“No it wasn’t, Nico,” Diotima said. “We told a family they were bereaved. Now they’ll collect Romanos and he won’t lie alone.”
“We’ll have to interview them again,” I said. “But not until they’ve had a chance to calm down. The next question is, which persona did the killer intend to kill?”
Diotima looked at me oddly. “What do you mean, Nico?” Diotima said. “Nobody could have mistaken Romanos for someone else.”
“No, but there were three men in the same body,” I said. “There was Thanatos the character in the play-”
“You mean someone was trying to kill the character?” Diotima said. “What sort of a crazy person would do that?”
“Characters kill other characters,” I said.
“Characters aren’t real, Nico,” Diotima said. “Real people kill other real people. They don’t kill fictional people.”
“Then why did the killer choose to kill Romanos as if he were Thanatos?” I said. “There are so many easier ways to kill a man than hanging from a god machine on a stage, in the dead of night, with two guards close by.”
Diotima chewed at her lip while she thought about it. “The method does sound rather dramatic,” she conceded. “Or it’s a crazy person. Go on.”
I said, “Then there’s Romanos the actor. That’s how he’s best known to men in Athens. Was this a professional quarrel that turned violent? Then there’s Romanos the metic who lives in a crowded house in Melite. Nobody at the amphitheater even knew he had a family in Athens, that’s how secretive he was.”
“Nico, you’re talking about motive.”
“All right. But which of those three men did the killer intend to strike down?”
SCENE 16
It’s a strange case when you know who the body is, but aren’t sure which man died. Was it Romanos the actor? Or the character he played? Or perhaps because of his life outside the theater?
Diotima’s point that it came down to motive was true, but the three different identities of Romanos were so extreme that we felt we had to begin with this question: who was Romanos that someone would want to kill him?
Diotima pointed out that Phellis had fallen in exactly the same situation as we had found Romanos dead, and both men had been dressed as the god of death.
“It’s almost as if the play was unlucky,” Diotima said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed. “Whoever heard of an unlucky play?”
Diotima shrugged.
I said, “Besides, we know that Phellis was brought down by the saboteur.”
“Do we?” she asked. “Is the saboteur the same person as the killer?”
It was my turn to shrug. “We’ll have to find out.”
“What do we make of the woman who drugged the guards?”
“I think they saw the killer.”
“So do I. But it might have been a man.”
“They said it was a woman.”
“Nico, actors pretend to be women all the time.”
Romanos might have walked to his place of execution, but more likely he had been carried-perhaps they knocked him out first, or perhaps he was drunk-either way there would have to be at least two men; one at each end. This idea caused us to knock on the door of every house close to the theater, in the hope that someone had seen a body being carried down the street.
It turned out there had been at least seven. The people of Athens hadn’t waited for the Great Dionysia to start before the dionysiac parties had begun. All across the city, symposia had raged through the night. Exhausted drunk men had been carried home by their slaves.
The heavy intermittent showers that had soaked Diotima and me had forced everyone to rush from place to place between spells of rain. Witnesses saw many incapacitated men on the street at the same time, and to an observer at night, there was no difference between a man who was dead drunk and a man who was dead.
It occurred to me that the perfect time to carry a body through the streets of Athens was on a party night.
Whatever, it meant there was no useful witness, and if someone had seen something, they would have been too tipsy themselves to be a reliable witness.
We abandoned the search and decided instead to question Sophocles. After all, he was the author of this tragedy.
Sophocles lived in the deme of Colonus, which lay to the northwest of the city. I sent a slave runner with a request to visit him, and received an immediate reply that Sophocles had gone to the local gymnasium to relieve the tension of the disaster, and that I was to see him there. His local gymnasium was the Academy.
I passed through the agora on my way to the Dipylon Gate, which was the closest exit to Colonus. In the agora all was chaos. Chaos was the agora’s usual state, but today’s chaos was different from the norm. Today, the market stalls had not been raised. Instead, slaves were hard at work hammering together long planks to make tables and benches for the party to come. Women strung chains of flowers between poles that the men had raised. Children carried baskets of flowers for the women or ran between the legs of the adults. Dogs followed their masters or ran with the children. People smiled as they worked, even the slaves. Men and women laughed and sang songs in praise of Dionysos, the god of wine and the harvest.
I followed the Panathenaic Way northwest from the agora and on through Ceramicus. This was the deme where the potters worked, and it showed in the large clods of clay dropped here and there, and the men working with their hands behind their wheels, in workshops that were open to the road. None of them looked up as I passed. Nor did the people here seem as interested in the Dionysia as other parts of the city. Perhaps it was because they were too busy making money.
These men were famous throughout the world, because only they knew how to paint their handiwork with red figures on a black background. The red figure pots of Athens were one of our biggest exports. A “ceramic” jar could command an outrageous price in places where the potters weren’t as talented as ours.
Every second house had a serving hole cut into its front wall, with a wooden door that opened upward to form an awning for the women who served behind the counters. They hawked the wares that their husbands and sons had made in the workrooms. In Athens, every business is a family business. Even mine. Diotima was as much a part of my work as I was.
Ceramicus was also home to another place where business was booming: the city’s cemetery. I passed it on the right, and reflected that soon Romanos would be cremated here.
The other side of Ceramicus backed onto the double portal of the Dipylon Gates, the widest way in and out of Athens. Despite this, there were so many people coming into Athens that I had to step back and wait for the tide to ebb.
I passed the time with one of the guards at the gate. He swore at the visitors and told them to hurry along, talking to me between the cuss words.
“Most of this is people coming for the party,” he said to me.
“Then why are they all coming from outside?” I asked.
“They’re camping outside the city walls.” He spat on the ground, narrowly missing a tourist. The tourist scowled but took one look at the unhappy guard and decided to make nothing of it.
The guard said, “Have you seen what the inns are charging for a bed?” He spat again. “If it were me, I’d be sleeping on hard ground too, if I had to pay a week’s wages for one night.”
“And then a lot of them will stay for Dionysia.”
I looked back at the crowd entering Athens. The sight of all those happy people made me nervous.
Outside the gates was the deme known as Outer Ceramicus, not as salubrious as Inner Ceramicus, but close enough that it did good business with passersby. Outer Ceramicus gave way to groves of olive trees, sacred to the goddess Athena, and orchards, all within a walled park. The fruit was free for the picking and I didn’t hesitate.