Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

Credit where it was due, he didn’t let go, this boy.

‘What’s there to tell? We meet by chance at Julius’s banquet and he realizes I’m the same Claudia Seferius his father married.’

‘With an inheritance like yours at stake, chance doesn’t come into it. As you know.’

When Claudia bent down, it wasn’t so much to pick a marigold as to decapitate it. The best course of action, she decided, was to charm his patrician boots right off him.

‘At least Varius is a bastard by birth. You, Orbilio, you’re a self-made man.’ She lobbed the marigold into the fish pond. ‘Anyway, it’s none of your damned business. You investigate murders, remember?’

‘Oh, I’m investigating. So much so, this is-’ he weighed the sadly misshapen loaf-‘ was my first meal of the day. I’ve been chasing…’

The kerfuffle in the corner diverted him. It seemed more intense, more serious than the usual scuffles in the peristyle, which tended to be of a carnal rather than an argumentative nature. Suddenly a woman in a dark-coloured tunic broke free of the small knot of slaves and, as she raced past a torch, Claudia recognized the fuzz of red hair.

‘Tanaquil! What on earth are you doing here?’

The girl seemed bemused, and then Claudia realized that Tanaquil had come in search of Orbilio, not herself. Well, of course she had, because no one at the villa knew where Claudia was staying. But the irritating thing was, if Tanaquil knew Orbilio’s address, how come Claudia hadn’t known it? That would teach her blithely to assume he’d sloped off back to Rome.

‘Marcus, something terrible’s happened! Terrible! You must come quickly.’ Oh, it’s Marcus, is it? You a lowborn hustler, him a patrician policeman, and you call him Marcus.

‘Everything’s under control.’ Orbilio waved away the anxious slaves. ‘Now, Tanaquil, calm down. What’s the matter?’

Her face, which was chalk white to start with, now had a greyish tinge to it. It was swollen from crying and her eyes were red.

‘It’s Acte,’ she said. ‘She’s dead!’

Claudia felt an icy wind blow through the peristyle. Not Acte. Sweet Jupiter, tell me it’s not Acte. Not at the hands of that butchering lunatic.

The muscles on Orbilio’s face tightened, the only sign of emotion. ‘What happened?’

Tanaquil dug her fingers into his tunic and made fists of them. ‘Oh, it was awful. Just like Sabina. Only that’s not the worst of it.’

Claudia and Orbilio exchanged glances.

‘No?’

‘Eugenius is beside himself, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, you’ve got to come, it’s awful, I think he’ll do it, he says he will and I believe him, you’ve got to hurry-’

‘It’s all right,’ he said gently, placing a hand on each of the girl’s shoulders.

‘Oh, but it’s not, it’s not, you don’t know what Eugenius is saying, he’s beside himself, I told you, he means it.’

Orbilio applied slight pressure with each hand and shook her gently. ‘Tanaquil, you’re not making sense. What does Eugenius mean to do?’

The redhead began to cry. ‘Utti,’ she wailed. ‘Eugenius means to kill him.’

Orbilio led the distraught Tanaquil to a marble bench, sat her down and patted her heaving shoulder. Claudia picked up a chicken leg from his plate on the sundial and absently began to gnaw.

‘Your brother’s a free man,’ he was saying. ‘Eugenius can’t act outside the law, you know that.’

Oh, she knows that, Orbilio. And any minute her head will find itself on your shoulder, and if I were you, I’d check for hair dye on your tunic.

‘He will, Marcus,’ she sobbed. ‘Eugenius means to do it, even though Utti’s innocent.’

‘Now, Tanaquil,’ Orbilio said sternly, ‘pull yourself together. Collatinus can do what he likes with his own slaves, he can execute the whole damned lot of them if he feels it’s justified, but trust me, there’s nothing he can do to a freeborn citizen.’

‘Really?’

‘Has your brother got his cap of freedom with him?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then neither of you have anything to worry about.’

‘You honestly think so?’ The tears were conveniently under control. ‘He loves people, Utti does.’

For breakfast maybe, Claudia thought, crunching into a stick of celery.

The redhead sought affirmation. ‘Claudia, you saw him with Sabina, they were both the same, weren’t they? Childlike in their different ways. Besides,’ she blew her nose on Orbilio’s proffered handkerchief, ‘if he’d killed Sabina, we’d have left the island long ago.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Claudia asked innocently, and received a hurt look in reply.

‘Tell me about Acte,’ Orbilio said. ‘Who found the body, and when?’

‘Me.’ Tanaquil spun round on the bench to face him. ‘Marcus, it was horrible, just the same as Sabina. There’s a birch grove about a half-mile up the hill from the villa, only nobody goes there because it’s supposed to be haunted-’

‘So what were you doing there?’ There was a certain sharpness in Claudia’s voice, and she was not surprised to see the girl blink several times before answering.

‘I–I, well, I was just out for a walk, that’s all. We’d been staying in Sullium and I fancied a bit of fresh air and-’

‘Never mind that.’ Orbilio admonished Claudia with a glare. ‘What time did you discover the body?’

‘Around noon. It’s been a hot day, hasn’t it, which might have something to do with it, but…’ A violent shudder shook her whole body. ‘…but her flesh was still warm.’

Which meant the murderer might still have been in the vicinity. Claudia wondered whether Tanaquil realized how lucky an escape she’d had.

The way she described finding the body, so meticulously yet so impersonally as though she was recounting someone else’s story, brought the reality of Acte’s death into sharp focus. The poor little bitch had been laid out on a limestone slab, her tunic covering her nakedness and anchored in place with her hands. As she said, just like Sabina. At first, because she seemed so peaceful, Tanaquil thought she was merely unconscious, but when she lifted Acte’s head and saw the spreading stain on the white rock below, it was obvious she was way too late. But the action of moving the body had dislodged Acte’s tunic, and Tanaquil saw that the insides of her thighs were bright red and sticky, and that’s when she’d panicked and screamed.

Orbilio scratched his chin. ‘She hadn’t been…mutilated?’

Tanaquil shook her head. ‘She’d been raped, but there weren’t any of the bites and bruises like on Sabina.’

The celery stick fell from Claudia’s fingers. Had Tanaquil interrupted the killer before he’d finished his work?

‘Why should Collatinus think it was your brother who killed Acte?’

Tanaquil spread her hands. ‘He said that since we arrived, two women had been murdered in the same foul way and he didn’t believe in coincidence. What’s more, he seemed to attach some significance to our leaving straight after that horrid business with Sabina.’

Don’t we all, thought Claudia.

Orbilio rose to his feet. ‘Look, you clean up, have a rest…’

His eyebrows rose enquiringly and Claudia found an imaginary knot in her girdle needed adjusting. No way! That light-fingered con artist could doss in someone else’s bedroom.

‘Use my quarters,’ he said, with excruciating politeness. ‘First past the shrine, on the right.’

Bugger. It was too late to intervene.

The redhead began to sob into Orbilio’s handkerchief. ‘They’re going to kill him, I can see it.’

Claudia snorted. If further proof was needed that Utti’s future was secure, that was surely conclusive. In fact, on that basis alone, he’d probably make eighty.