David Wishart - White Murder

The Temple of Queen Juno was just up ahead. Hesper had said the block was next to it, but like I say if the Aventine’s got lots of anything it’s tenements, and there were two or three contenders. I chose one at random that had a vegetable-seller’s at street level and asked the lad with the cabbages if he knew a Marcus Silvius. I was pretty certain that I’d get a yes: one thing the Aventine has in common with Rome’s other poorer parts is that everyone knows everyone else. With the number of people your average slum landlord manages to cram into his gimcrack property you’d expect anonymity, but it doesn’t seem to happen that way. If I’d asked the same question on the Pincian or the Caelian I’d probably just have got a blank stare, even from the guy’s next door neighbour.

‘Sure,’ the cabbage-seller said. ‘Third floor up, right-hand door.’

‘Would he be in at present, do you know, pal?’ I said. There was still a fair-sized chunk of the afternoon left, and tenement-dwellers tend to be working men with jobs to go to.

‘Oh, Silvius’ll be in, sir. He hasn’t got much option.’

Odd answer, but evidently the gods were smiling. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks, friend.’

I climbed the stairs. Like most of the high-rises I’ve ever been inside, it smelt of stale urine and staler cabbage soup, with overtones of nappies, and the graffiti artists had been busy on the walls. The usual preoccupations: sex and sport. This was obviously a Green neighbourhood: I passed two or three terse and unflattering phrases about the Blues and several longer ones saying how great the Greens were. One, obviously out of date, even mentioned Pegasus. I reached the third landing and knocked on the right-hand door.

There was a pause, followed by a sort of shuffling, rolling noise. The door opened onto nothing.

‘Yes?’

I looked down. The guy’s face only came up to my navel. Then I realised why. He wasn’t a midget, he just stopped at the knees. My scrotum contracted in sympathy.

‘Uh…Marcus Silvius?’ I said..

‘That’s right.’ A strong voice. Educated, too.

‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus. I was told you run a singing group.’

‘Indeed.’ He’d been looking a bit wary; now he relaxed.

‘You mind if I come in?’ I tried to control the queasy feeling in my stomach. Deformities of any kind always make me feel sick, and no legs was a total new one on me. It was a beaut, though; if you can use the expression for something like that. ‘I’ve a few questions.’

‘Not at all. Glad of the company.’ He put the palms of his hands flat on the floor and pushed backwards. Yeah; that accounted for the rolling noise: he was sitting on a wooden cart. Clever. Not that it’d help him with the steps, which explained the guy downstairs’s comment. ‘Close the door behind you.’

I did, and looked round. It was a bigger flat than you normally find in these places, and a couple of doorways off indicated at least three rooms. There was a lot of furniture, too, far more than a tenement flat usually boasted, or even a proper house. Chairs and stools, mostly. And everything was waxed and polished till it shone.

‘Have a seat,’ Silvius said. He parked himself so that his back was against a wall. I noticed there was a low table next to him with what ought to’ve been book rolls on it, but one was open and there were only a few lines of text, with symbols above them. He must’ve seen me look in their direction because he said: ‘Just a song or two I’m working on.’

‘Right. Right.’ Perilla wasn’t into music, but she had a few books of annotated Greek lyric poetry and I’d come across that sort of thing before. Smart buggers, those musicians. I lowered myself onto a chair and tried not to look at the shiny rounded stumps jutting out below the hem of his tunic. ‘That’d be for the glee club, yeah?’

‘I prefer to call it a performers’ circle. Or maybe a choir.’

The last word was Greek. I looked at him in surprise. He wasn’t a Greek himself – not with a name like Silvius – and you don’t expect to hear Greek in an Aventine tenement. Not anything barring the commoner swear words, anyway. ‘You’re a musician?’

‘I play the flute, yes, but not well. Mostly I compose for voice.’

‘Professionally?’

‘No. Not any more. Not for many years now, in fact, since my accident.’ He smiled. ‘A carriage ran over my legs, Valerius Corvinus, since you’re no doubt wondering. But I’ll spare you the details.’

I swallowed as my scrotum shrank another inch or so. ‘Uh…yeah. Yeah, right. Thanks.’

‘I used to compose and perform for the emperor’s mother.’

‘Livia?’ Jupiter, I hadn’t known the poisonous old bitch had been all that interested in music! ‘You worked for Livia?’ Well, that was something we had in common. I just hoped he’d done better out of it than I had.

‘For quite some time, yes. She had a good ear. And, although I shouldn’t really say it, a very fine contralto voice, even in her latter years. Untrained, of course, and she didn’t exercise it much, naturally. It’s such a pity that singing is so frowned upon in Roman aristocratic circles, isn’t it? I always feel there’s a great deal of stunted talent among you purple-stripers.’

I almost forgot the tightness in my crotch. Sweet gods! There was something for the grandchildren! The empress Livia singing in the bath! Still, I supposed, you never knew when the artistic temperament was liable to break out, even in the top families. Rumour had it that Prince Gaius wasn’t averse to a bit of dressing up, for a start.

Silvius was watching me carefully, a half-smile on his lips. ‘You’re surprised?’ he said. ‘About the empress?’

‘Sure I’m surprised! You were, uh, part of the household?’ I put that one delicately. Most private musicians were bought in with the help. On the other hand, if he was Livia’s freedman I’d’ve expected him to be a Livius rather than a Silvius, with his original slave name tacked on the end, which is the way these things go normally.

‘No. I was never a slave. In fact, I come from quite a good family. I own the deeds to three farms near Mutina jointly with my brother, and the income from these – plus the empress’s small pension – is more than adequate for my needs.’ He hesitated. ‘I also talk too much, as you’ve no doubt noticed. Forgive me. Now what can I do for you? I assume it has something to do with the group. You’re thinking of joining us, perhaps?’

‘Uh…not exactly. You know a guy called Uranius?’

‘Certainly; our basso profundo . He’s been with us almost from the start. We have two tenors, plus Uranius and myself. I sing baritone and also, of course, compose and direct.’

‘You have four meetings a month, right?’

‘Three.’

Something cold touched my spine, but I kept my voice level. ‘Only three?’

‘Yes. At fairly irregular intervals because the group have other commitments. We meet on the afternoons of the fifth, eighteenth and twenty-fourth days of every month. There was a fourth meeting on the twenty-ninth, but six months ago one of our tenors contracted a regular obligation for that date and we were unable to agree on a substitute.’

There was something out of kilter here, sure, but I could worry about that later. At least the twenty-fourth – the afternoon of the murder – checked out. ‘And Uranius was at the last meeting? The one on the twenty-fourth?’

‘No. I’m afraid he missed that one.’

‘What?’

‘By arrangement. He’d told us on the previous occasion that he would be otherwise occupied.’

Holy Jupiter! ‘Just let me get this straight, pal. Uranius told you on the eighteenth that he couldn’t make the meeting of the twenty-fourth because he had another appointment?’