David Wishart - Food for the Fishes

I followed him, thinking hard.

Yeah, well: accident it may still have been, but I’d met one of the sons and the manager so far, and if they were anything to go by I reckoned that as far as real, genuine grief at Murena’s death was concerned the fish had the edge.

Things were shaping up very nicely.

Them. The family. We.

I’d been given enough hints and I ought to’ve realised, sure. My appointment was with the widow Gellia, not with the whole boiling, but there they all were, reclining or sitting in the villa’s main atrium, stiff-faced as ancestral death masks. And watching each other closely out of the corners of their eyes, like in case any moment one of them would jump up and decamp with the family silver.

I couldn’t be wrong, no way; the body language and the general atmosphere made that clear from practically the moment I walked into the room. I knew, absolutely and irrevocably, that whatever the cause or causes of it might be all the members of the Murena family hated one another like poison.

No wonder they were all sitting here: not one of them trusted any of the rest further than they could spit.

Not that I suspected I was flavour of the month either, mind.

‘Ah, Corvinus, so you’ve arrived.’ That was the one I had met, Titus Chlorus. Stupid bloody observation, sure: the fish farm was only two hundred yards away the other side of the gardens, and Ligurius had taken me to the door, but I could see the reason for it. The guy was seriously nervous. He wasn’t the only one, either, by any means. Which was interesting.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Let me introduce you. My father’s widow, Gellia — ’

A hard-faced, brassy woman in a blonde wig and black eyebrows, early- to mid-thirties, sitting on a chair and sporting a mourning-mantle that practically knocked my eyes out. She gave me a frozen nod.

‘- sister Penelope. -’

In another chair to one side, slightly out of the circle. Odd. Early forties, probably, small and dumpy, ‘matron’ written all over her. Her white mantle wasn’t a patch on Gellia’s, and although she didn’t look exactly slovenly she clearly didn’t take much trouble over her appearance. She was the only one of the four, though, who was composed. Small, neat hands with only one ring on the engagement finger, resting motionless on the chair-arms.

‘- and my brother, Aulus Nerva.’

The youngest of the three siblings, probably mid-thirties. Like Chlorus, he was reclining on a couch. His mourning-mantle and stubble didn’t go well with the podgy lad-about-town face, overneat haircut and flashy signet ring. He was the only one of the four to be drinking. He raised his cup and, like Gellia, gave me the briefest of nods.

‘Take a seat, Corvinus,’ Chlorus said. ‘Some wine?’ He motioned to a slave standing by one of the side tables. I went over to the remaining couch and lay down. ‘Now. Apua’ — he corrected himself — ‘forgive me, Ligurius, rather, will have told you about how he found my father, so we can skip that part if you don’t mind, yes?’

‘“Apua”?’ I said.

Chlorus smiled. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a family nickname, one of my father’s coining. Father was fond of nicknames.’

Murena the eel-boss and Apua the anchovy-manager. Right. Quite a sense of humour the old bugger must’ve had. No doubt it creased them up when fish farm owners got together and swapped anecdotes. I reached out and took the cup of wine the slave handed me.

‘I understood the town officer already had someone in custody for killing my husband,’ Gellia said. Nice enough voice, but there was a nasal twang to it that I reckoned could get wearing after a while. Five minutes would do me.

I couldn’t complain about the actual comment, mind: straight to the point, no messing. The strange thing was that every eye in the room had zeroed in on her, and not with approval, either.

‘Gaius Trebbio. Right,’ I said. ‘Only I have personal reasons for thinking he couldn’t’ve done it.’ Was it my imagination, or was there a general sharpening of interest? ‘Besides, why should it be murder, lady? Why not an accident? I was told Licinius Murena had fainting fits.’

Gellia sat bolt upright in her chair. ‘Who told you that?’ she snapped.

Queer; me, if our positions had been reversed, I’d say an accidental death would’ve been better news than murder, and so, I’d bet, would ninety-nine percent of the world’s population. Gellia, though, seemed to take the suggestion as a personal insult. The strange thing was, I had the impression that at least two of the other three weren’t exactly taken with the suggestion either. With Penelope, I couldn’t tell. She just stared at Gellia with what looked like distaste and terminal boredom.

‘Ligurius,’ I said.

‘Did he, now?’ Chlorus said softly. I glanced at him. His eyes were on Gellia. ‘Well, well. Bravo, Anchovy!’

Gellia ignored him. ‘My husband,’ she said, ‘had several fancies about his health. That was all they were: fancies. For his age he was as strong as an ox.’

‘That’s not what Diodotus says.’ Chlorus said mildly. ‘Or for that matter, I’m afraid, what you — I use the plural, note — have been telling us for the past few months.’

She went brick red, and for a moment her composure cracked. ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ she snapped.

‘In fact, I can remember you yourself saying only four days ago — ’

‘How dare you!’ Looking at her, I’d’ve said that Gellia was within a copper piece’s-worth of throwing herself at Chlorus’s throat. ‘I never — !’

‘Oh, yes you did.’ Chlorus was completely at his ease. ‘I remember it distinctly. You told me four days ago, when I called round about the cost of repairs to Number Three Tank, that Father had taken a giddy turn after breakfast, and you were quite concerned. There’s no point in denying it now. That will do no good at all.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Nerva murmured. ‘Don’t you believe her, Corvinus. She always was a little liar, and now she’s got Dad safely dead — ’

Gellia whirled round. ‘Aulus, you complete — !’

I held up a hand. ‘Lady? Gentlemen?’ Shit; what was I into here? Revelations were one thing, but at this galloping rate there’d be blood on the tiles before we’d even started. ‘Maybe we could keep this reasonably amicable, okay?’

Gellia subsided. Fancy wig or not, made up to the eyeballs or not, she was no looker in herself, and a complexion that currently would’ve given a beetroot a run for its money didn’t help things much, either. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Valerius Corvinus,’ she said, cut-glass tones back in spades. ‘What must you think of us?’

‘In your case that should be pretty obvious, I’d imagine,’ Nerva said. ‘And he’d probably be right.’

Gellia ignored him, but her colour heightened. ‘You have some questions,’ she said stiffly to me. ‘Perhaps you could ask them.’

‘Ah…okay.’ I cleared my throat. Maybe we’d better do this formal at that: it was probably safer. I felt like I was like a kid poking at the workings of a military catapult: the slightest mis-prod and the thing would go off. ‘The night your husband died. I understand he took a bag of scraps down to the farm to feed the fish.’

‘Yes. He did that every evening. He was quite fond of the brutes, the gods know why.’

‘Right. What time would that be?’

‘An hour or so after sunset, after we’d finished dinner. That was when he usually went.’

‘He was pretty well normal at the time? Nothing unusual?’

‘Not at all normal. He was rather upset, as it happens. By events earlier in the day.’ She smiled unpleasantly, and her eyes rested on Nerva. I glanced at him. He was glaring at her with complete loathing.