Gary Corby - Death Ex Machina

“The theater is considered a temple to Dionysos,” I said. “Therefore any crime committed within is desecration. Yes, Pericles, I know this.”

“Just as your original assignment was to purge the theater of a ghost-even though we all knew perfectly well you would do no such thing-so your assignment now is to purge the theater of the taint of murder.”

“Which we do by finding the murderer,” I said.

“Except that it isn’t necessary to find the killer in order to clear the theater,” Pericles said smoothly. “We must consider the practicalities here, Nicolaos. If the Great Dionysia can’t proceed it will be a disaster for Athens.”

“What are you suggesting here, Pericles?” I said.

“Only that to earn your commission you need merely follow the forms to demonstrate good faith in finding a criminal. Any criminal will do.”

“Do you have someone in mind?” I asked him.

“If you feel that a death is necessary to expurgate the miasma, then another metic would be your best choice,” Pericles said. “What about one of the Phrygians?” he suggested.

“But I don’t know that they did it!”

“Is that a problem?” Pericles asked. “The Polemarch himself has told you that if the killer is a citizen, then the penalty for murdering a metic would be a fine, or at most exile for a few years.”

“There’s also the charge of impiety,” I pointed out.

“Yes, that would certainly lead to a death sentence,” Pericles conceded.

I must have displayed my horror, because Pericles said, “Listen, Nico, we must consider which is the greater disaster for Athens: a failed festival, with all its international repercussions, or the death of one man who wasn’t even a citizen. The good of Athens may demand a curtailed investigation. I think you can see that.”

The problem was, I did see that.

But I also saw that I couldn’t abandon the victim. For if Pericles, and Lysanias, and Sophocles, and everyone else was right when they said that our plays were as important to Athens as a diplomatic mission, then Romanos had died in the service of Athens as surely as any soldier who fell in battle.

I couldn’t not find justice for Romanos, even if he had been a conniving blackmailer.

And as for framing another metic, because it was convenient …

“I can’t do that, Pericles.”

“Then you had better bring me a better solution. Quickly. The public feast is set for two days hence. I want this fixed by then.”

I returned home wanting to rant to my wife about my difficult boss. Instead I walked in to find my mother-in-law paying a social call.

Diotima and her mother, Euterpe, lay on dining couches in the courtyard. From the various empty small food bowls dotted about, I deduced the visit had been going for some time. My own mother, Phaenarete, had absented herself. The house slave told me as I entered that she had been called away on an urgent delivery, by which he meant a baby. Whether this was strictly true I didn’t know. Phaenarete and Euterpe rarely got on, though they had worked at opposite ends of the same business.

My father, unsurprisingly, was shut away in his workshop. It was his natural place, but in any case it would never occur to him to entertain visiting ladies.

That left me to join the ladies and be polite, when what I really wanted to do was shout in frustration. Luckily it seemed the visit was nearing an end. Euterpe had come to hear the latest on the investigation.

“All of Athens is talking about it,” she told me excitedly. I took this to mean she was talking about it.

As I sat, Diotima was winding down from a minor tirade that women were not permitted to act.

“I know what you mean, dear,” Euterpe said. “I’m sure you would have made a fine actress. I myself was excellent.”

“But you don’t know how to act,” Diotima said to her mother. “You’ve never acted in your life.”

Euterpe looked at her daughter in some surprise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear. A courtesan has to please her clients, does she not? Well let me tell you, if there’s anything that a woman of my former profession is an expert at, it’s making a man feel he’s special, even when he isn’t. Also that he has the biggest dong since Heracles. Every man thinks he’s hung like Heracles. You wouldn’t believe how much acting ability that requires with the average man.”

Diotima stared at her mother openmouthed in shock.

Euterpe didn’t seem to notice. She added enthusiastically, “I’m especially good at faking orgasms. Would you like to see one?”

“Thanks anyway, Mother.”

Euterpe shrugged. “The fact is, my daughter, if it’s ability to fool men that you’re looking for, then I’m one of the best actresses in Athens.”

As Euterpe stood to depart, she added, almost absent-mindedly, “Not that there’s any need to, now that I’m married to your new father.”

“Of course not, Mother,” Diotima agreed primly, as she escorted her mother to the door. “You and Pythax have married for love.”

Euterpe looked surprised for a moment, then said, “Why, that’s so, dear, but it helps that when it comes to sex, there isn’t much to choose between your new father and Heracles.”

I heard the door open and shut, and Euterpe’s departing merry laughter.

That night, after dinner, Diotima read the manuscript that Euripides had given us. I don’t think she intended to, but she always read everything within reach, and she did it out of habit.

When she was finished she put down the scroll and said, “I hate to have to say it, but his writing is very good.”

“You mean that dysfunctional little creep really can write?”

“I’m afraid so,” Diotima said. She rolled the scroll backward from the end. She looked down at the words printed there in Euripides’s crabbed hand. “His stories are great, his characters are fantastic, his phrases are …” She groped for the right word. “Divine.” She frowned. “But there’s something odd. In every story, he progresses the plot very well. The tension builds. I was desperate to find out what would happen next, and then, every time, right before the climax, a god descends from the machine and wraps up everything. It leaves you dissatisfied with the story.” Diotima looked up at me. “It’s like he doesn’t care how his story ends.”

I shrugged. “If he thinks a god from the machine is going to solve the problems of we mortals, then more fool him.”

Diotima said, “Do you think he’s involved, Nico?”

“He’s weird enough,” I said. “But a killer? I don’t know. Not many killers write plays.”

Diotima put down the scroll. She hesitated, then said, “Nico, I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve caught Romanos out on one fabrication already, or we think we have,” she said.

I nodded. “Romanos didn’t recommend one of his own family for the third actor role, and then didn’t tell them what he’d done. It might not technically be a lie, but I follow you.”

Diotima looked unhappy and said, “Plus he was a blackmailer.”

“It doesn’t exactly instill sympathy for our victim,” I agreed.

Diotima said, “I wonder, is there anything else Romanos might have lied about?”

“Do you have something in mind?” I asked. I took her idea seriously, but I had nothing to suggest.

She gave an uncertain shrug, which was unlike her. “I’ve been thinking over everything I ever heard him say,” she said.

Knowing Diotima’s memory, she could probably quote his every conversation verbatim.

She went on, “It’s only an idea, but that night, when we three sheltered from the rain …”