Immediately below the Temple of Apollo, people came snaking up the Sacred Way, sad bunches of visitors, some standing still in groups to listen to their dogged guides. The crowds made Statia.n.u.s turn aside. He rushed away from the temple portico. High pillars bore statues of various Greek kings. They made excellent turning-points to skid around. Statia.n.u.s must be familiar with the layout. He nipped among the monuments, cuffing aside pilgrims who were dutifully staring skywards as their guides described the stone dignitaries. Seconds later, I crashed into these people just as they turned indignant after Statia.n.u.s barged them.

We jumped down a level, to the astonishing Tripod of Plataea, its three towering intertwined bronze snakes supporting a mighty gold cauldron. Next was a huge plinth bearing a gold chariot of the sun. Statia.n.u.s tried to hide behind it. When I kept coming, he bounded uphill again, dashed between two more columns with kings atop, and headed for what looked like a fancy portico. Its columns had been infilled with walls; thwarted by the solid barrier, he turned left. I nearly caught him at the Tomb of Neoptolemos. He was the son of Achilles. This was my nearest brush with the heroes of Homer, and I missed its significance. Never mind; Neoptolemos was dead, killed by a priest of Apollo (whose priests love music and art, but are tough b.a.s.t.a.r.ds) - and I was gasping too much to care.

Three women huddling over a travel itinerary blocked the free s.p.a.ce by a floral column which supported a trio of dancers; I slid around them all. Temple attendants swarmed in my path by the spring of Ca.s.sotis; I plunged into their midst and elbowed my way through. A dopy man asked me to point out the Column of King Prusias; he was right beside it. Statia.n.u.s had pushed his way through all of these, but as he raced past the spring he was accosted by Helena. She had waited at the temple, saw us doubling back towards her, and now stepped out to remonstrate with our quarry. Statia.n.u.s pushed her aside. She lost her footing. People rushed to a.s.sist her - getting in my way - and Statia.n.u.s loped off along the back of the temple.

Helena was all right.

'Stay there.'

'No, I'm coming.'

I carried on after him. He was into his stride now. I was more than ten years older, but I had done my share of weight training. I had a st.u.r.dy build and had never lacked stamina. I hoped he might tire first.

The Temple of Apollo is a mighty edifice, and makes a dramatic running track. Above us we had the theatre, dramatically carved out of the crag. It was reached by a very steep flight of steps; to my relief Statia.n.u.s ignored them. At the far end of the temple we pa.s.sed yet more perfect art: a creation in bronze which showed Alexander the Great wrestling a spectacular lion among a striving pack of hunting hounds, while one of his generals rushed to a.s.sist. I could have used that general to a.s.sist me.

My quarry turned downhill. Opposite the west end of the temple was a gate through the steeply stepped sanctuary wall. The usual scrum of guides and statuette-purveyors milled around. Tiring, Statia.n.u.s had become less sure-footed. He knocked into a hawker, spilled his tray of votive clay miniatures and was held up in a furious argument. Seeing me catch up, he shoved the hawker into me. I grabbed the man, spun him out of my path, and felt my ankle give as I turned it on one of the scattered statuettes. Cursing, I took my eyes off Statia.n.u.s and lost him.

He must have gone through the gate. I followed, though doubt gnawed. The path outside led to the legendary Kastalian Spring. Its waters were used in the Delphic rituals, so pilgrims on the full guided tour were dragged here for a sample. Dazed by a mixture of exhaustion and mystic awe, they b.u.mbled everywhere, completely oblivious to anybody wanting to get past them. This really slowed me up. An elderly lady sitting on a rock at the roadside insisted on asking me how far the spring was, trying at least three broken languages when I failed to answer.

The spring rises in a wild ravine. It must once have been a peaceful, rocky haunt of lizards and wild thyme. Now cra.s.s voices resounded as visitors washed their feet in the sacred torrents, calling out to their friends how cold it was. Steps led down to a rectangular basin where seven bronze lions' heads set in clean-cut stone slabs spouted water which was collected by touts with little drinking cups, all eager to obtain a tip, a.s.suming visitors had any money left after purchasing the stickman statues, tacky tat, and crumbling votive cakes. I bet when the pilgrims had gone on their way, the shrine parasites just collected the goodies from the handily positioned niches and sold them again.

