A Death in the Venetian Quarter Read Free Page B

loss.”
    â€œTo you or to Byzantium?”
    â€œEverything I do is for Byzantium,” he said with a straight face. “I think you must know this by now.”
    â€œWith a healthy dose of personal gain,” I observed.
    â€œOne’s wealth should be commensurate with one’s value, don’t you think?” he said.
    I let that go by. I’ve lived most of my fool’s life in poverty, at least as far as gold was concerned. If I had wanted to be ambitious, I would have stayed home.
    â€œAll right, the timing is suspect,” I said. “Why do you need me? Why not use Will and Phil like you usually do?”
    William and Philip were Englishmen who had joined the Varangian Guard. Philoxenites had close ties to the Varangians, and these two in
particular did his dirty work with efficiency and no small amount of personal pleasure.
    â€œWill and Phil are otherwise engaged,” he said. “They are soldiers first, and there is a bit of a war brewing, as you have probably observed. I can’t draw on them now. But even if I could, I would prefer using you.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He looked out his window at the seawall. A squad of Varangians was getting a catapult in position at the top of a tower.
    â€œThe jurisdiction over the area makes this a delicate situation,” he explained. “There have been various chrysobulls between Venice and ourselves over the years that have made the quarter virtually independent, although the Logothete is nominally in charge. The Venetians have their own officers, courts, and judges. We can’t just barge in and stomp around looking for a murderer, even if the victim is one of their own.”
    â€œAnd the murderer may not be from the quarter at all.”
    â€œExactly!” he said, beaming at me as if I were a student in his class.
    â€œTell me more, and I’ll see if it interests me enough to pursue it further,” I said.
    â€œThese are strange times when the Imperial Treasurer must entertain the fool,” he said. “Bastiani lived in a three-story building inside the Porta Viglae. The landlord is a man named Vitale. Poor housing, but the merchant was a stingy man by all accounts. He has no family here. There is rumor of a wife in Venice, but that’s not certain. His ships came into the wharf on the other side of the gate, and his offices were in the smaller embolum used by the silk merchants.”
    â€œI know the place,” I said. “I’ve passed by it when I’ve entertained at the hospital there.”
    â€œYour charitable work does you credit, I’m sure. Last night, Bastiani took his evening meal at a communal table in the embolum with his
fellow merchants, then went home alone. His landlord saw him go to his room on the top floor. Bastiani bade him a good evening, then shut and barred the door. That was the last time anyone saw him alive.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    â€œWhen he didn’t appear for the morning meal, the landlord went up and knocked on his door. There was no answer, and it was still barred. When they broke down the door, they found Bastiani lying on his bed in his nightclothes. The room was otherwise undisturbed. His eyes were closed, and he failed to respond to the ruckus raised by the door being smashed in. He was dead.”
    â€œHow was he killed?” I asked.
    â€œThat is a puzzle,” admitted the eunuch. “There was no mark on him, no evidence of violence. The only unusual thing was that his face was bright pink.”
    â€œPoison of some kind.”
    â€œThat would be my conclusion, but how was it done? There were no indications that he had eaten or drunk anything in his room. The last meal he had was a communal one, and nobody else at the table suffered any ill effects. The boarding house was a short walk from the embolum, and there are no taverns to lure the pedestrian between the two buildings. So, there you have