It’s not my fault

“I fear you have some distance to go with your negotiation skills,” Pericles said coldly. “Killing the other party is not the normal tactic.”

“I didn’t kill him!” I protested. Why didn’t anyone believe me?

Perhaps it was because the body was still warm.

Geros was so recently dead that I had mistaken him for a sleeping man, even when I touched him. That meant the killer or killers could not be far away. I had prowled around the other deserted houses with the greatest possible care—I assumed Diotima would be upset if I got myself killed—before concluding that whoever had done in Geros had fled.

That left me in a quandary. Should I raise the alarm, or should I search for clues? I decided I must raise the alarm.

I ran, with a sore foot that made me hop from time to time, across the graveyard to the nearest civilization, which as it happened was the sanctuary of the temple complex. There I found the priestess Meren wandering about. I told her to bring Anaxinos, but first of all to wake my wife and tell her what had happened. Meren gasped at the news that Geros was dead, looked at me strangely, and backed away.

“Did you kill—” she began to say, but choked on the words.

“No, I didn’t kill him!” I said. I was astonished that she thought I might have. It was the first hint that I might have a problem.

She nodded, then took off down the Sacred Way like a frightened deer.

I needed to tell Pericles, and wanted to do so personally, but I didn’t dare leave the body alone for so long, and I wanted to be there when everyone else arrived, if only to judge their reactions.

I couldn’t be in two places at once. Or three, rather, because I also wanted to scout the surrounding area at once for clues and for any hidden killers. In addition, I needed to search the ground around the body before it was trampled by a hundred new arrivals. I had rarely felt so torn by conflicting priorities.

There was nothing for it but to send Pericles a message and hope that he didn’t explode. I rushed to the Oikos of the Naxians, where I would be sure to find a stylus and something to write on. The doors creaked ominously when I pushed them open. I’d expected the Oikos’s doors to be unbarred, but I hadn’t expected to see anyone inside at such an early time.

Yet there, to my relief, I saw two slaves. Both looked up at the sound of the door. One was a middle-aged man, and the other quite young. The young one looked like he might once have been a soldier from some foreign land, captured in battle. A lot of men became slaves that way.

“You can’t come in here!” another man objected. He was a clerkish looking fellow, seated behind an enormous desk, bent over piles of papyrus.

I ignored him.

The older of the slaves began to say, “Master—”

“Shut up and listen,” I told him.

The slave closed his mouth. I turned to the younger man.

“I was going to write a message, but you’ll do even better. I want you to go to Pericles . . . do you know who he is?”

The slave nodded.

“You’ll find him at the dock in a great tent. Tell the guard out front that you have an urgent message, and don’t take no for an answer.”

The slave nodded. He was listening closely.

“Say to Pericles that his presence is urgently required at the abandoned village at the north end of the island. Tell him . . . tell him that if he doesn’t go there at once, he’ll regret it.”

I deliberately withheld the news of the death. This seemed to me the best compromise. I would keep an eye out for Pericles and waylay him as he arrived, to ensure he heard my version of events first.

“Have you got that?” I asked the slave.

He nodded again.

“Then run.”

The slave ran.

I returned to the scene of the crime.

This time I knew to stop at the outskirts of the buildings, to look for clues. I would have liked to have found footprints, but the ground was too hard and rocky even this short distance from the coast, and covered with gritty sand that blew easily in the constant sea breeze. Closer to the shore there was sand and there was virtually no tide, so footprints would hold their shape, but there were too many, and they went in every possible direction. Unfortunately I knew for a fact that people had been walking back and forth in the night. Among them was me. It looked like the multitude of prints that you would see at any beach. I could think of no way to make sense of them before the hordes arrived.

The first of these was on his way.

Pericles is a far more athletic man than most people give him credit for. He arrived first, though he was probably the last to receive the summons. I saw him bounding over the gritty sand and potholes of Delos like an angry rabbit. Running at his heels was Philipos, a shadow that couldn’t quite keep up.

I jumped out in front of the buildings and waved to them.

Pericles stopped before me, panting. Philipos ground to a halt earlier, favoring one leg.

“This had better be important,” Pericles gasped. “The slave you sent made it sound like a matter of life or death.”

