David Wishart - In at the Death

We raced each other for the stairs. This was serious. We got on okay with old Titus Petillius, sure, but largely because our household and his avoided each other like each had a separate and very contagious disease; a situation that dated back two years or so to when Mrs Petillius had been the guy’s housekeeper and — the thought still made me shudder — the love of our Bathyllus’s life. Petillius and Tyndaris didn’t have kids. What they had was Alcestis: a pure-bred silky-haired green-eyed puffball bought at enormous expense from a Damascene trader and hand-reared to a pampered life of fully-indulged luxury.

A situation which, judging by Placida’s single-minded pursuit of the beast, was shortly to be revised.

I hit the ground-floor tiles at a run, heading for the front door with Perilla a good second. No sign of Bathyllus, but then this was a job for the master of the house in person: grovelling would be called for, at the very least. I just hoped we weren’t too late and Placida had moved Alcestis into the fur mittens category.

We could hear the screaming even before we reached next door’s porch. And several loud thumps.

‘Oh, bugger!’ I turned the doorhandle.

‘Shouldn’t you knock, dear?’ Perilla said. ‘It isn’t very polite just to — ’

‘Look, lady,’ I snapped. ‘I’d say the household was pretty preoccupied at the moment, wouldn’t you?’ Hell. Locked. I’d have to knock after all. I hammered away on Petillius’s chichi Egyptian-cat knocker.

Eventually, the door was opened by the major-domo. I didn’t know his name — he postdated the wedding — but the guy gave me a stare right off a Riphaean glacier.

‘Yes, sir? Madam?’

‘Uh…can we have our dog back, please?’ I said.

‘Marcus!’

He stepped aside; Bathyllus couldn’t’ve done it better. ‘Come in. The mistress is expecting you, she’s having hysterics in the atrium. If you’d care to follow me?’

Tyndaris — Mrs Petillius — was lying on one of the atrium couches with her maid trying vainly to bathe her temples with rosewater and getting most of it on the upholstery because the lady was drumming the couch-end with her heels. Hysterics was right. Yeah, well, that explained the screaming, okay. Not the thumping, though: there seemed to be a lot of that, coming from upstairs, like there was some sort of wild-beast hunt going on. Which was probably the case.

A big woman, Tyndaris. Powerful lungs, too. The couch was beginning to buckle.

‘Ah…hi,’ I said.

The screaming stopped like it’d been switched off. Tyndaris hauled herself erect and glared at me like an enraged hippo.

‘Get that…that THING out of here! This minute! And if it’s touched one hair of Alcestis’s head my Titus will — !’

‘Yeah. Yeah, right. Got you.’ I backed away.

‘We’re terribly sorry,’ Perilla said.

‘So you bloody well will be!’

‘She’s, ah, upstairs, is she?’ I said. ‘Placida, I mean?’

‘Placida?’

‘Yes.’ Perilla said brightly. ‘That’s her name.’

‘Hah!’

‘I’ll show you the way, sir,’ the major-domo said.

‘Don’t worry, pal, I think we can manage.’ I headed at speed towards the staircase at the far end of the atrium, with Perilla trailing like a pale wraith, and took the steps two at a time.

She was in the main bedroom, on the bed, although there wasn’t a lot left of that and what there was looked distinctly chewed. Half a dozen kitchen skivvies with assorted brooms and culinary equipment were cowering in the doorway. There was no sign of the cat, which was probably good news; although on the other hand…

‘Oh, shit,’ I muttered. Obviously the brute had had the time of her life because she was looking as pleased as hell and the room was something out of the stage set for the sack of Corinth. ‘Come on, Placida. Home.’

I pushed through the massed minions, grabbed her by the collar and lugged her towards the exit. Half way there, she pulled away, bent her back, spread her rear paws, squatted and strained…

‘Placida!’

That was Perilla. Too late. Yeah, well, after all the excitement it was only natural, I supposed. Even so, it was the icing on the cake. As it were.

I looked at the goggling skivvies. ‘Uh…any of you lads have a shovel?’

We went back downstairs and grovelled. You don’t want to know the next part. You really don’t. Suffice it to say that the upshot was the financial equivalent of Cannae. When the bill hit my banker’s desk we’d be living on boiled beets for a month.

‘Just needs a little getting used to, eh?’ I said to Perilla as we walked back with Placida ambling good as gold between us; but the lady didn’t answer.

Fun, fun, fun.

I was up early the next morning, sneaking out of the bedroom just after first light; not that I needed to bother about waking Perilla, mind, because that lady could sleep through Etna erupting, and she isn’t one of nature’s early risers. I skipped the shave — I could always have a scrape at one of the booths around the edge of Market Square later if I had time — and went down to the dining room. No sign of Placida, but then after the previous afternoon’s escapade our friendly hellhound was in deep disgrace and relegated to a chained post in the garden. Not that I’d any sympathy, because if the day before had been anything to go by looking after the brute for two months would cost us an arm and a leg. Maybe we’d be glad of Natalis’s fifty thousand after all just to pay for the breakages.

I was really, really looking forward to going out dogless today.

Bathyllus was doing his pre-breakfast round of the bronzes with the special soft cloth he keeps for raising a shine on the various bums and bosoms. Sometimes I wonder about Bathyllus. All the same, if it keeps the little bald-head happy then who am I to complain?

‘Just get Meton to fix me an omelette in a roll this morning, sunshine,’ I said. ‘I’m off down to Public Pond, and I’ll eat it on the way.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Bathyllus sniffed: eating breakfast on the hoof in a public thoroughfare isn’t something the League of Major-domos approves of. ‘You’ll be back for dinner, of course. I understand Meton is serving fish.’

Oh, gods! I hate fish days. Not the menu, no — what our anarchic chef can do with a few slices of tunny, a bag of clams and a dash or two of fish sauce would have old Lucullus crying his eyes out — but turn up even five minutes late for the off and you find yourself living on boiled cabbage and meatballs for a month. Meton gets very serious about fish. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘Incidentally, you happen to know where Mucius Soranus lives?’

Bathyllus raised an eyebrow, which in Bathyllus-speak is strong stuff, certainly well beyond ordinary sniff-class: just because the guy’s a slave doesn’t mean he doesn’t keep up with the gossip, and where moral rectitude is concerned you could lay him flat and use him to draw lines. Even so, and on his uppers or not, Soranus was one of the Mucii who go back to the time when Scaevola played his trick with Porsenna and the brazier, and any prime-class major-domo worth his buffing rag would chew his own leg off before admitting that he didn’t know where one of the top five hundred hung out.

‘On the Cipian, sir. The big old three-storey property opposite the Porch of Livia.’

Hmm; not all that far away, then. If it didn’t risk breaching the three-line fish whip I might be able to take Soranus in last thing. Mind you, a talk with that bastard immediately before dinner could well put me off my feed. I’d have to see how things went. ‘Great. Thanks, pal. Now go and organise that roll, okay?’