Marilyn Todd - Dark Horse

Odysseus tied to the mast: Bulis tied to the pillar. The Cyclops blinded in his single eye by a war spear: Leo impaled on the same weapon. Odysseus struggling to contain the escaping winds by clutching the neck of the sack which contained them: Just like someone had squeezed Silvia's throat.

Everything that had happened, every killing, every attempted killing, had been a bizarre recreation of Odysseus's adventures. There was a strange rattle on the quayside, which could have been a wagon rumbling over the cobbles. Then again it might be the chattering of her own teeth. 'You think there's a lunatic out there who believes he's Odysseus reborn?'

'If only,' Marcus said quietly. 'I think we're dealing with an even grimmer possibility.' He led her into the cool shade of Neptune's temple, where the sea god's grove of sacred rowan trees cast their feathery reflections in his hallowed pool and small birds twittered in the branches. 'I believe Bulis and Silvia were a smokescreen.'

The chill went into her marrow. 'You are joking?'

'Am I? Suppose Bulis was tied up and gagged and the grain store set alight with the intention of the alarm being raised before tragedy struck?'

'But it wasn't.'

'No. But suppose that had been the plan? Just like Silvia was never meant to die, either?'

'And Leo was?'

'Exactly.' Marcus buried his face in his hands. 'Leo made a lot of enemies before he died. How better to cover up revenge than to make it appear that Bulis and Silvia were victims of a deranged mind, whereas the real motive was to kill Leo.'

Claudia watched the frogs in the margins of the pool. Dammit, this was the grief talking. Orbilio believed he had failed his cousin by spending the night in the tavern instead of heading straight for the villa. Now, that guilt was set to haunt him for the rest of his life if he cocked up on bringing his killer to justice. But the reasoning was utterly irrational. Wasn't it?

'Of them all — Qus, Silvia, Volcar, Jason, Nanai’, Nikias, Clio-'

'Clio?'

'She had fifteen thousand good reasons to kill him, remember. But Lydia has the strongest motive. Archetypal wronged wife, dismissed like a housekeeper after eighteen years of marriage, cheated out of her divorce dowry then expected to live within sight of her own fabulously refurbished house while her husband impregnates his new and incidentally much younger bride. I'd call that a motive.'

When Claudia dabbled her fingers in the pool, several small fishes came to the surface. I'm not quite the bastard you think I am, Claudia. Leo's voice echoed in her memory and she smiled. No, Leo, you weren't. Despite your obsession for sons, you still retained some vestige of honour, even though your pride refused to let others see it. Would things have been different, I wonder, had Lydia been privy to your master plan? That you were merely using the rose-grower's daughter as a means to an end, because once she had given you your precious heirs, you intended to remarry her? Magnus is out of her class, Claudia, in more ways than one. Dammit, Leo, I should have guessed then how much you cared! That the renovations in which you sank so much of other people's money weren't intended to impress some stranger of a child bride. They weren't even a monument for your future sons. Leoville was built as a tribute to Lydia! The woman you continued to refer to as your wife. The woman you never stopped loving…

'Life and death break contracts,' Orbilio quoted.

'Don't they just.' Claudia didn't wait to see whether he followed her out of the temple compound. He caught up with her at the door of the tavern. 'You knew a man of Magnus's skill and stature wouldn't doss in cheap taverns without good reason, so you assumed he' was behind the robberies.'

'I didn't assume anything,' he murmured. 'I just hoped he might be.' His face took on a tight smile. 'How much simpler, if Magnus had been the mastermind and not Leo and I'd got it all wrong. Anyway.' His expression brightened. 'I'll have you know, Mistress Seferius, I'm not the type of chap to go upstairs with girls in strange taverns. If you want my favours, I insist you ply me with silver, like everyone else.'

'Stick to the Security Police, Orbilio. The pay might be poor, but if you tried earning your keep as a gigolo, you'd starve within a week.'

'I hate it when you couch your words. Why don't you just give it to me straight? And you might like to tell me what we're doing here,' he added as Claudia flounced along the narrow walkway, trying the rooms as she went.

No doors in this place. Just tatty woollen drapes for privacy and she didn't understand why her stomach should flip at picturing Orbilio in one of these rat holes. Not at the thought of him, a nobleman, roughing it with straw mattresses in place of swandown and enough fleas to make the bedstead rattle, more that, once Silvia got her claws into him, such adventures would be strictly off limits.

'Silvia knew, of course.' Sisters are still sisters no matter how sour the relationship, and the Immaculate One understood only too well why, after being dumped, diddled and seemingly dumped again, Lydia looked happy. More than happy, in fact. She looked bloody marvellous. 'Skin blooming, hair glossy, there's only one explanation,' Claudia said.

Turning in the hallway, her shoulder brushed with Orbilio's. Electricity jarred her bones as the heat from his body transferred itself to hers. Distracted by the scent of sandalwood, the pulse that beat at the side of his neck, the dark hairs on the back of his wrist, she almost forgot the danger he posed.

'Leo could warn Magnus off all he liked,' she said, 'but you only have to look at his statues to understand the soul of their creator and know that it would be water off a duck's back if he had truly fallen in love.'

No way would Magnus sail off and leave Lydia. He had merely backed off and given her space. Space in which she could make her own mind up about her future, without outside influence or prompting.

'Explains a lot,' Orbilio said, making no move to back away in the narrow corridor. His pupils had darkened to pools of liquid jet, and his breath was warm on her face. 'The other day,' he said, 'I followed Magnus down to the point. Lydia was holding the tunics of two little girls, waving to the kids splashing around with the dolphin, and he stood there, perhaps for half an hour, just watching, before going down to speak with her.' He swallowed. 'I'm glad she's found true love,' he said. 'Everyone should have that.'

'Oh, she's found more than love,' Claudia said. Life and death break contracts, as Lydia took such pains to point out at that dinner party. Death certainly. But so, equally, does a new life. 'Lydia is pregnant.' She threw open a threadbare blue curtain. 'Aren't you, Lydia?'

Tact and diplomacy were a patrician's stock in trade, as Claudia well knew. But it was going to take every drop of Orbilio's blue blood to persuade Lydia to return to the Villa Arcadia.

'Comfort be buggered,' she snapped. 'My little house on the point is more than adequate.'

It was anything but, of course, but Marcus Cornelius was far too polite to mention the fact. Instead he turned to the subject of Leo's will, which he had deposited in the Treasury of the Temple of Neptune in the town. In it, Orbilio explained, Leo had left Lydia everything.

'Including his debts!' she snorted. 'I hope the dirty bastard rots in hell.'

Intractable pregnant widows would be no match for Orbilio's charm, but these things took time. Claudia took the shortcut. 'For gods' sake, Magnus, tell the silly bitch it's in her baby's interest.'

The sculptor laughed. 'I'm not sure whether to cast you as Venus or Medusa.'

'Not Medusa,' Orbilio pleaded. 'She'd frighten the snakes. Now Lydia, are you coming back voluntarily, or do I have to put you over my shoulder?'