“No,” Orestes said, “he won’t. And that means there’s going to be a war. Which,” he added, with a faint shrug of his shoulders, “we’ll almost certainly lose, unless you can think of a way of blasting the Roman fleet out of the bay. Pity about that,” he added.
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s not my fault.”
“Nobody said it was,” Orestes replied gloomily. “Still, that’s one thing I never thought I’d see.”
“What?”
“Archimedes,” he said, standing up. “Outsmarted by a Roman.”
He was just about to leave. I called him back. “I don’t suppose,” I said, “you’ve still got your file on Naso.”
He grinned at me. “As a matter of fact,” he said, and pulled out the papers from under his tunic.
I sighed. “Read them to me,” I said. “My eyesight — ”
So he read his notes on the life and times of Quintus Caecilius Naso, up to a point where I told him to stop and go back a bit. He read that bit again, and I asked him some questions, which he was luckily able to answer.
“You wouldn’t happen to have,” I said quietly, “anything similar on our friend Scaurus?”
“Wait there,” he said.
The bath was getting cold when he came back, but I hadn’t bothered to get out. I’d been too busy thinking; or, rather, bashing helplessly at the locked door of my intuition, behind which I felt sure the answer lay …
“Publius Laurentius Scaurus,” Orestes said, peering owlishly at the paper in his hand. “A member of the influential Laurentii family, once prominent in the Optimate movement, though their influence has been on the wane for the last twenty years or so. Married to the second cousin of the celebrated Aemilius — ”
There was a lot more of that sort of thing. I was partly listening, the way an old married man partly listens to his wife. At the same time, my mind was hopping, flapping, until suddenly and quite unexpectedly, it soared.
“Got it![1]” I remember shouting. “Here, help me out, I’ve got to see Hiero.”
Which I did, refusing to wait, or see anybody else. I barged my way into the royal presence and told him all about it. Then I said, “Well?”
A pause; then Hiero said, “You’re right.”
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
Hiero nodded slowly. Then he lifted his head and looked at me. “Archimedes,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Why haven’t you got any clothes on?”
In contrast to our previous encounters, my third meeting with Scaurus was distinctly low-key. There were just the three of us, in a small garden at the back of the palace. We sat like civilized men under a fine old beech tree, and a boy served wine and honey cakes.
Hiero — he was the third member of the party — wiped his lips delicately on a linen napkin and gave Scaurus a friendly smile. “I asked you here,” he said, “to see if we can’t work something out. Something sensible,” he added. “Just the three of us.”
Scaurus nodded gracefully. “I can’t see why we shouldn’t be able to,” he said. “If you’re prepared to be realistic.”
Hiero nodded. “And since you’re such an admirer of my cousin’s work,” he went on, “I’ve asked him along. I know you’ve had your differences, let’s say, but I feel sure that deep down, both of you men of science, you can really
“Of course,” Scaurus said. “And you’re right. The very greatest admiration.”
I acknowledged the compliment as best I could. “Maybe,” I said, “we could have a chat about scientific method.”
A slight frown crossed Scaurus’ face. “I’d have thought we had rather more urgent — ”
I raised my hand. “Method first,” I said, “then the specifics.”
He shrugged. “If you like.”
“What I admired about that paper of yours,” I went on, “wasn’t the actual conclusions, which are fanciful, or the empirical data, which is deeply flawed. No, what I liked was the
He looked at me as if he didn’t like me nearly as much as he used to. “More or less,” he said.
“In other words,” I went on, “the simplest explanation is likely to be the right one.”
“That’s not actually what I — ”
“Near enough,” I said firmly, “is good enough. In which case,” I went on, “try this. The simplest explanation for what happened to Naso isn’t that he climbed the wall on his own, or that this mysterious and wonderful flute-girl of yours winched him over the wall on an improvised crane. The simplest explanation,” I said, beaming at him like the rising sun, “is that when he came outside to shag the flute-girl, he found the sergeant of his honour guard waiting for him. The sergeant killed him, and a couple of squaddies lugged him out through the open gate and put him on a cart, to be disposed of later in a nearby warehouse. Well?” I asked him. “Simple enough for you?”
Bless him. He didn’t say a word.
“And why would the sergeant do such a thing?” I continued. “Because he was ordered to, or paid, or both. Who by? Well, that’s a subject for speculation, I grant you. It could have been a member of a rival political faction — let’s see, Naso was well up in the Popular party, just as you’re quite well thought of among the Optimates, aren’t you? Or maybe it was someone who reckoned the best way to make sure there’d be a war would be by manufacturing a serious diplomatic incident. Mind you,” I added, “they’d have to be a Optimate, since the Populars don’t want a war right now. Or it could simply have been the uncle of Naso’s first wife; you know, the one who died in mysterious circumstances, falling down the stairs or something like that, thereby making it possible for Naso to marry that rich and well-connected heiress. Or maybe it was just that someone whose career’s been nothing special lately simply wanted his job. We just don’t know. I’m sure,” I added sweetly, “that once we’ve shared our theories with Naso’s friends in the Populars, they’d have no trouble thinking of someone who answers one of those descriptions. Or maybe all of them, even.”
He gave me a look that would’ve curdled milk. “Have you finished?” he said.
“Yes. Almost,” I added. “I’d just like to give you a new dictum for your collection.”
“Well?”
“Give me a firm place to stand,” I said, “and I can kick your arse from here to Agrigentum.”
Later, Orestes asked me, “So why sprats?”
“Ah,” I said, smiling like a happy Socrates. “My guess is, the Romans had chosen poor old Stratocles’ warehouse well in advance as a good place to lose the body. They wouldn’t want it found, not ever, because a disappearance was just as good for breaking up the peace talks as a visible murder, and a body might just’ve given the game away; no rope-marks or anything like that to support the crane theory. There might have been some trifling clue they’d overlooked, but which might’ve been picked up by one of our sharp-as-needles Syracusan investigators. Attention to detail, you see, a typically Roman trait.”
“But?”
I grinned. “But when they got to the warehouse — it was dark, remember, and they wouldn’t have risked a light — they made a slight mistake. They’d been intending to put the corpse in one of the damaged jars we saw there, earmarked for dumping in the bay. Instead, they dumped it in a half-filled jar, which is how come it ended up in Rome.” I shook my head sadly. “Too clever by half,” I said, “and basically just careless.”
There was no war. Scaurus went home, and was replaced by a polite old Optimate who explained that the girl Maurisca had confessed that she’d been bribed by the Carthaginians (nice touch, everybody hates the Carthaginians) to tell a parcel of lies in order to get Hiero into trouble. The charges were, therefore, withdrawn, and the negotiations proceeded to a long, drawn out, meaningless conclusion.
