Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

I shrugged. 'I'm trying my hand with a stylus. Finding your playwright's soused body got me pitched out of Petra. It also happened at about the time I ran out of travelling funds. I needed work. Your job was the soft option: offering to scribble for Chremes looked easier work than straining my back lifting barrels of myrrh, or catching fleas driving camel trains.' Both twins had their noses deep in their winecups. I was not sure I had deflected their curiosity about my interest in the playwright's death. 'I've agreed to replace Heliodorus provided I'm not asked to play a tambourine in the orchestra and Helena Justina never acts on a public stage.'

'Why not?' queried Grumio. 'Does she come from a respectable family?' He ought to be able to see that. Maybe pretending to have a few brains was just a pose.

'No, I rescued her from slavery, in return for two bags of apples and a nanny goat…'

'You're a take-off merchant!' giggled Grumio. He turned to his friend, who was wielding the wineskin again. 'We're on to a scandal.'

Ineffectively shielding my cup from Tranio, I rebuked the other quietly: 'The only scandal Helena was ever involved in was when she chose to live with me.'

'Interesting partnership!' Grumio commented.

'Interesting girl,' I said.

'And now she's helping you spy on us?' Tranio prodded.

It was a challenge, one I should have been waiting for. They had brought me here to find out what I was doing, and they would not be deterred. 'We don't spy. But Helena and I found the body. Naturally we'd like to know who killed the man.'

Tranio drained his winecup in one gulp. 'Is it true you actually saw who did it?'

'Who told you that?' Not to be outdone, I quaffed my drink too, wondering whether Tranio was just nosy – or had a deadly earnest reason for wanting to know.

'Well, everyone's keen to know what you're doing with its now – assuming you were just a tourist in Petra,' Tranio insinuated.

As I had started to expect, my refill came immediately. I knew when I was being set up. After years as an informer, I also had a clear idea of my limit for drink. I set down my overflowing cup as if I was carried away by strong feelings. 'A tourist who made the journey of a lifetime only to get thrown out -' My rant as a disappointed traveller was received fairly coolly.

'So where does your sinister Arab fit in?' Tranio demanded bluntly.

'Musa?' I acted surprised. 'He's our interpreter.'

'Oh of course.'

'Why,' I asked with a light, incredulous laugh, 'are people suggesting Musa saw the killer or something?'

Tranio smiled, answering in the same apparently friendly tone that I had used: 'Did he?'

'No,' I said. For all useful purposes it was the truth.

As Grumio prodded the fire I too picked up a twisted branch and played with it among the sparks. 'So are either of you going to tell me why Heliodorus was so stinkingly unpopular?'

It was still Tranio, the exponent of mercurial wit, who enjoyed himself making up answers: 'We were all in his power.' He twirled his wrist elegantly, pretending to philosophise. 'Weak parts and dull speeches could finish us. That crude bastard knew it; he toyed with us. The choice was either to flatter him, which was unspeakable, or to bribe him, which was often impossible, or just to wait for somebody else to grab him by the balls and squeeze till he dropped. Before Petra no one had done it – but it was only a matter of time. I should have taken bets on who would get to him first.'

'That seems extreme,' I commented.

'People whose livelihood depends on a writer exist under stress.' As their new writer, I tried not to take it to heart. 'To find his killer,' Tranio advised me, 'look for the despairing actor who had suffered one bad role too many.'

'You, for instance?'

His eyes dropped, but if I had worried him he rallied. 'Not me. I don't need a set text. If he wrote me out, I improvised. He knew I would do it, so being spiteful lost its fun. Grumio was the same, of course.' I glanced at Grumio, who might have been patronised by the afterthought, but his cheerful face remained neutral.

I grunted, sipping wine again. 'And I thought the man had just borrowed somebody's best silvered belt once too often!'

'He was a pig,' Grumio muttered, breaking his silence.

'Well that's simple! Tell me why.'

'A bully. He beat the lower orders. People he dared not attack physically he terrorised in more subtle ways.'

'Was he a womaniser?'

'Better ask the women.' Grumio was still the speaker-with what could have been a jealous glint. 'There are one or two I'll help you interrogate!'

While I was at it, I checked every possibility: 'Or did he chase young men?' They both shrugged offhandedly. In fact nobody in this company was young enough to appeal to the usual ogler of boys in bathhouses. If more mature relationships existed, I might as well look first for evidence here with the Twins; they lived closely enough. But Grumio seemed to have straightforward female interests; and Tranio had also grinned at his interrogation joke.

As before it was Tranio who wanted to elaborate: 'Heliodorus could spot a hangover, or a pimple on a sensitive adolescent, or a disappointed lover at twenty paces. He knew what each of us wanted from life. He also knew how to make people feel that their weaknesses were enormous flaws, and their hopes beyond reach.'

I wondered what Tranio thought his own weakness was -and what hopes he had. Or might once have had.

'A tyrant! But people here seem pretty strong-willed.' Both Twins laughed easily. 'So why', I asked, 'did you all put up with him?'

'Chremes had known him a long time,' suggested Grumio wearily.

'We needed him. Only an idiot would do the job,' said Tranio, insulting me with what I thought was unnecessary glee.

They were an odd pair. At first glance they had seemed closely bonded, but I decided they hung together only in the way of craftsmen who work together, which gave them some basic loyalty, though they might not meet socially from choice. Yet in this travelling company Tranio and Grumio had to live under one goat-hair roof with everyone presuming they formed one unit. Perhaps sustaining the fraud set up hidden strains.

I was fascinated. Some friendships are sounder for having one easygoing partner with one who seems more intense. I felt that this ought to have been the case here; that the stolid Grumio ought to have been grateful for the opportunity to pal up with Tranio, to whom frankly I warmed more. Apart from the fact that he kept refilling my winecup, he was a cynic and a satirist; exactly my kind of fellow.

I wondered if professional jealousy had come between them, though I saw no signs. There was scope on stage for both of them, as I knew from my reading. All the same, in Grumio, the quieter of the clowns, I sensed deliberate restraint. He looked pleasant and harmless. But to an informer that could easily mean he was hiding something dangerous.

The wineskin was empty. I watched Tranio shake out the very last drops, then he squashed the skin flat, clapping it under his elbow.

'So, Falco!' He seemed to be changing the subject. 'You're new to playwriting. How are you finding it?'

I told him my thoughts on New Comedy, dwelling with morose despair on its dreariest features.

'Oh you're reading the stuff? So you've been given the company play box?' I nodded. Chremes had handed over a mighty trunk stuffed with an untidy mass of scrolls. Putting them together in sets to make whole plays had taken most of our journey to Bostra, even with help from Helena, who enjoyed that kind of puzzle. Tranio went on idly. 'I might come and have a quick look sometime. Heliodorus borrowed something that wasn't left among his personal things…'

'Anytime,' I offered, curious, though not in my present condition wanting to pay too much attention to some lost stylus knife or bath-oil flask. I swayed to my feet, suddenly anxious to stop torturing my liver and brain. I had been away from Helena for longer than I liked. I wanted my bed.