The Year of Confusion(14)

“You are too modest. And how is Julia? I haven’t seen her in at least a month.”

“She is quite well and I am sure that she will call soon,” I said. As soon as she found out that I had been here. They were friends, but there are limits.

“And how may I be of service?” She gestured me to a chair by a little table and she sat across from me while servants brought refreshments.

“I am investigating a murder at the particular behest of Caesar, and since the victim may have been among your circle of acquaintances, I thought you might be able to tell me something about him.”

“A murder? And it was someone I know?” She was genuinely shocked.

“You may have known him. Demades, one of the astronomers who has been working with Sosigenes on the new calendar. Asklepiodes told me that he was sometimes to be seen at gatherings of the Greek philosophical community, so I immediately thought of your salon.”

“Poor Demades! Yes, I knew him, although not very well, I confess. For a philosopher he was not very loquacious.”

“Asklepiodes has attested to his reticence.”

“And he was interested in little except astronomy.”

“Again, exactly what Asklepiodes told me.”

“Of course the subject of astronomy comes up from time to time at my gatherings, but there is far more discourse on other subjects. He took little part in those discussions.”

“Could you tell me when you last saw him?”

“Let me see, it was the evening of the last day of the year just ended. He had more to say because the new calendar was about to go into effect. There were several of the astronomers present at that meeting.”

“Do you recall which ones?”

“Sosigenes, of course. Some of them were foreigners, which surprised me. There was a pseudo-Babylonian who argued for the merits of astrology, and an Arab who knew a great many things about the stars unfamiliar to me, and a fascinating man from India who spoke for a long time on the transmigration of souls. Marcus Brutus found this enthralling, because he has been studying the philosophy of Pythagoras, whose theories involve just such metamorphoses.”

“Brutus was there? He was here the first time I called upon you, years ago.”

“Oh, yes. He has attended nearly every meeting since he returned to Rome.”

Brutus was another of those enemies of Caesar who had been unaccountably recalled from exile. Caesar treated the whole thing as a boyish lapse of judgment. He always showed a great affection for Brutus, whom I only saw as a rather tedious drudge. Perhaps it was because of Caesar’s old liaison with Servilia, Brutus’s mother. There were even rumors that Caesar had fathered Brutus, but I never credited these. In any case, Brutus had philosophical pretensions and was often to be found at such gatherings.

“What other Romans were present?” I asked. “It might help to know with whom he mingled in his final days.”

“Do you think this might be relevant?”

“One never knows. Sometimes a murder is casual, as when a thug stabs a victim to make it easier to lift his purse. Other times the murder is hired and a professional takes care of it. In neither case would my question be to the point, but I have found that in most cases the killer was someone known to the victim, very often a spouse or close relative. You see, there must be close emotional attachment for one to feel betrayal severely enough to kill. Or the killing is the result of a business dealing gone bad, or of someone impatient for an inheritance. In all those cases there is some close connection between murderer and victim. The idea is to discover what the nature of the connection might be.”

Her eyes sparkled. “This is so fascinating! I have said before that you should organize your theories of detection into a study and write them down. You could found your own unique school of philosophy.”

“‘Detection’?” I asked. “It’s a good word, but I fear that nobody else’s mind works like mine. Such a study would be a dismal failure, and philosophers would consider the study of evil or aberrant behavior to be unworthy. They like to concentrate upon the sublime.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Nobody thought like any philosopher until the philosophers began to propound, and then they changed the ways people thought. And physicians study the illnesses and injuries of the body, so why not the workings of evil in the human mind and the behavior that results from it?”

Now that I think of it, I suppose that may be exactly what I have been doing these last few years as I idle away my time under the reign of the First Citizen. I have no gift for writing philosophical tracts, however, and instead inscribe these memoirs of my adventures during those dying years of the Republic.