leather pouch we had removed from the body.

  “What’s in it?” I asked.

  Diotima opened the flap, put her hand in, and said, “I feel coins.”

  She pulled out three and displayed them in her palm. Two of these were silver tetradrachms. That was a four-drachm piece, the largest unit of currency for which any normal person would ever find a use. Merchants who traded boatloads of goods talked in terms of tetradrachms. Shoppers in the agora bought and sold in obols, and any one of these tetras was worth twenty-four obols.

  It didn’t make sense. Surely there was nothing you could possibly buy on Delos that would cost a tetradrachm. I said as much to Diotima. “Do they even use money on Delos? There are some small villages where the old style of barter is good enough.”

  “I don’t know,” Diotima said. “We’ll have to ask.”

  The final coin was something I’d never seen before. It was duller than silver, not as yellow as gold. A fish of some sort was stamped on one side, letters I didn’t recognize on the obverse.

  Diotima prodded it with a finger. “It looks like gold, but it isn’t,” she said. She looked up at me. “This coin is not Hellene.”

  “No.”

  “But we’ve seen similar coins before,” she said.

  “We have?”

  “In Asia Minor. In Persian-controlled Asia Minor.”

  She was right. Years ago, before we were married, Diotima and I had found ourselves on a case in the city of Ephesus, where we had come across a jar of coins. Those coins had been different from these, but they did share a certain style.

  I said, “Is there anyone on Delos who knows about coins?”

  “We’ll have to ask.”

  “There’s something else you need to know.”

  Diotima raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Last night, when I passed from the sanctuary into the graveyard, I came through the gate in the northwest corner. It didn’t make a sound.”

  “So?” Diotima asked.

  “So have you come across any other gate, door, wheel, or axle on this island that doesn’t creak and squeal when it’s used?” I asked.

  It was true. The climate of Delos was so warm and so relentlessly dry that everything that could turn squealed, even if only a little bit.

  “Let’s go look,” Diotima said.

  I pulled my tunic back on. It was still damp, but it would dry quickly in the warm weather. What was more annoying was the sand down my back. I would just have to live with it.

  We crossed the graveyard. I knelt at the gate to inspect the hinges.

  “They’re wet with oil,” I said.

  I ran my fingers across and smelled them. “Olive oil. It smells and feels like quality product. You could cook with this.”

  Men use cheap, coarse final pressing oil to grease machines.

  Diotima wiped for herself and smelled her fingers. “Cooking oil, I’m sure. Probably from the kitchens. I take it you didn’t oil the gate, Nico?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I wonder who did?” Diotima added it to her list of things to check. The moment the High Priest had assigned her to the job, she had pulled out that old scrap of papyrus and begun scribbling notes. She frowned as she completed the line. “This is a long list.”

  I said, “What’s your plan? I suppose you’ll begin with interviews?”

  “Yes. Of course, I’ll have to interview you first,” said my wife. “You’re the prime suspect.”

  “Me?” I said, horrified. “I expected that sort of response from Anaxinos, but not from my own wife.”

  “Well, you were the one standing over the victim’s body,” she pointed out. “Face it, Nico, if you were in my position, you’d be insisting that you did it, and demanding that we learn more about your dubious past.”

  “I like to think you’re already familiar with my dubious past,” I said bitterly. “You contributed to a lot of it.”

  “Not the parts of it that happened last night after I went to bed,” Diotima said. “Anaxinos asked a good question. How did you happen to be the one to find the body?”

  I had known this was coming. “You had better sit down,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

  I told my wife everything that had transpired while she slept.

  Diotima managed to hold in her anger until I petered out to an unhappy finish, at which point she exploded.

  “Nico, how could you!” she said angrily. “That is probably the most despicable thing you have ever done.”

  “I can think of a few others—” I began.

  “You suborned one of the most senior priests in all of Hellas!”

  “I want to point out that I tried not to bribe him,” I said, getting angry myself. “I even said I’d go back to Pericles and tell him no. But when I made the offer, Geros practically threw himself at me. It takes two to be corrupt, Diotima.”

  “I can’t imagine Geros agreeing to that.”

  “Nor could have I,” I said. “But it’s true. Straight away Geros asked how much Pericles was offering. He couldn’t wait to take Athenian money. I was as shocked as you are.”

  “I notice that didn’t stop you offering the bribe in the first place,” she said, even more angry than me.

  “What was I supposed to do? Tell Pericles I didn’t feel like helping Athens?”

  “That would have been a start! Not long ago, you shouted at me and said, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “That was about Anaxinos making you the official investigator,” I said.

