Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

If Helena had been sitting out here she would have kicked me for my lack of interest. I spent a few moments reflecting dreamily on the wonderfully curved ankle with which she would lash out – and her power to inflict a memorable bruise.

'Don't look so miserable!' Plancina commanded.

'Give it a rest! I'm heartbroken. I'm off duty tonight.'

'Might be your only chance.' She was bright all right. She knew how fickle witnesses can be.

This reminded me of a game I used to play in the army with my old friend Petronius: speculating which we liked better, bright girls who just looked stupid, or stupid ones who looked passable. On the whole neither kind had looked at either of us when we were twenty, though I used to pretend that I did all right and I reckon he had conquests I never knew about. He certainly turned into a sly reprobate later.

Shock must have plunged me into homesickness. I was off again into a reverie, now wondering what Petronius would have to say about me letting Helena get hurt like this. Petro, my loyal friend, had always agreed with the general view that Helena was far too good for me. As a matter of course he took her part against me.

I knew his views. He thought I was completely irresponsible taking a woman abroad, unless the woman was dismally ugly and I stood in line for a huge legacy if she was struck down by pirates or plague. According to what he called good old-fashioned Roman rectitude and I called blind hypocrisy, Helena should have been locked up at home with a twenty-stone eunuch as bodyguard, and only permitted to venture outside if she was going to see her mother and was accompanied by a trustworthy friend of the family (Petro himself, for example).

'Do you want to talk or not?' Plancina virtually yelled, growing indignant at my day-dreaming.

'I was always the type who liked to run away,' I muttered, fumbling the old repartee to the surface.

'Kiss and flee?'

'Then hope to get caught and kissed again.'

'You're no fun,' she complained. I had lost the knack after all. 'I don't think I'll bother.'

I sighed gently. 'Don't be like that. I'm upset. All right-what are you telling me?'

'I know who he was,' Plancina admitted in a hollow tone. 'The bastard! I know who Ione was favouring.'

I let the fire leap a few times. Some moments do need savouring.

'Were you and Ione friends?'

'Close as crumbs on a loaf.'

'I see.' This was a classic. The two girls had probably vied bitterly for menfriends, but now the survivor was going to split on the villain. She would call it loyalty to her dead friend. Really it was simple gratitude that it was Ione who had picked the wrong man. 'Why are you only telling me this now, Plancina?'

Maybe she looked abashed, or maybe she was just brazen. 'It's nice and quiet and dark. I've got an excuse to snuggle up outside your tent and look as if I'm just consoling you.'

'Very cosy!' I commented, in a gruff mood.

'Get off, Falco. You know the situation. Who wants to end up very wet and absolutely dead?'

'Not in the desert,' I carped tetchily. 'This bastard likes to drown people.'

'So what's it worth?' Plancina asked frankly.

I feigned shock: 'Is this a request to negotiate?'

'It's a request to be paid! You're an informer, aren't you? Don't you people offer cash for information?'

'The idea', I explained patiently, 'is that we obtain facts by our skill and cunning.' I left out theft, fraud, and bribery. 'Then in order that we can make a living, other people pay us for those facts.'

'But it's me that knows the facts,' she pointed out. Not the first woman I had encountered who had brilliant financial acumen even though she never went to school.

'So what facts are we discussing, Plancina?'

'Are you getting paid to find the killer?' She was persistent, this one.

'By Chremes? Don't be silly. He calls it a commission, but I know that louse. No. I'm doing this out of my superlative moral sense.'

'Drop dead, Falco!'

'Would you believe civic duty then?'

'I'd believe you're a nosy bastard.'

'Whatever you say, lady.'

'What a ghoul!' Plancina was fairly good-humoured with her insults. I reckoned she was intending to come clean without an argument. She would not have broached the issue otherwise.

There is a ritual in these exchanges, and we had reached the nub at last. Plancina pulled down her skirt (as far as this was possible), picked her nose, stared at her fingernails, then sat up to tell me all she knew.

'It was one of them clowns,' she said.

I waited for more. Gradually I ceased expecting it. 'Is that your story?'

'Oh, you want the dirty details?'

'I'd like some, at any rate. Don't shock me; I'm a shy floret. But how about, which one of them it actually was?'

'Gods, you don't want much, do you?' she muttered darkly. 'You're supposed to be the informer. Can't you work it out?'

I thought she was playing me up. It was time for me to shock her. 'Maybe I can,' I said dourly. 'Maybe I already have'

Plancina was staring at me. I saw a look of panic and fascination cross her face. Then she shivered. She dropped her voice abruptly, even though we had already been talking quietly. 'You mean you know?'

'You mean you don't?' I returned. A neat turn of phrase, though it meant nothing.

'Not which one,' she admitted. 'It's horrible to think about. What are you going to do?'

'Try and prove it.' She made a face, stretching the fingers of both hands suddenly. She was afraid of what she had stumbled into. 'Don't fret,' I said calmly. 'Your Uncle Marcus has jumped in piles of donkey shit before. Nobody will have to know you said anything, if that's worrying you.'

'I don't like the idea of meeting them.'

'Just think of them as men you're stringing along. I bet you can do that!' She grinned, with a flash of wickedness. I cleared my throat. 'All I need is whatever you do know. Tell me the story.'

'I never said anything because I was scared.' All her confidence was evaporating. That did not necessarily mean she had nothing useful to say. The ones to watch are those who come bursting with definite answers. 'All I really know is that Ione was having a fling with both of them.'

'Where does Afrania fit into this? I thought she was Tranio's pet?'

'Oh yes! Afrania would have been livid. Well that was why Ione was doing it; to put one over on Afrania. Ione thought she was a silly cow. And as for Grumio…'Plancina's flood of recollections trailed off for some reason.

'What about him? Did he have another girlfriend too?'

'No.'

'That's a short answer. Is there a long explanation?'

'He's not like the others.'

This surprised me. 'What are you saying? He really likes men? Or he doesn't know how to get on with women?' I stopped short of the more disgusting alternatives.

Plancina shrugged helplessly. 'It's hard to say. He's good company; they both are. But none of us like to get involved with Grumio.'

'Trouble?'

'Nothing like that. We all reckon he never has much time for it.'

'For what?' I asked, innocently.

'You damn well know what!'

I conceded that I knew. 'He talks about it.'

'That means nothing, Falco!' We both laughed. Then Plancina struggled to enlighten me. 'He probably is normal, but he never bothers much.'

'Too conceited?' I guessed.

'That's it.' I swear she was blushing. Some girls who give the impression they are ready for anything are strangely prudish in conversation. She made herself try to elaborate: 'If you had anything to do with him, you'd feel he would be sneering at you behind your back. Then if he did anything, he wouldn't want to enjoy it.' No good at it either, probably.

'That's interesting.' Discussing another man's impotence – or even his indifference – was outside my sphere. I remembered that the night I went to dinner with Chremes and Phrygia I had seen Plancina herself being entertained at the Twins' tent. 'You've had dealings with the clowns yourself. saw you drinking with them both one night at Abila -'