Last Act in Palmyra by Lindsey Davis Page A

Naturally he resents it. Anyway, I gather he’s always lusting after more glamorous bits.’
    â€˜Well that would have explained it if he had been found in the pool, and we had heard Phrygia luring him uphill.’ It seemed irrelevant to Heliodorus. But something about Chremes had always bothered me. I thought about him more. ‘Chremes himself plays the parts of tiresome old fellows –’
    â€˜Pimps, fathers and ghosts,’ Helena confirmed. It didn’t help.
    I gave up and tried considering the other actors. ‘The juvenile lead is called Philocrates. Though he’s not so juvenile if you look closely; in fact he creaks a bit. He takes on prisoners of war, lads about town, and one of the main set of twins in every farce which has that gruesome identity mix-up joke.’
    Helena’s summary was swift: ‘A dilettante handsome jerk!’
    â€˜He isn’t my chosen dinner companion either,’ I admitted. We had exchanged words on one occasion when Philocrates had watched me trying to corner my ox to harness it. The words were cool in the circumstances – which were that I asked his assistance, and he snootily declined. I had gathered it was nothing personal; Philocrates thought himself above chores that might earn him a kicked shin or a dirty cloak. He was high on our list to investigate further when we could brace up to an hour of insufferable arrogance. ‘I don’t know who he hates, but he’s in love with himself. I’ll have to find out how he got on with Heliodorus. Then there’s Davos.’
    â€˜The opposite type,’ Helena said. ‘A gruff, tough professional. I tried to chat with him, but he’s taciturn, suspicious of strangers, and I guess he rebuffs women. He plays the second male lead – boasting soldiers and such. I reckon he’s good – he can swagger stylishly. And if Heliodorus was a liability as a writer, Davos wouldn’t think much of it.’
    â€˜I’ll watch my step then! But would he kill the man? Davos might have despised his work, but who gets shoved in a pool for bad writing?’ Helena laughed at me suggestively.
    â€˜I rather took to Davos,’ she grumbled, annoyed with herself for being illogical. Somehow I agreed with her and wanted Davos to be innocent. From what I knew of Fate, that probably put poor Davos at the top of the suspects list.
    â€˜Next we have the clowns, Tranio and Grumio.’
    â€˜Marcus, I find it hard to tell the difference between those two.’
    â€˜You’re not meant to. In plays that have a pair of young masters who are twins, these two play their cheeky servants – also identical.’
    We both fell silent. It was dangerous to view them as a pair. They were not twins; they were not even brothers. Yet of all the company they seemed most inclined to carry over their stage roles into normal life. We had seen them larking about on camels together, both playing tricks on the others. (Easy to do on a camel, for a camel will cause trouble for you without being asked.)
    They went around in tandem. They were the same slim build – underweight and light-footed. Not quite the same height. The slightly taller one, Tranio, seemed to play the flashy character, the know-all city wit; his apparent crony, Grumio, had to make do with being the country clown, the butt of sophisticated jokes from the rest of the cast. Even without knowing them closely I could see that Grumio might grow tired of this. If so, however, surely he was more likely to put the boot into Tranio than strangle or drown the playwright?
    â€˜Is the clever one bright enough to get away with murder? Is he even as bright as he likes to think, in fact? And can the dopey one possibly be as dumb as he appears?’
    Helena ignored my rhetoric. I put it down to the fact that only senators’ sons have rhetoric tutors; daughters need only know how to twist around their fingers the senators they