  “Well, now I say the same back to you, my husband, about Pericles making you the agent for his corruption.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. When I’d calmed down a little, I said, “All right, I admit my mistake was not telling you right away what was going on. It was the first time since I met you that I’ve not shared a job with you, Diotima, and it didn’t turn out so well. But when I shouted at you, you pointed out, perfectly correctly, that Anaxinos had left you little choice but to agree. Pericles did the same to me.”

  “You don’t have to do everything that man tells you.”

  “With Pericles? He’s the most persuasive man on earth. You know how he can make any course seem like the right one.”

  “That’s true,” Diotima admitted.

  “In a way, Pericles was right,” I said. “If Geros hadn’t died, it would have all worked out. Athens would have taken the treasure, Anaxinos would be relieved that the conflict was resolved amicably, and Geros would have retired a rich man.”

  “It would still be the wrong thing,” Diotima said.

  “Well, yes,” I admitted. “But have you noticed how statesmen tend to be results-oriented people? As long as everyone gets what they want, they let the philosophers worry about the ethics later.”

  “Even Geros, it seems,” said Diotima unhappily. “How could he have resisted Athens by day, then done such a deal in the night?”

  It was the first time she had admitted that Geros had been a willing party in the arrangement.

  “I don’t know. The irony is, it’s the fact that Pericles and Geros had a done deal that m
akes it certain that I didn’t kill Geros.”

  “You can hardly say that to Anaxinos,” Diotima said.

  “No, he might not see it in quite the same light. The proof of my innocence is something I don’t dare mention.”

  “What a mess,” said my wife.

  “You mean my alibi?” I asked.

  “I mean everything!” she said, disconsolate. “Not a single thing on this island has gone right.”

  “Speaking of things not going right, what happens now to your dedication ceremony?”

  “Completely ruined,” Diotima said, and I put an arm around her as she suppressed a sob. “You heard Anaxinos. The whole island is polluted. The best we can do for Delos is find this murderer.”

  “What do we do first then?” I asked.

  “Anaxinos talked of going to Geros’s house. We should join him.”

  “I’ll meet you there. I have to report to Pericles first.”

  I found Pericles in his tent, on a camp stool, leaning over a trestle table. He had a large piece of papyrus in front of him, onto which he was scribbling words as quickly as he could. He continued to write even as I delivered a report on developments.

  He grunted at my news, largely ignoring me. Then I especially mentioned the three coins that we had found on Geros, because two of them were tetradrachms from Athens. This led me to the question I wanted to ask, and for which I didn’t want Diotima present when I asked it.

  “Those are big value coins, Pericles. It worries me. I need an honest answer.”

  “To what?” he said.

  “My attempt last night . . . was that the first time Athens has bribed Geros?”

  That made Pericles look up at me. “Why would you think it isn’t?” he asked.

  “He agreed too quickly. Far too quickly for my liking, and because those are Athenian coins. They didn’t come from any other city.”

  “I see.”

  Pericles put down his stylus. He looked up at me with an expression that was a combination of exasperation, indignation, and typical Periclean sincerity.

  “I absolutely promise you, Nicolaos, that Athens has never before bribed any priest of Delos. Not in my time as a leader, anyway.”

  “I imagine you’d know,” I said.

  “I would,” Pericles said without a blush. “If this annoying priest Geros was found with tetradrachms, they didn’t come from our coffers.”

  I had no choice but to believe him.

  Pericles picked up the stylus and continued his scribbles. I had been watching this with a determination not to ask the obvious question, but now curiosity beat me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Harpy must return to Athens for supplies. We can’t eat the locals out of everything they have. That’s obvious after last night’s dinner. I am sending my status report to the people of Athens with the captain of Harpy. The people expected us to collect the League treasury and return at once. It behooves me to tell them it will be days at the very least. I’ll have Harpy courier the message, and any personal mail the men want to send.”

  “Oh.” I wondered if my name figured prominently in that report, as the reason why the Athenians didn’t yet have the treasure. I decided I wasn’t going to ask.

  “You said Harpy would carry messages?”

  “If you have mail, but you’ll have to be quick. Harpy sails as soon as I’m finished here.”

  I could be very quick. I snatched an old piece of papyrus from the pile on Pericles’s table—I carefully didn’t ask permission—grabbed one of the writing brushes beside the ink, and wrote a few words for my family. I told them that Diotima and I were well, and warned them that we might be here for a few extra days. In fact, the delay might be indefinite, due to some pressing business, since Diotima and I were on a mission from the Gods. In closing I asked my mother, who was a midwife, as diffidently and as cautiously as I could, so as not to cause any alarm, whether she might have any quick hints on how to deliver a baby.

  I handed this to Pericles and continued on my way, to the house of Geros.

  The home of Geros, the second highest priest of the Sanctuary of the Delian Apollo, was as modest as every other house on the island. It stood in the middle of the row of homes that lined the Sacred Way from the New Village to the temples. There was no garden—well, Geros hadn’t struck me as the gardening sort of man—nor was the home painted in anything other than the dull gray that seemed to afflict all wood left out to the elements overlong.

