Rosemary Rowe - Murder in the Forum

Marcus rewarded me with a beam. ‘Of course.’ Gaius was sitting miserably on a stool in the corner, and Marcus gestured to him, saying smoothly, ‘Gaius Flavius Flaminius, you have been chosen for a singular honour. .’ and the poor old fellow was led away into his own bedchamber to perform his grisly task. We could hear him, a little later, piping up a feeble lament and periodically calling Felix’s name as tradition demanded.

Marcus turned towards me, smiling. ‘Well, I believe we have done all we can. The council will meet tomorrow to arrange the funeral. A public ceremony, naturally, with a pause in the forum for the body to be displayed and someone to proclaim a eulogy. So I must be sure to find that herald and bury him decently before then. We want no more unfortunate accidents. Where is Zetso? He will know where the body was left, and he can lead us to it.’

I shook my head. ‘I do not know, Excellence. I have searched all the public rooms. Perhaps he has hidden downstairs, in the cellar or one of the storerooms. If he sees the hand of the dead in this, he must fear for his own safety. It was Zetso who staked out the corpse.’

Marcus gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Perhaps. See if you can find him, Libertus. He can take us out tomorrow to find the herald in that comfortable carriage of his.’

‘Us’, I noticed. It seemed my customers would have to wait another day. ‘Yes, Excellence,’ I said humbly, and seizing a smoky taper in a holder I set off to look for Zetso.

The house was built on a slight rise, so there was an area below the rooms where we had been dining. It seemed the appropriate place to start.

Zetso was not in the kitchens, nor in the cellars, nor in the servants’ room under the stairs. He was not in the latrine, although I surprised one of the erstwhile guests, a florid trader who was enthroned there, suspended over the drain with his sponge-stick in his hand. Zetso was not in the narrow store cupboards leading off the passage and filled with candles, wood and grain. In the last cupboard I opened, however, I did find something. One of Gaius’s dogs.

It was lying quietly on the floor on a sort of rug, and it did not even lift its head as I approached. I might have shut the door and tiptoed away, but something made me lift my taper nearer.

No, I was not mistaken. It was not a rug, it was a plaid cloak, of the kind that the pretended Egobarbus had been wearing earlier. In fact, I was prepared to wager it was the same cloak. When I came to consider it, I had not seen Egobarbus since the dramatic end of the entertainments. I bent closer for a moment and then shut the cupboard door and ran as quickly as I could up the dim and unlit stairs.

I went to the lobby and exchanged a few words with the doorman, and then I returned to Marcus.

‘Excellence?’

Marcus was talking to one of the aediles , the market police, but he turned impatiently at my approach. ‘Libertus?’ He did not care to be interrupted.

I took a deep breath. ‘Forgive me, Excellence, but I think you must come quickly. I have not found Zetso, but there is something downstairs in a cupboard which I think you should see.’

‘I hope,’ Marcus said sternly as he followed me reluctantly down the short staircase, ‘that this is as important as you say.’ He was not dependent on my poor smoky taper, a slave with a fine oil-lamp was lighting his way, but he walked gingerly and with distaste, as though subterranean perambulations through the lower regions were not at all to his taste.

He had a point. The latrine in a town dwelling is never especially sweet-smelling, despite being over running water, but the odour from this one seemed to permeate the whole area. A man like Marcus, I realised, would probably not even demean himself by visiting the ablutions in a house like this: if he were staying here he would expect to be provided with servants, washing water and chamber pots.

‘See for yourself, Excellence,’ I said, opening the store cupboard with a flourish. In the better illumination the contents were clearer than before.

Marcus, who is not a lover of bouncy dogs, backed away hastily and motioned for the door to be shut before the dog awoke. All the same he had noticed the blanket. ‘That cloak! It is the one which that Egobarbus fellow was wearing. Or one very like it. What is it doing here in the store cupboard?’

‘I suppose it is just possible, Excellence, that either Gaius or Felix bought a length of the same cloth. Unfortunately we can hardly ask either of them since Felix is dead and Gaius is occupied in mourning him. Although perhaps the house-slaves would know.’

Marcus turned to the slave who was carrying the lamp. ‘Well? You work in this house, don’t you? Did Gaius, or Felix, purchase such a thing?’

The lad gulped and shook his head. When he spoke his voice was trembling with nervousness. ‘Not that I know of, Excellence. I cannot imagine that my master would want such a piece of coarse Celtic plaid, His Excellence Tigidius Perennis Felix even less so.’

Marcus was looking impatient, and I stepped in hastily. ‘I agree, Excellence. A most unlikely purchase for either of them. In which case I can only suppose that it is the cloak, and the man himself put it here. It occurs to me that I did not notice him again after Felix died. The doorman did not see him leave, either. I made a point of asking him.’

Marcus’s frown deepened. ‘Yet Egobarbus would not be easy to miss. Those whiskers and that cloak. . By Jupiter, greatest and best! Libertus, I see what you are thinking. Somehow he came here and abandoned his cloak in order to escape without being noticed. Though he would have needed something to disguise those whiskers. A hooded cape, perhaps?’

I nodded, doubtfully. Roman citizens are not as universally clean-shaven as they used to be. Indeed, there has been quite a little fashion for beards since the Emperor Hadrian sported one, and naturally, since Commodus himself is bearded, much of polite society in high places follows the Emperor. But it is not usual in Glevum. Even I have to submit to the expensive horrors of a barber’s shop occasionally — with its dreadful sharpened blades and its spiders-web-and-ashes dressing for nicks and cuts — though I generally prefer the ministrations of Junio with a pair of iron scissors. Most of the guests, and slaves, at the banquet tonight had been as smooth-faced as Vestal virgins, so Egobarbus was as conspicuous as a lighted torch. Even a hooded cape would scarcely have disguised that exuberant moustache.

‘There is-’ I began, but Marcus brushed me aside and was scowling down the narrow corridor.

‘What is behind those other doors?’

I hastened to inform him. ‘More store cupboards, Excellence, and the big entrance on the right is to the kitchens. Egobarbus is not there. I searched them not a minute ago when I was looking for Zetso.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Marcus said, ‘we will search again.’ He gestured the lamp-bearer forward and suited the action to the words. In vain. There was nothing in the other cupboards but grain and candles and nothing in the smoky candlelit kitchen but a group of startled slaves, who — drawn as they were from different households — were squabbling noisily about what scraps were whose, and who should be expected to clean the greasy salvers and rub the dirty knives with red earth and ashes. My visit earlier had caused consternation enough, but at the sight of a purple-striper in the kitchen they stopped their bickering at once, and dropping their various brooms and implements stood staring at us in mystified terror.

Marcus made a pretence of looking under the tables, but there was clearly nothing to see and he withdrew, muttering, ‘Very well, get on with your work.’ The slaves’ hands resumed their tasks obediently, but their eyes never left us until we were once more back in the gloom of the corridor.