Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

'Did anyone owe him a debt? One they would have to repay if he left?'

'He wouldn't lend a copper, even if he had one,' Phrygia told me.

Chremes added in a morose tone, 'The way he drank, if his purse ever contained anything, it all went on the wine.' Thoughtfully, we both drained our goblets, with that air of extreme sense men acquire when discussing a fool who can't handle it.

'Did he owe anyone himself?'

Phrygia answered: 'No one would lend to him, mainly because it was obvious they would never get it back.' One of the simpler, and more reliable, laws of high finance.

Something niggled me. Tranio lent him something, I believe?'

'Tranio?' Chremes laughed briefly. 'I doubt it! Tranio's never had anything worth borrowing, and he's always broke!'

'Were the clowns on good terms with the playwright?'

Chremes discussed them happily enough. 'They had an on-off friendship with him.' Again I had a sense that he was hedging. 'Last time I noticed they were all at loggerheads. Basically he was a loner.'

'You're sure of that? And what about Tranio and Grumio? However they look on the surface, I suspect both of them are complex characters.'

'They're good boys,' Phrygia rebuked me. 'Lots of talent.'

Talent was her measure for everyone. For talent she would forgive a great deal. Maybe it made her judgement unreliable. Even though Phrygia shivered at the thought of harbouring a murderer, maybe a usefully talented comedian with the ability to improvise would seem too valuable to hand over to justice if his only crime was eliminating an unpleasant hack who couldn't write.

I smiled pleasantly. 'Do you know how the Twins were applying their talent when Heliodorus went up Dushara's mountain?'

'Oh stop it, Falco! They never did it.' I had definitely offended against Phrygia's code of company behaviour: good boys never did bad things. I loathed that kind of shortsightedness, though in the world of informing it was nothing new.

'They were packing their bags,' Chremes told me, with an attitude that suggested he was being more impartial and reasonable than his wife. 'Same as everyone else.'

'Did you see them doing it?'

'Of course not. I was packing mine.'

According to this weak theory the entire group would have alibis. I did not bother to ask where he thought Davos, Philocrates and Congrio might have been. If I wanted to be bamboozled, I could ask the suspects individually in the hope that the murderer at least would be inventive in his lies. 'Where were you staying?'

'The others were in an indifferent rooming house. Phrygia and I had found a slightly better place.' It fitted. They always liked to pretend we were one big share-alike family; but they preferred to have their comforts. I wondered if Heliodorus had ragged them about this snobbery.

I remembered Grumio saying something. 'According to Grumio, all a clown needs are a cloak, a strigil and oil flask, and a wallet for his takings. On that basis, a clown's trappings could be flung together pretty rapidly.'

'Grumio's all fantasy,' Chremes mourned, shaking his head. 'It makes him a wonderful artiste, but you have to know it's just talk.'

Phrygia was losing patience with me. 'So where is all this getting you, Falco?'

'It's filling in the picture helpfully.' I could take a hint. I had been munching their wonderful titbits until I could hold no more. It was time to go home and make my tent companions jealous by happily belching and describing the goodies. 'That was quite a feast! I'm grateful…'

I made the usual offers of they must come over to us sometime (with the usual underlying suggestion that all they might get would be two winkles on a lettuce leaf), then I turned to leave.

'Oh, just tell me one more thing. What happened to the playwright's personal property after he died?' I knew Heliodorus must have owned more than Helena and I had acquired with the play box.

'There wasn't much,' said Chremes. 'We picked out anything of value – a ring and a couple of inkstands – then I gave his few rags to Congrio.'

'What about his heirs?'

Phrygia laughed her dismissive laugh. 'Falco, nobody in a travelling theatre company has heirs!'

Davos stood behind the tree under which he had pitched his tent. He was doing what a man does when it's night, when he thinks there is nobody about, and he can't be bothered to walk further off into open countryside. The camp had fallen silent; so had the distant town. He must have heard my feet crunching up the stony track. After quaffing my share of my amphora, I was in dire need of relief myself, so I greeted him, walked up alongside, and helped water his tree.

'I'm very impressed with your Hercules.'

'Wait until you see my bloody Zeus!'

'Not in the same play?'

'No, no. Once Chremes thinks of one "Frolicking Gods" farce, we tend to get given a run of them.'

A huge moon had risen over the uplands. The Syrian moon seemed bigger, and the Syrian stars more numerous, than those we had back home in Italy. This, with the restless wind that always hummed around Abila, gave me a sudden, poignant feeling of being lost in a very remote place. To avoid it, I kept talking. 'I've just been for a meal with our gregarious actor-manager and his loving spouse.'

'They normally put on a good spread.'

'Wonderful hospitality… Do they do this often?'

Davos chuckled. He was not a snob. 'Only for the right strata of society!'

'Aha! I'd never been invited before. Have I come up in the world, or was I just lumbered originally with the backwash of disapproval for my scribbling predecessor?'

'Heliodorus? He was asked, once, I believe. He soon lost his status. Once Phrygia got the measure of him, that was the end of it.'

'Would that be when he claimed to know where her offspring might be?'

Davos gave me a sharp look when I mentioned this. Then he commented, 'She's stupid to look!'

I rather agreed with that. 'The child's probably dead, or almost certainly won't want to know.'

Davos, in his dour way, said nothing.

We finished the horticulture, tightened our belts in the time-honoured manner, casually stuck our thumbs in them, and sauntered back to the track. A stagehand came by, saw us looking innocent, immediately guessed what we must have been doing, got the idea himself, and vanished sideways behind somebody else's tent looking for the next tree. We had started a craze.

Without comment, Davos and I waited to see what would happen, since the next tent was clearly occupied and a desperate pee tends to be audible. A muffled voice soon shouted in protest. The stagehand scuttled guiltily on his way. Silence fell again.

We stood on the path while the breeze bustled around us. A tent roof flapped. Somewhere in the town a dog howled mournfully. Both of us raised our faces to the wind, absorbing the night's atmosphere contemplatively. Davos was not normally one to chat, but we were two men with some mutual respect who had met at night, neither ready for sleep. We spoke together quietly, in a way that at other times might have been impossible. 'I'm trying to fill in missing facts,' I said. 'Can you remember what you were doing in Petra when Heliodorus wandered up to the High Place?'

'I most certainly do remember: loading the bloody waggons. We had no stagehands with us, if you recall. Chremes had issued his orders like a lord, then taken himself off to fold up his underwear.'

'Were you loading up alone?'

'Assisted in his pitiful manner by Congrio.'

'He can't help being a flyweight.'

Davos relented. 'No, he did his best, for what it was worth. What really got up my nose was being supervised by Philocrates. Instead of shifting bales with us, he took the opportunity to lean against a pillar looking attractive to the women and passing the kind of remarks that make you want to spew.'