Pompey, who owned many such mines, would be in a position to know. He glanced at Asklepiodes. “A trifle late to summon a physician, isn’t it?”
“He is not here to treat the victim, but to examine him,” I explained. “Master Asklepiodes is an expert in all manner of violent wounds. I’ve found his expertise to be most useful in my investigations.”
Pompey raised his eyebrows. “That’s a new idea. Well, carry on.” He turned to leave, then turned back. “But I shouldn’t waste a great deal of time on this. The real problem will be for the quaestors and praetors to sort out. The man himself amounted to nothing. The eunuch killed him. My advice is, just leave it at that.”
“I will leave it,” I told him, “when I am satisfied that the murderer has been caught.”
“As you will.” His look was not hostile, his words were not loud, but his tone was bone-chilling. He left a great silence behind him when he walked out of the bedroom.
7
I STILL CANNOT UNDERSTAND IT,” I said to Asklepiodes. We sat in his spacious quarters at the Ludus of Statilius Taurus. I had never been in a physician’s quarters before, and I suspected that his decor was odd by the standards of that profession. Every manner of weapon hung on his walls or stood in racks around the rooms. Many of them had scrolls affixed describing the various wounds they could inflict.
“That a man was strangled?” Asklepiodes said.
“No. I have three murders here, and one break-in and robbery, all of them somehow connected. And an arson, let’s not forget that. Sinistrus undoubtedly killed Paramedes, but who strangled Sinistrus? And I can’t believe that it was the same person who killed Sergius Paulus. Do we have three murderers here? And who broke into my house, cracked me on the head and stole that amulet? Macro said that must have been done by a boy, and he seems to be a foreigner.” I paced the floor and walked to a window. From below came the clattering, the shouts and the labored breathing of the fighters practicing in the palaestra.
“It is a difficult problem.” Asklepiodes toyed with a decorated silver stylus. “But why do you think it was not the same person who killed Paulus and Sinistrus?”
I sat on a fine couch and rested my chin on a fist. “You were in Paulus’s bedroom. You saw the window. I don’t believe that the eunuch killed him. And I doubt that he would have let anyone else past, knowing that it meant his own crucifixion. So the murderer came in through the window. The boy who broke into my house might have done it. Very well, there is nothing logically wrong with that. It would be no great task to strangle a drunken, snoring fat man.”
“I follow you so far,” Asklepiodes said. He was wearing the plaited silver hair-fillet I had given him on the last occasion. I reminded myself to choose another present for him.
“But the boy could not have strangled Sinistrus, who was a large, powerful man and a trained fighter. So there must be two murderers, both expert with the bowstring.”
Asklepiodes set down the stylus and gave me a superior, knowing smile. “Why do you think that a man of exceptional strength must have strangled Sinistrus?”
This drew me up short. “Why, it seems … how could it not be so?”
The physician shook his head. “The garrote is not the same thing as simply wrapping your hands around a man’s neck and squeezing. Allow me to demonstrate.” He got up and crossed to one of the walls and took a short bow from a peg. It was unstrung, the stout cord wrapped around the lower limb. Stripping the string from the bow, he stood before me with the string draped between his hands. “This is the most conventional way to use the garrote,” he said, wrapping a turn of the cord around each hand. “You are far larger and stronger than I am. Even so …” He stepped around behind me. A hand flashed in front of my face and I felt the cord biting into my neck. Even though I had been expecting it, I panicked immediately. There is no more shocking sensation than having a breath cut in half and knowing that you cannot breathe. I reached behind me and I could feel the physician pressed tightly against my back. I could grasp his clothes, but I could not secure a strong grip on his body to pull him loose. I began to charge at a wall, ready to twist so that I could crush him between my body and the wall, but instantly both the man and the cord were gone.
“You see?” he said as I sat and drew in great, ragged breaths. “One need not be terribly strong to throttle even a powerful man. Unconsciousness comes in less than a minute. Death in five or six.”
“But why,” I said when I had breath, “did Sinistrus not crush the boy against a wall?”