Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

She shrugged. 'It wasn't hard to do. Congrio doesn't like you, and he despises your wife. Some slaves can't stand working for an ex-slave; Congrio hated it, simply on principle. Pride comes with talent, which he has in abundance, as I'm sure you'll agree. He had worked all his life in the respectable household of a patrician master, then suddenly found himself the property of — well, Gordianus, your ancestry is hardly worth mentioning, is it?'

'I'd prefer that you didn't mention my ancestors, true enough. So you told Congrio that if he would go along with your schemes, you could set everything right and become his new mistress. He agreed to become your agent in my household.'

'Something like that.'

'Would you believe that for a long time it was Aratus I suspected of betraying me?'

'Aratus?' said Claudia. 'You should have known better. Lucius always said he was the most unwavering and loyal slave he had ever owned. A man couldn't hope for a better foreman to run a farm.'

'So I've gradually come to realize. But back to Congrio: when the first headless body appeared in my stable, it was Congrio who placed it there, wasn't it?'

'Why ask me? You must have had the story from him already.'

'Some of the story. Other bits I've worked out for myself, but there are some things only you could know for certain, Claudia. Well, then, it started on the day that we burned the first batch of blighted hay. There were a lot of fires on my land and a lot of smoke going into the air. One of your slaves showed up, ostensibly to deliver a gift of figs from your farm, in exchange for which I sent you some fresh eggs. I thought the man was there to see what the smoke was about; in reality, he was there to confer with Congrio and make plans for the delivery of the body. I remember he stayed a long time in the kitchen; I thought he was merely tasting Congrio's custard.

"The next day a wagon arrived, full of provisions. Congrio said it came all the way from Rome and that he'd had to go over Aratus's head to order the things he needed. That made me angry at Aratus, and took my mind away from Congrio. Still, I wondered why he insisted on unloading the wagon himself. Now I know: there was a dead body amid the pots and pans. The wagon came from your farm, not from Rome. Congrio unloaded the body, as your agent had instructed the day before. He managed to conceal it in the kitchen and then put it in the stable later. No wonder he was sweating and trembling; I merely thought he was out of breath and angry at Aratus.' I spread my hands on my lap. 'So I know how the body arrived and who assisted. But who was Nemo?'

'Nemo?'

"That was what I called the headless corpse, having no name for him. From his body, it was hard to tell whether he was freeborn or a slave. If a slave, he wasn't engaged in hard labour and didn't work outdoors. Nemo was your cook, wasn't he?'

Claudia looked at me sidelong. 'How did you know that? I never even told Congrio.'

'You told me yourself, but I wasn't listening at the time. Do you remember the note you sent back with Congrio, thanking me for lending him to you?' I pulled the scrap of parchment from within my tunic. 'I saved it. I don't know why, except that you were so effusive in your gratitude that you called it "a promissory note" which I could use to call on you for repayment. It was sentimental of me to set much store by it, I suppose, but I was touched by your gratitude. In the note you also said something else. Let me read it to you: "Greetings neighbour, and my gratitude for the loan of your slaves," et cetera, et cetera, "especially your chief of the kitchen, Congrio, who has lost none of his skill since the days when he served my cousin Lucius. I am doubly grateful because my own cook fell ill in the midst of preparations, whereupon Congrio proved to be not merely a great help but utterly essential" So, your head cook was ill. Later he died.'

'How did you know?'

'You told me! It was here on the ridge, over on the eastern side. We were all watching the Cassian Way, you and Meto and I, and you fed us honey cakes. "My new cook baked them fresh this morning," you said. "He's no Congrio, I fear, but he does make fine sweets." Your new cook, Claudia, because the old one, the ill one, had died and you replaced him. And because you hate waste so very much — not even a morsel of a honey cake could you stand to waste! — you even found a use for your dead cook's body, thinking it could be a tool to frighten me off my farm, or at least make a beginning. So Nemo wasn't murdered, was he? He died of an illness, and after he was dead you had his head cut off so that no one would know him when he appeared on my farm. One of the kitchen slaves I lent you just might have seen the man, after all, and thus might have recognized the dead man's face.'

'You comprehend everything, Gordianus. And did the appearance of the body not frighten you at all?'

'It frightened me very much, but at the time I had reason to think I knew who had left it, and why, and it had nothing to do with my neighbours or whether I should stay on the farm. I hid the incident from the slaves, including Congrio. Was it maddening when Congrio had nothing to report to your man the next time he came?'

'Quite.'

'Meanwhile, I had every reason to think that I could trust you, if anybody, because the kitchen slaves I lent you returned with glowing reports of how you stood up for me to your cousins. It was you who planted the idea that I could use those slaves as spies on your family gathering. You joked about my having them poison your cousins; well, I would never do that, but I could tell my slaves to keep their ears open. And so they simply happened to "overhear" you defending me to Gnaeus, Manius, and Publius. But you meant for those words to be overheard, didn't you? I was to think you were my only ally, and so when awful things began to happen on my farm, I might suspect anyone and everyone else, but never you. And if the time ever came when I was ready to sell the farm in desperation — well, I would turn to the one neighbour who had stood by me, wouldn't I?'

Claudia shifted on her hard seat. 'Something like that,' she said quietly.

'The first headless body appeared in the middle of Junius. Then, for a while, nothing untoward happened. Misunderstanding the signal and its origin, I thought this was because I had complied with certain demands made on me against my will. In fact, those days were uneventful because of your absence. You left for Rome to oversee some work on the house on the Palatine, which you inherited from Lucius, so you weren't around to make mischief.

'The second body didn't appear until after the middle of Quinctilis, when we returned from Rome after Meto's birthday and the elections. You had planned to stay in Rome all that time, but you came back early, before we did; you told me at Meto's party that you were about to leave for home. You also made sure that I met your charming cousin Manius, with predictably appalling results that once again portrayed you as my friend and ally. You came back early, and so you were here when your cousin Gnaeus killed his poor slave Forfex in a rage. Perhaps you had no intention of leaving a second body on my land, but when the opportunity presented itself like a gift from the gods, once again you couldn't let a good corpse go to waste. You had the body stolen from where Gnaeus's slaves had interred it along the rocky stream bank. Once again, the corpse was delivered by your slave, visiting Congrio, probably carrying it in a handcart. The man had been dealing with Congrio so regularly, exchanging foodstuffs every now and again, that no one ever took any notice of him.

'You knew that I had met Forfex, and so once again it was necessary to remove the head, to obscure the corpse's identity. You should have removed the hands as well, but how could you have known that Meto would recall the triangular birthmark on the back of Forfex's left hand? That led me to Gnaeus. He admitted killing Forfex, which was his right as the slave's master, but he denied having dropped the body down my well. He seemed to know nothing about it.'