"Leonidas had too good a life. Me to hunt for him and talk to him all day then every few months we put ribbons in his mane and sprinkled him with real gold dust to make him look pretty, and sent him to run free after criminals."
"So he wasn't depressed?"
"Of course he was!" the keeper snapped, changing mood suddenly. "Falco, he was turning into a cage-pacer. He wanted to be running after gazelles back in Africa, with lionesses available. All lions can be solitary if they have to--but for preference they love to fornicate."
"He was fretting, and you were very fond of him. So was it you who put him out of his misery?" I asked sternly.
"No." Buxus' voice was miserable. "He was just restless. I've seen worse. I'm going to miss the old beast. I never wanted to lose him."
"All right. Well that puts us back with the mystery. A locked cage isn't a closed room though; it's accessible. Could he have been speared through the bars?"
Buxus shook his head. "Not easily."
"I was outside the cage by then, trying it out with the long spear. "No, there's not much space--" With hardly room to draw back my arm, it was a short, awkward throw. "It would take someone extremely accurate to loose off a shot through the bars. The bestiarii are good, but they don't hunt indoors. I suppose they could have just poked him--"
"Leonidas would have tried to avoid the spear, Falco. And he would have roared. I was only next door. I'd have heard him."
"That's a good point. It was some spear thrust that killed him anyway. From close quarters, and with space to manoeuvre." I knelt beside the corpse, checking it over again. There were no other wounds on the body. The lion was definitely killed by one terrific blow--with the weapon hand-held, I reckoned, not a throw--impaling the beast from straight in front. It was extremely professional. The situation must have been damned dangerous. The spear itself would have been a heavy one, and withstanding the onrush of the lion would have taken courage and power. Then I guessed Leonidas had fallen immediately, right where he was killed.
"Maybe he was killed near the front of the cage, the spear broke, then he crawled away." Buxus lacked my expertise in working out the processes. He had a slave's habit of self-contradiction too--unless he were deliberately trying to confuse me.
"We said killing him through the bars wouldn't work." Even so, to cover the possibility, I led Buxus to the front of the cage and examined the straw. "Look--no blood. You haven't mucked him out today, have you? If he was alive and crawling, he would have bled." I walked the keeper back to where the lion lay. Seizing the beast by its massive paws I braced myself and dragged him sideways to examine the straw under his belly. Buxus lent a hand.
"Some blood, but not enough."
"What's it mean, Falco?"
"He was not killed through the bars, and I doubt if anyone came inside the cage. It would be far too risky and there isn't enough space to wield the spear."
"So what happened to Leonidas?"
"He was killed somewhere else. Then his body was moved in here after he died."
VIII
"IF LEONIDAS WAS taken elsewhere, let's look for signs of what happened--"
"Falco, nobody could have got him away from here!"
"It will do no harm to look."
Buxus was looking nervous now, as if he had remembered that Calliopus wanted him to mislead me. I needed to search for evidence quickly, before some slave came along with a flat-headed broom and either accidentally or purposely swept away clues.
Outside in the exercise area the gladiators had stirred up so much dust there was no longer any chance that tracks from last night would show. I wondered if this was deliberate, but the fighters had to train, and this was where they normally did it. They had gone back to their exercises and kept up their racket, leaping around me with horrible yells as I crouched looking for paw prints on the hard dry ground. Their aggression made me feel tense. It was supposed to be practice,
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