Gary Corby: Death Ex Machina

“Yes. I took it from there. I decided to draw the agora and the city as if looking down from a high mountain. Like the Gods were looking down on the action, you know?”

“Did you draw a man tripping in the agora?”

“How should I know?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I draw hundreds of little background figures every month. I don’t keep a list.”

“What about a wine bar?” I asked. “Did you draw that?”

“Probably. Every agora has one.”

That was true enough.

“What about someone throwing up?”

He laughed.

“What about a picture of the god machine and a man falling from it?”

“Look, who are you people?”

“We’re investigating a series of sabotage attempts against the theater.”

“It’s nothing to do with me,” he said.

“The last one resulted in a man having his leg destroyed. And mark this, Stephanos: every single booby trap that’s hurt someone is drawn into the skene that you painted.”

Stephanos had switched colors. He hesitated while he worked on a particularly tricky piece of blue clothing that a satyr was ripping off a maenad.

“I haven’t hurt anyone,” he said.

“Do you know a man named Phellis?” I said.

“One of the actors?”

“He’s the one with the crippled leg,” I said.

“Bad luck for him then.”

“What about the stage manager?”

“Kiron? I know him well. I deal with him whenever I work at the theater. He’s a good man.”

“Do you have an apprentice by any chance?” Diotima asked. I thought it was an inspired question.

“No.”

So much for inspiration.

“Did you alter the skene painting?”

“No.” He sounded tense.

“Did you draw in the god machine?”

“No. I might have done those other figures you talked about. I can’t remember.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I couldn’t think of any way we could break his statement. Not unless we could find someone who’d seen him working on the skene in the last few days. I looked Diotima’s way to see if she had any ideas. She silently shook her head.

Stephanos must have sensed the pressure was off. He put down the paint pot and began to flake another into the brazier. He cleaned off the palette knife and the other tools. Seeing a few spots of white paint on his hand, he licked them off.

“Is that safe?” I asked.

“It’s only lead. It can’t hurt you.”

“He was tense when you questioned him about the wall,” Diotima said when we were outside.

“Hardly surprising, since I’d just accused him of assault in a sacred area,” I pointed out. “Most people would be a little put out.”

“If anyone had seen him at the theater in the last few days surely they would have mentioned it,” Diotima said.

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. It was amazing what people remembered only after you asked them. But there was another problem. “What possible motive would he have to foul the plays?”

“I don’t know.”

Diotima’s point, though, applied to everyone. I said, “There’s one thing we know for sure. Someone painted in the god machine and Phellis’s accident.”

“That’s true,” Diotima said.

“So your logic applies to everyone. Whoever did the paint job, why weren’t they seen?”

“For the same reason nobody saw the booby traps being laid,” Diotima said at once. “Someone sneaked in and did them at night.”

“How good are you at painting in the dark?” I said.

“They used torches,” Diotima said.

“And yet they escaped detection. Or else they did it in the glaring light of day.”

“They’d have to be very confident,” Diotima said. “People walk in and out of the theater all the time.”

“Or maybe the pictures were there all the time.”

We reached the deme boundary at Piraeus Way. As we crossed the road I felt a few drops of water land on my head. I looked up. A drop landed in my eye. The sky had clouded over and it was about to rain, something that rarely happens in spring, but when it does it can turn into a late winter downpour.

Diotima had felt the drops too. She put out her hands to confirm. She said, “Nico … what about my house?”

Dear Gods. Diotima’s house. She’d inherited the house from her birth father. We lived with my parents, because that was how things were done in Athens, but the house was part of her dowry.

The problem was, the house was in a state of disrepair. I’d been meaning to fix the roof for the past month, but it hadn’t seemed urgent. Now I was going to have to do it in the rain.

We turned left, and passed through the agora. Those vendors who hadn’t already left for the day were packing their stalls as quickly as they could. We dodged around the line of departing donkeys laden with goods. Only a few blocks later we came to Diotima’s house.

It had been something of a puzzle what to do with that house. It was a grand place with a fine courtyard and large rooms, but city homes were a sink for wealth, not a source. We couldn’t move in even if we wanted, because we couldn’t afford to maintain and staff it, not on my income.

We’d tried renting it out to visiting trade delegations and wealthy merchants who were in Athens on extended stays. There were one or two men of influence in Athens who were well-disposed toward me, and they sent wealthy visitors my way. The rich tenants had complained constantly about every little thing, demanded extra slaves to serve them, and when it came time to settle the bill looked for every possible excuse to reduce the agreed amount. I’d decided that wealthy men got that way by never paying their bills. Also these men invariably left the place in a worse state than they found it. They would hold parties in our house but not replace the broken furniture. I knew for sure that one man who owned a merchant fleet in Rhodes had departed with our complete set of new kitchen knives.

Something had to be done. Somehow we had to make that house pay.

Achilles let us in. Not the hero of the Trojan War, but an old slave, crippled in the heels, who for his faithful service Diotima had promised to care for to the end of his days. There used to be two house slaves as well, but we’d sold them when we stopped renting the place. We simply couldn’t afford to feed that many mouths.

“Master, mistress,” Achilles said as he opened the door. Every time I talked to him, he seemed older. “It’s good that you’re here. What am I to do about the women’s quarters?”

“You’re not to do anything, Achilles,” I said. If he tried to climb onto the roof, he would certainly die.

“I’ve placed pots where the worst of the leaks are,” he said.

I walked into the central courtyard to inspect the damage. The courtyard itself was jumbled. The garden beds were full of weeds, the furniture looked the worse for wear. But there was nothing that couldn’t survive some rain.

The hole in the inner wall where a drunk partygoer had punched his way through was under the cover of the eaves. The eaves themselves showed signs of wet rot setting in, and the coming rain would worsen that, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

The immediate problem was higher up. If I craned my neck, I could see where holes had developed in the thatching in numerous places. If the rain came down as hard as I thought it might, there’d soon be pools of water on the second storey floors. That wouldn’t do.

I fetched the ladder from out back and carried it up to the women’s quarters in the right wing. That was where I could see was the worst of the damage. Achilles followed after with the canvas of an old musty army tent that he struggled to hold. Diotima carried rope. It wouldn’t be the best fix, but it would have to do for now.