“Troilus? Visited me?”
“It was early in the morning, he said.”
Petronia turned toward the window facing the sea. John could not see her expression. “Oh, yes. I see. What I meant was that he wasn’t visiting me. A young fellow like that…why would he? It was Agnes he came to see.”
“Did he often visit her?”
“No. He was concerned about her, he said. He hadn’t seen her for a while, which explains why he arrived before dawn. Can I offer you some wine, Lord Chamberlain?”
Petronia took a cup and blue glass flask from a niche beside the brazier. “No?”
She poured herself wine, sat down on the edge of the bed, and gestured toward the large painted chair. “Please, please. Ascend the throne. You’re close enough to it, after all. It’s one we use on stage. We used it last in Agamemnon. Our version is always popular. Uproarious, you know.”
John declined. He fixed the actress in his gaze. She had leaned forward so that her tunic fell open, revealing an expanse of tawny skin below the white powder covering her neck. “It would be best for you to tell me everything that happened. I can see you may have wanted to protect Troilus but I can assure you, if he is responsible for the murder neither you, nor anyone else, will be able to save him from justice.”
Petronia emptied her cup, refilled it, and gave John a bleak smile. Her eyes glistened. “Troilus murder Agnes? I can’t imagine such a thing, Lord Chamberlain. They were…well…he would never have harmed her.” Her lower lip trembled as she raised the cup to her mouth again.
“You said Troilus arrived here before dawn?”
“I can’t say exactly when but it was still dark when Agnes left. The sky was beginning to lighten. I don’t know what they talked about. She has her own place.” Petronia nodded toward the painted backdrop partitioning the room. “I’ve trained myself not to hear what I’m not meant to hear.”
“Praiseworthy, indeed, but you must have heard something of their conversation since they exchanged angry words.”
Petronia stared at John in horror. “Who said so?”
“It was obvious, since you seemed so reluctant to tell me.”
Petronia shook her head. “How foolish I am. An old actress trying to deceive the Lord Chamberlain. But you are correct, for they did indeed argue. I didn’t hear precisely what was said but I could tell from their tone.”
“And then Agnes left?”
“Yes, although it was not on account of the argument. Agnes and I were already up when Troilus came pounding on the door. Agnes had to meet someone, you see. That wasn’t so unusual. She often had early appointments but she would never say what they were or who was involved.”
“And Troilus?”
Petronia dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. She looked at John pensively. Her jaw clenched. She was silent for what seemed like a long time and then her chest moved as she took a breath. “Troilus stayed here afterward. He needed someone to talk to. He thought Agnes had an assignation.”
John nodded his understanding.
“She did,” Petronia continued, “but not the sort he had in mind. She often spent time with disgruntled exiles from court. They were always meeting at odd hours, most likely to avoid being noticed. A wise thing considering the kind of loose talk they engaged in. It was all play.”
The actress sighed. “She always dressed as if she had been summoned to an audience with the emperor. Well, as near as she could given our circumstances. That’s why she was accepted in those circles. She acted her part so well, you see.”
John wondered whether that was the only service Agnes rendered. He kept the thought to himself. “When did Troilus leave?”
“He stayed for a long time, Lord Chamberlain. When you’re young you can agonize over affairs of the heart for hours. Sometimes it’s good to be able to discuss these matters with someone who is older and, sadly, wiser.”
“I trust you are wise enough to be telling me the truth. If you are not, I will soon find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
John paused outside Petronia’s lodgings to decide in what direction the truth might be discovered.
From the street the sea was invisible, obscured by the structures rising all around. The low sun left the street in shadow except for a single, sharp lance of fire which found its way through some gap in the buildings.
If Petronia wasn’t lying, which was far from certain, then Troilus could not have murdered Zoe. Whatever had been in the sack, Agnes had been seen alive hours after Helias had noted Troilus’ late night labors.
In addition, Troilus had been baring his soul to Petronia when Agnes died, perhaps even as John was gazing down at her dyed and lifeless body in the cistern.
No matter the exact duration of his visit, Troilus could never have killed Agnes, attempted to obscure her identity with dye, and conveyed her body to the cistern unless he had in fact followed straight after her, which, according to Petronia, he had not.
No doubt Petronia had thought she was protecting Troilus by initially failing to reveal his argument with Agnes. He would have been one of the last to see the victim alive. An obvious suspect. As it turned out, Petronia had inadvertently concealed the innocence of the man of whom she was so obviously fond.
Her fondness for Troilus meant that Petronia could not be ruled out as an enemy of Agnes.
The lance of light crossing the thoroughfare faded as the sun sank lower.
John turned for home.
He walked up the short incline toward where the narrow street intersected a colonnaded thoroughfare.
It must have been the same direction Agnes would have gone on her way to meet him in the square. While John waited, she had been waylaid and killed.
By whom? And where?
If John were to attempt to retrace her route he might notice something useful. He would still be moving in the general direction of the palace. She would have kept to the main streets. There would have been no need to take shortcuts to a prearranged meeting, especially for a woman in predawn darkness.
Merchants were closing their shops. The torches they were setting into wall brackets would have rendered the colonnades relatively bright and safe even in the dead of night. Nevertheless, the shops were interrupted by gloomy alcoves, open doorways leading to apartments, archways opening into courtyards, and the black mouths of alleyways, all places where a murderer might lie in wait.
He spoke to a merchant, who jumped up, startled in the midst of locking the grating protecting his shop to the iron ring set in the pavement. No, there had not been any disturbances recently. He’d seen nothing out of the ordinary. He never arrived to open his establishment until dawn anyway.
Most shopkeepers would have been at home at the time Agnes passed by on her way to her appointment.
A familiar odor caught John’s attention.
The smell of grilled fish, the sort sold on skewers by the docks. This street was a fair distance from the docks. He dismissed it as nothing more than hunger coupled with imagination.
The smell grew stronger.
Why would anyone be selling grilled fish in this part of the city at this time of the evening?
Then he saw the ragged creature huddled on the step of a doorway, surrounded by charred skewers from which hung mostly scraps of blackened meat, obviously unsold or ruined wares discarded by a vendor at the end of the day.
The beggar noticed John looking at him, grabbed an empty skewer, and waved it like a sword. “Get away, you bastard, or I’ll have yer eyes out. It’s all mine, this is. I didn’t battle them mangy curs to stuff the chops of a worthless lout like you!” Bits of fish clung to the man’s beard.
“I have a couple of coins for you, if you have certain information,” John replied in an even tone.