  I knocked on the door, and was admitted by a worried-looking man of late middle age. He rubbed his hands absently and said, “Ah, yes sir, I was told to expect you.”

  I stepped into the atrium, whence I could see straight in to the inner courtyard, which was a hive of activity.

  The villagers who had come to collect Geros from the scene of his death were now in the courtyard of his house. They were clustered about a table that had been carried into the center space. With them were several priests who sang a hymn to Apollo while a handful of priestesses prepared the body for the afterworld. The women washed Geros, dressed him in fresh clothes, placed a coin under his tongue, with which to pay Charon the Ferryman to cross Acheron, the River of Woe, and used a clean white rag to bind his jaw, so that his mouth remained shut.

  They did these things very properly, as anyone would expect of holy people, with the dead man’s feet pointing toward the door, to prevent his psyche from escaping into the world.

  The villagers saw that their part was done. They took their leave, passing by me as they left. Damon gave me a wink.

  I wondered why Geros’s family were not performing these duties. I asked the house slave who waited beside me.

  “There is no family,” he said.

  “None at all?”

  “There was a wife, but she died long ago.”

  “They had no children?” I asked.

  “The lady died in childbirth, sir,” the slave said.

  “Oh.”

  Such words made me uneasy at the moment.

  “Are you the only slave?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” he said politely. “I do all the work, including cooking. I expect you wish to join the High Priest and the visiting priestess?”

  “Yes. The priestess you mention is my wife.”

  “Then allow me to congratulate you both on your growing family, sir.”

  The slave showed me upstairs to Geros’s private room. There I found Diotima sitting sideways upon a dining couch. She had a small pile of papyrus and wax tablets beside her. Anaxinos was wandering about in a distracted way.

  “They must be here somewhere,” Anaxinos said.

  “What must?” I asked. They both turned at my words. I had surprised them.

  “Keys to the temple complex,” Anaxinos said. “Geros and I both have copies. I must collect his set, in the interests of security.”

  Anaxinos opened closet doors and poked around.

  I had heard of keys, but never before come across any.

  “What do they look like, sir?” I asked.

  “Thin bars of bronze, about the length of my forearm.”

  Diotima read the documents by her side, while I helped Anaxinos search, opening boxes and a couple of chests.

  “Are these them, sir?” I asked.

  Anaxinos peered over my shoulder to see inside the small wooden box I had found. It had been sitting on the floor behind where the door swung, which was why neither of us had seen it at once. Within was a handful of exactly what the High Priest had described. The bars looked like they had been bent in the middle.

  “That’s them. Thank you.”

  I handed the box up to the old priest, who thanked me a second time.

  “I expect you wish to remain and read all of Geros’s correspondence,” he said. The High Priest’s tone told us w
hat he thought of that.

  Diotima replied. “There is always the chance that somewhere in here is a hint to any enemies Geros may have had, sir.”

  “We already know his worst enemies: the Athenians camped on our shoreline.”

  “There may be others,” Diotima said. “Who knows what we might find? We can only look.”

  “Just so.” Anaxinos paused, then asked, “Tell me, do you not find this distasteful?”

  “It is necessary, High Priest,” Diotima said.

  “It must be an Athenian way of thinking,” he said darkly, and departed.

  “What do you have?” I asked, when we were alone.

  “I have an embittered, disappointed old man who was angry at life,” Diotima said. “Did you know Geros had a wife who died in childbirth?” she asked.

  “The slave told me.”

  “The records are here.” Diotima waved a thin sheaf of papyrus. “Read this.” She handed me the papyrus. It was brown with age, but the writing was perfectly legible. I leafed through, reading quickly.

  “His wife was pregnant here on Delos,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I flipped to the next page. “She went into labor early. They tried to rush her to Mykonos.” Mykonos was the nearest major island, where she could safely give birth among good midwives.

  “She didn’t make it,” Diotima finished for me. “She died in transit, trying to give birth on the boat. Read the last page.”

  The final page was a diatribe against Apollo and Artemis, and the rule of life and death that had forced Geros’s wife to lose her life on a tiny boat.

  I wanted to crumple the sad pages, but instead I placed them carefully on the desk. Our victim had written those words after the greatest tragedy of his life.

  “He had lost his faith,” I said. “That explains why Geros was so ready to accept a bribe. He no longer cared about the Gods.”

  Diotima nodded. “I think so. Though how anyone could lose belief in the divine twins is beyond me.”

  “Is there anything else?” I asked.

  “I cleaned out the room.” She gave me the papers to carry.

  At that moment an enormous rumble filled the room. It was my stomach. I suddenly realized that I’d been awake all night and hadn’t eaten since dinner.