I scanned the people, searching for Statia.n.u.s. By now, I myself felt like a barley cake that had been left too long on a ledge in the sun. A cup-pedlar tugged my sleeve. I jerked away.

I stood on the roadway, thinking I had lost him. Breathing hard, I startled a few pilgrims as I gazed out at the mountains and swore at the scenery.

Then I saw there was a second fountain. Older and almost deserted, this one had a small paved courtyard with benches around it on three sides. Here, just four rather friendly looking old bronze lions spewed water in hiccupy trickles, while a solitary attendant lurked, without much hope. I bought a cupful, dashed it down, and tipped him.

'Seen a man out of breath?'

Amazingly, he waved an arm. I thanked him and set off once again, heading further down the path. Almost at once I heard Helena behind me, calling. I slowed. She caught up, and we continued together, jogging through shady olive groves until we pa.s.sed the Delphi gymnasium. Beyond it lay a small enclosed sanctuary which had an air of immense age.

We slowed right down. We glanced at each other and walked into the sanctuary. Altars with inscriptions against the retaining wall told us we had come to the long-revered sanctuary of Athena p.r.o.naia. Apart from the clutch of altars, it had just five or six main buildings, arranged in a line, including a large abandoned temple which had been destroyed by an earthquake. A newer, smaller temple had replaced it. There were a couple of treasuries, fronted by a large pedestal bearing a trophy. In the centre of the site stood a beautiful circular building, surrounded by Doric columns, with exquisite decoration on its upper features, of the type called a tholos. We had seen one at Olympia, where Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great had collected statues of themselves and their ancestors. This stood on a circular base of several steps. Collapsed on these, struggling to recover his breath, was a young man in a white tunic.

We walked across to him.

'Tullius Statia.n.u.s!' Helena's voice was hoa.r.s.e but she sounded strict and determined to stand for no nonsense. 'I believe you know my brother, Aelia.n.u.s.'

He looked up with dull eyes, unwilling or unable to run away from us any longer.

XLII.

We took him to the gymnasium. It was close by, a familiar place where Statia.n.u.s might relax; and it was bound to have food-sellers. Helena found a place in the shade outside (since as a woman she was barred, while I set us up with pastries, stuffed vine leaves, and olives. Statia.n.u.s ate most of it. He seemed ravenous; I wondered if he had run right out of money.

Spending cash, I mean. He must possess funds, but out here he could be stranded. Men of his rank only need a banker abroad who knows their banker in Rome, but without such a contact they are as helpless as the rest of us. Delphi would have money-changers, but since the shrine's decline there would be few international financiers who took letters of credit. Statia.n.u.s was said to be bad at managing and once he had used up what was in his pouch, he could find himself stuck.

Now we took a proper look at him. He was probably clean but he needed a shave. Under the stubble, his face was devoid of character. He had a limited range of expressions: he could look up, down, to the left and to the right. His mouth never moved and his eyes had no animation. A kind person would say grief had wiped him out. I was never that kindly.

Helena and I finished eating first. As Statia.n.u.s ravenously continued, Helena began the softening up process, first asking about Aelia.n.u.s. Between mouthfuls, Statia.n.u.s told us how they had become friends at Olympia. Aulus seemed to have expertise in tragic situations and persuaded Statia.n.u.s to trust him. He sympathised with the way Statia.n.u.s had been hounded by the quaestor during the investigation into Valeria's death. When the group were taken to Corinth and put under house arrest, Statia.n.u.s could not bear to face Aquillius again; he despaired and decided to bunk off to Delphi as a last resort. Aulus tagged along.

'So where has he gone? Why did he leave you?'

