David Wishart - Illegally Dead

Yeah; I saw what he was getting at now. Smart reasoning. Whoever had killed Cosmus must’ve been tall, certainly too tall for a woman, probably for most men. Tall as me, easy. Strong, too, which meant that they were in the prime of life, or at least kept themselves in decent shape. We were doing pretty well here. ‘So,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a valid scenario. Cosmus poisons Hostilius on the instructions of AN Other, refills the medicine bottle to defer suspicion, again maybe as instructed, pockets what he can get his hands on — maybe that was his own idea this time, but whatever — and lights out by prearrangement to his temporary bolthole. AN Other then — again by prearrangement — meets him here, ostensibly to pay him off and arrange his passage elsewhere but actually to get rid of a potential embarrassment. He kills him and throws his body down the well, where — he assumes — it won’t be found for quite some time, at least until things have a chance to blow over. That work?’

‘He can’t have been very clever,’ Marilla said. ‘Cosmus, I mean.’

‘I don’t think he was,’ Clarus said. ‘Not that I knew him myself.’

‘Well, at least the physical aspects of the murder let Veturina out. That’s one thing.’

‘Ah…no, Corvinus. No, I’m afraid that actually they don’t.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve never seen her before, have you? Veturina is…uh…quite big.’

‘Is she, indeed?’ I said.

Bugger.

I found out what he meant the next day, when I went round to Hostilius’s place and met the lady: Veturina looked like she could tie iron bars in knots, never mind use them to ventilate a kid’s head. That said, there was nothing particularly masculine about her, quite the reverse. She might be well on the wrong side of fifty, but she was still no bad looker, even in zero make-up and a mourning mantle. And I’d just bet she was the kind to keep stuffed toys in the bedroom. She put me in mind of a fluffy Amazon.

‘I’m sorry, Valerius Corvinus,’ she said. ‘This is…I’m going to find this very difficult. I knew Lucius was dying, he knew it himself, but first the suddenness of his death and now — ’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘Forgive me. How can I help you? Where can I start?’

Well-spoken and articulate, but with a strong low-class Bovillan accent; yeah, Marcia had said she was a Bovillan innkeeper’s daughter. Interesting, though, that after all the years she and Hostilius had been married — over thirty, hadn’t it been? — and she’d been moving in, presumably, higher social circles than she could’ve been used to she hadn’t gone to the bother of upgrading it. Maybe that said something about the woman.

‘With the death itself would be logical,’ I said. ‘Unless you think there’s a better point.’

‘No.’ She wasn’t nearly as composed as she sounded, mind; I noticed she was gripping her fingers together, twining them hard, holding her hands close in her lap. They were big hands, but not mannish ones. The nails were bitten to the quick. ‘Although I can’t tell you very much about that, actually. Oh, I was with him when he died, but only because Scopas fetched me. We…Lucius and I lived separate lives for the most part. Not by my doing. You may have heard from Hyperion that he was…very difficult latterly.’

‘Fetched you from where?’

‘Only along the corridor. There’re two rooms that I use, a bedroom and a sitting-room looking out through the portico over the garden. I spend most of my time there, just as Lucius spends — spent — most of his in a sitting-room of his own.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s a big house, but I don’t…didn’t want to move too far away from him in case he thought I was…in case he suspected me of…’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘Forgive me. I’m trying to be frank and helpful, but being so is in itself embarrassing.’ I said nothing, just waited. ‘That was why I saw Cosmus coming out.’

I straightened. ‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not being very coherent. The fact that my day room overlooks the garden explains why I saw Cosmus come out through the portico. There’s another door, you see, a little further along the corridor, between my rooms and Lucius’s. He must’ve come through that.’

‘Uh…what time are we talking about now?’ I kept my voice neutral. ‘The time when your husband died?’

‘Oh, no. Much earlier, about an hour after dawn. I’m a late riser as a rule, unlike Lucius, but that morning for some reason…anyway, I was surprised because Cosmus had no business in that part of the house. And I’d just heard Lucius’s footsteps in the corridor going towards the latrine. That’s the other way, to the — ’

I held up my hand. ‘Hold on, lady. Let’s get this clear. You’re telling me that the morning of the day your husband died you saw Cosmus — the dead slave-boy — coming from the direction of your husband’s room while your husband was out of it? Right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you think that maybe you should’ve mentioned this earlier?’

I’d deliberately kept my voice neutral and unthreatening, but her chin went up.

‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Why should I? Until this morning when Quintus Libanius brought you round I’d assumed that Lucius died a natural death, and that was several hours later. Why should I think anything particular of it, let alone think in terms of — ’ She stopped at the word, frowned and tried again. ‘In terms of murder?’

Fair enough. ‘Still, when you knew that Cosmus had disappeared — ’

‘I did not know that!’

The sharpness of tone made me blink. I stared at her. ‘Uh…fine, fine,’ I said. ‘No problem, lady, it was just a — ’

‘I scarcely saw the boy! Not from one day to the next!’

Upset was one thing, but this was something else. Maybe Hostilius hadn’t been the only one with a tile loose. ‘So Scopas, your major-domo, didn’t tell you?’ I said, still keeping my voice carefully neutral. ‘Or about the articles missing from your husband’s room?’

She took another deep breath, and her hands twisted together in her lap. I could hear the finger-joints crack with the pressure. ‘No. No, he didn’t,’ she said. ‘Not at that point, anyway.’

Uh-huh; not like a conscientious major-domo, and I hadn’t heard anything to suggest that Scopas was anything but. Quite the contrary. Well, that was something I could check with the guy himself later. ‘So when did he?’

‘I honestly can’t remember. Perhaps it was the day after, when we were clearing up, putting things in order. You’d have to ask him yourself.’ She paused. ‘Corvinus, I’m sorry, but my husband has died and I’ve just been told that he was murdered. The first shock was bad enough. The second…well, as you can understand I’m not thinking too clearly at present. You’ll have to make allowances.’

Yeah. Right. Still, I’d bet good money that she was a lot more together than she was pretending to be. And there was some pretence going on here, that I’d swear to. I was beginning to have my doubts about this lady. ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘it’s been — what? — seven days now since your husband died, and up to this morning there was no word of Cosmus being missing. Now, if there was the matter of a theft and as you say you saw the kid under suspicious circumstances leaving — ’

‘“As I say”?’ She jerked round to face me. ‘Are you accusing me of lying?’

‘Uh, no. Not at all. It’s just that — ’

‘Or perhaps of murdering Lucius myself?’ She was on her feet now and glaring at me.

Shit. No sign of fluffiness now: what we’d got was pure Amazon — she must be six foot tall in her sandals, easy — and not friendly Amazon, either. ‘Hang on, lady,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s no need for this. No one’s accusing you of anything.’