David Wishart - Food for the Fishes

Jupiter, this was weird! ‘So Ligurius carried on as your father’s manager while you married his partner? And you never started a proper affair?’

‘Never. I suspect Father knew all along that we still kept up, but if he did he didn’t care. He despised Gaius. He called him Anchovy, little fish. Something not worth bothering about.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I know. How did Ligurius feel about that?’

‘He shrugged it off. Gaius despised my father at least as much as he despised him. He expressed his contempt by doing his job to his own satisfaction and simply ignoring my father otherwise. And my husband.’

‘Murena never thought of sacking him?’

Penelope’s eyes flashed, but she answered in the same level voice. ‘No. Or at least, not to my knowledge. If he had, or if he’d even tried to, he knew I’d make the whole affair public at once, whatever the cost. It might not have caused him any legal problems after all that time, but it would’ve finished him socially in Baiae.’

‘So you knew about Philippus’s deal with Tattius?’

‘Yes, I knew. Too late to do anything about it, but I knew. And I didn’t — don’t — blame Philippus. He was a slave, he took the only chance of betterment that offered. And the result was that my father was being punished after all, in a way. Besides, Gaius is an excellent manager. The farm would have gone into liquidation long since if it weren’t for him. My father knew that too.’

‘Okay.’ I shifted in my chair. ‘What about the actual killing? Your father’s, I mean. Tell me about that.’

‘It was an accident. Or partly so.’ For the first time, she lowered her eyes. ‘There had been an…estrangement for several months between Decimus and my father. Father had bought the Juventius estate and he was planning to build a hotel. It would’ve cost money, of course, a lot of money, and although Father was reasonably well off he couldn’t afford to do it without making economies elsewhere. He told Decimus that he intended to plough the profits from the business for a year or so — all the profits, barring the minimum living expenses — back into funds, to finance the project. My husband was a very greedy man, Corvinus, and also a very stupid one. He accepted the situation at first, or said he did, although with a very bad grace. Finally — we’re talking a few days before the…death, you understand — he had a terrible argument with my father, in Gaius’s presence, over what he called his ‘allowance’. My father was not a man to be bullied. He told Decimus that he was fed up supporting him and that if he didn’t like it he knew what he could do. He also said — and I believe he was joking, but that’s the way Father was when he was angry — that he was surprised that his daughter stayed married to him, and that if she was thinking of a divorce then she had his blessing. Gaius, as I say, heard all of this. He thought things over later and without telling me decided — rather foolishly — that perhaps the time had come to approach my father and suggest we get married after all.’

‘So he went to see him. Privately, and when he knew there’d be no slaves around to overhear. When Murena went down in the evening after dinner to feed the fish.’

‘Yes. He had his own key to the fish farm gate, of course, so he didn’t have to go through the villa entrance.’

‘What happened then?’

‘They talked, and Father laughed at him. Like he always did. Said he hadn’t been serious, and he’d never consider a little fish like Gaius marrying his daughter, under any circumstances. Gaius lost his temper and hit him.’

‘And Murena fell into the tank.’

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: ‘Yes.’

‘He could still have pulled him out.’

‘He tried to. He got one of those poles with the nets on the end; you know, the ones the slaves use to take out the fish.’ I nodded. ‘Anyway, he was clumsy, and Father was struggling too hard because he couldn’t swim. Besides, the eels got in the way. The end of the pole caught him on the head and knocked him out. Gaius panicked. He tried to use the net end to snare him in, but the net was too small and Father was too heavy. He only succeeded in pushing the body deeper and further away. By the time he did manage to get him close enough to the edge to grab his mantle it was too late, and Father had drowned.’

‘So he decided to leave him where he was, for the eels.’

Her eyes came up, and there were tears in them. Not for her father, though; I knew she wouldn’t cry for him. ‘There was nothing more he could do, Corvinus! Father was dead, Gaius had killed him and as I say he panicked. He went back to the gate and let himself out.’

Yeah, well; it all made sense. Mind you, I had my doubts about the details. I was getting this second hand, from a woman who was in love with him. Me, I wouldn’t’ve put it past Ligurius to have at least helped nature take its course. Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t’ve blamed him much, either. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘What about Chlorus?’

A definite hesitation. ‘Titus’s death was…unfortunate,’ she said finally. ‘But there was nothing Gaius could do there either. He had to kill him.’

Right. Anyway, I reckoned that now I could answer that question myself. ‘Chlorus needed to give himself an alibi,’ I said. ‘He had one already, sure, but it wasn’t one he wanted to use. He was out that evening at his mistress’s, and that was something he didn’t want to become public knowledge. So he went to Ligurius, explained the situation in confidence, and asked him to do him a small favour: say that they’d been together that evening discussing a defaulting customer. Which they genuinely had done, only not that night, the one before. Am I right?’

She nodded, but didn’t speak.

‘Okay. Backing Chlorus’s story would get Ligurius off the hook where I was concerned, no problem. He wasn’t married, he lived alone, so there’d be no other way I could check up. Except via the neighbour, of course. There was that possibility, sure, but it was a risk he had to take, and unless for some reason I chose to disbelieve both him and Chlorus — and why should I do that? — he reckoned he was safe enough, even if I did get round to asking his laundry pal. One evening’s very like another, especially after a few days’ve passed, unless there’s anything to mark it out, like a murder, say. And when I talked to him the guy didn’t mention the murder at all. I should’ve noticed that, and wondered why not; after all, finding your boss half eaten in an eel tank is news your average punter would be itching to pass on to a mate over an evening jug. Only I didn’t do either.’ Yeah, right; moron wasn’t the half of it!

She smiled. ‘No. Gaius didn’t mention Father’s death at the time, for obvious reasons. Then, for the reason you’ve given, he was very careful not to be the first to introduce the subject. His neighbour hardly ever goes out, and there was a good chance he wouldn’t hear of it at all. Which, from what you say, he evidently still hasn’t. Being asked to back my brother’s story was a godsend for Gaius.’

‘Except that when he had time to think things over Chlorus began to smell a rat. Ligurius didn’t owe him anything, they weren’t pals and they didn’t even like each other; so why should he agree to lie on his behalf so easily? Especially where a murder was concerned. Chlorus knew damn well that Ligurius hadn’t been with him that evening like he’d told me, so as things developed he started wondering what he had been doing. And the answer, naturally, was killing Murena.’

‘Yes.’ Penelope’s face was expressionless. ‘Titus…broached the subject with him in private two days after my father’s death. Delicately: Titus had no liking for Father anyway, remember, and he couldn’t care less who had murdered him. Also, I suspect, he rather hoped the crime would be fixed on Gellia or Aulus, and that would have been to his advantage. Having Gaius accused and condemned wouldn’t have benefited him at all, quite the reverse.’ She half-smiled. ‘My brother, Corvinus, was not a nice man. Gaius killed him, yes, but it was in pure self-defence, and he was no loss. Believe me, I’d known him all my life.’