David Wishart - Solid Citizens

‘Was there much blood? On the ground, I mean.’

‘Nah. It was throwing it down, had been all night. The alley was like a river.’

Well, that seemed straightforward enough; certainly everything fitted. I was turning to go when I had another thought. ‘You know Opilia Andromeda, the brothel-keeper, right?’

‘Sure. Everyone does, round about here. She’s OK, Andromeda, always says hello, like you saw. We pass the time of day sometimes, when trade’s slack. Not that we have any contact professionally, so to speak. I’m a married man, myself, and if I did try anything on my wife’d kill me.’

‘She been here long?’

‘About a year. She’s from Tibur, originally. Bought the business cheap from old Mama Tyche when she retired.’

‘How did she manage that? I mean, cheap or not it must’ve cost a fair slice of cash.’

‘Oh, well, now.’ He sucked on a tooth. ‘It’s quite a story, that. No secret, mind, it was all over the neighbourhood five minutes after she arrived. You notice she wears a scarf?’

‘Yeah. To cover a burn scar. A big one, from the looks of it.’

‘Right. She got that in a house fire. She was in the business herself, just one of the girls. Slave, not free.’

I remembered the burned-out shell I’d passed on the same street as the brothel entrance. ‘A fire? The one in the building further down the road near the main drag?’

‘Nah, nothing to do with that. That only happened a few months ago, and the place was a warehouse. “House fire”, I said. It was back in Tibur, before she came here. There was an accident with a lamp, some drunk or other in one of the rooms playing silly buggers, and the place went up like a torch. She pulled the madam — that was her owner, Opilia — out of the flames and got herself burned doing it. Opilia freed her and gave her her stake. Lucky chance, that was. She’s no spring chicken, Andromeda, and no one wants to go with a girl that’s damaged goods, even over in Tibur.’

Interesting. I’d’ve liked to know how a slave-prostitute had developed a taste for Plato, mind. I doubted that Lydia — free or slave — could get the length of reading even the graffiti on the brothel walls. Unusual lady was right.

I thanked the guy, and left. The next place I needed to go was the victim Caesius’s own house, for a word with his major-domo.

I made my way back round to the main street — what they call the Hinge in Bovillae — and headed left towards the Arician Gate. A big, old house, Nerva had told me. There weren’t many of these to start with, and besides the biggest of the lot had cypress branches hung up round the door, which was, no pun intended, a dead giveaway: it was Caesius’s, for sure. I knocked, and the door was opened by a young slave with the front of his fringe shorn off close to the scalp.

‘Valerius Corvinus, pal,’ I said. ‘Silius Nerva asked me to look into the death of your master. Could I have a word with the major-domo, do you think? Anthus, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course.’ He stood aside. ‘Just go through to the atrium. I’ll fetch him for you.’

I did, and stopped short at the entrance. What I hadn’t been expecting was that Caesius himself would still be in residence, laid out on a funeral couch in his magistrate’s mantle and with a pan of incense burning beside him.

Under these circumstances you have to observe the niceties. I took the pair of shears from the small table at the couch’s foot, snipped off a lock of my own hair, put it in the waiting basket at the corpse’s feet, and added a pinch of incense to the pan.

Then I took a closer look at him.

Sixty was about right, maybe a bit over. He’d been a good-looking man, Caesius, with a strong face — it still had crumbs of dry plaster on the sideburns from when they’d taken the death-mask — and a full head of silvered hair. No sign of the wound that had killed him; that’d be on the back of the head, and the undertakers would’ve cleaned it up and made sure it wasn’t immediately visible when they laid him out. The gold coins covering his eyes glinted at me in the sunlight filtering through the gap above the ornamental pool.

‘A fine-looking man, wasn’t he, sir?’

I turned. Anthus, obviously. Small and stooped, about the same age as his master.

‘Yeah. Yeah, he must’ve been,’ I said. ‘When’s the funeral?’

‘This afternoon. The senate is giving it at public expense.’ There was no mistaking the pride in the old guy’s voice. ‘That doesn’t often happen, as you know. The master would’ve been very gratified, and appreciated the honour very deeply. You’ll be attending yourself, sir, of course.’

I hadn’t planned on it, but I couldn’t well say no, not to the guy’s face. I wasn’t wearing a mourning mantle, sure, and there wasn’t time to go back to Castrimoenium to change, but under the circumstances I didn’t think that’d matter much if I stuck to the sidelines. No doubt it being a public funeral there’d be quite a crowd there just to watch.

A public funeral explained why the body was still here, too. These things take time to organize.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I’ll be going.’

‘The ceremony begins an hour after noon. Processing from here, sir, naturally, but I should simply wait in the market square if I were you. That’s where they’ll be delivering the eulogy.’ A glance at my mantle-less tunic and still-very-damp and far-from-new cloak; under normal circumstances the guy would probably have added a Bathyllus-type sniff, but as it was I got off easy. ‘Now. Young Titus said that you were investigating the master’s death on behalf of the senate. How can I be of assistance?’

‘Just a few questions, pal, and a bit of background information.’

‘Anything. Anything at all. Ask away, please, and I’ll do the best I can.’

‘Ah … do you think we could go somewhere, uh …?’ I gestured at the corpse, not sure how to finish the question. Quieter or less public didn’t quite seem to fit the bill, somehow.

‘More convenient.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. The master’s study, perhaps. If you’d like to follow me.’

I did. He led me through to the study, behind an ornately panelled wooden door.

‘Here we are, sir,’ he said. ‘Do sit down on the couch. I’ll stand, myself, if you don’t mind.’

I’d expected the usual books, and there were a few of these, right enough, in a book-cubby beside the window, plus the other normal items of study furniture such as the expensive-looking rosewood desk and an iron strongbox, but most of the walls were lined with open cupboards whose shelves were almost full of artwork: pots, figurines, small bronzes. Old Greek, mostly, and pretty good stuff, from what I could tell. On the writing desk itself, there was a lovely marble group of the Abduction of Ganymede that must’ve set the guy back a good slice of his yearly income.

Anthus saw me looking.

‘It was the master’s hobby, sir,’ he said. ‘Almost his obsession. He was a keen collector, as you can see, for many years. Very knowledgeable, too. Now. What exactly did you want to know?’

‘Nothing specific,’ I said. ‘Or at least, nothing more than anything else. Like I told you, I’m just feeling my way, working on the background at present. Silius Nerva said your master was a widower. His wife died quite recently, and there were no children. That right?’

‘Yes. The Lady Vatinia passed on just over two months ago. And no, they had no family, unfortunately.’

‘There’s a brother, I understand.’

Was that a flicker? ‘That’s correct. Master Lucius. He was — is — five years younger than the master.’