The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

I didn’t finish the sentence because at that point I slipped and nearly ended up on my face. The floor was slick with oil. Someone had tried to blot it up with sawdust, but hadn’t been thorough enough.

Orestes grinned at me. “Archimedes’ principle of the displacement of fluids,” he said. “I read about it at school.”

I gave him a look. “I’m guessing,” I said, “that this is where the body was tipped in, and the displaced oil came gushing out. He was a big man, so there was a lot of spilt oil.”

“Quite,” Orestes said. “So where does that get us?”

I wiped oil off the sole of my sandal with the hem of my gown. “Nowhere,” I said.

* * *

The next day, Orestes came to see me. I sent word that I didn’t want to talk to anybody. He insisted. I pointed out that I was having a relaxing, well-earned bath, in which I hoped to dissolve every trace of the air I’d been forced to share with Publius Laurentius Scaurus. Orestes came in anyway, and sat down on the floor looking sadly at me and not speaking.

“I told Hiero,” I said. “I didn’t want to get involved.”

“You’re involved all right,” Orestes said. “They’re demanding your extradition.”

I’m not a brave man. I squealed like a pig. “Hiero’ll never agree.”

“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 talk to each other. Wouldn’t you say?”

“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.”