I took my time getting relief with a few deep breaths. After all, there was no urgency to inspect a corpse.
As I waded through the last of the water, I saw only glimpses of the body between the legs of the people clustered about, staring, pointing, and arguing. Something about their reaction didn’t seem quite right. I dripped my way across, the group parted, if only to avoid getting as wet as me, and I looked down into the very dead face of Melo.
“How in Hades did he get in there?” I said loudly.
There was no point in asking. No one knew any better than I did.
“This is very depressing,” I said.
“Especially from Melo’s point of view,” Diotima added, which was true enough.
I said, “We need to determine how he died.”
“He drowned,” said Zeke, frowning.
“Did he?” I asked. “We found him in the spring. It’s not the same thing.”
“Are we sure Ophelia’s not in there too?” Doris asked.
“I’m sure,” I said. “The spot where I found Melo was the last left on my sweeps. Why didn’t he rise to the surface? I thought bodies did that.”
“Not necessarily at once, I believe,” Zeke said. “We live close to the coast. Every now and then I’ve been in town when a drowned man was brought in. They seem to stay under until they bloat. Then they rise.”
“How long had Melo been in the water?” Doris asked.
“It can’t be more than three days,” Diotima said. “We spoke to him then, after we gave up the search.”
“And how in Hades did he manage to drown without being seen, in the middle of a sanctuary full of girls and women walking back and forth?”
Then Diotima and I answered my question in unison. “He fell in at night.”
“But Nico,” said Socrates, frowning, “didn’t you say it yourself?”
“Didn’t I say what?”
“When you tried to dive. You said, ‘How does anyone manage to drown?’ ”
It was a fair point. “You’re right, Socrates. Something’s … er … fishy. We’ll have to inspect the body. But not here in front of the girls.”
Zeke ordered the slaves to carry the body to the same storeroom where was stored the skeleton of Hippias. In the absence of a courtyard not inhabited by young girls, the storeroom would have to do for observance of the rites. The slaves would place Melo’s feet toward the door, and the priestesses would clean his body and place the coin. I wondered if they’d find room enough for both bodies. If things kept on like this, the sanctuary might need to build an extension.
“What do we do with all this other stuff?” Diotima asked. She sat amongst a small fortune in gold and silver ornaments. No, not a small fortune: a large one. A family could probably live for a hundred years on the value of what she had scattered on the grass. Pots, vessels, statuettes, a whole pile of mirrors made of bronze, tarnished beyond repair, rings, gems, wooden spindles and spindle whorls, a case of sewing needles made of bone.
“Throw it back into the spring,” Thea said.
“You must be joking!” I said it without thinking, before I could stop to think I was correcting the High Priestess.
Thea was not amused. “No, young man, I’m not joking. Everything you see lying on the grass was dedicated to the Goddess. Women long dead gave their most precious possessions to our Goddess, that she might grant them favor in life. They might be dead, and their psyches in Hades, but their gifts were forever, and I will not see that undone.”
The lady had a point. I sighed and reached for the first, a beautiful statuette of a young child.
“I’ll do this, Nico,” Diotima said. “You go get yourself warm.”
I smiled in gratitude, because I was shivering beyond control. As I left, I saw Diotima begin. Gaïs bent to help her, and together the two priestesses blessed each object with all their power before each was returned to its home.
It had been clever of me to strip. I used my exomis as a towel and then, in the absence of anything else to wear, put it on. I was damp, but at least I wasn’t frozen and the shivers had left me.
I took Socrates with me to see the body.
A slave guarded the entrance. I told him there was little chance of the occupants escaping, and he replied that Zeke had ordered him to stay, not to keep the bodies in, but to keep the more curious girls out.
“They’re already playing dare games to see who’s willing to come closest,” he said.
So much for protecting the children’s innocence. I opened the door and we went inside. Socrates had seen death before, and I didn’t expect such a clean body to be any concern.
He didn’t disappoint me. But he stood back, looking somewhat askance, and said, “Nico, what do you look for? How do you inspect a body?”
“Like this.” I knelt beside Melo and heaved him over. He’d been a light man in life, but in death he was heavy as a sack of rocks.
Despite having been in the water, the exomis he wore had nettles and seeds stuck to it. Well, that was no surprise. He’d spent his days wandering the countryside in search of his betrothed.
I pulled down the tunic and ran my fingers over his body. I said to Socrates, “I’m searching for any sign of a wound.”
Socrates gave a moue of distaste. “Can’t you just look?”
“With some wounds you have to find the broken bones beneath.”
It was the idea of touching a dead body that upset him. We Hellenes have a horror of touching the dead. A man who’s been in contact with a corpse is forbidden to eat or have sex or enter the holy places until he’s been ritually cleansed.
“What’s this?”
At the corpse’s back, beneath the leather belt of his exomis, was something solid. I pulled it out, to find it was a piece of broken pottery. I held it up to Socrates and said, “Easy to see how a killer missed it.”
“Nico, there are words on the other side.”
I flipped it over. Socrates was right. Scratched into the fired clay were these words: caves hills fields coast boats farmhouse. A line had been scratched through the first four words. The final two were inscribed in the same hand but with slightly thicker lines. I guessed they’d been added later.
People used broken pottery to scratch notes all the time. This, it seemed to me, must have been notes Melo had scratched for himself. It didn’t take much imagination to realize this was his checklist of places to search for Ophelia.
I said, “Socrates, don’t tell anyone else about this, except for Diotima of course. All right?”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because …” I was stumped for an answer. “Because you shouldn’t give away information unless you need to.”
Socrates nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.
My prodding and my close inspection of the body provided nothing more, either front or back. It was when I touched his head that I made progress. The bone beneath the hair moved. I poked around, gently at first, then more firmly, until I was certain. The skull at the back of his head had been broken. There was no blood, but then nor should there be, since the body had spent at least a day in cold running water.
I took Socrates out and returned to the spring for another look, and then we joined the others in Thea’s office. It was crowded with everyone present, but at least the Little Bears couldn’t hear us.
As I walked in, Thea was speaking. “The explanation is obvious,” she said. “This annoying young man was in the habit of skulking around the sanctuary. Obviously, he fell into the water in the dark and drowned. It’s happened before, and sadly, it will probably happen again.”
They all stopped and turned to me as I entered.
Diotima said, “What did you find?”
“Melo was knocked on the head,” I said. “From behind.”
There was a pause before they understood the implication, then startled gasps from the women, except for Diotima. She’d expected as much.
“Are you sure?” Thea asked.
“It’s certain,” I said. “His skull is broken inward. Anyone can feel it.”