Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

“And you can stop fretting about Soni. He was the star of today’s show and, trust me, heroes don’t pop like bubbles.” Sweet Minerva’s magic, to hear them talk, you’d think the boy was a god in the making, not simply another bearer Max had trained up!

“They said he led the hunt from the start ,” Cypassis said breathlessly. “Ran like a hare, according to one. Even uphill. Even weighed down with his javelin and arrows!”

Remembering his bunched muscles and stomach harder than permafrost, it was easy to see why Cypassis had been so eager to fulfil her errand of seeking out the young slave. Claudia glanced at the girl’s bosom, bouncing and generous like puppies in hay, and knew that no man alive had yet rejected charms given so freely and yet totally without obligation. Cypassis loved ’em and left ‘em, usually with dazed grins on their faces and memories warm enough to last them a lifetime, and Soni – red-blooded hunk that he was – would be putty in those broad Thessalian hands. If Wonderboy was missing, it was certainly not because he was hiding!

With Claudia’s bodyguard out of action, who better, she’d thought, than Soni for a replacement? His skill, his courage, his cunning had been praised from the rafters, and let’s not forget his strength and his stamina. Thus, Cypassis had been despatched to fetch him with a view to sounding him out, but that had been over two hours ago…

Across the atrium, where cedar-scented oil lamps hung from every pillar, where water cascaded down five circular tiers of a fountain and where marble athletes wrestled, boxed or weighed up the discus, an orchestra suddenly struck up, making her jump. Every note from the horns and the cymbals, the trumpets and drums dripped testosterone.

“Oh, no! The banquet!” Cypassis clapped her hands over her mouth. “I didn’t realize it was so late!” She scurried across to Claudia’s jewel box and rooted out a handful of ivory pins. “There’s your hair to pin up, your shoes need a buff-”

“You concentrate on finding Soni,” Claudia said. Any fool can give their sandals a rub on the back of her calves, and as for her curls – well, they’d simply have to get on with it. “Unless,” she grinned, “you’d rather I approached someone else?”

Deep dimples appeared in Cypassis’ cheeks, and some of the colour returned. “I’ll settle for Soni,” she grinned back. “I hear he holds his women as tight as his liquor!”

Masculine voices boomed out in the hall, laughing, recounting, reliving, as they made their way to the banquet and Claudia clipped on earstuds shaped like a bee. Gold – naturally. A present from Max. She buffed up her armband, inlaid with carnelian and pearls, another gift, and fixed a filigree silver tiara into her hair. The tiara had been the first in this generous line, along with alabaster pots containing precious Arabian perfumes, intricate onyx figurines and rare spices all the way from the Orient.

Despite knives scraping against plate, silver platters being cleared and replaced, despite music and voices growing louder and louder, as though each had to compete with the other, Claudia made no move to join the men in the banqueting hall. Instead she leaned her elbows on the warm windowsill. The setting sun had sponged the enveloping hills a warm heather pink and the mew of the peacocks strutting on the lawn cut through the rasp of the crickets and the low-pitched croon of the hoopoe. Far in the distance, a wagon clattered over the cobbles, bringing home the last of the harvest. Down in the fertile lowlands of the Tiber, the wheat would have been threshed and winnowed a whole month before and would already be piled in granaries guarded by tomcats. But this was Aspreta, hilly and wooded, deep in the Umbrian hills.

This was the land of the huntsman.

Of one man in particular, Max – who had tamed the wild woods around his sumptuous villa to create vast landscaped gardens awash with artificial lakes, temples and grottoes. With watercourses rippling their way down the hillsides. With fishponds and porticoes and foaming white fountains, which the dying sun had transmuted into molten copper. A skein of ducks flew overhead, and the air was rich with the smell of freshly scythed grass and the merest hint of ripe apples. It was surely impossible for anything sinister to have occurred in this Umbrian idyll. There would, Claudia felt certain, be a perfectly simple explanation for Soni’s disappearance…

She poured herself a glass of chilled Thracian wine and sipped slowly. Dear me, Max’s lands were so vast, a girl had to positively squint to even see the hunting grounds from the villa. A smile twisted one side of her mouth. Oh, yes. This was definitely the right decision, accepting his invitation to stay…

She pictured her host, tanned and blond, lean and muscular, and knew that the sight of him in an open-shouldered hunting tunic cut high above the knee had fluttered many a female heart in its time-

Max. She rolled the name around on her tongue. Max. Ducatius Lepidus Glabrio Maximus to be precise, but known (for obvious reasons) as Max. And this fabulous estate was his. Or more accurately, was his and his alone. No wife – Max divorced wives like most men shuck peas – but more importantly, no heirs either. Claudia sighed happily. That’s right. No little Max’s running around, waiting to inherit the pile. Idly she wondered how quickly a girl might conceive, to redress this obvious imbalance…

The sun sank below the hilltops, swamping the valley in its garnet embrace, as swallows made their final parabolas over the lake. A perfect night for seduction, she reflected. A perfect night for-

A gentle tap on the door cut through her reverie. “Claudia?”

Many a fair-skinned man will suffer for a day outdoors in the sun, but the hunt had had the opposite effect on Claudia’s host. It had deepened his tan, lightened his hair, and set off the white of his linen tunic to Greek god perfection.

“Are we too raucous for you, darling?” Aegean blue eyes ranged over the arch of her breasts, her exquisite jewels, the rich tangle of curls piled high on her head. “Is that why you haven’t joined us?”

“Are you sure you want me?” she countered, as the door closed softly behind him. “I am, after all, the only female guest and… well, boys will be boys and all that.”

“Janus, how could I not want you?” His eyes were smoky, his voice a rasp. “Claudia-” He opened his clenched fist to reveal a shining sapphire ring. “It’s a betrothal ring.”

Oh, Max. How predictable you men are!

“Oh, Max, this is so unexpected!”

For a minute he said nothing, and she watched the rise and fall of his magnificent chest. Then, as he was about to speak, the moment was broken when, emitting a cry not unlike a strangled cat, one of the peacocks on the lawn shook its tailfeathers then spread them in a brilliant display of iridescence to a pair of peahens who continued to strut with total indifference.

“Isn’t it risky, allowing such precious birds to roam free?” Claudia asked, as he advanced towards her, his soft leather sandals making no sound on the dolphin mosaic. He smelled faintly – very faintly – of almonds. “Suppose your wild beasts fancied a nibble? They’d surely be the easiest of targets.”

“In my business,” Max whispered, his hand slipping round the curve of her waist, “a man can leave nothing to chance.”

For a beat of six, Claudia watched as the drab peahens flapped in to the branch of a walnut tree, to settle down for the night. Then she gently removed his hand. The peacock’s fantail fell limp.

“Over that hill -” Max swept the rejected arm towards a spot far on the horizon as though that had been its original intention “- runs a high perimeter fence with some pretty ferocious spikes on the top.” He laughed. It was a melodious, gentle, masculine laugh, pitched seductively low. “The only threat to these beautiful birds is my cook. He claims their roasted flesh is delicious!”