David Wishart - Parthian Shot

‘I’ll stay here,’ he grunted. ‘I’ve got things to discuss.’ Then he added, in fast Latin: ‘You just remember, boy: we’re here on sufferance. So no more screw-ups, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. Yeah, well, I’d sort of taken that on board already, especially where Osroes was concerned. Sufferance was a good word. I nodded briefly. Callion was still grinning. I wondered if he’d understood. He was smart enough, certainly.

Osroes rose to his feet. ‘This way, then.’

We went through the passage at the back of the atrium into the small hallway beyond. One of the doors leading off it, I knew because I’d been through it myself, was the dining room. There was a staircase straight ahead and a corridor on the right next to the dining room itself.

‘This part of the house we don’t use,’ Osroes said briefly. ‘A smaller reception room, a study, some general rooms. You can see them if you like.’

I opened the doors one by one and looked inside. The rooms had that too-neat, empty, stale feel to them that all unused rooms have. ‘Where does the corridor lead?’ I said.

‘To the kitchen and the side door.’

I went down it. There was a line of store cupboards, mostly empty, along the right-hand wall, and then on the left — past where the dining room would be — the entrance to the kitchen. I glanced inside. A guy was shovelling out the ash from the top of the cooker, chatting in a language I didn’t know to another man who was peeling onions. They looked up, saw me and Osroes beside me and were suddenly very quiet and very busy. Osroes ignored them.

The side door was beyond. It had two massive bolts, which were firmly shot and locked into their guards. Yeah, well; no mileage there. Still, for the sake of completeness I pulled them and looked outside. The door opened onto the garden; not the pretty-pretty part, that was on the south side of the house where it’d get the most sun. This bit was purely functional: herbs and salad stuff and dug-over ground. There was a high, blank wall beyond.

‘This part of the property is none of our concern either.’ Osroes was looking over my shoulder with his month-old-fish-under-the-nose expression on. ‘I’m afraid our cook has a very poor opinion — fully justified, I’d say — of the quality of your Roman vegetables and salad leaves. If you’ve quite finished we’ll go upstairs.’

Supercilious bastard. I closed the door and re-bolted it.

At the top of the staircase he turned left. There were three doors along this stretch of corridor, one on the right, two on the left.

He opened the door on the right and stepped back to let me past without a word.

Parthian decor obviously extended to the bedrooms: the place was kitted out like a five-star cat-house. The only discordant note was the bed itself and the floor area immediately beside it. The bed had been stripped and the side-mats were missing. No prizes for guessing why: if Zariadres’s throat had been slit there would’ve been a lot of blood splashed around.

The room opened out onto a balcony overlooking the city. I went over and checked it out. Scrub that idea, then: anyone trying to get in this way, from any direction including above, would’ve had to have had monkeys in his ancestry.

‘Nice view,’ I said.

‘It’s the only bedroom on this side which has one.’ Osroes was still standing by the door. ‘That’s why we don’t use the other two.’

‘Did you see the body yourself?’

Oops: mistake. The guy’s nostrils flared, and he took his time answering. Finally, he said: ‘No, I did not. Not, I may say, from any squeamishness on my part. Magians are forbidden even to look at a corpse. I understand your High Priest of Jupiter is subject to the same restriction.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’ Fair enough. Add it to the collection. Well, there wasn’t much to be seen here, especially since the room had been cleaned within an inch of its life. ‘Let’s go back down, shall we?’

‘Certainly. You won’t, I hope, want to look inside our private rooms?’

‘No, that’s okay,’ I said. Then, as diffidently as I could: ‘Who has which, by the way?’

‘I’ll show you the corridor.’ We went back to the landing. ‘All of them are on the left along the outside of the house overlooking the city. Callion’s is the first, then mine and finally Peucestas’s.’

I glanced along the passage. Sure enough, there were three doors, plus another two — presumably more unused bedrooms — on the right, with a blank wall beyond. ‘And no one heard any movement during the night? No creaking floorboards?’

‘You asked that before.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I did.’ I turned round just to check that from where I was standing, at the junction of the second corridor and the top of the stairs, I could see the door of Zariadres’s room. I could, just. Then I stepped aside and let Osroes lead the way back downstairs.

Vitellius was talking when we came back into the atrium, but when he saw me he clammed up. The other two stared at me expressionlessly. I walked over to the couch I’d had before and lay down.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’ That was Callion.

‘Why was he killed?’

‘Who can say?’ Osroes raised his shoulders. ‘If we were in Parthia the answer would be easy: traitors die, and Artabanus would not hesitate to kill someone he viewed as a traitor, as he would view any of us. Also, no doubt there he would have his private enemies. But here in Rome? Who is there in Rome, apart from us?’

Three pairs of eyes — Vitellius’s included — locked on to him, and the room was suddenly very quiet. I’d lay good money that that was the first time the thought had been put into words, although the suspect short-list must’ve been obvious to all of them from the outset. It was interesting that Osroes had brought it up. He’d done it deliberately, that was for sure, and I wondered why.

‘I had no reason, personally, to kill Zariadres,’ Peucestas said softly. ‘I swear it.’

‘Nor did I.’ Callion sipped his wine.

‘And I didn’t kill him either. I didn’t like the man, I admit it, but I did not kill him.’ Osroes smiled; on that face it was like a razor drawn across where his mouth should be. ‘There, Corvinus, that’s done. You have three sworn denials. Of course, one of us may be given over to the Dark Lord, in which case a lie would come easily to him. Still, there is your question of why to answer.’ He paused, and then added carefully: ‘Plus the question of the door and the drugged porter.’

‘The obvious explanation for that is that someone killed Zariadres and then slipped out,’ I said.

‘No,’ Callion said, quietly but firmly. ‘I told you, Corvinus, and I’ll swear to it. There was no one in the house last night who shouldn’t have been here and who was unaccounted for when Peucestas found Zariadres this morning.’

‘To your knowledge.’

‘To my certain knowledge.’ He smiled. ‘I’m afraid that you will have to think again.’

‘So why the drugged door-slave and the open door?’

No one answered. Suddenly, I felt angry; so angry that for two pins I’d’ve chucked the whole boiling, gone straight round to Isidorus’s and told him in words of one syllable just what he could do with himself…

Just for a moment. It was a close thing, though.

I gritted my teeth, unclenched my fists and tried to keep my voice a notch this side of civil. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So tell me. Who drugged the porter and unbolted the door, and why?’ No response. Well, I hadn’t really expected one, although that’s not to say I didn’t believe that at least one of the slippery bastards could’ve provided it; in fact, the belief was practically a certainty. I stood up.