Lindsey Davis - Ode to a Banker

Nobody stopped me. I walked quietly, as if I had permission. Self-confidence can take you a long way, even in a strange house.

There were various small rooms, frescoed yet not so grand as the ground-floor reception area. Most were bedrooms, some looking unoccupied as though they were kept for guests. One grand set of rooms, silent and shuttered, contained the master bedroom with the marital bed. If Vibia slept there now, she must feel like a lost little flea.

Eventually I found her in a smaller salon, propped up on a couchful of well-plumped cushions, chewing a stylus end.

'Writing! Dear gods, everyone's at it. I wish I had the ink-supply contract around here.'

Vibia flushed and put away the document. I wondered why she had been scribing it herself. 'No secretary? Don't tell me you are composing a love letter!'

'This is a formal notice asking a tenant to remove his possessions from my property,' she retorted frostily. I chanced my luck and held out my hand to look at it, but she clung on fiercely. It was her house. I was an uninvited male visitor. I knew better than to force her to do anything.

'Don't worry; I'm not going to make a grab for it. Informers avoid being accused of assaulting widows. Especially young attractive ones.'

She was naive enough to let any kind of compliment soften her. Lysa, her rival, would never have fallen for anything so routine. 'What do you want, Falco?'

'A private conversation, please. Business, regrettably.' I had lived with Helena Justina for three years, but I could still remember how to flirt. Well, I liked to practise on Helena.

'Business?' Vibia was already giggling. She signalled to her maids, who fluttered off. They would probably listen outside the door, but Vibia did not seem to have thought of that. No hardened campaigner apparently. Yet perhaps no innocent.

She was sitting up now, with one little foot bent under her. I joined her on the reading couch. Cushions jammed themselves into my back; their striped covers were packed hard with filling, uncomfortably reminding me how Glaucus had pummelled me; I hooked out a couple from behind me and dropped them on the floor. A lavish carpet, imported a vast distance from the East by camel-train, waited to receive these discards. My bootstuds caught slightly on the fine woollen tufts.

Vibia had perked up, now that someone handsome and masculine had come to play with her. How fortunate it was that I had bathed and shaved at Glaucus' comprehensive establishment. I would hate any hint of uncouthness to offend. And we were at close quarters now.

'What a lovely room!' I gazed around, but even Vibia cannot have supposed it was the creamy plaster covings and the painted swags of flower garland that concerned me. 'The entire house is striking – and I gather that you, lucky girl, have acquired it?'

At that she looked nervous. The smile on the wide mouth shrank a little, though the gash was still generous. 'Yes, it is mine I have just made an arrangement with my late husband's family.'

'Why?'

'What do you mean, why, Falco?'

'I mean, why did you have to ask for it – and why ever did they agree?'

Vibia bit her lip. 'I wanted somewhere to live.'

'Ah! You are a young woman, who had been married and mistress of her household for three years. Your husband died, rather unexpectedly – well, let us assume it really was unexpected,' I said cruelly. 'And you were faced with the prospect of returning like a child to your father's house. Unpalatable?'

'I love my papa.'

'Oh of course! But tell the truth. You had loved your freedom too. Mind you, you would not have been stuck for very long; any dutiful Roman father would soon find someone else for you. I'm sure he's surrounded by people he owes favours to who would take you off his hands… Don't you want to remarry?'

'Not now I have tried it!' scoffed Vibia. I noticed she did not argue with my assessment of her father's attitude.

I sucked my teeth. 'Well, you had a thirty-year age difference with Chrysippus.'

She smirked – not sweetly, but viciously. Interesting.

'Everyone else thinks you were a schemer who stole him from Lysa.'

'Everyone else? What do you think?' she demanded.

'That it was deliberately fixed. You probably had little to do with it originally. That doesn't mean you objected – any sensible girl would approve of such a rich husband.'

'What a horrid thing to say.'

'Yes, isn't it? Chrysippus probably paid your family a grand figure to get you; in return he acquired a connection with good people. His enhanced status was intended to help his son Diomedes. Then because Chrysippus gave so much to your father on your marriage -'

'You make it sound as if he bought me!' she shrieked.

'Quite.' I remained passionless. 'Because the price was so high, the bargain absolved Chrysippus from leaving you much in his will. Just the scriptorium – not a thriving concern – and not even the house attached to it. I dare say, if there had been children, other arrangements would have been made. He would have wanted children, to cement the connection with your family.'

'We were a devoted couple,' Vibia reiterated, churning out the same false-sounding claim she had presented to the vigiles and me the day her husband died.

I appraised her slim figure as we had done at her first interview. 'No luck with a pregnancy though? Juno Matrona! I hope nobody tried interfering with nature here?'

'I don't deserve this!'

'Only you know the truth of that fine declaration…' As I continued to be openly insulting, she said nothing. 'Devoted or not, you cannot enjoy having been purchased like a barrel of salt meat. Chrysippus treated his authors that way, but a woman prefers to be valued for her personality. I think, you were aware – or in time you became aware – of the reasons the Chrysippi – all of them, including Lysa in the interests of her beloved son – had wanted your marriage.'

Vibia no longer disputed it: 'An alliance for the improvement of all parties – such things happen frequently.'

'Discovering that Lysa had supported the idea must have been a shock though. Did you turn against your husband then? Enough, perhaps, to rid yourself of him?'

'It was not a shock. I always knew. It was no reason for me to kill my husband,' Vibia protested. 'Anyway, Lysa had a shock herself – Chrysippus soon realised that he liked being married to me.'

'I bet that pleased her! Did she turn against him?'

'Enough to kill him?' queried Vibia sweetly. 'Oh, I don't know – what do you think, Falco?' I ignored the invitation to speculate.

'Let's accept that you and your husband rubbed along together happily. When Chrysippus died unexpectedly, you were threatened with losing everything you had here. That made you harden your attitude. So you persuaded Lysa to let you have the family home. Marriage for the purposes of others will never happen to you again.'

'No, it won't.' It was a simple statement, impassively made. Not, I thought, a confession of murder.

The marriage was probably complex, as all marriages are. It had not necessarily been miserable. Vibia had possessed money and independence. As I saw her when we first met, and as Euschemon had described her, she was a wife whose domestic and social place was worth having. Chrysippus had doted on her, and he loved to show her off. Expecting only a marriage of convenience, Lysa had been genuinely angry at what had been sprung on her after so many years.

'Were you happy in bed?'

'Mind your own business.'

Vibia gave me a level stare. She was no virgin. That look was too confident – and too challenging. Nor did she carry the wounds, mental even more than physical, which would have resulted from three years of sexual abuse.

'Well, I don't think you suffered. But did you hunger for better, sweetheart?'