David Wishart - Last Rites

Maybe it was grief and lack of food, but from where I was standing and my experience of the guy so far Marcus Lepidus was short of a watertight roof by all the tiles and half the joists. And if ever I saw guilt written plain on a face, Lepidus’s was the one.

At least there was no fight left in him now. I steered him gently to his couch and pushed him down on to it. He didn’t resist, just stared past me at nothing; or rather at something I couldn’t see and probably wouldn’t want to.

‘Okay.’ I moved gently on to the really shaky ground. ‘So what were you talking about, you and Cornelia? The day Servilia saw you?’ I waited. Nothing. His eyes had gone blank, like twin coin dies. ‘Come on, Lepidus! You were with the girl for a good twenty minutes. Servilia said you were asking her something; “pleading” was the word she used. So what was it?’ Nothing. I could’ve been talking to the fancy bronze statue in the corner. I sighed. ‘All right. We’ll leave it and move on. Second: why did you gatecrash the rites? And what exactly happened that evening?’

I waited. And waited. Even a refusal to tell or another brawl would’ve been better than what was happening. He’d simply frozen up on me. His face was set like a wax death-mask and he was staring into nothing, completely immobile. I leaned over and waved my hand in front of his eyes. He neither moved nor blinked. My spine went cold.

Gods!

Well, there was nothing more I could do, I was beginning to shake, and all I wanted was out. I stood up. No reaction. None. I moved to the door.

With that open, I felt better. I took several deep breaths and turned round. Lepidus was still staring.

‘Did you kill her?’ I asked quietly.

But he didn’t answer. I closed the door gently behind me.

I left word with the slave to look after him and made my way down from the Quirinal. There wasn’t much I could do now except make my report to Camillus, who as acting chief priest was technically responsible for putting any prosecution into gear. I didn’t envy him. On the one hand, the murder of a Vestal was unheard of and it’d call, if anything did, for the guy responsible to be chopped; on the other hand Lepidus came from one of the top families in Rome and his father was one of the biggest wheels in the Senate. Also, he was clearly two buns short of a baker’s dozen to begin with. Both of these facts might well make a difference, and I was glad that whoever ended up fielding the mess and deciding how to deal with it, it wouldn’t be me.

Camillus wasn’t in, either at home or at the King’s House where he had his office, so I left a message at both places asking him to get in touch as soon as he could and set off back to the Caelian. Mid-morning or not, I felt washed out: sure, we’d got our murderer, but it hadn’t exactly been a satisfying case. ‘Mess’ was right; there were too many loose ends flapping around for my liking, and that wasn’t good at all. Besides, I had an uncomfortable feeling that we’d screwed up somewhere along the line. Where precisely I wasn’t sure, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.

Perilla was in the atrium. I planted a kiss on her upturned mouth and slumped down on to the couch opposite her.

‘Marcus?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah.’ I lay back and rubbed my eyes. They felt like someone had thrown sand in them. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘Really? Then why do you look like something the cat dragged in?’

‘The investigation’s over.’

‘Oh.’ A pause; Perilla sounded as let down as I was. ‘Lepidus admitted killing the girl?’

‘No. But he was responsible, all right, I’d take my oath on that. The guy had “guilty” written all over him.’

‘Very well. So why did he do it?’

‘Jupiter knows. It must’ve been the pregnancy angle, although he denied it. They were close enough, and on his side he was head over heels in love with her.’

‘But?’

‘Why the hell should there be a “but”?’

‘Don’t snap. Because if there isn’t then you’d sound more convinced. And convincing.’

True. ‘Okay. Pregnancy just doesn’t fit. He’s the wrong type, she’s the wrong type, and everybody who knew them says it’s impossible.’

‘Then Lepidus must have had another reason.’

‘Perilla, there isn’t one, or none that I can see. Anyway, it doesn’t matter any more. The case is out of my hands and working out the whys and wherefores is up to Furius Camillus and the head city judge.’

Perilla was quiet for a long time. Then she said softly, ‘You don’t think it was Lepidus after all, do you?’

‘Gods, lady, he has to be the killer! Nothing else fits! He’s the right age and class, the right physical type with the right skills, he was seeing her in secret, he gatecrashed the ceremony, he left the room the same time she did and if there was something between them, sexual or not, it explains how she could be decoyed into the back bedroom without giving the alarm. Also the guy’s a total fruitcake with as much grip on reality as a Minturnian prawn. What more do you want?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious. If Lepidus did kill the girl then I want to know why. And so do you.’

Yeah. She was right; that was the bummer. Everything made sense bar that. Or a kind of sense, anyway. I shrugged. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s work it out. Forget the pregnancy and the affair, they won’t wash. What else is there?’

‘For a start, what he was doing at the rites in the first place.’

I poured myself a cup of Setinian from the jug beside me. ‘Lady, we’re going round in circles. He went to kill Cornelia. It’s the -’

‘Assume for a moment that he didn’t. Kill Cornelia, that is. Where would that idea take us?’

‘But -’

‘Let’s go over the facts, Marcus. First of all, Servilia saw Cornelia talking to Lepidus in Pearl-sellers’ Porch. Lepidus admits to this, and also to the existence of a long-term relationship. Second, Junia Torquata tells us that she has been preoccupied and moody for some time. Third, the day after the meeting Lepidus disguises himself as a flutegirl and attends the rites at the Galba house. Fourth, in the course of the evening, Cornelia makes an excuse and leaves the room. Shortly afterwards Lepidus also slips out via the garden porch. He does not reappear. Shortly after that, Cornelia is found dead in the back bedroom. The natural assumption is that Lepidus killed her, but that is all it is, an assumption. He had the opportunity, certainly; but, equally certainly if we discount a sexual link between the two, he had no obvious motive, especially since from what you say he was strongly attached to the girl. And if he had no motive then the means, too, is problematical at best.’

I frowned. ‘Uh… run that last one past me again.’

‘Marcus, if Lepidus didn’t attend the rites with the express purpose of killing Cornelia, then where did the knife come from?’

I sat back. Shit; she was right! I’d forgotten the knife! Without a pre-existing motive, the reason for that being there went down the tubes as well. And as the basis for a murder charge one out of three just wasn’t good enough. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the ball. Where do you want to play it?’

‘Let’s imagine that on the night of the ceremony – for some reason – Lepidus needs to talk to Cornelia urgently. I doubt that the meeting was prearranged, because Cornelia would have realised that it involved profanation of the rites and refused to agree. So the decision was his, and he took it unilaterally.’

‘Hang on, Perilla. They’d talked only the day before. And it would’ve taken Lepidus time to set the scam up, assuming he had the contacts to do it.’ Hell; that was another thing. How did Thalia fit into all this? ‘Twenty-four hours just isn’t enough notice.’