“Yes, the sacred basket. Thinking about it reminds me-”
Cornelia interrupted his thought by leaping up and running to the window. “Goddess!” she cried. “I spoke too soon! The City Defender just arrived!”
John met Georgios and a contingent of armed guards in the courtyard. The City Defender looked tired. There were bags under the eyes of the big square-jawed face, and when he spoke it was with bemusement more than bluster.
“You are taxing my patience and my resources,” Georgios said. “I don’t have enough prison cells for you and your friends and your servants.”
“Why are you here this morning?” John demanded.
“According to the confessions I have just heard, that elderly servant of yours, who is apparently more spry than he looks, is responsible for the murders of both Theophilus and Diocles. Your female servant, however, only killed Diocles.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
Now Georgios looked pained now as well as tired. “In part, perhaps, but not all of it certainly. I realize the emperor sent you into exile here but did he order you to bring the crime in Constantinople with you?”
“That’s what people feared, so naturally that’s what they see. Isn’t it obvious my servants are trying to protect me?”
“Or trying to protect each other. The real question is which of you needs protecting? One, or two, or possibly all three?”
“None of us. Neither Peter nor Hypatia is a murderer.”
“In the grip of passion we can all become murderers if only for an instant, but an instant is all it takes to drive a blade into a man’s back. It is perfectly plausible the old man killed Theophilus. He tells me he was out by the temple that night, and likewise the woman was on the spot when Diocles was killed. Perhaps you ordered these deaths? At any rate, as owner of the estate you are equally responsible.”
“You are therefore here to arrest me?” John had noted the guards were blocking his path to the gate. The courtyard penned him in on all sides.
“It is necessary.” Georgios’ tone was curt.
“I think not. I know who killed Theophilus and Diocles.”
Georgios smiled in weary fashion. “If you killed them, of course you would know.”
At his gesture a couple of his men drew their swords and stepped toward John.
“I didn’t kill anyone, Georgios. But were I to reveal the culprit’s identity would you believe me on the evidence I have and act on it?”
“My interest is in maintaining public order in Megara. What is good for Megara is good for me. You have my attention.”
“Then allow me to continue my investigations. There is more to be done to ensure justice will be carried out.”
The guards who had stationed themselves on either side of John looked away from the man they were supposed to seize and looked toward the City Defender.
“I will allow you one day,” Georgios said, “and will leave a few men here with your lady to keep her safe while you continue to look into the matter. Meantime, your servants will remain my reluctant guests.”
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?”