Lindsey Davis - Scandal Takes a Holiday

Scandal, with the names of the parties robustly revealed, because we are an open city. Deceived husbands need to be told what is going on, lest they be charged with condoning it, which is statutory pimping. And the rest of us like a bit of fun.

I was disappointed. Where the gossip should be was just a note that Infamia, the columnist, was on holiday. He often was on holiday. Everyone always joked about it. Let's be blunt. it was thought that senators' wives whose affairs he discovered sometimes gave him a free ride to shut him up, but the senators who knew about it then hired thugs to track down Infamia, and the thugs sometimes caught him.

'On holiday' meant our scandalmonger was laid up with wounds again. With no juicy stories to delay me further, soon I was being interviewed by the rather dour scribes who run the news service. Or so they thought. I had more experience. In reality, I was interviewing them. There were two, Holconius and Mutatus. They looked about fifty, worn out by years of deploring modern life. Holconius, the elder and presumably senior, was a seamy, thin-featured stylus-pusher who last smiled when the story came in about the Empress Messalina plying her trade in a brothel. Mutatus was still more po-faced. I bet he never even chuckled when the Divine Claudius pronounced his edict that farting was legal at dinner parties.

'Let's go through your problem,' I probed, fetching out a note tablet. It made them nervous so I held the waxed pages upon my knee, with the stylus at rest. They told me they had lost contact with one of their number whose name, they said, was Diocles. I nodded, trying to give the impression I had heard, and of course solved, such mysteries before. 'How long has he been missing?'

'He is not exactly missing,' Holconius demurred. I could have scoffed, well why call me in then? But those who work for the Emperor, putting an imperial gloss on events, skewing everything to look good – have a special way with words. Holconius had to send everything he wrote for Palatine approval, even if it was a simple list of market days. He then had every pearly phrase redrafted by some idiot until its impact was killed. So I let him be pedantic, this time.

'We do know where he went,' he murmured.

'And that was?'

'To stay with a relative in Ostia. An aunt, he said.'

'That's what he told you?' I assumed 'aunt' was the new term for fancy woman, but I thought no worse than that.

'And he never came back?' So the fancy woman was tasty. 'Is this unusual?'

'He is a little unreliable.' Since no details were supplied, I embroidered it myself.

'He is lazy, drunk, feckless, he forgets to be where he should be, and he's always letting people down.'

'Why, do you know him?' interrupted Mutatus, sounding surprised.

'No.' I knew plenty like him. Especially scribes. 'So the job for me is: go to Ostia, find the bonny Diocles, sober him up if he'll let me, then bring him back?' Both of the scribes nodded. They seemed relieved. I had been gazing at my note-tablet; now I looked up.

'Is he in trouble?'

'No.' Holconius still hardly raised a sweat.

'Any trouble,' I repeated quietly. 'At work, involving work, trouble with women, trouble with money, health worries?'

'None that we know of.'

I considered possibilities. 'Was he working on a particular story?'

'No, Falco.' I reckoned Holconius was telling me the big fibs. Well, he was the political hack; Holconius, I knew, took the shorthand notes in the Senate, so untruths were his stock in trade. Mutatus just listed this month's programme for the games. He could do stupid inaccuracy with effortless grace, but he was weaker on pure lies.

'And what section of the Gazette would Diocles normally produce?'

'Does it matter?' asked Mutatus quickly. I deduced it was relevant, but I said sweetly,

'Probably not.'

'We do want to be helpful.' Reluctance filled his tone.

'I would like to be fully informed.' Innocent charm filled mine.

'Diocles writes the light-hearted items,' stated Holconius. He looked even more sombre than before. As the edict reporter, he disapproved of anything light. I could tell that before I arrived today Holconius and Mutatus had held detailed conversations about how much to confide in me. I worked out what that meant.

'So your absentee writes the shock-and horror society news?' The two scribes looked resigned.

'Infamia' is the pseudonym of Diocles,' Holconius confirmed. Even before they admitted it, I wanted the job.

In my first week of enquiries in Ostia, I made a slow start. I reported my lack of progress to Helena, the morning after she arrived.

'If Diocles' landlady is his real aunt, I'm the back legs of a Syrian camel.' Helena and I were eating fresh bread and figs, sitting on a bale near a ferry that took workers to and fro between the main town and the new port. We had risen fairly early. We were entertained by a stream of loaders, negotiators, customs men, and sneak thieves going to the port for their morning's work. Eventually a host of newly landed merchants were ferried in, along with other foreigners in multicoloured hues, looking bemused. The merchants, fired with know how, raced straight for the hired mules. Once they realised all the transport had been taken, the general travellers milled around aimlessly; some asked us the way to Rome, which we pretended we had never heard of. If they were persistent we pointed out the road to take, and assured them they could easily walk it.

'You are being childish, Marcus.'

'I've been sent on fifteen-mile hikes by horrible locals in foreign parts.' I had been deliberately misdirected by roadsweepers in Rome too. 'You thought of it first.'

'Let's hope we never see them again.'

'Don't fret. I'll explain you are a senator's daughter, brought up in ignorance and luxury, and have no idea of distance, direction or time.'

'And I'll say you're a swine!'

'Oink.' Our room nearby came with neither a breakfast menu nor a slave to serve it up. The accommodation had a bucket for the well and a couple of empty lamps, but not so much as a foodbowl. One reason we were out and about was to buy basics for picnics before Albia and the children arrived. My little daughters might be fobbed off with 'Let's all go hungry for fun on this holiday!', but Albia was a ravenous teenage girl; she turned nasty unless fed every three hours.

At least we were in the commercial hub of the Empire. That helped with the shopping. Imported goods were piled in mounds everywhere and helpful negotiators were only too happy to drag items from the bales and sell them cheaply. Some actually had a connection with that cargo; one or two might even pass the price to the owner. I had already bought some winecups an hour ago, and thus considered my part done. There was no need to order up amphorae; provision had been put in hand by me. Helena pointed out that after a mere week on my own I had reverted to the classic informer. I now reckoned a room was fully furnished if it contained a bed and a drink, with a woman as an optional extra. Food was something to snatch at a street caupona while on watch.

So far I had nobody to watch. My case was going nowhere.

'You found out where Diocles was living, though?' Helena asked, after finishing a mouthful of fresh bread. I picked olives from a cone of old scroll papyrus.

'A hired room near the Marine Gate.'

'So stayingwith his 'aunt' was a fiction. He is not with his family?'

'No. Commercial landlady of the forbidding kind.'

'And how did you discover her?'

The scribes knew the street name. Then I knocked on doors. The landlady soon popped out of her hidey-hole, because Diocles had left owing rent and she wanted it. Her story matches what the scribes already told me, Diocles arrived here about two months ago, seemed set to stay for the summer season, but vanished without warning after about four weeks, abandoning all his stuff. It came to light because the Gazette had an arrangement to send a runner once a week to pick up copy. The runner couldn't find Diocles.'