Lindsey Davis - The Accusers

Be careful,' warned Helena as I left next day. Determined to impose my authority on my younger partners, I was heading out early. I creaked and had a blind side, but there was no choice.

'Don't worry. This business is all talk,' I replied drily, alluding to her own misplaced belief up until yesterday. A twinge caught me. 'As you see!'

I was going to talk about funerals later. It seemed the wrong moment to tell Helena that.

'Don't get into any fights, Falco.'

I winced at the pains I already felt. 'No, darling.'

First, I went to Rubiria Carina's house to re-interview her and her brother. On the subject of their father's will, I extracted no more than Honorius had done. They both meekly accepted their disinheritance and told me that so did the elder sister, Juliana.

'Birdy, Birdy, you're not helping yourself Indignation will look much better to a court. It's more natural. We are trying to advise you; contest the will!'

'I can't,' he whimpered. As usual, he gave no reason. When I glared, he stiffened up. 'I choose not to. And I will not discuss it.' Whatever pressure he was under to make him take this attitude, it must be serious.

'If your father dumped you in favour of your wife, that might just about have been acceptable – but now Saffia has left you. Maybe your strange, devious papa might have altered his will if he had lived – but he ignored the chance. His witnesses were to be called in to swear to his suicide; he could easily have prepared an updated will and had it signed. As far as I know, he made no move to rewrite the conditions or to add a codicil. So, Negrinus, what do you have to say about this?'

'Nothing.'

'Did you know about this will?'

'Yes.'

'From the start? When it was prepared more than two years ago?'

'Yes.'

'Did you argue?'

'No. Father could do as he wished. I had no choice.'

'Did you even talk to him about his arrangements?'

A vague look came over that oddly bookish face. 'I think he meant to change the will.' Negrinus was unconvincing. We could not defend him in court with anything that sounded so insincere.

'Our father was not devious,' Carina stated frigidly. She must have been harbouring resentment over my remark.

'Your father had been proved corrupt,' I reminded her. 'Now it looks as if his personal relationships were as rocky as his business conscience.

'Children have no options in their family heritage,' she commented. I saw Birdy heave a huge sigh to himself. His sister only assumed a look of determination.

'Why did your father favour Saffia Donata?'

'Nobody likes her,' Carina suggested. 'Papa felt sorry for her, perhaps.'

I could not bring myself to suggest to Birdy that his father had had an affair with his wife.

I did ask these legacy-spurning siblings about their parents' relationship. Why, after a marriage of forty years or more, had their father been so ungenerous to Calpurnia Cara?

'We have no idea,' Carina told me firmly. I always felt she was the tough one, but even Birdy clenched his jaw.

'Well, how do you react to this? – I believe your mother killed your father.'

'No.' They both said it. They spoke up instantly. Then, as if she could not restrain herself, Carina murmured to Birdy, leaving me out of it: 'Well, in a way she did. She made the situation unbearable, you know.'

I looked at him quizzically. He explained it as their mother trying to force the issue of their father committing suicide. I did not believe that was what Carina had meant. She clammed up, of course.

Now I did tackle Birdy on the obvious solution: 'I'm afraid your father made your wife Saffia his fancy piece – and your mother could no longer stand it.' Negrinus showed no reaction. Carina flushed, but said nothing. 'Were your parents always close to Paccius Africanus?'

'They had a business relationship with him,' Negrinus answered.

'Your mother too?'

'Why?' It came out very quickly.

'I think her attachment to him may have been rather too close. Still is. Perhaps that was how Calpurnia compensated for her husband's appalling behaviour with Saffia.'

'No.'

'Look, I know it's unpleasant to think about your mother fooling around with other men -' I wondered if it might be relevant that Birdy, with his thin-faced look, and Carina with her wider-cheeked features were so unlike each other.

'Our mother was always chaste, and faithful to Father,' Carina corrected me coldly.

Changing the subject, I told them about the informer Bratta buying the hemlock. 'I think he acquired it, on instructions from Paccius, for your mother to use.'

'No,' Birdy said again.

'Come on, Negrinus. You do not want to believe that your mother is a murderess, but it's her or you. See how a case can be built here. The family graft had been exposed; the family fortune was threatened. Paccius counselled your father to kill himself, your mother strongly supported it. She came up with a plan; Paccius used his man to acquire the drug. So your father took one lot of pills under pressure, changed his mind, thought he was safe – then was put down with another deadly potion like some old horse.'

'No,' said Negrinus, almost through gritted teeth. He was a man defending his mother – albeit a mother whose testimony would condemn him for parricide. 'I wish I'd never mentioned the hemlock plan, Falco. It was just a wild idea we once discussed, speculating on crazy ways to escape our financial losses. It was never serious. And never put into action.'

'Why Perseus?'

'What?'

I spelt it out patiently: 'You told me your mother wanted to kill a slave as a decoy, using his corpse so your father could go into hiding. The door porter was to be sacrificed. That's very specific: Perseus was the doomed slave. What had he done?'

'Again, that was just a suggestion…' Negrinus was shifty, though it could be awkwardness because he genuinely did not know.

Frustrated, I was now ready to pull out of the case. I had had plenty of clients I could not trust, but this beat all. I had never felt so much excluded, when excluding me worked utterly against the man's own interests.

'If you won't tell me the truth -'

'Everything I have told you is the truth.'

I laughed, brutally. 'But what have you not told me?'

I left, furious. I had not severed links. I should discuss that with my partners first. Besides, if I dropped the case, I would never learn what was going on. I had my curiosity. I wanted to know what these people were hiding.

It was mid-morning, so I paused and bought a snack at a bar just opposite. This can be a good idea, after a het-up meeting. Many a time staying on the scene had produced something helpful, once people thought I had left.

Eventually, Negrinus emerged and hopped agitatedly on the doorstep until transport was brought for him. I tailed him and was not surprised by where the smart litter headed. He went straight to his mother, like a devoted boy.

Wrong. He went to her house. But her outcast son did not want to see his cruel mama.

In the street outside the Metellus mansion with its yellow Numidian obelisks, he shed the litter and secured an observation post. He got the bar counter – which left me, when I arrived, hiding behind a stinking row of fish-pickle amphorae. He bought a beaker of hot, spiced wine; I had left my drink behind at the previous place. Typical. He was the suspicious character; I was the upright informer. The Fates would adorn him with comforts; I was stuck with a rumbling stomach and a cold arse.

What was he doing? When I realised, a sneaky fellow-feeling arose. The noble Metellus Negrinus was waiting for his mother to go out.

Calpurnia left home in her litter, which was a beaten-up chaise carried by two elderly bearers, one who seemed to have gout, neither. in uniform. I could see she was the passenger, because the curtains were missing. A miserable female slave, shivering in a thin gown, wandered behind on foot.