'I don't blame him. He thinks this is a waste of time. There's nothing to do here except wait, month after month, while the organisers at the temple give out the questions, always to other people. Aulus said my connections aren't good enough ever to get a chance at the oracle. But I can wait. I do a bit here at the gym. Sometimes I run.'

'Yes, we know you can run!' I snarled wryly. 'You use the training tracks here at the gym?' The sports facilities were on two levels, with a washing area between them. The lower building appeared to be a palaestra, with the usual large courtyard and side rooms for boxing practice. When I bought the food I had seen that the upper building had an indoor covered running track for use in hot or otherwise inclement weather, with an open-air colonnade at the back; both tracks extended a whole stadium's length. 'Aulus is pretty athletic. Did he practise with you?'

'Yes, but being stuck here bored him. He tried to persuade me to abandon the oracle, but I am adamant. I need the G.o.ds' help to find out what happened to my wife.'

A raw note had entered his voice. We let him alone for a few minutes. Eventually Helena took him back to the beginning of his marriage, asking how Valeria had been chosen as his bride. Statia.n.u.s confirmed that prior to the wedding the couple hardly knew each other. Valeria's mother had been a friend of his own mother's years before.

'She was respectable, but she came cheap?' My frankness grated. Statia.n.u.s steadied, as if he recognised he was up against a fiercer interrogator than he had encountered so far. Aquillius Macer had stubbornly thought him guilty, but lacked push; even Aulus would go easy on a fellow aristocrat - he rarely used charm, but had a sn.o.bbish politeness with his own level of society.

Impatient with my rudeness, Helena leaned towards Statia.n.u.s. 'We met your mother in Rome. She is thinking about you, missing you. She wants you to come home and be taken care of.'

He let out a very small humph. I guessed he realised Tullia Longina thought he should get on with his life - which meant a speedy remarriage.

I let Helena continue the interview. More sympathetic than me, she drew from Statia.n.u.s his version of what had happened to his wife at Olympia. It mostly matched what we had heard. Valeria wanted to meet Milo of Dodona, in order to hear a recitation. They had quarrelled about that; her husband admitted that they quarrelled frequently.

'Were you in love with your wife?'

'I was a good husband.'

'None of us can ask for more,' Helena a.s.sured him gravely.

She had more. She had much more, and she knew it. She pressed my hand briefly, as if she thought I was about to erupt indignantly.

They discussed the fatal evening. Statia.n.u.s had dined out with the men; he came back and found Valeria missing, went out again to look for her. n.o.body else took any interest; he searched alone. He could not find her. 'Did you go to the palaestra that night?' Helena asked.

'No. I have cursed myself for that, a thousand times - but it was a private club. They had people on the doors to deny non-members admittance. If I had gone, I might have saved her.' If he had blundered in on the killing, he might have been bludgeoned to death too. 'When I did go there the next morning...'

He could not continue. Helena, who was tougher than she looked, calmly described for him how he had found the body; the hostile superintendent ordering him to remove it; carrying his dead wife back to the group's tent; screaming for a.s.sistance. He seemed surprised we knew it was Cleonyma who first came out to him. 'A good woman,' he said briefly. We sensed how stoically she must have responded to the ghastly scene.

'Tullius Statia.n.u.s, did you kill your wife?' Helena asked.

'No.'

Helena held his gaze. He stared back with only a tired look of defiance. He had been asked the same question too many times: he would not rant in outrage at it. He knew he was the chief suspect. Presumably by now he also knew there was no direct evidence to arrest him.

'This must all be very hard for you,' Helena sympathised.

'At least I am alive,' he replied harshly.

I took up the questions, tackling him again about his relationship with Valeria. He knew I was probing for a motive. Like all relationships, theirs had been complicated, but it sounded as if they were realistic about their fate. Although they had sc.r.a.pped all the time, they had one thing in common: both had been put into the marriage for other people's convenience.

'Would you have divorced? Was it that bad?'

'No. Anyway, my parents would have opposed a divorce. Her relatives, too, would have been disappointed.'

