Lindsey Davis - The Spook Who Spoke Again

I said I hoped then that the man from Ostia would be funnier. He laughed easily.

The actors performed a scene, which I found dull. It had a lot of talking and nothing happened. Afterwards Faustus took me down to Thalia and Davos on the race track. He gave orders that the full script of the play they intended to perform must be sent to him tomorrow at the aediles’ office so he could try to get to grips with it. Then they would not be allowed to vary a word after he approved it. He said he liked the acrobats, but he had to view several companies, so would only confirm whether Thalia’s were chosen for the Games once he had seen the others.

He gave some money to his slave Dromo, a sneery, spotty young man, who I could see was jealous of me being on such friendly terms with his master. Faustus told Dromo to run to the sweetmeat-seller and buy me a cake.

‘Can I have one?’ demanded Dromo; he was like the cheeky slave in Falco’s play.

‘All right. Just one; no more, Dromo.’

I think Faustus intended me to go along with Dromo on the cake errand but I stayed behind. I didn’t like the look of Dromo and I was hoping to hear what his master said to Thalia if it was about me. It was. The magistrate stood with one hand on my shoulder like an uncle. He suggested that Thalia should consider how I was a boy with potential, but if at some point in the future it ever became known I had worked with entertainers that would be a certain career impediment. She knew the legal situation.

Thalia gave him a nasty look but said quietly she would bear it in mind. Dromo came back and gave me a cake he had bought with the aedile’s money. He tried to pass me the smallest, but I pointed out that I had seen what he was doing so he had better swap them over.

After they left, Thalia changed her attitude. She told me in private that maybe Faustus was right. If I wanted to be a big rissole one day, I had best stop mucking out the menagerie animals. I asked what kind of rissole I could be. Thalia said, sounding less cross than before, that since Didius Falco was an equestrian and Helena Justina’s family were senators, the menu was mine to choose. As a Roman, I could be any kind of exotic rissole I wanted, with whatever fancy gravy I liked on it and a side dish of radishes. And I was not to worry because Falco knew what he owed me so he would pay for it. With fish pickle on the radishes.

From what I knew of Falco, that seemed a rash claim. He often said to his children that we shouldn’t raise our hopes because he intended to spend everything and only leave us his good wishes and a pair of old boots.

Thalia did not know about me taking visitors’ money for the menagerie. I decided not mention that, because I was halving the new increase in the ticket price with her, in case I needed any petty cash for my enquiries into Ferret’s disappearance.

I felt that my enquiries were bogged down. People in my family say this happens. You have to go home and rave about, groaning like an ogre, while everyone keeps out of your way. If you start throwing your boots at the walls too noisily, Helena comes in and settles you. She says, calm down, darling, you don’t frighten me but you are scaring your poor innocent children. Tell me what the matter is, please. Nothing is the bloody matter. I know, just tell me about it, sweetheart. You growl that the case is impossible, you wish you never took it on, why don’t you ever learn, you are going to sack the client and bugger it.

I see, says Helena.

Next day you get up, have a bright idea, and solve your case.

You can’t get bogged down on the first day, that’s too soon to lose heart. You have to do spadework first. Spadework or legwork. I couldn’t do legwork because I wasn’t allowed to walk off on my own, I was supposed to stay in the tented area or at the Circus track. So I did more spadework.

After the aedile left, the acrobats milled around. They were stretching, balancing and practising sleights of hand, juggling and manipulating. The kennelful of trained little dogs were running around pulling miniature chariots. Faustus had not witnessed this, which was a good thing because only half of the doggies did it, while the others broke out of their reins and scampered about, yapping naughtily.

I announced loudly that I would not tell my sister’s boyfriend, the aedile Faustus, that the company’s performing dogs were hopeless, so long as someone helped me find out what happened to my ferret yesterday. They all pulled faces, as if they were impressed.

You have to identify where everybody was when the crime happened. So I walked around asking each person whether they had been in Thalia’s tent yesterday morning, or if not, where? I made a list in my notebook, the one Faustus gave me (he had told me I could keep it unless he ran out of them). There were two columns, one column for people who admitted they had been in the tent and one for those who hadn’t, but when I finished asking, all the people were listed in the same column, saying they had not been there. This was no use. But at least I had now learned their names.

They all knew me too, so if anyone remembered anything helpful, they could come and find me easily.

I then made a third column for anyone I believed had lied to me. This was one: the tiny woman called Sassia. She had a face like a monkey and I could see all her bones. The reason I thought she was lying was that she was now wearing a green costume with fringes on it which I knew I had seen in the pile of clothes in the tent. It was a crucial clue.

On the other hand, it would be very dangerous for Sassia to go into that tent because if Jason thought she was a little monkey, he might make her his prey. But if she had badly wanted to fetch her costume, she might have shown him Ferret as a distraction from her.

I could not really remember when I saw the green costume. Was it before Ferret disappeared, or afterwards? Luckily it wasn’t my job to remember things, because I was not a witness. I was the enquiry agent. We don’t come under suspicion. We are in command.

If Sassia collected the costume this morning, she would be in the clear for the crime, which happened yesterday. I didn’t ask her that question. I was biding my time. I could make it a dramatic moment in my revelation of the suspect’s guilt.

You have to do that in public, gathering together all the interested parties so you can discount them or discredit them. Don’t forget that someone may own up who hasn’t really done it, because they are protecting someone else. There is generally someone with a long-lost lovechild they have not dared to name, or another person has been blackmailing someone to force them to keep quiet about a terrible thing that happened twenty years ago. This is life. Especially when it’s death. Especially murder, because nobody would kill another person just because they lost their temper, would they?

The acrobats were rather strange. When I was asking questions and working out who they all belonged with, Pollia was sitting across the lap of the one called Laurus; she looked extremely comfortable there so I asked if he was her husband. I knew it was wise to check. I carefully didn’t mention that I had seen her kissing Hesper yesterday. On no, said Pollia with a silly laugh, her husband was Pedo. I couldn’t understand it because Pedo at that moment was snuggling up to the other woman, Silvia. They were murmuring to one another and giggling the way people do when they are being all lovey. I didn’t know how to show all this on my chart of which people were linked to each other. These acrobats did not even try to make my job easy.

After I had made a whole lot of notes, I noticed the scene-shifters were bringing in the water organ that Davos had mentioned. I had only seen one from far away before, so I walked up to watch.