Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

Ruso was appalled to find himself wondering whether, if he hobbled fast enough, he could be out of sight behind the hedge before she turned round. Instead, he took a deep breath and approached the throne.

‘You can leave us, Zosimus,’ she told the steward. ‘I will ring if I need help.’

Ruso blinked. Between them on the little stone table there really was a brass bell.

The steward gave Ruso a look that said he had better not try anything and walked away.

Claudia’s skin looked waxy. Her eyes were puffy below the make-up, and the dark hollows beneath them matched the murky grey of her outfit. She said, ‘Zosimus thinks you poisoned my husband.’

Ruso shifted the bell to one side and sat on the table, since there was nowhere else and he was not going to hover like a servant. ‘I know.’

‘Well, did you?’

‘No. Did you?’

A crease appeared between the plucked brows. ‘Still as tactless as ever, I see.’

Ruso had wondered how this would go, and so far it was going just as he had expected. ‘Let’s start again, shall we? Hello, Claudia. I’m very sorry about Severus.’

She groped down in the side of the chair and drew out a fan. ‘Thank you,’ she said, wafting cool air across her face. ‘I’m sorry too. Surprisingly.’

He wanted very much to know what that meant, but knew it would be a mistake to ask.

She said, ‘Did he suffer?’

He told her the death had been very quick. He was not sure she believed him, but she seemed grateful. It occurred to him that he could not remember seeing her dressed without jewellery before.

‘I’m supposed to be up at the house, receiving condolences,’ she said, ‘but if I have to stay in that room with Ennia much longer I shall strangle her. I don’t care who’s going to take her back to Rome now, so long as somebody does. Preferably very soon.’

‘Did your husband have any other close family?’

‘No, thank goodness. Can you imagine what it would be like with a whole bunch of them, weeping and collapsing all over the place? All this is just a pantomime, you know. She did nothing but whinge when he was alive.’

It seemed to be the way with sisters. He said, ‘I suppose there’ll be an investigation.’

‘Eventually.’

‘Had he been ill recently?’

‘I thought you said he was poisoned?’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m just trying to make sure of the facts. I’ve had some experience with things like this over in Britannia. Let me see what I can find out for you.’

‘You?’

Ruso could not think what he could say that would change the opinion Claudia had formed of him during three years of marriage, so instead he said, ‘I’d imagine Severus had enemies.’

‘Of course he did. It wasn’t his job to make friends, it was his job to manage the estate. As you know.’

‘I’ll need names. Details.’

She shook her head. ‘We don’t need you, Gaius. Daddy’s gone to see Fuscus to ask him to send a message to his cousin the Senator.’

His cousin the Senator. Even Claudia was doing it now.

She said, ‘We expect he’ll send one of his own men to investigate.’

‘From Rome? That’ll take for ever.’

There was still a hint of superiority in her tone as she said, ‘The message will go on the official despatch service.’

‘Even so, it’ll be at least two or three weeks.’

Claudia patted her hair. A couple of strands dislodged themselves and tumbled down over one ear, making her at once half as formal and twice as attractive. ‘Daddy said that’s what we should do,’ she said. ‘When he finds out I’ve been talking to you, he’ll be furious.’

Ruso knew better than to argue with Daddy. He got to his feet and stepped across to check that there were no gardeners lurking behind the neatly sculpted cypress hedges before saying, ‘This probably isn’t the right time to tell you, but you need to know. I was alone with Severus when he died. His last words were, The bitch has poisoned me .’

She fell back into the chair as if he had struck her. ‘What?’

‘Don’t make me repeat it.’

‘But I — that’s ridiculous!’

‘If I thought you’d done it, I wouldn’t be telling you.’

‘Well, you’d better not tell anybody else.’ When he did not reply she said, ‘You haven’t, have you?’

‘Not yet.’

She began to pick at the feathers of the fan. ‘You may as well know. The man was a reptile.’

‘I’m sorry you weren’t happy,’ said Ruso, and meant it.

‘There’s no need to gloat.’

‘I wasn’t.’

A spurt of gravel rose up as the fan hit it. ‘Stop being so gallant, Gaius! I know all about him chasing Flora. Arria came to warn me.’

‘So I heard.’

‘I’m not surprised somebody poisoned him, are you?’

‘Don’t let anyone else hear you saying that.’

‘You’re the one who said I should speak my mind.’

‘Did I?’

‘You always said you could never work out what I was thinking!’

Ruso, enlightened, bit back, ‘No, what I said was that I wasn’t a bloody mind-reader.’

She gestured round her at the elegant garden. ‘I put up with him in exchange for all this, Gaius. In return he had access to Daddy’s business advice. The local contacts were very useful for him, because everybody he knew was back in Rome, and he didn’t want to be too beholden to Fuscus.’

‘I see.’ So Severus had harboured ambitions of his own.

‘It was a business arrangement. I didn’t want him dead.’

It made sense, and it made sense of Lollia Saturnina’s assertion that Claudia had made some very bad decisions lately. ‘So if it wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘and it wasn’t you, who was it?’

‘How should I know? It must have been somebody in your house. I expect it was Arria.’

‘Arria didn’t go near him,’ said Ruso, rapidly considering and dismissing this alarming possibility. ‘I’ve already made inquiries at home. How did he get on with his sister?’

‘I told you. They argued.’

‘About what?’

‘Going back to Rome, what else? As if any boyfriend would wait for her for this long!’

‘These were serious arguments?’

Claudia sighed. ‘Don’t be silly, Gaius. She didn’t kill him. She was hoping he would take her back there. Promise you won’t repeat what he said. You know what everyone will think.’

‘People will ask what his last words were.’

‘Then make something up.’

It was the second time in two days that he had been told to stave off questions with lies.

Claudia was frowning at him. ‘You’ll have to practise. You’re a terrible liar, you know. Try not to look shifty. And whatever you do, don’t scratch your — you’re doing it now! For goodness’ sake, Gaius!’

Ruso snatched his right hand away from his ear.

‘That always gives you away,’ said Claudia.

He said, ‘I’m not prepared to wait for a man from Rome. I want this looked into now.’

‘But Daddy said — ’

‘Daddy isn’t suspected of murdering him,’ pointed out Ruso. ‘And unless I tell people what Severus said, neither are you.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘I want permission to talk to the household here,’ he said, wondering if she realized that it was unlikely to be her household for much longer. ‘I need to find out what Severus did that morning. What he ate, where he went, who he spoke to.’

In the silence that followed he watched her fiddle with her hair.

‘Think about it, Claudia. The investigator from Rome won’t know any of us. As long as he can offer up somebody plausible to the court, he won’t care who it is. He’ll get a smooth lawyer to drag up everything that person’s ever supposed to have done or said, and the magistrates will convict them. You know what happens after that.’