'So you reached an accommodation?' Helena suggested. He nodded. It seemed the couple were resigned. In their social circle, if they had given up on this marriage, both would only have been shunted into new ones - which could have turned out even worse.

Later, Helena and I discussed whether Statia.n.u.s had hated the situation more than he now said. Did the prospect of nagging parents force him to decide that killing Valeria was his only way out? I thought sticking with her was the easiest option - and he liked the easy ones. Having met his mother, Helena felt that if he really wanted out, he could have got around the opposition eventually. So she believed the marriage would have lasted. 'At least until one of them found somebody who offered more love.'

'Or better lovemaking!'

'Ah, that would definitely count,' Helena agreed, smiling.

While we were with him at the gymnasium, I tested Statia.n.u.s as hard as possible. 'So would you say you had learned to tolerate your wife -and she felt the same?'

'I never would have harmed her.' It did not answer my question, and when he saw I was dissatisfied, he snapped, 'It is nothing to do with you!' I could see how this att.i.tude would have upset Aquillius.

'Statia.n.u.s, when a young woman dies a brutal death, all her relationships become matters of public record. So answer me, please. Was Valeria more restless than you were?'

'No, she didn't like Olympia, but she was happy with me!' His frustration was showing. 'I don't know who you are, Falco - I trusted Aelia.n.u.s and that's the only reason I'm talking to you.' Now self-pity took over. 'I shall never get through this.'

'That is why you should talk to me. By finding the truth, I help people contain their pain.'

'No. As soon as I saw my wife there dead, I knew everything was over. Everything has changed for ever. Whoever he was, the man who took her life - when she had enjoyed no life to speak of - also ruined mine. If I go home, I know my brothers and my parents will not understand. I have to carry this alone. That is why I stayed in Greece,' Statia.n.u.s said, answering one question that I had not asked yet.

Helena and I were silent. We understood. We even understood his certainty that n.o.body he knew would ever truly share his devastation. His misery was genuine.

For the first time, Tullius Statia.n.u.s had revealed his heart. We saw why Aelia.n.u.s had been sure he was not the killer. We too believed him innocent.

Belief was not proof.

We had reached a natural break. Statia.n.u.s complained he was tired; he had eaten so much he must be ready for a nap to sleep it off. I wanted to ask more questions, to gauge his thoughts about the others on the trip who must become suspects if we decided he was innocent, but I agreed to defer it. He told us where he was staying - a dismal inn, though he said it was no worse than the places to which Phineus took his clients. In fact, Phineus had told him where to stay. I noted that he spoke of Phineus with routine disparagement.

He promised to meet us tomorrow; I arranged to collect him from his inn. He seemed perfectly willing to talk to us now, and I wanted to extract everything I could from him while we had him in Delphi, separate from the group. Then I would take over from Aulus the task of persuading Statia.n.u.s to give up on the oracle. But that could wait overnight. There was no rush.

XLIII.

Next day, when we went to pick up Statia.n.u.s I felt my first pangs of doubt. His lodging house was a dingy hole. I could see why he would not want to hang around there. Even so, when the landlord said the young man had gone out for some exercise, it worried me.

'He's gone running. Try the gymnasium.'

This could be the start of a long search. We had let Statia.n.u.s fool us. We had failed to win him over; he was ignoring the arrangement to meet. Neither Helena nor I said it, but both of us reconsidered. Was Tullius Statia.n.u.s not an innocent man, as he had convinced us, but guilty and a superb actor?

Never. He was not bright enough.

Still, he was jumpy enough to do something stupid.

I knew Helena wanted to see a building in the sanctuary they called the clubhouse. It contained fabulous ancient paintings of the destruction of Troy and the descent of Odysseus to Hades. Lovers of art had to see these famous pictures. I sent Helena off there, saying that when I found him I would extract Statia.n.u.s from the gym and bring him along.

He was not at the gym. By the time I reached it, I had faced up to my anxiety. When I could not find him, I was not surprised. I feared that he had done a bunk. But where could he go?

