David Wishart - Solid Citizens

‘I was visiting a patient this side of Castrimoenium. Nerva’s messenger caught me on the road. What’s going on? The man said Aulus Mettius has been found murdered.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I thought you might want to show off. Save me a bit of bother and just tell me who did it.’

He grinned. ‘I’ll do my best. But I don’t perform miracles, Corvinus, and sleuthing’s your department.’

‘Fair enough.’ I turned to Phrontis. ‘This is my son-in-law. Do you think we could see your master’s body now?’

‘Certainly, sir.’ The major-domo was frowning at Clarus: doctors tend to come pretty low in the social pecking order, and doctors visiting dead patients rank even lower. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’

They’d put him on the bed in his room, just as they’d brought him in, on a makeshift stretcher. The way he was lying, like with Caesius, there was no sign of the wound, and what I noticed most of all was the look of surprise on his face.

‘We’re waiting for the undertakers to come from town,’ Phrontis said quietly. ‘They shouldn’t be long. Would you like me to stay?’

‘No, that’s fine. We’ll come back out when we’ve finished. If you could arrange to have someone show us to where he was found?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ll do that.’

‘Oh, and maybe send someone over to the Roscius place, ask Quintus Roscius if he’d meet us there to give us the details. Nerva’s slave Tertius would do. He came over here with me.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course.’

He left.

‘OK, Clarus,’ I said, stepping back. ‘Do your stuff.’

I waited while he examined the body. Me, I’m OK with corpses, but like the last time I’d watched him do it I found his brisk detachment chilling. Finally, he pulled the bed well away from the wall, moved round into the space behind it, and put his hands beneath the corpse’s armpits.

‘Take a hold of his head for a second, will you, Corvinus?’ he said. ‘Don’t let it droop.’

‘ What? ’

‘I need to see the wound. Unless we roll him over — which I don’t want to do, because he’s beginning to stiffen — I have to pull him clear of the stretcher so I can get underneath. Do it quickly, please, in case anyone comes.’

I moved in and took Mettius’s head in both hands, supporting it, while Clarus heaved the body backwards.

‘That should do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t let go, right? Rigor’s setting in quite fast, and we might not be able to get it to go back the way it is now.’

Gods!

He took a metal stylus from his tunic pouch, knelt down and peered up at the wound, prodding it. Finally, he grunted with satisfaction.

‘OK, that’s enough,’ he said, straightening and moving back to the corpse’s feet. ‘Hang on for a bit longer while I pull him back on to the stretcher.’

He did. Then we moved the bed into its original position.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘He’s been dead three or four hours, but you knew that already, I suppose. Killed by a single blow to the back of the skull. From the shape of the wound, the weapon was about an inch and a half thick at its striking point. Possibly a club of some kind, but because the angle and the position suggest a lateral blow rather than a downward one, more probably a longish weighted stick. That’d account for the severity of the damage, too. The bones of the skull aren’t just broken at the point of impact; they’re completely shattered and driven into the base of the brain itself. My guess is a double-handed swipe with a lot of force behind it and plenty of leverage.’

‘So the murderer was probably a man?’

‘No, not necessarily. A strong woman in good health could’ve done it, easy. Given, as I say, a long, heavy stick and plenty of room to swing it.’

I sighed. ‘So we’ve narrowed it down to the murderer being either a man or a woman, right?’

‘More or less.’

‘Great. Score one for science. You’re not helping much here, pal.’

‘I warned you, Corvinus, I don’t do miracles. I can tell you at least that you’re not looking for a one-armed midget. Whoever hit him was as tall as he was, or not all that much shorter. Unless he was kneeling down when he got clouted, of course, in which case all bets are off.’

‘Very useful,’ I said sourly. ‘Thanks a bunch.’ The bottom line was that none of it ruled out any of the likely suspects — including Andromeda — barring maybe Brother Lucius, who probably couldn’t have mustered up the requisite strength. But then if Marilla’s theory was right — and it was the best one going, under the circumstances — he wouldn’t be doing his own dirty work in any case, would he?

Hell.

Mind you, the long, heavy stick side of things was interesting. Who did we know whose everyday job involved carrying a long, heavy stick and knowing how to use it offensively?

Right.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you’re finished then we’ll go and take a look at the scene of the crime.’

It wasn’t far, just out of sight of the villa complex where the cultivated land stopped and nature took over, a dip in the landscape made even more secluded by a close-packed grove of pine trees with thick, man-high bushes growing between them. The perfect place for a clandestine meeting.

A good place for a murder, too.

‘Where exactly was your master found, pal?’ I asked the slave who’d brought us.

He pointed to a patch of flattened grass just inside the clearing. ‘Just there, sir.’

Yeah. That fitted. The way things were arranged, the killer could’ve hidden behind the screen of foliage and scrub, waited for his victim to pass or turn his back, then come out and let him have it. Which is what I reckoned had happened. It’d been raining, but not heavily, and there were still clear splashes of blood on the ground.

‘Which way’s the Roscius property?’ I said.

‘We’re on the edge of it, sir. The farmhouse is over there.’ The slave pointed again, to the right. ‘About two or three hundred yards.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I looked round. Clarus was poking about in the undergrowth. ‘You find anything?’

‘No. Nothing that could’ve been the murder weapon, anyway,’ he said.

‘See if you can …’ I began, then stopped. Quintus Roscius was coming through the trees from the direction of his farm. ‘Ah. Hi, Roscius. Thanks for coming over.’

‘No problem.’ I noticed he very carefully wasn’t looking at the spot where the body had been. ‘There isn’t much I can tell you, though.’

‘Just what you’ve got will be enough, pal,’ I said easily. ‘So what’s the story?’

He shrugged. ‘I was hunting. When the dog led me down here I thought she was following a scent. Mettius was lying face down, with the back of his head all bloody. I went down to the villa and raised the alarm. That’s all there is.’

‘You usually hunt in this part?’

‘Sure. Technically, this is my land, although that wouldn’t matter much because it’s useless ground and no one around here gets uptight about things like that. You get a few deer coming down into the fields, particularly in the winter when food’s scarce. I usually leave some vegetable scraps lying around to attract them and take a walk up this way when I’m out after the small stuff. Sometimes I get lucky.’

Yeah; now he came to mention it there was a pile of old cabbage leaves and a few rotting carrots at the edge of the clearing. Fair enough. ‘Did Mettius do any hunting?’ I said.

‘Nah. Never took any interest in it. He was a town boy, and the family’s well enough off not to have to bother about keeping their larder stocked personally. They get their bailiff to set a few snares and limed twigs, sure, but that’s about it.’