The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (2 page)

While it may have gained its greatest popularity in recent years, the crime story set in ancient Rome was not actually invented in the 1990s, but has numerous precursors. This volume includes a small but intriguing sampling of some earlier forays, including Miriam Allen deFord’s “De Crimine” from 1952, featuring the famous advocate Cicero and based on actual events, as well as one of Wallace Nicholls’s vintage tales of the Slave Detective. The anonymously
authored “The Missing Centurion” dates from 1862, and so constitutes one of the earliest efforts to mingle historical and mystery fiction; kudos to editor Mike Ashley for rescuing it from utter obscurity.

Here then is the panoply of ancient Rome cast across continents and ages, viewed through the gimlet eyes of those who make it their business to write about the lowest human activity (murder) and the highest (the quest for truth). What better way to celebrate the virtues and the vices of a city that claims to be eternal?

Steven Saylor

“F
ine,” said Publius Cornelius Scipio, the World’s Biggest Man, “but what does a philosopher actually do?”

Your typical Roman question; ignorant, offensive and unpleasantly awkward to deal with. “We think about things,” I said.

“You think about things?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s it?”

Oh no you don’t, I said to myself. You may be a military
genius and the man who beat Hannibal, but I’m a Greek lawyer. You don’t stand a chance.

“That’s it,” I said. “Because, after all, thought’s what separates men from animals. Thought’s the part of us that makes us like the gods. So we think about things.”

He shrugged. “What things?” he asked.

Outside the tent, soldiers were moving about; I could feel the tramp of their nailed sandals on the baked ground, coming up through the soles of my own feet. Where the tent-flap was slightly open, I couldn’t see anything except the blinding African sun, occasionally eclipsed for a split second as people hurried past. The smell of Army was everywhere and overpowering, but I tried to ignore it.

“Everything,” I said. “Everything separately, and everything together, in the context of everything else. That’s what’s so special about thought.”

“Really.” I could see I’d lost him, which wasn’t good. I needed the job. “In other words, you sit on your bum in the shade with your mouth open, and for that you’re worth more per day than a blacksmith makes in a year.” He shook his head. “No disrespect,” he said, “but you’re full of it.”

I smothered a grin. “Absolutely,” I said. “I’m full of everything, because I’m full of thought. In thought, the whole universe exists in microcosm inside my head, perfect in every detail. More to the point, I can recreate the universe any time I like, just by thinking. You give me a feather, and I can think you the whole chicken. From first principles, as it were.”

He turned his head ever so slightly, and I knew I’d got him. Using his own tactics against him, of course. In the great battle, a week ago, he’d provoked Hannibal into committing his elephants to a charge, and then opened his lines and let them pass harmlessly through. Scipio’s mind was all elephants.

“You reckon,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” I replied. “Which is, of course, why you need me on your team. It’s the perfect combination; Roman energy, vigour and muscle, Greek intellect. And please bear in mind, so far all you’ve done is the easy bit; fight Hannibal, win the war, that stuff. Now you’ve got to face the tricky part. Which is why you need me.”

“Tricky part,” he repeated. To do him credit, he spoke Greek like – well, not like a proper Greek, but he could’ve passed for a half-breed Sicilian, on a good day, with a bad cold to mask his accent. “Like?”

“Like going home,” I said. “Surviving victory. Winning is easy. Staying won; that’s hard.”

He laughed; strange man, I thought. “Well,” he said, “tell you what, here’s the deal. I have a very nasty, inconvenient problem that needs to be cleared up fast; in two days, to be precise, and assuming the weather doesn’t get even hotter. And the thing of it is, this is a thinking problem, not a doing one. It means going back into the past. Do you reckon you can manage that, just by thinking?”

“Of course,” I said. “And if I succeed, I get the job. Agreed?”

He smiled. Good-looking man, for a Roman. “Agreed,” he said.

“Excellent. So, what’s the problem?”

Here’s a rule of life for you; don’t try being clever around Roman generals. They’re all of them thick as valley oaks, but sly. There’s not a lot that your finely honed lawyer-philosopher’s brain can do about sly; it sneaks past your defences and bites your ankles.

