The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits Page 3

  "Well, of course," he replied indulgently. "When you put a stem on a hammer you leave it in a tub of water overnight to soak. Swells the wood, see, to get a better grip."

  I thanked him and left. Two-pound crosspein; doesn't mean anything to me, either. But the rusty hammer was a substantial piece of metal, I dreaded to think what it could do to a man's head.

  Gnatho. Handsome and rich; not the sort to do his own dirty work, either. Scipio had as good as told me to suspect him, so I did.

  If you want to know who's who in an army camp, ask the pay clerks.

  "Oh, I know who he is all right," the chief clerk said. "And yes, there's a poor relation of his on the roll — Vipsanius Gnatho, junior tribune attached to the Spanish auxiliary. Good man, as far as I know; won the headless spear at Numantia, no less."

  I whistled. Headless spears aren't given away free, like nuts at a bad play; they're only awarded for conspicuous valour and saving the life of a fellow soldier. "I didn't hear about that," I said.

  "Pretty strange business," the clerk said, "considering who it was he saved."

  "Go on."

  He grinned; born showman. I hate those. "Vitellius Acer," said the clerk. "You know, him that was killed last night. Waste of time saving him, really," he added.

  "I see what you mean," I said. "I thought Acer and Servius Gnatho hated each other."

  "They do," the clerk said. "Or did; whatever. But this 'cousin, Vipsanius Gnatho; seems like Acer was riding round in his fancy chariot just when the enemy sent out a sortie. Sly about it, they were, first thing our boys knew was when their archers opened up on our sappers coming off shift. Anyhow, Acer's riding along like Zeus Almighty in his chariot, suddenly Vipsanius jumps up behind him, grabs hold of him by the shoulders and throws him off, then jumps down after him; broke a leg by all accounts. Anyhow a heartbeat later, two dozen Spanish mercenaries hop up from behind a low wall and start shooting. They reckon if Vipsanius hadn't got Acer down off that chariot, he'd have been more full of points than a hedgehog."

  "Hold on," I said. "Spanish mercenaries? I thought they were on our side."

  He laughed. "They're on anybody's side who pays," he said. "Best light infantry in the world, some people reckon, but personally I wouldn't give them the time of day."

  Well, that showed me the direction I had to go. "Thanks for your help," I said. "I wonder, could you tell me where I'd find Caius Laelius?"

  Now I'll tell you something I bet you don't know about the Romans; their ponderous, galumphing excuse for a language doesn't have a word for "Yes". Instead, when they want to express assent, they've got to say things like certainly or I agree or even by Hercules! Bizarre; but at least it explains, to my satisfaction at least, why Scipio and Laelius learned Greek. Not, as they'll try and persuade you in Rome, so that the dazzling young general and his trusty sidekick could enjoy the glories of our literature. As if. No; the only possible explanation is that, using Greek, Laelius would be able to express agreement with every damnfool thing Scipio said without having to overtax his dismally limited imagination.

  Caius Laelius, Scipio's best buddy, was a chubby, curly man who could've been anywhere between fifteen and forty. As soon as I told him I was investigating Acer's death, he was so eager to help he was practically frothing at the mouth.

  "Sure I know Licinius," he said, nodding eagerly. "I bought a whole bunch of field-hands off him just after the battle, and he's looking after getting them shipped back home for me. Made me a good price, too; but I can't say as I took to him much."

  "Really?" I raised my eyebrows. "You can't dislike him too much, if you sat up all night playing knucklebones with the man."

  He frowned. "Who told you that?" he said.

  "He did," I replied.

  Laelius shrugged. "How odd. Yes, he did drop round uninvited, I might add — and it took me a hell of a long time to get rid of him, because you've got to be polite to these people. And yes, come to think of it, we did play knucklebones, but only a couple of hands, thank goodness. I'm not saying he cheated, but Lady Luck was definitely on his side. Reckon I lost more in a few hands than I paid for those slaves."

  I managed to hide my smile. "Licinius reckons he sat up with you all night," I said, "which is why it was impossible for him to have killed Acer. I take it you're telling me that's not so."

  "Absolutely." Laelius' enormous features arranged themselves into a study in puzzlement. "You know," he said, "that's disturbing, isn't it? Everyone knows Licinius and Acer weren't on good terms. You don't think —"

  "On the contrary," I interrupted, "I do virtually nothing else. Thanks for your time."

