unpleasant to worry about, and the kava berries were quickening my wits very nicely.
‘Is there anything on him in the Ministry files?’ I asked. ‘The drugs aside, what motivated Dioscorides is easily guessed. But Demetrius? He was the Permanent Legate’s personal secretary in all senses. It now seems he was also working for Heraclius. I imagine his file must be as fat as a Syrian whore.’
‘Not really,’ said Alypius, speaking in place of Theophanes and looking rather nervous. ‘He is an Armenian, taken directly into the service of His Excellency.’
‘An Armenian?’ I said, with a bright smile. ‘That would explain the weak Latin, yet also the poverty of his Greek. Can you say when he arrived in Constantinople?’
‘He appeared shortly after His Excellency had sent all the regular officials and slaves out of the city,’ Alypius replied.
‘I’ve had Priscus circulate his description to everyone it may concern,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope that he is found soon – and preferably brought to me in one piece. I think my instructions were reasonably clear, even to the Black Agents.
‘Every mystery involving the Permanent Legate seems to begin with Demetrius. With or without the help of Priscus, I’m sure I shall find much to discuss with him when he does reappear. Such a shame, though, don’t you think, that there is so much on file about a relative nobody like Dioscorides, and so little on a man who has for months now been Number Two to the Pope’s representative?’
‘Have you not considered’, Theophanes answered, with a look at Alypius, ‘that there might be a supernatural element to the killing?’
I smiled again and chose my words. ‘Theophanes,’ I said, ‘there are undoubtedly miracles on the record. Most undoubtedly, there are those recorded in the Holy Scriptures of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Apostles.’ I thought for a moment to stop and cross myself. But it might have spoiled the cool sarcasm of my tone. I continued: ‘But in our own corrupted age, we cannot accept that a miracle has occurred until we have exhausted all other natural possibilities.
‘Let me assure you,’ I finished, ‘that the Permanent Legate was killed by a natural person. I don’t yet know why he did it. But I think I know how it was done and who did it. And I’ll further assure you that – unless I’m stopped by naked force – I’ll know within the next few days why it was done.’
Theophanes looked again at Alypius. His face had taken on the stiff tension of a gambler at the races. Looking out of his depth, Martin sat very still.
I turned to the boxes of confidential files piled up on the far side of the room from Maximin.
‘Martin went properly through these this morning,’ I said. ‘We’ve both since had another look. As Martin thought yesterday, the Permanent Legate’s papers have been carefully sorted. Many things are missing that we reasonably believe ought to be there. We are missing all correspondence for this year with the Dispensator in Rome. Also all correspondence whatever between you and His Late Excellency since his arrival in the city the year before last. We are certain of this last correspondence because the empty filing racks still carry the inked labels of description. This gives us further reason to believe that the sifting of papers was both hurried and unpremeditated. Given luck and boldness, murder is easy. It’s the attendant circumstances that are harder to control.’
As I spoke, I could see that Theophanes was beginning to sweat under the paint. For the first time ever, I’d broken his composure.
‘What I have, though’ – I held up my hand for silence – ‘what I have is this.’
I took a small sheet of papyrus from the file that Martin held open for me. The pattern of folds and weakening in one of the corners told that it had once been pinned to other sheets. Now, sliced in half down the middle, it had been reused on the back.
‘This is interesting for what it says on both sides,’ I announced to Theophanes. ‘The reverse of the sheet carries a list written, I think, by His Excellency himself. If so, he was dealing with some very large sums of money – far more than the Legation accounts indicate were at his disposal.
‘You will see references to my own banking house. I may visit Baruch in the next few days, but will not trouble him with this. He’s a banker and – until recently, at least – a Jew. I am convinced that even three days with Priscus under the Ministry would not reveal what services he provides his other customers. And such is as it ought to be.
‘The sheet was used originally, however, for the draft minutes of a meeting in Ephesus. You will see that this took place in April. I wonder why His Excellency might have made a spring visit to Ephesus? And who else might have attended?’
I asked the question with a lightness that no other face in the room reflected. Theophanes was on his feet. He snatched furiously at the sheet as I stood over him with it. He looked at the list. He turned to Alypius. Eyes blazing, he launched into a flood of blame in their own bleak language.
Alypius defended himself as best he could. But Theophanes was almost out of control with rage. He even forgot to keep his voice down and every so often his gaze wandered to the open door to the balcony. It was only with extreme effort that he pulled himself together and turned back to face me.
He looked at the upper side of the sheet and I could see traces of anger on his face under the paint give way to relief.
‘But my dear Alaric,’ he said with a return to Greek, ‘you have only the right-hand side of the sheet. There are no names here. As for the date, this could be any April – the regnal year is missing.’
He spoke now with forced lightness, but his hands shook as he dropped the sheet on to my desk.
‘Of course, you are right,’ I said, enjoying myself. ‘I really should have seen that for myself. As for what I can read of the minutes, they do seem to concern matters of doctrine that were quite within His Excellency’s competence. I cannot see why he had to travel to Ephesus to discuss whether the Lombard King might be won over to Orthodoxy. But what I can see of his probable comments is most uplifting. Perhaps the sheet is useless after all. Shall I throw it away?’
‘Do allow me to take that duty from you,’ said Theophanes with the glimmering return of his charm. ‘It would never do to disturb the serene tidiness of your office.’
He took the sheet back and buried it in his robe. Then he sat down and, with still shaking hands, sipped at his kava juice. Martin gave me an even more scared and uncomprehending look.
At that moment Maximin began to cry. I turned to Martin with a sigh. ‘Can you see if Gutrune is yet up to changing some shitty clothes?’
But as Martin rose, so too did Theophanes.
‘In one of my numerous pasts,’ he said, ‘I was an acting nursemaid. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bring comfort to your most beautiful son. If Martin would be so kind as to fetch fresh clothes and hot scented water for my hands…’
47
Maximin again lay in his cot, happy in his fresh clothes. For all I knew, Theophanes hadn’t touched a baby in fifty years. But he hadn’t lost an ounce of a very considerable skill. He could have given lessons to Gutrune on how to clean shitty bottoms and then tie the clothes on.
Martin and Alypius had danced attendance with bowls of water and lengths of fine cloth. Then Theophanes had spent an age praising the boy’s present and future qualities. He had evidently enjoyed himself with Maximin but it was also clear that he’d been eager for any excuse to change the subject. But if I was willing to let him recover his composure, there was much more ground to cover.
‘Now, Theophanes,’ I opened, ‘let us deal with this matter of an apparently insoluble murder. We have the Permanent Legate’s body in a locked room, with neither weapon nor murderer. I have no doubt you were highly pleased with yourself when you set it up. But I am not one of those two-legged sheep wandering about the streets of this city.
‘The main enemy of truth is not ignorance. If perceived, that can be the beginning of wisdom. The real enemy is false assumptions.’
I leaned forward and dropped my voice lower still. I now spoke in Latin.
‘What reason,’ I asked Martin, ‘have we to believe that the Permanent Legate’s room was bolted on the
