Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

She sank back into the chair. Behind her, a lizard skittered up the plinth of a statue, and vanished amongst the folds of a stone toga. Finally she said, ‘All right. We’ll start before we get instructions from Rome. But I want it done properly.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ he insisted, feeling old resentments rise.

‘There’s only one way to do this sort of thing.’ She lowered her voice and glanced round to make sure the garden slaves were safely out of earshot. ‘The funeral contractor — a horrible man, he smells — has offered to supervise the questioning.’

Ruso stared into the eyes of his former wife. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Well, you aren’t going to do it, are you? I can hardly ask the staff to question each other, and besides, you know what will happen. Unless you frighten them enough, they’ll just all cover up for each other.’

‘And if you frighten them too much, they’ll make up whatever you want to hear.’

‘That’s why we need an expert. Attalus knows what he’s doing, even if he does smell. He has the contract for the amphitheatre.’

‘Just because he can shift dead bodies — ’

‘He’s had to do this sort of thing several times before.’ She paused. ‘I know it’s not nice, but he’s promised to be very discreet. He’ll do everything a long way from the main rooms so there’s no disturbance, and his men will bring their own equipment and clear up afterwards.’

‘But — ’

‘This is not the time to be squeamish! What else are we going to do? We’ll tell him to stop as soon as we’ve found out who did it.’

Ruso clamped his fingers around the warm stone of the tabletop. ‘No.’

‘Oh, do make your mind up! You said yourself, we need to question everybody. I’ll get Daddy to pay him for doing the people here, and you can pay for yours.’

Ruso frowned. ‘My what?’

‘Your household, of course. He did die in your house, after all.’

‘No.’

The painted eyes locked with his own. ‘I’m the family,’ she said. ‘I decide what’s to be done.’

‘If you insist on having the staff tortured,’ said Ruso quietly, ‘I’ll have to tell people what Severus said. That way at least the male slaves will stand a chance of being left alone.’

‘Oh, Gaius!’ Claudia flung her hands in the air in exasperation. ‘Why do you always have to be so difficult?’

He was spared having to answer this question by the arrival of a kitchen slave with a plate of Claudia’s favourite honey cakes. He wondered what the staff who had arranged this kind gesture would think if they knew she had been discussing having them questioned under torture.

‘All right,’ she conceded, reaching for a cake. ‘You talk to people here and I’ll ask Daddy about Severus’ business contacts. But I can’t see how it’s going to help.’

Ruso waited until the slave was out of earshot. ‘Yesterday morning,’ he said, ‘can you remember exactly what Severus did? Was there anything out of the ordinary?’

She hesitated for a moment. Then she said, ‘He’d been having trouble sleeping lately. He was like that sometimes. Business worries, I suppose. Anyway, he woke up much too early as usual, farted, scratched his privates, jumped on me and woke me up too.’

Ruso hesitated. There was nothing of any investigative value in this account of his former wife waking up with another man, and certainly nothing he wished to hear repeated, but he had to ask. ‘If you were asleep, how do you know what he did when he woke up?’

She sighed. ‘Because I was pretending, Gaius. Sometimes he didn’t bother me if he thought I wasn’t awake.’

Ruso said, ‘Oh,’ and felt like an intruder. Then he said, ‘I don’t need that much detail.’

‘Then why did you ask?’

He wanted to say, Did you ever pretend to be asleep with me? ‘What did he do after that?’

‘He washed himself over at the basin, put on a clean tunic, grumbled as usual.’

‘About what?’

‘I thought you didn’t want all these silly details? About being ill.’

How illness could be seen as a silly detail when the man had dropped dead the same day was a mystery to Ruso. Trying not to sound too eager, he said, ‘So he was already ill?’

‘No worse than usual. Country air didn’t suit him. He said it gave him palpitations.’ She sniffed. ‘But the headaches and the bad stomach only ever struck after a big dinner.’

‘If he really had trouble with his heart — ’

‘If it was anything serious it would have killed him ages ago. So anyway, then he put on his house shoes, shut the door behind him and went to his office, and I never saw him alive again.’ She paused. ‘I wasn’t always cross with him, Gaius.’

Coming from Claudia, this was almost an expression of affection. Ruso was aware that she had honoured him with a confidence, and that he was supposed to respond accordingly. He coughed, urgently summoning and discarding various possible replies. I’m sorry was ambiguous. I know was untruthful. You weren’t always cross with me either was irrelevant, and …

And it was too late. The silence was growing awkward. Ruso said, ‘How do you know he went to his office?’

‘He always went to his office in the mornings to meet up with the steward. Not everyone is as disorganized as you.’

‘I’ll have to talk to the steward.’

‘Well, good luck. Zosimus is being no help at all. It’s the household steward’s job to organize the funeral, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, it is, I’m sure. But every time I tell him to do something he says he can’t act without orders from Rome. So I said, I’m the wife of the Senator’s agent and part of the family, and do you know what he said?’

This sounded like the sort of question Claudia usually answered herself, so Ruso raised his eyebrows in what he hoped looked like anticipation.

‘ “Not any more.” Not any more! So who am I, then?’

Ruso said, ‘Are there slaves mentioned in his will? People who would be freed after his death?’

‘I don’t know what’s in his will,’ said Claudia. ‘But he didn’t own any of the slaves. We’re the poor relations. Practically everything here belongs to the Senator.’ She paused. ‘Do you think he’ll pay for the funeral?’

Zosimus turned out to be a remarkably ill-informed steward. He was not aware of Severus having any enemies. He was not aware of anyone visiting the office yesterday morning apart from the farm manager and a slave delivering a couple of unimportant business letters which he himself had taken, read out and answered. Nor was he aware of any reason why he should answer any more questions.

Ruso might have been convinced by the man’s claim of ignorance, had he not known that Zosimus had supported Severus’ lie about the debt payment being two hundred short. As it was, the only thing of which he could be certain was that Zosimus did not trust him. It was also evident that any power Claudia had once been able to wield had died along with her husband. Zosimus had not hurried out in response to Claudia’s repeated ringing of the bell but had eventually strolled down the garden as if he had come of his own accord. It was therefore no surprise when the steward declared that he could not allow Ruso to enter the office or question the household staff.

‘I am the widow!’ Claudia reminded him, raising her chin. ‘I insist!’

‘And I’m in charge of the staff,’ said Zosimus with the calm of a man who knows his position is invincible. ‘A message has been sent to Rome for instructions.’

‘But the Senator doesn’t know we’ve already got somebody here who can look into it, does he? The doctor knows all about murders. He’s been involved in dozens of them over in Britannia.’