Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

Someone was lying to him.

Perhaps the answer lay in whatever Asper had been trying to tell Metellus in that ill-fated letter to Room Twenty-seven. That was unfortunate because he still had no idea what it was. He was going to have to recheck everyone’s story. He also needed to go to a funeral, examine a body, report officially to the Council, get into Asper’s office, talk to the local money changer…

Farther along the walkway, a door opened. A child’s voice was raised in complaint. A slave emerged with both hands full of bags. Behind her he heard the child insisting that she wanted to stay here. Ruso shrugged his shoulders a couple of times to loosen them before he turned and headed back into Suite Three to get properly dressed and face the day.

That was when he noticed the pale rectangular shape lying just inside the street door. He flipped open the thin leaves of wood. Neatly penned across them in a bland script were the words, Get out of town as fast as you can. From a well-wisher.

He snatched the key from the hook, sliding it back and forth in the lock with an unsteady hand and swearing as the prongs failed to find the holes. Finally he wrenched the door open.

Dias was leaning against the stable wall opposite. The rest of the alley was empty except for a couple of hens scratching in the dirt.

Ruso forced himself to stay calm. “How long have you been there?”

“I came to take you to the cemetery, sir. The doctor’s on his way out there now.”

“Why didn’t you knock?”

“I did.”

“Did you see anybody put a note under my door?”

“No. Is there a problem?”

Ruso retreated. “No. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

Get out of town as fast as you can.

Why? And how long had Dias been standing there? Had he put the note there himself and then waited calmly for Ruso to find it?

He should have checked the street door as soon as he got up. Instead, he had wandered out to the garden with his mind full of the day ahead. The note could have been there all night.

He was halfway to the reception area when Serena’s cousin, whose name he had forgotten again, came out of the door clutching a ring of heavy keys. “Hello Ruso! There’s a message for you to pop next door and look at a carriage. How was your dinner party?”

“Short,” he said. Evidently the news about Bericus had not reached her yet. “I’ve had a confidential note pushed under the door,” he continued, “but nobody’s signed it. Could you ask the staff if anyone saw anything? Has anyone been asking which room I was in?”

“Of course.” A furrow appeared between the neatly plucked brows. “Are you all right? You look a bit pale.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her, backing away and giving what he hoped was a reassuring wave. “Absolutely fine. No problem at all. Fine.”

Any illusion that she might have believed him was spoiled as he heard her say, “Oh dear.”

There was no need to go to the stables to find Rogatus: Outside the mansio the overseer’s bandy legs were stationed next to a vehicle whose roof was being loaded with luggage.

“You wanted to see it before it went out, boss.”

The carriage was old and much repaired. Ruso walked all around it, conscious that Dias was watching him and wishing he knew what he was looking for. There was a fresh scrape along one side at about the right height for the overhanging oak. Other signs of damage to the woodwork could have been caused by wear and tear. There were no marks that looked like weapon scars. Rogatus, who clearly thought this was a waste of time, said he could see nothing, either.

“Perhaps,” said Ruso, crouching to squint along the shadowy line of a mud-spattered axle and wondering who wanted him out of town, “you could remind me exactly what Asper said about where he was going.”

“He was on the way to your office, boss,” replied the man without hesitation. “He’d got the tax money ready to go.”

Noting that he had now become boss instead of sir, Ruso said, “Did he mention calling on anyone on the way?”

“Not a word, boss.”

“And you’ve no idea why he was setting out so late?”

“I never asked. He could have made it before dark, though.”

Ruso moved to the front and eyed the hefty team of four who would pull the carriage to its next destination. “Are these-?”

“That’s them,” Rogatus confirmed.

One horse was munching thoughtfully on its bit. Another bent its neck to rub its muzzle against an itch on its left foreleg. None looked highly strung. Rogatus had rightly described the carriage as a “heavy old vehicle” and Ruso suspected the weight must be near the limit of their strength. Evidently the overseer did not believe in wasting horsepower. This was not a carriage that could outrun a mounted enemy, and he could see why it had not been stolen for a fast getaway.

He approached the weather-beaten native who was loading the luggage. “Are you the regular driver?”

“It’s no good talking to him, boss,” put in Rogatus. “He don’t know a thing.”

The native sniffed, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and swung a heavy bag up into the carriage. “At least I know how to drive.” Continuing in Latin that was effective rather than elegant, he added, “Him over there, he tell me there is no work for the day, then he give my team to some fool who lose them on the road and he think I will not find out.”

Rogatus pretended not to have heard. “Like I said before, boss, I was doing the tax man a favor. Most of us around here”-plainly this excluded the sniffing driver-“know how to show a bit of respect to authority.”

“Hah!” said the driver before Ruso could answer. “It is himself he is doing the favor to. The tax man drives, and the driver gets no wages.”

“The driver might get some wages,” said Rogatus, “If he got off his backside a bit more often.”

The driver tutted. “It is lucky I am a patient man,” he said, shaking his head as if contemplating the horrors that would ensue if he were not. “Without me here, his stables will fall to pieces.”

Rogatus gave the smallest of shrugs, as if the driver were not worth the effort of more. “Good luck getting any sense out of that one, boss. I tell you, if the rest of him worked as hard as his mouth, he’d be a wonder.”

The driver stabbed a rude gesture toward Rogatus’s departing back before bending to lift the next trunk. Ruso could imagine returning in twenty years’ time to find the pair of them toothless and shriveled with age, propping up opposite ends of the same bar and still complaining about each other over their beers to anyone who would listen.

The driver gasped a few choice words in British as he heaved up the weight of the trunk. It landed on the floor of the carriage with a crash. “What is it women put in these things?” he demanded.

“Crockery,” said Ruso.

The driver stepped back from the door. “You want a look, then? Have a look.”

Ruso climbed in, and out, and learned nothing other than the fact that today’s passengers had vast amounts of luggage. He was outside on the driver’s seat assessing how well he could see approaching robbers when a boy’s voice announced, “That’s a new driver.”

Ruso turned and recognized the officer’s family he had seen stopping to use the latrines at the posting station yesterday. He explained his presence with, “I’ve just finished checking your vehicle.”

“He is here to ask questions,” the real driver explained. “The last man who take it is murder on the road and the horses run off.”

The woman gave a small squeak of terror and clutched at both children.

“No problems, mistress,” the driver continued, giving her a grin that displayed a solitary tooth and slapping the nearest horse on the neck as if to show how dependable it was. “All safe with me today.”