Scipio grinned at me, then led me through the camp to the big open space in the middle, where the soldiers do drill and stuff. Just off this main square (Roman camps are like towns,
with a square and streets and everything) was a little canvas and ox-hide alleyway, backing on to a high paling fence. When we reached the end of it, I saw something that made me realize I’d just been taken for a garlic-nibbler.

Dead body. Very dead. The glorious Plato, looking for the perfect encapsulation of the essential nature of Dead, would’ve jumped up and down and clapped his hands in glee.

I have this thing with dead bodies. I don’t like them terribly much.

“That’s the problem,” said Scipio, pointing at the red and black thing slumped in the dust, attractively garnished with flies. “Marcus Vitellius Acer, Roman senator, sort of a second-cum-third cousin of mine. If you look closely, you’ll see he’s had his head bashed in. It’d be a great help to me if you could think about it, and tell me who did it.”

Silly fool; last thing I wanted to do was look closely at that. I’ve seen worse, I ought to point out. I’ve seen half a stonemason sticking out from under a three-by-six granite block, where a bit of second-hand rope couldn’t take the strain. I’ve seen kites stripping sun-dried meat off a ribcage, where some old nuisance of a beggar dropped dead beside the road and it was nobody’s business to tidy him away. And I’ve seen a battlefield, but I’d rather not remind myself by talking about it. Marcus Vitellius Acer was bad, but he could’ve been worse. I guess.

“Hence,” Scipio was saying, “the need for urgency; because unless we get him burned in the next two days, he’s going to stink the place out so bad you won’t be able to smell the elephant dung. Also, the family are going to want to know why I made poor dear Marcus hang about on the wrong side of the River with all the riff-raff, and I have better things to do with my time than explain myself to my second cousin Vitellia.”

I was thinking; investigate deaths, what do I know about
investigating deaths? Whereupon, I thought, elephants; he’s tricked me into charging, then opened his ranks. And me a lawyer. I was ashamed.

“No problem,” I said. When all else fails, act cocky. “Only, I’ve got to ask you this, what sort of investigation are you looking for?”

He looked at me. “I want the truth,” he said.

“Oh,” I replied. “That old thing. You sure? I mean, it’s not for me to tell you your business, but wouldn’t it be neater just to arrest someone you want to get shot of anyway, and make out it was him? It’s how we handle these situations back home, and we find it works pretty well.”

Romans do scorn very well; they’ve got the lips for it. “Kind thought,” he said, “but the plain old truth will do me just fine. So; are you up for it or not?”

It occurs to me that when my mother taught me to speak, she entrusted a deadly weapon to my worst enemy. “Of course,” I said.

“Now you’ve examined the body,” Scipio said, as we sat opposite each other in his tent behind big cups of wine, “I expect you’ll be wanting some background on Acer. Right?”

I nodded slowly. I was reluctant to open my mouth just then, for fear of what might come gushing out of it. It’s embarrassing when strangers can see what you’ve been eating lately.

“Fine,” he said. “The main thing about Acer was, he was a Senator. Big man in the Senate, all through the war; supported Fabius after Trasimene, stuck with him after the Metaurus, when everyone else was on my side about the invasion of Africa. I respected him for that, but nobody much else did. Probably that’s why he was so keen to come out here, to show them all he was big enough to accept the Senate’s decision even though he didn’t agree with it. So he
wrote to me asking for a command; and he’d been a good soldier when he was young, fought against Demetrius in Illyria, so I didn’t mind accommodating him, and anyhow, he was family. Did well in the battle, too; I’d tucked him away at the back of the heavy infantry where he couldn’t get hurt, but an elephant broke through the line and went crazy, caused a real mess. Acer was back there with the reserve; he charged out in front of the horrible creature, on foot, alone, and actually managed to keep it pinned down until the archers shot off its crew and our people were able to get ropes on it. Not quite sure how he managed it, because every time he told the story it was slightly different, but a man who was there said he stuck a spear right up through its lower lip, then danced about in front of it dodging and yelling, and somehow contrived not to get trampled or swatted. Not bad work for a man in his fifties.”