Clearing my head, I stood in the central courtyard. I had searched both the gymnasium tracks, indoors and out, and the palaestra; I had even inspected clothes on hooks in the dressing room, in case I recognised his white tunic. Finally I stopped for a good curse, a lively event which took place in the washing area. There was a big pool in the middle of the courtyard. Against the far wall were about ten individual basins, fed with water through lions' heads. After venting my rage there, I turned away towards the exit.

Somebody was watching me.

My spine tingled. I was suddenly aware of my surroundings. A couple of men were bathing in the pool after their endeavours on the track. Their splashes joined the melodious trickles from the waterspouts. From the palaestra came the low thunking sound of sand-filled punchbags being rapidly hit. I could hear music too. The gymnasium was haunted by flautists and lyre-players, as well as teachers, orators, and poets. One voice seemed to be delivering a scientific lecture, though the speaker sounded slow and the room he was using echoed hollowly as if he had only a small audience.

The man who was watching me stood nervously in a doorway. I stared him out. I knew from his stature that he was more likely to be one of the entertainers than a dedicated athlete, even an amateur. He was pale, thin, and nervous-looking. An unsatisfactory sky blue tunic hung awkwardly on his shoulders as if it was still on a pole at a market stall. Scrolls poked from a battered satchel slung across his pigeon chest.

When I glared at him, he dropped his gaze. I kept mine level.

'See something you like?' I challenged. I made it sound as if he had best answer me, d.a.m.n fast, or something he certainly would not like would happen. 'I'm looking for Tullius Statia.n.u.s. Do you know him?'

Words came out in a pathetic bleat. 'I try to avoid him.' Now that was a surprise.

The men in the pool had stopped splashing about and were listening. So I led the stranger out of doors, where I could interrogate him in confidence.

'The name's Falco. Marcus Didius Falco. I am a Roman, representing the Emperor, but don't let it worry you.'

'Lampon.'

'You a Greek, Lampon?' He was. He was also a poet. I should have known from his weedy behaviour. I was a spare-time poet myself; it gave me no fellow-feeling for professional writers. They were unworldly parasites. 'So, my versifying friend, why are you hiding from Statia.n.u.s - and what made you stare at me?'

He seemed glad to confide. So I soon found out Lampon was not just any old poet. He was a poet I had already heard about - and he was very, very scared.

Earlier this year he was at Olympia, where he was hired one night by Milo of Dodona. Milo set him up to give a recitation to Valeria Ventidia, hoping she would then nag her husband and fellow-travellers to sponsor Milo's statue. Lampon knew Valeria had been killed that night; recently he heard that Milo was dead too.

'You are right to be nervous,' I told him bluntly. 'But telling me is the best thing you can do.' Lampon, being a poet, inclined to both cowardice and doubt. 'I'm your man for this situation, Lampon. You tell me everything - then trust me to look after you.'

He was easily convinced. Eagerly, he told me all he knew.

Lampon and Milo had waited in vain for Valeria to show. Then they spent most of that night getting drunk. Milo was miserable over his failure to attract sponsors, and Lampon pretended the wine helped him to be creative; like most poets, he just liked it. Together, they gulped down many flagons. Since both athletes and authors have a lot of practice with wine, they nonetheless remained awake. So Lampon could now vouch for Milo of Dodona, who did not leave his presence until dawn; Milo could not have killed Valeria. Alive, the mighty Milo could have given the same alibi for Lampon. Despite Milo's death, I was prepared to exonerate the scribbler anyway. I knew about poetic recitals. I knew all about turning up with your scrolls but finding no audience. While drink would be a natural solace, killing a girl who failed to show was not worth the effort for a poet.

The next thing Lampon told me was even more important. 'The girl had a better offer!'

'You saw the better offer?'

Lampon looked shamefaced. 'I never told Milo.'

'Did you tell anybody else?'

'I went to the tents with Milo next day. He wanted to know why she hadn't come. He could never tell when people just weren't interested in him...' Clearly the poet was more experienced.

'What happened at the tent?'