  One more visit to pay, and then I'd be done; just as well, since it was getting dark and I was worn out. I was going to have trouble convincing Scipio that I'd figured it all out while reclining in the shade if I was staggering all over the place from exhaustion. I went to the wheelwright's tent; he remembered a man bringing him a broken hammer to fix, even showed me a pail of water where, he assured me, the hammer had been dunked afterwards; "though," he said sorrowfully, "I could've told him, you got to leave it in there overnight. Just dipping it in and taking it out again's no good at all."

  That chore out of the way, I sent a runner to Scipio, asking him to spare me a little time at his earliest convenience, as I'd solved his puzzle for him. I'd barely had time to take the weight off my feet and scrub my face with sand when back the messenger came; Scipio's compliments, and he could see me right away. Fine.

  "First," I said, after we'd done all the hospitality and offering and refusing cups of wine and so forth, "I want to ask you one more time. What do you want from me, as far as this business is concerned?"

  He sighed. "I already told you, the truth."

  I smiled. "I'm delighted to hear it," I said. "And I have to say, my view of the courage and integrity of the Roman nobility's just gone up a whole lot."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "What I said," I replied. "You see, a lot of my people, Greeks in general, have a very poor attitude towards you Romans. We make out that you're — well, you make a lot of noise about the basic simple virtues of bravery, honesty, loyalty and what have you, but in fact you're the exact opposite. Not true, goes without saying."

  Scipio was looking at me. "Get to the point," he said.

  "If you like," I replied; and I proceeded to tell him about my day, and the various things I'd seen or been told about. "Now then," I went on, "the way I see it, everything turns on one thing, this simple iron peg." I took it out, displayed it on the flat of my hand. "Like I said, I found this under Acer's body, all covered in his blood. I also found the hole in the ground it came out of; I can show it to you if you like."

  "No need."

  "As you wish. Now, you'll see that the peg is sharp at this end, and there's dry caked blood on the sharp tip, going all round it. But Acer wasn't stabbed. If he just fell on top of the peg, which just happened to be lying there, you'd expect to see blood on one side only. Agreed?"

  "I guess so," said Scipio.

  "Fine," I said. "In which case, here's a hypothesis for you to consider. Acer is attacked; having no sword or dagger to defend himself with, he grabs for the nearest excuse for a weapon he can find - he grabs the rope that was tied to this ring, to pull the peg up out of the ground. The rope is frayed and breaks, but he's got the peg out. He uses it as a dagger, though it doesn't do him a lot of good, he dies anyhow. But my guess is, the blood on this peg isn't Acer's. It's the blood of the man who killed him."

  Scipio leaned forward a little. "Good," he said. "A man with a wound like that'll be easy to find. If you're right about Acer stabbing him - well, you can see how deep the stab was by the tidemark of dried blood."

  I nodded gravely. "Precisely," I said. "Just think about that. It must've gone in a good finger's depth. The murderer was lucky to be able to walk away, with a hole in him like that."

  "So?" Scipio said. "Have you found him?"

  I shook my he
ad. "I haven't been through the whole camp looking for wounded men or corpses, but the duty officer tells me everyone was present and correct on parade this morning. And you know how places like this are for gossip and rumours; if any of the non-combatants or camp-followers had wound up dead, we'd all know about it. Unless, of course," I added, "it was a slave who died."

  Scipio conceded that with a minor shrug.

  "Bearing that in mind," I said, "here's two alternative theories. We're taking motive as read, since there's no point me telling you what you told me this morning."

  He smiled.

  "Theory one," I went on. "Acer was killed on the orders of Servius Gnatho. Now there's one thing about this theory that puzzles me; namely, not so very long ago, Acer's life was saved by Servius Gnatho's poor relation and hanger-on, Vipsanius Gnatho; Vipsanius rescued Acer from an ambush by Spanish irregulars, for which he received the headless spear. Strikes me as odd that Servius' dependent cousin should put himself out to save the man his rich patron later has assassinated. Wasted effort, yes?"

  "Fine," Scipio said. "We'll forget about Gnatho, then."

