When the Devil's Idle Read Online Free Page A

problems he’d had with
his bowels and how they led to the Protestant Reformation—Germans
as a rule suffering greatly from constipation.
    It was easy to
follow his train of thought. First a man eats and then a man …
or in Martin Luther’s case at least, a man tries to.
    “ What
about World War II?” Patronas asked, deciding enough was enough.
“Was constipation the cause of that, too? Not enough prunes in
Berlin, you’re saying?”
    The priest
laughed good-naturedly, going along with the joke. “No, the Nazis
had much more serious problems than that.”
    “ Such
as?”
    “ Well,
for one thing, they were all psychopaths.”
    The size of the
car necessitated taking a roundabout route out of Skala—a bumpy,
unpaved road used by construction vehicles. They entered the main
road a few minutes later and slowly wound their way up the
mountain, passing the Patmian School, a Greek Orthodox seminary,
and the Cave of the Apocalypse, a World Heritage Site where St.
John had heard the trumpet of the Lord and written the Book of
Revelation. The air smelled of pine, a thin forest covering the
land above and below the cave.
    A second World
Heritage Site, the Monastery of St. John the Theologian, dominated
the landscape. From the very top of the mountain, it resembled a
storybook castle, its crenellated towers and walls so vast, they
could be seen far out to sea.
    The village of
Chora, where the German had been murdered, lay at the base of the
monastery.
    Patronas was
surprised to see two flags flying in front of the city hall where
they parked the car, the yellow and black banner of the Orthodox
Church with its two-headed eagle and the blue and white flag of the
modern Greek state. The pairing was unusual and indicated that
areas of the village were under the direction of the Patriarch in
Constantinople. Not quite like Vatican City, but similar. Patronas
hoped the duality would not impede his investigation. Dealing with
the government in Athens was hard enough. Petitioning the holy
fathers in Constantinople for anything would be a
nightmare.
    The wind was
fierce and it thrashed the leaves of the eucalyptus trees along the
road. A flock of black and white swallows, xelidoni , were
circling high overhead, their cries faint against the
wind.
    Initially,
Patronas had wanted to stop for coffee, but he decided against it. Victim’s been dead a while , he told himself. We’d best
keep moving .
    He and Tembelos
quickly unloaded their equipment and followed Evangelos Demos
through the village—Patronas lugging a forensic kit of his own
devising and Tembelos, the camera and plastic body bag. Evangelos
said he’d already done the preliminary work at the crime scene,
stringing up yellow police tape and hanging a tarp over the
victim
    “ You
need anything else,” he told Patronas, “we can bring it from
Skala.”
    A cloistered
labyrinth, Chora reminded Patronas of the medieval towns on his
native Chios. There was little visible evidence of the wealth its
inhabitants supposedly possessed, only an impenetrable maze of
stone walls and arched passageways. Here and there, he caught a
glimpse of a courtyard or old-fashioned television antenna, but for
the most part all was hidden. Unlike the other Greek villages he’d
seen, there was no laundry hanging from the balconies, no plastic
jugs under the eaves to collect rain water. All was quiet, the only
sound, the relentless drone of the wind. Maybe it was the hour, but
the village felt deserted.
    Evangelos Demos
confided that since the rich Europeans had come and bought up most
of the houses, the actual Greek town had withered away. Seeing
their opportunity, most of the residents had sold out; the ones who
lingered now were isolated and alone, elderly people with no place
else to go. “You should see it in winter. It’s a ghost
town.”
    The monastery was
omnipresent, its gray bulk like a man-made massif towering over the
houses of the village.
    Although it was
still very early, a waiter