Rosemary Rowe - A Pattern of Blood

‘You had better go, Excellence.’

‘In a moment,’ Marcus said. ‘They can’t start without me. I want to understand. When did you begin to suspect?’

‘Sollers suggested the solution himself. Sollers said that perhaps Maximilian’s crassness was a bluff. Maximilian did not have the intellect to bluff like that, but Sollers did. Who was more obvious than Sollers, when you consider it? He was in the ante-room. He arranged that the daggers should be placed on the table — where of course he could easily obtain them. Who suggested that the last two clients should be sent away so that Quintus could “rest”? Sollers. Who sent away the servants from the room? Sollers. Who had blood upon his clothes even before he examined the corpse? Sollers. I even mentioned it to him. But he had bled Quintus earlier, so he had an answer.’

‘When he bled Quintus, he had him alone in the room. Why didn’t he kill him then?’

‘Because then it would have been clear who’d done it. But he was preparing for the murder, even then. By bleeding Quintus he drew off a lot of blood, so that there was much less spurting later. It is a well-known medical trick. He described it to us himself. In fact, I think Quintus was being bled when he died.’

‘Again?’ Marcus was surprised.

‘Think. Quintus had his tunic disarranged. His shoulder and his arm were bare and his back exposed. Why would an attacker do that? Yet why would Quintus do it for himself? Then yesterday, when Julia was being cupped, I understood. He had bared his arm to have his doctor cup him. I saw Julia do the same.’

‘If Sollers was applying the bleeding-cup, how could he stab Quintus at the same time?’

‘With his other hand. We knew the blow was dealt left-handedly. Sollers is perfectly capable of that. He tried to do it to me. Again, I should have seen it earlier. Surgeons are ambidextrous — Julia pointed that out. He used the direction of the thrust to point to Maximilian. I almost fell for it.’

Marcus shook his head. ‘ When did he do all this? Sollers started giving Julia her treatment when Maximilian was still with his father. By the time the treatment was over, Quintus was dead. Julia told us that. You do not mean to suggest that she was lying?’

‘Oh, yes, she was. And that deflected me, although it was not you and I she set out to deceive. She left us, heard the quarrel and went back to her room, you will remember. Someone — she thought that it was Flavius or his messenger — came to her door and asked if she was there. She told her maids to say that she was not.’

‘Yes?’ Marcus was impatient.

‘But the message was not from Flavius. We know that he was in the front courtyard at the time. It was Maximilian who went to look for Julia — Rollo saw him do it. But her maids informed him that she wasn’t there. So Maximilian believed it. He went back to his apartments to search for something else to pay the bath attendant with, and then came to speak to us. While he was doing that, Sollers murdered Quintus Ulpius.’

‘But when Julia came out of her room, the quarrel was still in progress.’

‘Who said so? Sollers, again. Sollers, who had just come from Quintus’s bedchamber carrying a bowl of blood — the same blood he had been letting when Quintus died. He must have been appalled to meet with Julia — he thought that she was safely engaged in receiving us. But he is a clever man. He turned the thing to his advantage. A medicus is the one man who can carry bowls of blood without suspicion. Imagine the cool composure of a man who can persuade a wife to offer as a sacrifice the blood he has just spilled in killing her husband.’

Marcus gulped. ‘Great Mercury!’

‘Or Great Minerva, in this case,’ I said grimly. ‘Sollers even persuades Julia to wash the bowl, as part of the ceremony — thus destroying the evidence — and manages to splash her clothes with blood. Of course, once it is known that Quintus is dead, she is terrified that someone will see the stains and make a connection. She actually begs Sollers to keep silence. Even then he is clever. He appears to give her an alibi, by telling us about the treatment — which incidentally gives him an alibi, too.’

Marcus shook his head disbelievingly. ‘And then she uses the bowl for funeral decorations?’

‘I think that might have been her own idea. Sollers was only concerned to move it from the reception room. He was in too much haste and did not strike quite true. He knew that Quintus was only dying, and was not yet dead, but he dared not stay to strike again. So he took the bowl away. If Quintus found some dying strength — as in fact he did, since he crawled as far as the door — without the bowl he could not summon help. I should have spotted that at once.’

There was a silence while Marcus digested this. In the courtyard the dancers were performing their ritual gyrations, while the mourners, with garlands on their brows, formed up to take their place in the procession. Maximilian was there: I saw him in the torchlight, his toga still stained with his own blood. Julia, in a litter, looking pale. It had been decided not to tell her about Sollers until after the ceremony. Others were appearing in the courtyard. I saw Flavius follow the procession, with Mutuus at his side. Lupus came to join them, but Mutuus turned pointedly away. Poor Lupus.

Marcus was watching them too. He turned to me again. ‘When did you know that things had not happened in the order we were told?’

‘When I heard about that bowl of blood. Sollers told Julia that he had just finished bleeding Quintus when Maximilian came. Yet Mutuus told us that Quintus had already called his slaves back and was ready to resume work when Maximilian interrupted him. Sollers would hardly have left blood and cupping bells in the room while Quintus was entertaining clientes. That was when I began to wonder if he could have cupped him twice. And then, of course, things fell into place.’

Marcus looked at me approvingly. ‘Little escapes you, old friend.’

‘In fact, Excellence, I am ashamed to recognise how many things I did miss. Sollers knew that Quintus was threatening to disinherit his son. No one else knew that. He must have been listening, in the ante-room. He was there when Maximilian pushed past him, the slaves told us so. Yet later, there he was in the rear courtyard. How did he get there? He did not pass us in the atrium, and there is no other route from the front garden except through the room where Quintus was. Besides, Quintus himself told us. When he was crawling, dying, to the door, he was not calling Sollers, he was naming him. I should have seen that long ago.’

Marcus dropped his head into his hands. ‘And Rollo?’ was all he said.

‘That was an accident,’ I said. ‘Sollers meant to poison me. I suspected another hand in it, at the time. I reasoned, as Sollers said, that murderers often follow a pattern. But of course, being Sollers, he took good care that no pattern could be seen. His pattern was doing the unexpected.’

‘So having stabbed Quintus, he tried to poison you?’

‘He chose a subtle route, all the same. He gave me a sleeping draught — but that was not poisoned. That could have been traced to him. Instead, he put the poison in the food, which anyone might have handled. I saw him today, walking around the kitchens tasting and prodding — if that was his habit, it would not be hard for him to introduce poison onto my plate. He slipped it into the fish pickle, is my guess, where it would not be tasted.’

‘But you do not care for it.’

‘Fortunately for me, Excellence, Sollers did not know that. My dislike of fish pickle saved my life. And poisoned poor Rollo, I’m afraid. I gave him the contents of the tray, and he went to the latrine feeling sick — as you suggested, Excellence — moments after he left me, I should think. Someone found him there and hid him in the drain. Sollers, I believe, but it may have been Flavius — we can discover that when the funeral party returns.’