  "All right," I told him, "now let's think about the slave dealer, Licinius. Acer was killed by a massive bash on the head. No weapon was to be found in the vicinity. Earlier that day, according to the blacksmith, one of Licinius' slaves dropped by the smithy and left with a hammerhead and a broken handle. He went to the wheelwright's. The hammer gets taken back to the smithy by a different man. The hammer shows signs of having been in water — which might mean it was used to pulp Acer's brains, and needed washing; but dunking in water overnight is what you do when you mend hammer handles, according to the smith, and the wheelwright. But," I continued, "the wheelwright says that after the hammer was fixed, it was just dunked briefly, which is useless."

  "Interesting," Scipio said.

  "Ah," I replied, "but not nearly as interesting as the other stuff the wheelwright told me. But we'll leave that for now. About the murderer; we believe he was stabbed, so deep it could've been fatal. But nobody seems to be dead except Acer, or even seriously injured."

  "So it must've been a slave," Scipio said.

  "That'd explain it," I said. "And when I went to see Licinius, practically the first thing he told me was that he'd had another item of stock just die on him. Who knows, or cares, what happens to dead slaves' bodies? Buried in a lime-pit or left out for the birds or burned on a bonfire with the trash; no body left to examine for major stab wounds. Theory; either the slave died of the wound or was knocked on the head to keep things quiet, but his body was disposed of and nobody thought twice about it. Neat?"

  "Very," Scipio said.

  "Well, quite," I said. "Neat enough to earn Licinius a view from the top of a cross, unless he apes his betters and opens a vein first." I paused. "Except," I said, "that's not what happened."

  Scipio didn't say anything.

  "Because," I carried on, "when I went to the wheelwright's, I asked him if he knew the man who'd collected the hammer. He said yes. He identified the man as the property of Caius Laelius."

  Absolute silence for a moment. Then Scipio looked up at me.

  "Meaning?" he said.

  "Meaning," I answered, "we now have to stop and think. Would you like to hazard a guess as to what thoughts've been crossing my mind lately?"

  Scipio lifted his head; "Why don't you just tell me?" he said.

  "All right, I will." I settled back a little in my chair. "And something that's been snagging my attention all along is, what an easy job this has been. No, I don't mean it in the look-how-clever-I-am sense. It was easy, simple as that. You listed the prime suspects for me; I looked at the scene and found the tethering-peg, which led me to the smith, and from there on it was like Theseus' golden thread in the Labyrinth. Even better, in fact; because just in case I didn't fancy the Licinius theory, there's a perfectly good Gnatho theory to fall back on. Because, of course, it's really easy to explain away Vipsanius saving Acer's life. For instance, it could be that Vipsanius was trying to kill Acer when he pulled him off the chariot; he failed, but there you go, bad luck happens. And Vipsanius was a commander of Spanish auxiliaries, and the ambushers were Spanish, because there's Spanish mercenaries on both sides. Dead easy for Vipsanius to arrange for his Spaniards to pass the word to their friends and relations on the other side to stage the ambush. And then there's another nice selection of choice; either Vipsanius got cold feet, realized he'd be in the frame if Acer died, and saved him; or he screwed up killing him, as previously argued; or maybe even Vipsanius arranged the ambush and the rescue, possibly even contrived to break his own leg, just so he and his cousin wouldn't be suspected when Acer was subsequently killed by Gnatho's assassin — exactly the conclusion you and I jumped to, in fact."

  Scipio scowled at me. "Where's this all leading?" he asked.

  "Ah," I said, in my best trial-advocate manner. "Here's where thinking helps. Think about what we've got; we've got a neat set of clues and coincidences that point to Licinius; we've also got a whole quiverful of plausible arguments in favour of Gnatho being the guilty party. Also, as well as the positive evidence, there's the negative evidence — the other possible lines of enquiry sealed off so definitely, if you like. An army camp, with sentries everywhere, and nobody saw or heard a damn thing. That's evidence; without it, I'd never have reached the point I'm at now. The point I'm making is this; instead of having to scratch round, I'm awash with helpful facts, strong leads, corroborative circumstances, and negative facts that rule out other possibilities. Basically, this job is too easy."

  Scipio drew his forefinger and thumb down the line of his jaw. "I think I see what you're saying," he said. "Go on."

