We walked across to him.
"Tullius Statianus!' Helena's voice was hoarse but she sounded strict and determined to stand for no nonsense."I believe you know my brother, Aelianus.'
He looked up with dull eyes, unwilling or unable to run away from us any longer.
XLII
We took him to the gymnasium. It was close by, a familiar place where Statianus might relax; and it was bound to have food-sellers. Helena found a place in the shade outside (since as a woman she was barred, while I set us up with pastries, stuffed vine leaves, and olives. Statianus ate most of it. He seemed ravenous; I wondered if he had run right out of money.
Spending cash, I mean. He must possess funds, but out here he could be stranded. Men of his rank only need a banker abroad who knows their banker in Rome, but without such a contact they are as helpless as the rest of us. Delphi would have money-changers, but since the shrine's decline there would be few international financiers who took letters of credit. Statianus was said to be bad at managing and once he had used up what was in his pouch, he could find himself stuck.
Now we took a proper look at him. He was probably clean but he needed a shave. Under the stubble, his face was devoid of character. He had a limited range of expressions. he could look up, down, to the left and to the right. His mouth never moved and his eyes had no animation. A kind person would say grief had wiped him out. I was never that kindly.
Helena and I finished eating first. As Statianus ravenously continued, Helena began the softening up process, first asking about Aelianus. Between mouthfuls, Statianus told us how they had become friends at Olympia. Aulus seemed to have expertise in tragic situations and persuaded Statianus to trust him. He sympathised with the way Statianus had been hounded by the quaestor during the investigation into Valeria's death. When the group were taken to Corinth and put under house arrest, Statianus could not bear to face Aquillius again; he despaired and decided to bunk off to Delphi as a last resort. Aulus tagged along.
"So where has he gone? Why did he leave you?'
"I don't blame him. He thinks this is a waste of time. There's
nothing to do here except wait, month after month, while the organisers at the temple give out the questions, always to other people. Aulus said my connections aren't good enough ever to get a chance at the oracle. But I can wait. I do a bit here at the gym. Sometimes I run.
"Yes, we know you can run!' I snarled wryly."You use the training tracks here at the gym?' The sports facilities were on two levels, with a washing area between them. The lower building appeared to be a palaestra, with the usual large courtyard and side rooms for boxing practice. When I bought the food I had seen that the upper building had an indoor covered running track for use in hot or otherwise inclement weather, with an open-air colonnade at the back; both tracks extended a whole stadium's length."Aulus is pretty athletic. Did he practise with you?'
"Yes, but being stuck here bored him. He tried to persuade me to abandon the oracle, but I am adamant. I need the gods' help to find out what happened to my wife.'
A raw note had entered his voice. We let him alone for a few minutes. Eventually Helena took him back to the beginning of his marriage, asking how Valeria had been chosen as his bride. Statianus confirmed that prior to the wedding the couple hardly knew each other. Valeria's mother had been a friend of his own mother's years before.
"She was respectable, but she came cheap?' My frankness grated. Statianus steadied, as if he recognised he was up against a fiercer interrogator than he had encountered so far. Aquillius Macer had stubbornly thought him guilty, but lacked push; even Aulus would go easy on a fellow aristocrat – he rarely used charm, but had a snobbish politeness with his own level of society.
Impatient with my rudeness, Helena leaned towards Statianus."We met your mother in Rome. She is thinking about you, missing you. She wants you to come home and be taken care of
He let out a very small humph. I guessed he realised Tullia Longina thought he should get on with his life – which meant a speedy remarriage.
I let Helena continue the interview. More sympathetic than me, she drew from Statianus his version of what had happened to his wife at Olympia. It mostly matched what we had heard. Valeria wanted to meet Milo of Dodona, in order to hear a recitation. They had quarrelled about that; her husband admitted that they quarrelled frequently.
"Were you in love with your wife?'
"I was a good husband.'
"None of us can ask for more,' Helena assured him gravely.
She had more. She had much more, and she knew it. She pressed my hand briefly, as if she thought I was about to erupt indignantly.
They discussed the fatal evening. Statianus had dined out with the men; he came back and found Valeria missing, went out again to look for her. Nobody else took any interest; he searched alone. He could not find her."Did you go to the palaestra that night?' Helena asked.
"No. I have cursed myself for that, a thousand times – but it was a private club. They had people on the doors to deny non-members admittance. If I had gone, I might have saved her.' If he had blundered in on the killing, he might have been bludgeoned to death too."When I did go there the next morning.
He could not continue. Helena, who was tougher than she looked, calmly described for him how he had found the body; the hostile superintendent ordering him to remove it; carrying his dead wife back to the group's tent; screaming for assistance. He seemed surprised we knew it was Cleonyma who first came out to him."A good woman,' he said briefly. We sensed how stoically she must have responded to the ghastly scene.
"Tullius Statianus, did you kill your wife?' Helena asked.
"No.'
Helena held his gaze. He stared back with only a tired look of defiance. He had been asked the same question too many times. he would not rant in outrage at it. He knew he was the chief suspect. Presumably by now he also knew there was no direct evidence to arrest him.
"This must all be very hard for you,' Helena sympathised.
"At least I am alive,' he replied harshly.
I took up the questions, tackling him again about his relationship with Valeria. He knew I was probing for a motive. Like all relationships, theirs had been complicated, but it sounded as if they were realistic about their fate. Although they had scrapped all the time, they had one thing in common. both had been put into the marriage for other people's convenience.
"Would you have divorced? Was it that bad?'
"No. Anyway, my parents would have opposed a divorce. Her relatives, too, would have been disappointed.'
"So you reached an accommodation?' Helena suggested. He nodded. It seemed the couple were resigned. In their social circle, if they had given up on this marriage, both would only have been shunted into new ones – which could have turned out even worse.
Later, Helena and I discussed whether Statianus had hated the situation more than he now said. Did the prospect of nagging parents force him to decide that killing Valeria was his only way out? I thought sticking with her was the easiest option – and he liked the easy ones. Having met his mother, Helena felt that if he really wanted out, he could have got around the opposition eventually. So she believed the marriage would have lasted."At least until one of them found somebody who offered more love.'