“It’s funny you should say that,” I said, searching desperately for a way to make what I had to say any less distressing. “Because Geros is dead.”

Pericles stared at me. He sent Philipos to check, presumably in some vain hope that I was wrong. That was when he accused me of the killing.

“It’s not my fault, Pericles,” I said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

I hoped that was true. I hoped Geros hadn’t died because of my offer of a bribe. That put me in mind of a very important detail.

“Pericles, we’re going to have to tell the priests about the bribery. I’m sure it’ll come out.”

“You want to be executed for corrupting a public official?” Pericles said acidly.

“Is that a crime?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course it’s a crime, you idiot!”

“Then how come you told me to do it?”

“Shhh!” Pericles looked left and right, to see if anyone was listening. No one was. “That’s a detail we don’t need to explore,” he said.

“It’s a detail Anaxinos will almost certainly become aware of,” I told him.

“Then if it happens I will have to speak with the High Priest, to put these things in their proper light,” Pericles said. “I am disappointed with you, Nicolaos. Very disappointed.”

I would have to live with Pericles’s disappointment.

Philipos now returned. “The priest is dead all right. Well done, Nicolaos.”

“It wasn’t me!”

Philipos pointed toward the sanctuary and said, “Here come the Delians.”

Anaxinos walked, as quickly as he could, along the path that diagonally crossed the graveyard. For an older man, he had made good time. In his wake were several of the priests who never seemed to leave his side. Behind him came my wife, with Meren to assist her. I wanted to go to Diotima, but knew that she wouldn’t appreciate the attention. Nor could I have reached her without passing by Anaxinos, which would have been awkward.

Pericles said to me, very quietly, “Whatever you do, Nicolaos, don’t tell Anaxinos about the bribe.”

We waited, and they came to us. I took Diotima’s arm and quietly asked, “Are you all right?”

“Is it true that Geros is dead?” she replied, completely ignoring my solicitous question.

“Yes, I’ll tell you the full story later,” I whispered.

“You’ll tell us the full story now,” Anaxinos said. I had not spoken quietly enough. The High Priest of Apollo had overheard my words. “Where is he?”

I led the party to the house. Anaxinos, Pericles, Diotima, and I went in. There was barely room enough for us all to fit. The other priests and Philipos watched from the doorway. We all looked down at the corpse.

“There is no doubt that he is dead?” Anaxinos asked.

“I’m sorry, sir, there’s no doubt,” I said. I knelt beside the corpse and touched the murder weapon and the bloody rents in his clothing. “As you can see, there are multiple stab wounds; the blade must have gone straight through his heart.”

I pulled the knife out of Geros’s chest. It was hard to extract. I had to twist a little, to relieve the suction. The noise as it came out was sickening.

I held up the blade for all to see. It dripped blood. “Does anyone recognize it?”

“It is a sacrificial knife,” said one of the priests. “We use them during ceremonies when a lamb is to be sacrificed upon the altar.”

Diotima carried a sacrificial knife in her pouch at all times, but hers was much shorter, and the blade curved. This one was double-edged, straight, and thin. What this blade and Diotima’s had in common was that they were both sharp enough to split a hair. It was the perfect assassin’s weapon.

“Are there many of these on the island?” I asked.

The priest who had identified the knife snorted. “Not above a hundred or so. We priests all carry one.” To prove it he reached behind his back and produced his own.

“There are always one or two left at every altar,” another priest added.

“Then no one would notice if one of these was missing?” I said.

The priests shook their heads. “Not after last night.”

No, they wouldn’t. There had been plenty of sacrifices last night. Apparently Geros had been one of them.

“Is there any sign of a struggle?” Pericles asked.

“The ground is so littered that it’s impossible to tell,” I said. “I looked carefully at the ground inside before you all arrived. There are plenty of signs that people have been here.”

“That seems odd for an abandoned home,” Anaxinos said. “Surely we need only search for anyone who had been here.”

One of the priests coughed.

“Yes? Speak up,” Anaxinos commanded.

“High Priest, these old houses have long been used by anyone who wants to meet . . . ah, shall we say . . . for private conversation.”

“Oh, I see,” Anaxinos said. He turned a little bit red. “I suppose I should have thought of that.”

“What it means,” said Diotima, “is that there’ll be more clues in this room than we can cope with.”