  "Right," I said. "Now, when you gave me that helpful briefing, you mentioned a third possibility; namely, that someone had killed Acer, your enemy, under the misguided impression he'd be doing you a favour. I really don't want to dwell on that, because I hate offending powerful men, especially generals who command the army surrounding me on all sides. I would just like to point out that the most damning point against Licinius is his statement that he spent the night gambling with Caius Laelius, which Laelius denies. Furthermore, the wheelwright says that the man who fetched the hammer was Laelius' slave. I don't need to tell you of all people that sentries are trained to stay awake and be observant, but they're also trained to obey orders from superior officers, even if it means telling lies to Greek civilians. What I'm not saying," I added, as Scipio shifted in his chair, "is that your personal friend Laelius decided to rid you of the pest Acer, and covered up the killing by framing not one but two widely disliked men who nobody'd ever miss — a slave dealer and a notorious seducer — because even though I now firmly believe in Roman integrity, courage and (above all) forbearance, a poxy little Greek clerk could come to harm that way, and I have this unfulfilled ambition to live to be forty." I paused, drew a breath and added; "And that's about it, really. Sorry I couldn't be more help to you."

  I managed to keep my knees from buckling under me until I was out of Scipio's tent and halfway across the yard to the stables, where I devoutly hoped my horse was saddled and ready. My heart nearly stopped when a bunch of soldiers appeared at me out of the gloom; but it was all right, they were just the men I'd sent out earlier to check out my theory about the murder weapon, finally reporting back, when it didn't really matter anymore.

  "This what you were after?" one of them said, handing me something small, round and heavy, wrapped in a cloak.

  I unwrapped it. "Yes," I said. "You found it where I said it'd be?"

  "Yes."

  I smiled. "Thanks."

  "No bother," the soldier lied blatantly, and he walked away. What he'd brought me was a catapult ball; about the size of a cabbage heart, stone, and (as I confirmed by the light of the nearest lantern) stained brown with dried blood in one place. He'd found it on the practice range, among all the other catapult shot; I'd told him to find the one with blood on it. I guessed there'd be a
bloodstained one when I saw those little dimples in the dust, the marks left behind by a neat stack of the things, just what you'd expect to find outside the stores, near where they store the horsehair they use to make spare catapult springs from.

  I got rid of it on the way to the stables, where my horse was waiting.

  Scipio didn't do anything overt about Laelius; they were friends and political allies, and besides, if he'd made any of it public he'd inevitably have been suspected of complicity. But from then on, the friendship waned, Laelius' influence grew less, his advice and policies were neglected, almost as if Scipio didn't trust him quite so much anymore. A pity, from Rome's point of view, since Laelius, though hardly a military or political genius, was at least cleverer and more sensible than Scipio himself, and had been responsible for a great deal of Scipio's better and brighter actions in the past.

  In case you were wondering, by the way, I did get the job I was so anxious about. The job was a position I'd been after for ages; chief spy for King Philip of Macedon, last and strongest of Rome's substantial enemies, and the only hope of the Greek world against the shadow rising in the West. He was so pleased at the way I'd contrived to discredit such a key player as Caius Laelius, framing him for something he hadn't even done, that I was promoted to controller in chief of Macedonian intelligence operations in the Roman empire. I'm proud that I've been able to do something for the Greek cause, and I'll never forget Acer and his killer, who made it all possible.

  Ah yes, Acer's killer.

  Vitellius Acer was, of course, killed by the captured elephant penned up in the stockyard adjoining the plunder store. As everybody knows, elephants have a prodigious memory for past injuries, and an uncanny ability to tell humans apart. As soon as it saw the man who'd wounded it during the battle by sticking a spear through its lip, it pulled up the tethering-pins that were holding it down, rushed across the enclosure, grabbed a stone in its trunk (lucky for it that there was a pile of stones just handy, in the form of the catapult balls) and smashed Acer's head in for him. Acer did his bit by falling on one of the tethering pegs and smearing blood on it (I wiped chicken's blood on the other side before I showed it to Scipio); and by knocking over the pile of catapult balls. Some tidy-minded squaddie replaced them at some point before I got there, thereby conveniently smuggling the real murder weapon away from the scene — it was taken along with the rest of the pile to the range and used for target practice. It also helped that Licinius, worried about being accused because his hatred of Acer was so well known, exaggerated how long he'd been with Laelius so as to provide himself with an alibi, though it's just the sort of thing a clown like that might be expected to do. As for the blacksmith's hammer, that was pure serendipity, or, as I prefer to believe, the gods helping out a righteous cause.