David Wishart - Illegally Dead

‘Yes. It was the biggest, most stupid, most evil mistake of my life. Can I tell you about it now? Please?’

‘Yeah,’ I said quietly. ‘Yeah, if you like. Go ahead, pal. Take your time.’

He looked at the bust again, but this time his eyes didn’t shift. ‘I never loved her,’ he said. ‘Not as much as she loved me, certainly. I don’t think, at that stage, I was capable of genuinely loving anyone; certainly not Lucinda, that was a combination of lust, ambition and greed. Smugness, too, if that’s not too small a vice to put beside the others. Fifteen year old girl or not, she made it perfectly clear almost from the first that she wanted me, even knowing that I was married already, and that she’d do anything to have me. Her father was no hindrance, she could wind him round her finger, she was beautiful and she was rich. And I…well, I had ambitions. Serious ambitions. I knew that with her as a wife I could get out of Bovillae, set up a practice in Rome, and…oh, but you know yourself. The only obstacle was Tascia.’ He turned back. His cheeks were wet. ‘A complete and utter fool, you see. So when Lucinda suggested at the time of the Brabbius trial that the obstacle might be removed I gave in without a struggle.’

‘She knew about Habra, then?’

‘Oh, yes. She’d used her before. A…young male cousin, she told me it was, but I suspect the man might’ve been one of the family’s own slaves. Lucinda always was wild. She was certainly no virgin when we married, and she wouldn’t’ve had any compunctions in that direction. It wasn’t poison as such, just something to give Tascia when the time came that would…keep her bleeding, whatever the midwife did. Until she had no blood left. Then she died.’

I waited for a while, then I said: ‘She started blackmailing you? Habra? After you married Lucinda?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘No. Or not as such. Oh, she asked me for money, yes, but I gave it to her willingly, more than she asked, and I kept giving it. Call it a conscience payment, if you like. Lucinda never knew, I was careful of that, or that she’d settled in Castrimoenium, because it was part of my punishment of myself, nothing to do with her.’

‘And another part was that you gave up the idea of moving to Rome.’

‘Yes. Not immediately. It was no sudden conversion, don’t think that. I told you, Corvinus, at the time I was not a very nice person. Even less nice’ — another half-smile — ‘than I am today. I was ambitious, I’d got — or thought I’d got — all I wanted. Only gradually it became not so important any more. I felt I had to pay. Do you understand that?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I understand.’

‘So I stayed in Bovillae. And I…stopped sleeping with Lucinda. Then we moved to Castrimoenium and’ — he shrugged — ‘here we are. Still.’

Jupiter! Well, I had to admit the guy had paid, all right. Seia Lucinda, too. Twenty years! Gods! ‘Then Senecio came back,’ I said.

‘I thought he was dead. As he should’ve been, because who survives twenty years in the galleys? He must’ve found Habra first, there would’ve been people in Bovillae who knew where she’d gone. Then he found us. Lucius and me. He thought we were equally responsible and, unlike his sister, he wanted us dead.’

‘He said something, didn’t he, when he attacked you?’

‘Yes.’ Acceius closed his eyes briefly. ‘I can’t remember exactly, but it was suitably explicit and damning: something about us having gone back on the deal with Habra over getting rid of Tascia. Lucius guessed at once who he was and what he meant, of course — however ill he was in other ways, he never lost his lawyer’s sharpness — and that was that. I panicked. I…wrested the knife from Senecio and stabbed him. It was quite deliberate, and I’m sorry about that now. It would’ve been far better if I’d allowed him to stab me and finish things before they started.’

‘Then, the next day, you went to confront Hostilius, and he gave you his ultimatum.’

‘He was generous; very generous.’ Acceius took a deep breath. ‘But then Lucius always was, all the years I knew him. He offered me a simple choice. I would divorce Lucinda for adultery with Castor, which she would admit to, and prosecute her under the terms of the Julian law; you know, of course, that they’d been meeting secretly for the past seven or eight months in an empty house she owned in Bovillae?’ — I said nothing — ‘or he’d formally accuse the two of us of murder and start putting the case together. He gave me six days to decide.’

‘How did you work things out with Cosmus?’

Another shrug. ‘Oh, that was easy. A little judicious blackmail on my own account, plus the promise of a large sum in cash and help to disappear. I’d known for some time that he was acting with Castor in collusion with Publius Novius but…well, for various reasons I was reluctant to tell Lucius because — and I don’t expect you to understand this, Corvinus, but it’s the truth — I felt sorry for Castor himself, and it would’ve destroyed him, too.’

‘You felt sorry for Castor,’ I said neutrally. ‘Even though you knew he was having an affair with your wife.’

He smiled. ‘I said you wouldn’t understand. Yes. Yes, I did. The affair was nothing. Lucinda wasn’t a happy woman, no more than — for the past twenty years — I’ve been a happy man, and as I say we hadn’t been properly husband and wife since Bovillae. Think of it, if you will, as another part of my punishment, and of hers. Besides, destroying Castor would’ve hurt Veturina very badly indeed. I didn’t want that; I’ve never wanted that. Veturina has been hurt enough.’ He paused. ‘Arranging things wasn’t difficult. Cosmus spent a lot of his time in the stables, so we were hardly strangers: I saw him practically every time I visited the house. I knew about Lucius’s morning routine, of course, and about the medicine. I threatened Cosmus with exposure to Lucius — he would’ve sold him like a shot, and into a life that would’ve been far less pleasant than the one he had — and, as I say, added certain promises. Fortunately Cosmus wasn’t the most intelligent of slaves, nor the most moral: he agreed almost at once. As to the actual killing…well, I won’t defend that, I can’t, but at least I tried to make it as merciful as I could.’

‘Did Lucinda know?’

‘Not immediately. But yes, I told her, shortly afterwards.’ He frowned. ‘She…again I don’t expect you to believe this but I meant to play fair by Cosmus, originally. Lucinda persuaded me that perhaps it…was not a good idea.’

‘So you killed him.’

‘Yes. I went to the Bavius farm where we’d arranged he should hide with that intention in mind, and hit him with an iron bar while his back was turned.’ He looked at me bleakly. ‘It was a proper murder, for which I have no defence. There were no extenuating circumstances for Cosmus’s death, none at all. I can’t pretty it up by ascribing it to panic, like Senecio’s, nor can I claim that the death in itself was a mercy from which other people benefited, as Lucius’s was. I killed Cosmus out of purely selfish motives, and it was done intentionally, for Lucinda’s sake and my own. I told you, Corvinus, we’re not nice people. We’re both better off dead.’

‘What about Habra?’

‘That happened exactly as I said it did. At least, I don’t think I deliberately intended to kill her, although she certainly wanted to kill me. Understandably so. I’m sorry about Habra.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry about it all.’

‘Yeah. Right.’ I stood up. I felt sick, and empty.

‘That’s all?’ He was watching me. ‘You’ve no more questions?’ Again, that half smile.