Lindsey Davis - Enemies at Home

The slaves were loafing in the courtyard, looking relaxed; that was typical of slaves. There was nothing they could do about their predicament; other people owned their lives and would decide their fate. The threat of death had stopped worrying them, at least for the time being.

Although the aediles were given no personal guards, their building contained strongboxes full of fines from the many who broke regulations (well, those who were spotted) so the place had protection. Its guards were temporarily keeping an eye on the Aviola slaves.

‘We lost one this morning.’

‘Careless! Someone run away?’

‘Died on us. The porter who was beaten up. He’s still on the premises if you want to have a look at him.’

‘I may as well.’

Nicostratus lay dead on a pallet, covered with a cloth, which did little to allay the stink of his rotted wounds. I could learn little about him from his corpse, except that he had been short, dark and hairy — and cruelly treated. The battery was pointless; why would thieves stop and beat up a porter so badly, when a couple of well-aimed blows is usually enough to have such a man whimpering in a corner? Or couldn’t they just have slipped him a few coins to lose himself for half an hour?

Were these robbers in love with violence? And had the porter’s beating fired them up, so they went on to attack Aviola and his bride too? But that would mean the murders were unplanned.

‘Someone knocked all hell out of this one! Did anyone try to look after him when he arrived here?’ The guard pulled a face. Fairly neat bandaging had been carried out on the dead man and one of his legs had a splint. ‘Manlius Faustus let him be seen by a doctor?’

‘But of course! Faustus insists we treat them all tenderly. We want them in good condition for the arena beasts, don’t we? There’s no fun if convicts are submissive and limp.’

I did not suppose having the man fit for the lions was Faustus’ motive.

‘Will someone ask the doctor to come and have a word with me? Dromo can take a message, if you give him directions. The patient may have said something, while he was being treated.’

Dromo did go, only to return bitterly complaining that the doctor was a bad-tempered Greek who had been horrible to him. That did not surprise me. I sympathised with the doc.

The man sent me a verbal message that he had better things to do than attend the dead. However, to satisfy Manlius Faustus, there was also a written report. The doctor described Nicostratus’ injuries, including a broken leg, a hole in his skull, and various traumatic wounds that appeared to have been inflicted by a blunt flat-faced weapon, such as a plank. Splinters of wood were in the wounds.

In the doctor’s expert opinion (his phrase), the savagery used on Nicostratus differed significantly from the controlled force required to strangle the other two victims.

In answer to my query, the patient gave up the struggle after a week of drifting in and out of consciousness, during which he never said anything about the attack.

Thank you, Hippocrates.

By the time Dromo brought me this, I was interviewing the slaves one by one, in the room Faustus used as his office. Afterwards, those I had seen were kept separate from those I had yet to see, so they could not confer.

Some owners acquire slaves who are all of a type. Not these. The nine survivors were a mixed bunch, all heights, colouring and weights. I reckoned they varied too in their levels of intelligence, skill and willingness. The young men had hair to their shoulders, normal practice, and all wore simple patched tunics in neutral colours. They looked fit and tidy, products of a decent home. In conversation none of them really told me much about Aviola or Mucia, though they spoke well of both.

Before we started, I reminded the group that the law said slaves had to give evidence under torture. I would not be doing that. ‘- Not at this stage.’ They knew what I meant.

I saw Phaedrus first, the other door porter. He was a sturdy, fair-haired young man with north European origins, a Gaul or German. He had an open face and honest manner — which generally signals a lying witness. According to him, although I had been told Nicostratus was the night porter, it was the other way around. Phaedrus was to have been on late duty but had stayed in the kitchen, having his supper first; it was when he went to relieve his colleague that he found Nicostratus and raised the alarm.

‘So were you in the kitchen throughout the robbery and murders?’

‘Yes, but I heard nothing.’

‘Phaedrus, I have been in that kitchen. I know the layout. Are you sure you never heard the intruders breaking in and attacking Nicostratus?’

‘No. They must have put him out cold with the first blow.’

‘Then they continued knocking him about? Unlikely! You heard no one come across the courtyard?’

‘They must have tiptoed through the columns on the opposite side.’

I agreed that fitted with them going over to the dining room to take the silver. ‘Would you have run to help if you heard a commotion?’

‘Of course I would have! Sorting trouble is my job.’

‘You don’t shy from a rumpus?’

‘I would have been straight in.’

‘So what made you deaf? Was anybody else with you?’ The blond belligerent looked shifty but said no. ‘Oh, come on, Phaedrus. You can do better than this. What was taking up so much of your attention that you missed all the racket? Were you playing around with somebody?’

Phaedrus had no answer, or none he would give me.

I asked about working with Nicostratus. Apparently they hardly knew each other, but got on well. It was routine for a house to have two porters, since one could not stay alert both day and night. (‘Alert’ ? In my family, we reckon door porters are dopey at all times. ) Phaedrus let slip that he himself was an incomer from Mucia’s household.

‘Really? It’s common on marriage for staffs to merge,’ I mused. ‘Sometimes they don’t gel, and that causes upsets.’

‘Oh, not us!’ maintained Phaedrus, looking innocent. Maybe the young men bonded. They were both in their twenties, Nicostratus slightly older. They could have palled up, talked about gladiators, discussed women (shared one?). A woman could well explain why Phaedrus was oblivious to noise that night.

‘So were you very upset when you discovered Nicostratus so terribly hurt? How do you feel about him dying today?’

His face changed then, showing true distress.

I let him go.

Who next? I chose the gardener.

Diomedes was short, lumpy in the body, big-eared and almost bald. He readily agreed that he was not over-taxed in his duties, though he claimed to hanker for the wider acreage of the country villa in Campania. At the Rome apartment he was a general handyman. He supplemented the water carrier, fetching extra buckets from the local fountain. He nailed things and cleared gullies. He went up ladders to wash shutters − which presumably meant he looked in through windows and saw room contents. He would have known the silver existed.

I told him Polycarpus had said Diomedes was asleep in the garden. ‘The robbers went through to the dining room, then the bedroom. So you are the person most likely to have seen them. What do you say?’

Diomedes said shamelessly that there had been wine at the feast, to which he and Amethystus helped themselves. So yes, they were slumped in a corner of the peristyle, but he bragged that both were completely ‘crocked’. They would not have woken if the robbers had trampled all over them and left boot-prints on their heads.

I bought the story. He was clearly a sloppy workman, yet I found him free of guile.

How trusting, Albia! You ought to know how that works: the ‘honest’ suspect makes a small confession − to hide a bigger one.