Free See Delphi And Die by Lindsey Davis

rain-sodden mountainsides, always last to assemble when the group were moving on - yet, sadly, never quite left behind.
    'Smelly,' Gaius contributed; he was probably correct.
    'Like you are, Gaius!' muttered Cornelius.
    Every group of people thrown together by accident contains one creep; we had all met them. I pointed out how fortunate my companions were that I had assembled our party on scientific lines, omitting anti-social loners in large hats. They guffawed again.
    'A man like that could be the killer,' Helena said.
    I disagreed. More likely he himself would be murdered by someone he had driven crazy with his odd behaviour.
    As Helena stacked our foodbowls neatly, she asked, 'I wonder where they have all trotted off to? That's one thing Aulus doesn't say.'
    'Sparta.' I knew this from the Tracks and Temples tour itinerary I had pinched from Polystratus. I went to fetch it from my baggage pack, to double-check. One thing was certain: my personal group was not going to Sparta. Helena and I had a pact. She hated the Spartan attitude to women. I loathed their treatment of their inferiors, the Helots. conquered, enslaved, maltreated, and hunted down by night as sport by belligerent Spartan youths.
    I had brought other lists among my note-tablets. One was a roll-call of the tour Marcella Caesia took three years ago, the names given to me in Rome by her father. I lined up his research against our new list, but apart from Phineus there were no matches.
    'So the mystery is solved: we want Phineus!' declaimed Albia.
    Informers are more cautious; most of us have made mistakes over naming suspects too fast. I explained that Phineus would be crazy to be so obvious, that it now looked as if the two dead women had met dissimilar fates, probably at the hands of different killers - and that accusing Phineus was too easy.
    'Simplicity is good!' Albia argued. She waved her wrists and posed her head elegantly, as if she were modelling Roman fashions under Helena's tutelage.
    'If you accuse an entrepreneur unwisely, it's a very simple lawsuit for defamation.'
    'Then you could defend us in court, Marcus Didius.'
    'I only chase achievable compensation; I won't go bankrupt! I could just as easily mess up my life by becoming a trapeze artiste. Danger, thrills, and  -'
    'Going up in life,' capped Gaius.
    'See more of the world, joined in Cornelius, catching on fast.
    'In all its ups and downs!' I quipped. Helena shot us a look implying none of us had reached formal manhood.
    After we stopped giggling, I explained that we had to find solid evidence, using mundane investigation techniques. All the young people lost interest. This would be how it felt to run an educational leisure tour, with reluctant adolescents hating the culture. Bored young people might start plotting mischief - though not, I thought, actual murder.
    Albia was annoyed that I had dismissed her theory, but she did support me next morning when I went to reconnoitre the spot where the Seven Sights tour had camped. Helena wanted to come, but was unwell; Greek food had struck her down. After breakfast Albia and I walked quickly southwards from the Leomdaion along the embankment formed by the great retaining wall of the River Kladeos. The Kladeos was a hesitant trickle, wandering among bulrushes, though no doubt in flood it became dramatic.
    Jumping fleas pinged around our feet. The air was thick with vicious insects.
    'This is nothing, Albia. Imagine this place during the Games, when a hundred oxen are slaughtered at one sitting. Don't even try to calculate the quantities of blood involved. Plus hide, bones, horns, entrails, scraps of uncooked or uneaten meat. While the smoke is soaring up to the gods on Mount Olympus, down here the flies are in their own heaven.'
    Albia picked her way cautiously. 'I can see why those two Germans we met said they always prayed it would not rain. The ground would become very muddy.'
    'Mud and worse!'
    We found where the camp had been. Aulus had drawn a