Lindsey Davis - The Ides of April

"Morellus thinks you had a lucky escape that night."

"Andronicus could have killed me any time."

"Ah, but soon he was unable to resist you!"

"Skip the crass jokes."

"I was not joking," replied Tiberius mildly. "He spoke of you to us at home as a gorgeous creature. There was hope you might reform the irresponsible side of his character-though I'd like you to know, I never wished him on you." He paused. "I tried quite hard to keep you apart."

Feeling disconcerted, I carried on: "Prior to those attacks, he had killed Julius Viator-why? Can it be that when Cassiana Clara was sitting in the garden at your house during that dinner party, and Andronicus found her, he was the man who assumed she was, as he told me very crudely, 'asking for it?' He made a grab for her? I wanted to persuade her to give me a witness statement-"

Tiberius shook his head and interrupted. "No need. The girl can be left to forget the incident, if she really can ever forget that it led to her husband's murder. I was in the colonnade on the other side of the garden, coming back from the facilities. Andronicus had not heard me. I saw it all. And yes, he tried to force himself on her. She was very inexperienced; the assault was a great shock to her."

"So he read the situation wrong? She screamed?" A nod. "Viator rushed out, saw his wife struggling, was furious, and like the other victims, he made his feelings known much too strongly for Andronicus?"

"Viator actually thumped him."

"Oh, now we see that was Viator's death sentence!"

"That seems to have been his first death," Tiberius said glumly. "One good punch from an athletic man caused his deterioration into a killer. And Andronicus was in severe disgrace at home for weeks after he assaulted Cassiana Clara," he told me. "Tullius gave him a warning. He came very close to being dismissed permanently that time."

"That time?"

"He has a long history of behaviour problems. Being reprimanded has no effect. He never admits he has done anything wrong. If forced, he blames other people; once you know him, you can watch his cunning brain devising excuses as he wriggles." Tiberius described it wearily; I had the impression he had been involved in trying to rehabilitate the culprit. "He wins over Tullius, who likes an easy life, with that charm of his."

"And Faustus?"

"Sees through him."

"One day Andronicus took me to the house," I admitted, knowing that Tiberius would raise a scathing eyebrow. On cue, he obliged. "I thought the other staff were friendly with him."

"That's how he gets away with it," Tiberius said, scowling. "You and I view him as a predator, but most people notice nothing unusual. He knows how to blend in. He has hidden his aggression and his lack of remorse in plain sight."

"When I said her husband had been murdered, Cassiana Clara was terrified he would go after her next. It seemed extreme then. Of course she is right. If he fears she might give evidence against him- say he assaulted her and her husband threatened him-Andronicus will attack her too. Someone threatens him, he just wipes them out of existence. Has Clara been sent away from Rome to protect her? Has the aedile warned her family?"

"Yes. To both questions."

That was a relief. "So," I concluded, "what do we think about Lupus?"

"Lupus?"

"The oyster boy."

Tiberius chipped in immediately: "We buy our shellfish from that stall. Lupus was a cheeky lad; I remember him. Liked to joke with customers, typical barrow boy, pain in the arse sometimes, basically too young to judge when his comments were inappropriate. The Porticus is over by the temple, so if no one else was on that side of the hill but Andronicus had to be at the archive, he would be ordered to pick up supplies. On one occasion, he came home complaining bitterly that a boy had been rude. Took it personally, as he always does. Refused to go again."

"Clearly he did go, once too often," I concluded grimly. "When I interviewed the family they reckoned they saw nobody the day Lupus was killed, but if we paraded Andronicus they might remember him."

"They might."

Tiberius stood up. The subject was affecting him. It was affecting me too, so I also lumbered to my feet. I felt stiff, weary and downhearted. He complained about us sitting in that enclosed stuffy room for too long to be good for thought; he urged that we left the station house and went somewhere with a new view and more air.

In the doorway Tiberius paused, looking at me from close quarters. He could see I was reluctant to go. "All right?"

"Fine."

"I don't think so."

"I will be."

He waited a beat, but when he saw my chin come up, he steered me into the colonnade and we set off walking.

Slowly, as Tiberius and I walked through our city that morning, I recovered my courage. I had lived in Rome for fifteen years, most of them on the Aventine. These were my streets. I became determined not to be driven out of them by fear.

Our steps led away from the riverside, a direction in which I rarely went. We must have taken a turn around the Plane Tree Grove, a rather bare public park near the road that was named after it, though I was so distracted I had no memory of this afterwards. Then we worked across the southern side of the main Hill until we emerged out of the Thirteenth District into the Twelfth, beside the vigiles' Fourth Cohort headquarters, where I had been entertained by Scaurus and his henchmen. No mention was made of that.

For a long while, we did not talk at all, as we meandered down the wide Street of the Public Fishponds towards the Circus Maximus. Stopping short of a descent right down to the racetrack, we made our way above it instead, along the lower part of the Hill again, back past the two Temples of Venus and eventually that of the flower-and vegetable-covered garden god Vertumnus. I remember I commented to Tiberius on the Temple of Venus Verticordia that only in Rome could the goddess of love and lust be worshipped in a version that was propaganda for sexual purity.

"Venus the 'turner of hearts' towards virtue-meaning women's chastity, of course," I grumbled.

"Faithfulness in love," argued Tiberius, revealing a romantic side.

"If you believe in it!"

"You don't?"

"I do. My husband was faithful to me, and I to him."

"I have noticed you always speak well of your marriage."

"Well, it was short!"

"And a long time ago? — Yet you still wear your wedding ring."

Wrong. Lentullus and I had never bothered. I explained wryly that I acquired this ring only a few years ago from a house sale my family organised and wore it to imply respectability in my work. Sometimes it may have deterred men, though I had no wish to remind the runner that I ever looked available. It was bad enough that he knew I had attracted Andronicus.

"Have you ever been married, Tiberius?" He only wore a signet ring, its symbol a spirited fish-tailed horse. I had seen it when I inspected his scarred hand.

"Once."

"Oh-and never again?"

"I didn't say that." This man failed to say quite a few things, I was beginning to suspect.

Our meandering had brought us to the lower reaches of the steep Clivus Publicius. We had to pass the house where the child Lucius Bassus had lived, the very spot where he had been run over by the Metellus and Nepos wagon. On the wall where Tiberius had written up his fatal poster calling for witnesses, the family had now installed an oversize memorial plaque. They must have spent the compensation money Salvidia's stepson paid. A touching message commemorated Lucius:

Lived three years, four months, ten days: a little soul who loved only play, returned to the gods of the underworld:

his parents' hopes are shattered.