Alexandria

Unusually for public servants, library assistants believe they exist to help people find things. This one put down an armful of scrolls and led us off immediately. Once away from the audience, I got talking to him. His name was Pastous. He was one of the hyperetae, the staff who were responsible for registering and classifying the books.

'How do you classify?' I asked, quietly making conversation as we crossed the mighty hall.

'By source, author and editor. Then each scroll is labelled to say it is mixed or unmixed – whether it contains several works or only one long one. Each is then listed in the Pinakes, which were begun by Callimachos.' He looked at me, uncertain how educated I might be. 'A great poet, who was once head of the Library.'

'Pinakes? This is your famous catalogue?'

'Yes, the tables,' said Pastous.

'Defined by what criteria?'

'Rhetoric, law, epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science and miscellanea. Authors are arranged under each topic, each with a brief biography and critical account of his work. The scrolls are stored alphabetically too, according to one or two initial letters.'

'Do you specialise in a particular section?'

'Lyric poetry'

'I won't hold that against you! So the Library has holdings of books – and books about the books?'

'One day,' Pastous agreed, showing a sense of humour, 'there will be books about the books that are about the books. An opening for a young scholar?' he suggested to Aulus.

My brother-in-law scowled. 'Too futuristic for me! I don't see myself as original. I am reading law.'

Pastous saw that Aulus' surly manner hid some wryness. 'Precedents! You could write a commentary on the commentaries on precedents.'

I broke in. 'He is earning no fees currently. Would there be money in it?'

'People write for money?' Pastous smiled lightly, as if I had put forward a strange concept. 'I was taught that only the rich can be authors.'

'And the rich do not need the work…' Then I asked the question Helena had asked Theon yesterday: 'So how many scrolls are there?'

Pastous reacted calmly: 'Between four hundred and seven hundred thousand. Call it half a million. However, some say considerably less.'

'For a place that is so heavily catalogued,' I sniffed, 'I find your answer oddly vague.'

Pastous bristled. 'The catalogue lists every book in the world. All of them have been here. They are not necessarily here now. For one thing -' He was not above a gentle jibe – 'Julius Caesar, your great Roman general, burned a great number on the quayside, I believe.'

He was hinting that Romans were uncivilised. I glanced at Aulus and we let it pass.

We had reached an area behind the reading hall. Dim corridors with lower ceiling heights ran here like rabbit burrows. Pastous had brought us past one or two large, narrow rooms where scrolls were stored. Against the long walls, some were in big open pigeonholes, others contained in closed boxes. Smaller rooms had clerks working and craftsmen, all slaves I guessed, engaged on maintenance: mending torn sheets, adding scroll rods, colouring edges, applying identification tags. From time to time we were assailed by scents of cedarwood and other preservatives, though the main aura was timeless and dusty. Some of the workers were the same.

'People stay here for decades?'

'The life claims them, Falco.'

'Was Theon enraptured by this life?'

'Only he could have said,' returned Pastous gravely.

Then he came to a stop and made an elegant arm gesture. He had indicated a pair of tall wooden doors that had recently suffered damage. One now stood half open. He did not have to tell us: we had reached the dead Librarian's room.

VIII

A small black slave had been left to guard the room. Nobody had explained to him what that entailed. He let us go in with no attempt to check credentials. So comforting.

The corridor was otherwise deserted. All the milling sightseers described by the centurion Tenax must have gone away, bored. Aulus coughed nervously; he asked Pastous if the Librarian's body was still here. The assistant looked shocked and assured us it had been taken for burial.

'Who gave the order?' For once a vague expression came upon Pastous. I asked if he knew where the remains had gone.

'I can find out for you.'

'Thanks.'

I pushed at the double doors. The one that moved was solid and heavy, none too level on its great hinges; the other was stuck fast. This was a grandiose entrance. One man's arms would not be long enough to place the doors in the full open position simultaneously; they were designed to be ceremonially moved by a matched pair of flunkeys.

Someone had gone at them like a developer's wrecker on double time for fast demolition. 'They made a good job of it!'

'I heard a natural science student was fetched.' Pastous had a pleasing dryness. 'They tend to be large healthy young men.'

'The outdoor life?'

'Few lectures, so most spend their spare time out at the Gymnasium. On field trips, they build up their legs running away from rhinoceroses.'

Aulus and I sidled through the half-open door and entered the room. Pastous remained on the threshold behind us, watching with a curiosity that managed to be polite yet sceptical.

We inspected the doors. On the outside of the room they had a formidable lock of great antiquity, a wooden beam that was held shut by pin tumblers; with much squinting I made out there were three of those. Whenever the doors were closed and the beam put in place, gravity would make the tumblers fall and act as a lock. Inserting the correct key would lift them out of the way, then the beam could be withdrawn using the key. I had seen other locks where the operator removed the beam by hand, but Pastous said this was the traditional Egyptian kind, as used on most ancient temples.

There was one disadvantage: the wooden key must be about a foot long. Aulus and I knew that Theon had not been carrying anything like that when he came to dinner with Uncle Fulvius.

I reckoned no one used the old wooden beam lock now. Perhaps because of the inconvenience, someone had much more recently installed a Roman lock. It was metal, beautifully ornate with a lion's head, and fixed on the inside of one of the doors. Its beam shot into a post that had been specially fixed to the other door to receive it. This lock would have a slotted turning key. Operated through the door, from outside in the corridor, the key would turn, moving pins inside the lock. However, a ward plate also inside the lock ensured the slots on the key had to line up; only the correct key was able to turn through this plate – and it had to be inserted right on line. I had seen keys that were made with hollow stems, so they were pushed in over a guide to keep them straight.

If Theon had been carrying this key last night, he could have hidden it about his person, on a string around his neck maybe, and we would not have seen it. It must be bigger than a ring-key, but still manageable. 'And this key has disappeared?'

'Yes, Falco.'

The lock was damaged; this was probably done when people broke in to find the body. Double doors are vulnerable to pushing in. Pulling them open from the inside if you had been locked in would be more difficult. But there was no sign of that.

'Too much to hope that the key just fell somewhere!' Aulus hated puzzles. As Tenax had told us, there was nowhere for a key to have fallen. We looked up and down the corridor, just in case it had been kicked across the floor, but no.

I had no patience with mystery features myself, so I turned back into the room and looked around. It had been purpose-built for a notable incumbent. Half as high again as the corridor outside, it had a coffered ceiling and ornate classical covings. The walls were inset with yet more book cupboards, in expensive wood but plain; all the spaces in between were richly painted and gilded in colourful Egyptian style. A dramatic desk was supported on two elegant carved leopards. Behind it was a seat more like a throne than a clerk's writing station, ornamented with enamel and ivory. My father would have made an offer to auction it on sight.