I nodded. “Diotima is right. We could spend ages chasing down every dropped hairpin and every mislaid ring in this place, and all we’d do is discover an embarrassing number of otherwise innocent trysts.”

“Besides,” my wife added. “Even if we found any real evidence, the killer could claim it was dropped during an innocent meeting.”

This gloomy conclusion depressed everyone.

As we spoke, Geros’s blood, which was still liquid, had run the length of the incredibly sharp iron of the blade, collected at the point, and fallen to the ground in a slow but steady trickle. What struck me was that this was the only blood on the dirt floor.

Anaxinos noted the same thing. “He might not have been killed here.”

“Not necessarily, sir,” I said. “If a blow is struck cleanly enough, then the blade can act like a plug.”

“I see,” Anaxinos said. “Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you?” He sounded angry with me.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean I want to know why you happened to be here to find him.”

I’d been expecting that question, but I hadn’t been looking forward to it. I had an answer prepared.

“I had offered to meet with Geros,” I said. “I wanted to see if there was some way we might . . . ah . . . assuage his concerns regarding the treasure.”

Anaxinos stared at me. “So he agreed to meet in an abandoned house on the far end of the island?”

“Actually, it was his idea.”

“A likely story.”

“This negotiation was done on my orders, Anaxinos,” Pericles cut in smoothly. “The location was indeed the choice of Geros. I think he felt that a more . . . private setting would allow differences to be aired without undue emotion.”

Pericles had adroitly changed the subject, just enough to divert Anaxinos from an unfortunate line of questioning.

“Hmmpf.” Anaxinos clearly was not impressed with Pericles’s words. “I wonder that I was not invited to this ‘private’ discussion.”

There was not much Pericles or I could say to that.

“This is a disaster on so many levels, I barely know where to begin,” Anaxinos said.

“Why don’t we begin with the dead man,” Pericles said. “There is justice to be meted out.”

“It’s worse than that,” Anaxinos said angrily. “Don’t you realize this entire island and everyone on it is now ritually polluted? Dear Gods.”

Uh oh.

Anaxinos was right. It hadn’t occurred to me, and I could tell from the look on Pericles’s face that it hadn’t occurred to him either.

Where Pericles and I lived, and anywhere else on earth, if there was a murder then only the murderer was cursed, and the family of the victim impure until the rituals had been observed.

But here on Holy Delos, where it was strictly forbidden for anyone to die or be born, this murder meant that every person on the island was tainted with the miasma of unholy death; every building, every grain of sand, every handful of dirt, every drop of water and mouthful of food, every weed in the ground. Even the shrines and the temples were out of action until the balance had been restored.

“What must we do?” Pericles asked quietly.

“First the murderer must be punished,” Anaxinos said. “Then there must be a sanctification. On every part of the island, and in every temple, including the shrines in every home. This is going to take days, maybe months.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Athens will help in any way that we can,” Pericles said.

“Athens caused this disaster in the first place!” Anaxinos replied.

“Anaxinos, I swear to you that Athens had nothing to do with this,” Pericles said, oddly echoing my own words to him.

“Then you are calling one of my people a murderer,” Anaxinos replied.

Pericles looked very, very unhappy. “Forgive me, Anaxinos, that wasn’t my intention,” he said.

“But it is your clear implication, because there is no other possibility,” Anaxinos said.

Anaxinos was right again. If an Athenian didn’t kill the old priest, then a Delian must have. Neither answer was acceptable to our leaders.

Every time Pericles tried to calm down Anaxinos, the High Priest found a new and even better reason to be upset. The fact that he was right in every one of them made me deeply uncomfortable.

“I can only repeat that this murder was none of our doing,” Pericles said. “I am as horrified as you are, Anaxinos. I will appoint an investigator—the very best in Athens—and he will find the culprit. This I promise you. We will bring the killer to justice, no matter who he is, and he will be fully punished as the law demands.”

“I thank you, Pericles, but we have already appointed our own investigator,” Anaxinos said. “Yours will not be required.”

“I insist,” Pericles said. “Our man is the very best.”

“Ours is better. I’m told she has extensive experience.”

She?

The High Priest signaled to someone I knew.

“I present to you the investigator who will solve this crime. Her name is Diotima.”