This could be either vindictiveness or simple jealousy. The Prefect, and/or his administrative staff may have felt they were perfectly equipped themselves to answer any questions from Vespasian without him needing to commission me. They may even have imagined my story about the Pyramids was a cover; perhaps I had a secret brief to check how the Prefect and/or his staff were running Egypt . . .
Dear gods. This is how bureaucracy causes needless muddle and anxiety. The result was worse than a nuisance: putting out false stories locally could get agents into trouble. Sometimes the kind of trouble where a poor mutt doing his duty landed up losing his life in a back alley. So you have to take it seriously. You never think, ‘Oh I am the Emperor’s agent, so important the Prefect will look after me!’ All prefects loathe agents on special missions. ‘Looking after’ can take two forms, one of them filthily unpleasant. And of all the Roman provinces, Egypt probably had the worst reputation for treachery.
While I was musing, the scholars leaned against column bases quietly. These young men showed respect for thought.
It was unsettling - quite different from my normal work at home. If I was trying to identify which of three grasping nephews stabbed some loose-tongued tycoon who had foolishly admitted he had written a new will in favour of his mistress, I had no time to think; the nephews would scarper in all directions if I paused, and if I appeared vague, even the indignant mistress would start screeching at me to hurry with her legacy. Tracking stolen art was worse; to play ‘find the lady’ with chipped statues at some dodgy auction in a portico required keen eyes and close attention. Stop to let the mind wander, and not only would the goods be whipped away on a handcart down the Via Longa, but I could have my purse lifted by a thieving ex-slave from Bruttium, together with the belt it was hanging on.
I pulled myself back to the present. ‘Sorry, lads. Off in a world of my own . . . Alexandrian luxury is getting to me - all this freedom for daydreaming! Tell me about the library scrolls, will you?’
‘Is that relevant to Theon’s death?’
‘Maybe. Besides, I am interested. Anybody know how many scrolls are in the Great Library?’
‘Seven hundred thousand!’ they all chorused immediately. I was impressed. ‘Standard lecture they give all new readers, Falco.’
‘It’s very precise.’ I grinned. ‘Where is the spirit of mischief? Don’t renegade staff ever put about conflicting versions?’
Now the scholars looked intrigued. ‘Well . . . Alternatively there are four hundred thousand - possibly.’
One pedantic soul who collected boring facts to give himself more character then informed me gravely, ’It all depends whether you believe the rumour about when Julius Caesar set fire to the docks, in his attempt to destroy the Egyptian fleet. He had sided with the beautiful Cleopatra against her brother and by burning his opponents’ ships as they were at anchor, Caesar gained control of the harbour and communication with his own forces at sea. It is said that the fire swept away buildings on the docks, so quantities of grain and books were lost. Some people believe this was most or all of the Library itself, although others say it was only a selection of scrolls that were in store ready for export - maybe just forty thousand.’
‘Export?’ I queried. ‘So what was that? - Caesar grabbing loot - or are scrolls from the Library regularly sold off? Duplicates? Unwanted volumes? Authors whose writing the Librarian personally hates?’
My informants looked uncertain. Eventually one took up the main story again: ‘When Mark Antony became Cleopatra’s lover, it is said he gave her two hundred thousand books - some say from the Library at Pergamum - as a gift to replace her lost scrolls. Afterwards, perhaps, Cleopatra’s library of scrolls was taken to Rome by the victorious Octavian - or not.’
I made a bemused gesture. ‘Some say and perhaps ... So what do you think? After all, you do have an operational library now.’
‘Of course.’
“I can see why the Librarian seemed a trifle put out when the conversation flagged awkwardly and my wife asked for figures.’
‘It would reflect on him badly if he was unable to say what his stocks were.’
‘Is it possible,” I suggested, ‘that at various times, when threatened, wily librarians misled conquerors about whether they had taken possession of all the scrolls?’
‘Everything is possible,’ agreed the young philosophers.
‘Could there be so many scrolls, nobody can ever count them?’
‘That too, Falco.’
I grinned. ‘Certainly no one man can read them all!’
My young friends found that idea quite horrible. Their aim was to read as few scrolls as possible, purely to tickle up their debating style with learned quotations and obscure references. Just enough to obtain flash jobs in civic administration, so their fathers would increase their allowances and find them rich wives.
I said I had better not keep them from that laudable aim any longer. ‘I just remembered I forgot to ask the Zoo Keeper where he was the night Theon died.’
‘Oh,’ the students told me helpfully, ‘he’s bound to say he was with Roxana.’
‘Mistress?’ They nodded. ‘So how can you be so sure that he had an assignation that night?’
‘Maybe not. But isn’t “with my mistress” what all guilty parties tell you, when they are fixing up an alibi?’
‘True - though colluding with the mistress requires them to admit to a racy way of life. Philadelphion may need to be circumspect; he has a family somewhere.’ I saw the young men were envious - though not of the family. They wanted to hook fabulous mistresses. ‘So what is Roxana like? Bit of an exotic specimen?’
They came alive, making voluptuous gestures to indicate her curvaciousness and seething with lust. I had no need to go back to Philadelphion. Whether or not he had something to hide, he would make Roxana swear he was with her all night and any court would believe him.
When he had finished the necropsy, he had told me he was going to dine somewhere. I gained the impression at the time that, wherever it was, Philadelphion was well in. After cutting up dead flesh, he must have welcomed the warm delights of living.
I wondered at which hour of the day a citizen of Alexandria could decently visit his mistress.
I asked one last question. Remembering the item on the Academic Board’s agenda on discipline (-which they had deferred very eagerly), I asked: ‘Do any of you fellows know somebody called Nibytas?’
They looked at one another in a -way I found puzzling, but said nothing. I made my gaze sterner. At last, one replied shiftily, ‘He is a very old scholar, who always works in the Library.’
‘Know anything more about him?’
‘No; he never speaks to anyone.’
‘No use to me then!’ I exclaimed.
XVIII
The young man took me indoors and pointed out where Nibytas generally sat - a lone table at the very end of the great hall. I would not have found it unaided; the table had been pushed right into a dark corner and set at an angle as if creating a barrier to others.
The old man was absent from his place. Well, even the studious have to eat and pee. A mass of scrolls littered the table. I walked up to have a look. Many of the scrolls had torn strips of papyrus stuck in them as markers, while some were lying half unrolled. They looked as if they had been left like that for months. Unruly piles of private note-tablets were jumbled in among the library scrolls. The reading position reeked of intense, long-winded study that had been going on for years. You could tell at a glance the man who sat here was obsessive and at least a little crazy.
Before I could investigate his weird scribbles, I spotted the tragedy professor, Aeacidas. I wanted to interview all the likely candidates for Theon’s job, and do it as quickly as possible. He had seen me; afraid he would decamp, I walked over and asked for a few words.