Allyn Allyn - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

“It was,” she agreed.

“If it was the thief I saw,” I said earnestly, “then there are at least four who could not have taken it: the cook, the gatekeeper, Marcus’s manservant, and Marcus himself.”

“You came into my room?” he asked in surprise.

“Nay. I heard you snore as I passed your door.”

No one smiled.

“Who else in this household can prove he did not take the pearl in the first part of the night?” asked Quintus in a voice of doom.

“My three servants were asleep when I left,” I told him, “and they were there when I returned. One could not have been in the atrium for she would have had to pass me to get back to our room out there on the peristyle.”

An older women spoke for three who shared her cubicle. “My pallet lies across the doorway, master. I was awake almost all night with a toothache. No one could have slipped past without I saw her.”

Four of the men had similar sleeping places and a similarly wakeful companion, but both servants paled when Cato pointed out that this left them with no one to speak for their own innocence.

“True,” I said with more assurance than I felt. “Yet, were I the thief, I would not clear another. I would try to spread suspicion on everyone. Their very words bespeak their innocence.”

For the first time since the theft was discovered, Quintus smiled, as if remembering something amusing, but he did not explain.

In the end, there were three who had no one to affirm their innocence — two women and a man. These were Sextus, short, fat, and white-haired, a former pedagogue to Marcus and now Quintus’s reader; Lydia, a comely Greek hairdresser of some twenty years; and Dorcas, a plain dark woman whose skills as a midwife were often hired by Prisca’s wide circle of friends.

Sextus and the cook normally shared a cubicle, as did Lydia and Dorcas. But last night, the cook worked late and I had left him in the kitchen immediately before seeing someone move in the atrium. When Dorcas was questioned as to whether Lydia left their cubicle, it was Marcus who answered. “I will speak for Lydia. She slept in my bed last night. All night.”

His words were no surprise to his father. Nor to several of the servants, for I saw them grin. Prisca, however, frowned, and Lydia was careful to keep her eyes cast down. Her face was not beautiful but her hair was the color of ripe wheat and her breasts and hips were soft curves beneath an elegant blue stola that Prisca had once worn.

Lydia and Dorcas were both half a head taller than I, while fat little Sextus was at least two fingers shorter.

“May I speak, Quintus Porcius?” I asked.

He gave me an indulgent nod.

“Which is the servant who brought the wreath to Prisca this morning?”

A fearful woman stepped forward. I took the pillaged wreath from the table in front of Quintus and handed it to her. “Put it back where it was before.”

When she had hung it high on the wall, I told Sextus to bring it to me. Stretch though he might, he could not touch it. When similarly directed, however, Dorcas easily lifted it from the hook.

Quintus immediately handed the lash to Cato and said, “Take her into the garden and whip her until she confesses where the pearl is hidden.”

The midwife fell to her knees in terror. Two menservants grasped her arms and began to drag her across the floor to her punishment.

“Mercy, master!” she cried. “I swear by Vesta I did not take it. You may kill me, but I cannot tell what I do not know! Mistress! You know I have never taken a crumb without permission. I beg of you!”

“Wait!” I said, my mind racing with another possibility. “Cato? When you searched the house, did you search Marcus’s room as well?”

“My room?” Marcus turned in haughty disbelief. “You accuse me of taking the pearl?”

“The patronus bade me search every room,” the steward replied. “I do as I am ordered.”

“The fake pearl was fashioned from pure white wax,” I said. “In my mother’s house, white candles were only for the family, not the servants. Was the candle in his room white or tan?”

Prisca gave an impatient wave of her hand. “My son does not use servants’ candles. Nor does he steal from me. Besides, you said you heard him snore when you passed.”

“I did,” I agreed. “But his candle still burned and I did not hear the hairdresser.”

Lydia looked at me scornfully. “The child babbles. I do not snore, and the candle burned because we were too tired to blow it out.”

Marcus was yet young enough to turn a fiery red at her words and now the other servants laughed outright.

“The hairdresser has a tongue as clever as her fingers,” I said. “Clever enough to fashion a fake pearl from white candlewax and hide the real one in the young master’s room while he slept. With warm wax, she could stick it to the underside of his bed or stool.”

“Search again,” Quintus told his steward.

Dorcas still cowered at our feet. Tearfully, she watched Cato and the others stream toward the peristyle and Marcus’s room, too terrified to hope for reprieve.

Although the others seemed ready to accept my theory, I had misgivings. If Lydia was the thief, why did she not look scared? Why was her face serene? Then her eyes met mine, and I read there a smug taunt. I was now convinced that she had indeed taken the pearl. I was equally convinced that she thought it was hidden where no one could find it.

Could she have swallowed it? Must I suggest that she be made to defecate in the garden like a dog until she passed it?

Her hands were smooth and soft, her fingernails clean and well-kept. Her yellow hair was artfully arranged and tied with colorful silk ribbons for Saturnalia. Surely such a one would not plan to pick through her own dung.

I clasped my golden bulla and prayed to the gods for help.

Lydia and I were the only two not surprised when the others returned to say that the pearl could not be found. I think Quintus wanted to believe me, but Prisca was now ready to defend Lydia. “She is the best hairdresser I have ever had,” she said. “I pay her well and give her my old clothes. She has no need to steal from me.”

“Does Dorcas?” I asked.

“Dorcas has long desired her freedom,” Prisca said. “With what she has already saved and the sale of the pearl, she could buy both her freedom and a shop of her own.”

“Mistress, no!” the midwife moaned as Cato looked questioningly at his master.

“Take her,” he said.

I watched helplessly as two menservants pulled her toward the garden. Her shrieks echoed off the walls.

“Father, wait!” said Marcus. “Must we begin Saturnalia with such unhappiness? Can her punishment not wait until the festival is ended? Given time to think, she may tell us on her own where the pearl is.”

We held our breath as Quintus hesitated. A man of action, his natural inclination was to settle everything immediately, and I feared to see Dorcas beaten bloody until it became clear that she knew nothing. At long last, he nodded.

“Your mercy does you credit, my son. It shall be as you ask. Lock her in the storeroom, Cato. Give her two lashes to taste what will come if she does not confess, then bread and water until the festival is ended.”

As they led a sobbing Dorcas to the back of the house, Quintus Porcius turned to Prisca. “Come, wife.” He gestured to the small hearth there in the atrium where bright flames flickered cheerfully before the family altar. “Let us begin this joyful day anew with fresh sacrifice to the gods.”

Prisca opened a jar of salt and everyone in the household threw a pinch into the fire as Quintus led a prayer to cleanse the house of evil and to ask Saturn’s blessing. Mine was the last pinch of salt on the fire and as the flames danced upward, everyone cried, “ Io, Saturnalia!”