Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

I was still searching for a motive for the playwright's death – though had I known just how long it would take me to find it I should have given up on the spot.

'Byrria didn't kill Heliodorus, but good looks like hers could well have stirred up strong feelings among the men, and then who knows?'

'I dare say you will be investigating Byrria closely,' said Helena.

I ignored the jibe. 'Do you think Byrria could have been after the scribe?'

'Unlikely!' scoffed Helena. 'Not if Heliodorus was as disgusting as everyone says. Anyway, your wondrous Byrria could take her pick of the pomegranates without fingering him. But why don't you ask her?'

'I'll do that.'

'I'm sure you will!'

I was not in the mood for a squabble. We had taken the discussion as far as we could, so I decided to abandon sleuthing and settled down on my back for a snooze.

Helena, who had polite manners, remembered our Nabataean priest. He had been sitting with us contributing total silence – his usual routine. Perhaps restraint was part of his religion; it would have been a tough discipline for me. 'Musa, you saw the murderer come down the mountain. Is there anybody in this group of travellers whom you recognise?'

She did not know I had already asked him, though she ought to have guessed. Musa answered her courteously anyway. 'He wore a hat, lady.'

'We shall have to look out for it,' replied Helena with some gravity.

I grinned at him, struck by a wicked possibility. 'If we can't solve this puzzle, we could set a trap. We could let it be known that Musa saw the murderer, hint that Musa was planning to identify him formally, then you and I could sit behind a rock, Helena, and we could see who comes – hatted or hatless – to shut Musa up.'

Musa received the suggestion as calmly as ever, with neither fear nor enthusiasm.

A few minutes later somebody did come, but it was only the company bill-poster.

Helena and I exchanged a surreptitious glance. We had forgotten this one. He had been in Petra and ought to have been included in our list of suspects. Something told us that being forgotten was his permanent role. Being constantly overlooked could give him a motive for anything. But maybe he accepted it. So often it is the people who have who think they deserve more. Those who lack expect nothing else from life.

Such was our visitor – a miserable specimen. He had appeared around a corner of our tent very quietly. He could have been lurking about for ages. I wondered how much he had overheard.

'Hello there! Come and join us. Didn't Chremes mention to me that your name is Congrio?'

Congrio had a light skin covered with freckles, thin straight hair, and a fearful look. He had never been tall to begin with, and his slight, weedy body stooped under burdens of inadequacy. Everything about him spoke of leading a poor life. If he was not a slave now he probably had been at some stage, and whatever existence he snatched for himself these days could not be much better. Being a menial among people who have no regular income is worse than captivity on a rich landowner's farm. No one here cared whether Congrio ate or starved; he was nobody's asset, so nobody's loss if he suffered.

He shuffled near, the kind of mournful maggot who makes you feel crass if you ignore him or patronising if you try to be sociable.

'You chalk up the advertisements, don't you? I'm Falco, the new jobbing playwright. I'm looking out for people who can read and write in case I need help with my adaptations.'. 'I can't write,' Congrio told me abruptly. 'Chremes gives me a wax tablet; I just copy it.'

'Do you act in the plays?'

'No. But I can dream!' he added defiantly, apparently not without a sense of self-mockery.

Helena smiled at him. 'What can we do for you?'

'Grumio and Tranio have come back from the city with a wineskin. They told me to ask whether you wanted to join them.' He was addressing me.

I was ready for bed, but put on my interested face. 'Sounds as if a sociable evening could be had here?'

'Only if you want to keep the caravanserai awake all night and feel like death tomorrow,' Congrio advised frankly.

Helena shot me a look that said she wondered how the town-and-country twins could tell so easily who was the degenerate in our party. But I did not need her permission -or at least not when this offered a good excuse to ask questions about Heliodorus – so off I went to disgrace myself. Musa stayed with Helena. I had never bothered to ask him, but I deduced that our Nabataean shadow was no drinking man.

Congrio seemed to be heading the same way as me, but then turned off on his own. 'Don't you want a drink?' I called after him.

'Not with that pair!' he responded, vanishing behind a waggon.

On the surface he spoke like a man who had better taste in friends, but I noticed a violent undertone. The easy explanation was that they pushed him around. But there could be more to it. I would have to scrutinise this bill-poster.

Feeling thoughtful, I made my own way to the Twins' tent.

Grumio and Tranio had put up the uncomplicated bivouac that was standard in our ramshackle camp. They had slung a cover over poles, leaving one whole long side open so they could see who was passing (and in their case commentate rudely). I noticed that they had bothered to hang a curtain down the middle of their shelter, dividing it precisely into private halves. These were equally untidy, so it couldn't have been because they fell out over the housekeeping; it hinted instead at aloofness in their relationship.

Surveyed quietly at leisure they were not in the least alike. Grumio, the 'country' twin who played runaway slaves and idiots, had a pleasant nature, a chubby face, and straight hair that fell evenly from the crown. Tranio, the taller 'townee', had his hair cut short up the back and swept forwards on top. He was sharp-featured and sounded as though he could be a sarcastic enemy. They both had dark, knowing eyes with which they watched the world critically.

'Thanks for the invitation! Congrio refused to come,' I said at once, as if I assumed the poster-writer would have been asked too.

Tranio, the one who played the boasting soldier's flashy servant, poured me a full winecup with an exaggerated flourish. 'That's Congrio! He likes to sulk – we all do. From which you can immediately deduce that beneath the false bonhomie, our joyous company is seething with angry emotions.'

'I gathered that.' I took the drink and joined them, relaxing on sacks of costumes alongside the walkway that ran through our encampment. 'Almost the first thing Helena and I were told was that Chremes hates his wife and she hates him.'

'He must have admitted that himself,' Tranio said knowingly. 'They do make a big thing of it.'

'Isn't it true? Phrygia openly laments that he has deprived her of stardom. And Helena reckons that Chremes frequently wanders from the hearth. So the wife is after a laurel wreath, while the husband wants to stuff a lyre-player…'

Tranio grinned. 'Who knows what they're up to? They've been at each other's throats for twenty years. Somehow he never quite manages to run off with a dancer, and she never remembers to poison his soup.'

'Sounds like any normal married couple,' I grimaced.

Tranio was topping up my beaker almost before I had tried it. 'Like you and Helena?'

'We're not married.' I never explained our relationship. People would either not believe me, or not understand. It was no one else's business anyway. 'Do I gather that inviting me tonight is a shameless attempt to find out what she and I are doing here?' I taunted, probing in return.

'We see you as a Hired Trickster,' grinned Grumio, the supposedly dopey one, unabashed as he named one of the stock characters in New Comedy. It was the first time he had spoken. He sounded brighter than I had expected.