I nodded. Vitellius Acer had been living on borrowed time after that, no question. It’s a Roman knack, doing bloody stupid things that History later turns to gold, like the contents of Midas’ chamber-pot.

“Anyway,” Scipio went on, “that tells you he was brave, impetuous, not the sharpest needle in the case maybe, but he had nerve.”

“Enemies,” I said.

Scipio laughed. “Oh, he had enemies all right,” he said. “In politics, the number of enemies you make is one of the most reliable ways of keeping score. I can give you three names straight off the top; Servius Gnatho, Publius Licinius –” he paused, and grinned. “And me, of course.”

I hadn’t been expecting that. “You,” I said. “But I thought –”

“I liked him, actually,” Scipio said. “And he was a sort of cousin, and he did well in the battle. Fact remains, he was a very effective supporter of Fabius Maximus, and therefore
my sworn enemy, politically. Also,” he added, with a shrug, “he hated me like poison, which made him a security risk, if you follow me. Oh, I didn’t kill him, and I didn’t tell anybody else to take care of it, either. Trouble with being the man in charge, though, you get a lot of people who’re always trying to guess what you want well in advance, so they can suck up to you by doing it. Killing my acknowledged enemy is just the sort of thing some ambitious hothead’d do on the offchance there’d be a nice reward.”

“In which case,” I said quietly, “you wouldn’t want him caught, right?”

“Wrong.” He looked all Roman at me, down his nose. “Unauthorized murders aren’t approved procedure in my army.”

“Fine,” I said. “And approved murders?”

He smiled. “War is approved murder,” he said. “But Hannibal didn’t kill this poor sucker.”

Thing about being a lawyer, you get used to the other guy being the straight man. “You assume,” I said. “But there’s escaped prisoners, spies –”

“Or maybe he was hit by extremely solid lightning. But it’s rather unlikely.”

“Noted,” I said. “Tell me about those other two people you just mentioned.”

“Ah yes.” Scipio nodded. “Gnatho. Nasty piece of work, though you wouldn’t think so to look at him. You’re a Greek, so I’m assuming you buy into this beauty-equals-virtue idea that my teachers tried to beat into me when I was a kid. Don’t believe it. Gnatho’s a good example. Rich man, young, handsome; Calabrian, if I remember correctly. The short version is, Acer stole his boyfriend, so he got back by seducing Acer’s wife.”

“Which means,” I interrupted, “Acer had a good motive for killing Gnatho, not the other –”

“No, that was just the start of it. Since then, they’ve been at each other’s throats like Spartan hounds. In fact, I think the feud led to the seductions, rather than the other way about. They just didn’t like each other much, fundamentally.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s a start. Who’s the other man? Licinius?”

“Wealthy knight,” Scipio said. “Made a fortune buying prisoners straight off the battlefield in the Gallic war, selling them quick and cheap to the big Senatorial estates. Quite the inspirational success story, because he came out of nowhere, father was a blacksmith in Apulia, and suddenly he appeared on the scene with a purseful of money, and nobody knew where he’d got it from. Turned out some time later he was fronting for Acer – as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, since a philosopher like yourself will undoubtedly have figured it out from first principles, Roman senators are forbidden by law to sully their paws with Trade, so what we all do is set up some likely character in a good line of business and quietly collect 60 per cent of the profits. As Acer did with Licinius; only he misjudged his man, because Licinius ran the business but quietly omitted to pay Acer his share; and of course Acer couldn’t sue or do anything about it, because he wasn’t supposed to be waddling about in the cesspit of commerce in the first place. So Acer had to use other methods to get his money.”

“Such as?”

“Such as sending a couple of retired gladiators to kidnap Licinius’ family, as a bargaining aid. But the boys he hired must’ve got clonked on the head once too often; they made a hash of it, Licinius’ houseboys started a fight, and the result was that Licinius’ father, brother and kid son all got killed. Well, Licinius paid up after that; but I’d call that a motive for murder, wouldn’t you?”