The Marathon Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF Page A

recoiled at the idea of a burial.
    “The day after that, two of the girls came down with high fevers—”
    “Not Allike and Ophelia?”
    “A different two. It’s not like we’re short of girls to fall ill. Fever in a place such as ours can spread like wildfire, and children are much more likely to die than adults. Whenever a girl in our charge is sick, we drop everything to treat her and make sure the others don’t get it. The girls survived, I’m happy to say, but days passed before anyone thought of the bones.
    “That was when we discovered that Sabina had gotten it into her head to tell the Basileus. She’d read the scrolls in the case—I think she was the only one to do so—and sent him the material.”
    “Sabina is?”
    “One of the priestesses, and an interfering little busybody, if you ask me. The High Priestess was furious. She felt that whatever this was, whoever it was, it was all in the past, and the publicity would do no one any good, and I must say I agree. But what was done was done.”
    “Did you bury the bones?”
    “We planned a cremation, but there was no point until the skull was restored, or we’d only have had to do a second ceremony.”
    “I have the skull. Would you like it?”
    “No, thank you very much! You can bring it with you when you visit Brauron. You
are
coming to Brauron, aren’t you?”
    “Of course. We have a murder to investigate.”
    “I’m very sorry about Allike,” Diotima said. “How did she die?”
    Doris hesitated. “She was … badly hurt. I don’t like to think about it.”
    “Beaten?” I asked. “Stabbed?”
    Doris hid her head in her hands and wept deeply. Hellenes like to declare their grief with lavish display, but it was clear that Doris’s was from the heart.
    Diotima left my side, to put her arm around Doris. “I’m so sorry,” she said once more.
    I said, “But Doris, we need to know what happened. Can you tell it now?”
    “Yes.” Doris used the hem of her chiton to wipe her face. “The girls take it in turns to do the after-dinner chores. We insist they do it themselves and not rely on the temple’s slaves, because when they’re grown and mistresses of their own households, they’ll need to know everything about running a house, or how will they manage their own slaves? That night, Allike carried the bucket of scraps out to the compost, and she never returned.”
    Which probably meant that the killer had been stalking the sanctuary grounds.
    “When did you notice she was missing?”
    “When we sent the girls to bed. It’s hard to keep track of who’s where in the evenings, but an empty bed in the dorm rooms is obvious. Someone said, ‘Where’s Allike?’ We searched, we walked all about with bright torches and called her name, but she never appeared.”
    “Go on.”
    “We mounted a major search the next day. Every adult, even the slaves. We found her body that afternoon, some distance away, beyond several hills.”
    “Then whoever took her knew the area.”
    “Or carried a torch,” Diotima said.
    Doris said, “We thought there was some madman out in the woods. We didn’t connect Allike’s death with the skeleton. Not until Ophelia disappeared two days later.”
    “You didn’t lose her the same way, did you?”
    “It’s inexplicable! After the disaster of Allike, we ringed the sanctuary with guards and forbade all the girls to be alone. But Ophelia just disappeared, overnight.”
    “Maybe she ran away on her own?”
    “Ophelia wasn’t the type. I can spot them. That was when we realized Allike and Ophelia were the two who’d discovered the skeleton. The coincidence was too much.”
    It was too much for me, too. I said, “You think she was taken too, then.”
    “It seems the obvious answer, doesn’t it? When our problems came upon us, and we didn’t know what to do, someone suggested we call for you. The High Priestess resisted at first—she has a horror of publicity and thought your presence might call