David Wishart - Last Rites

‘My head slave told me it was urgent,’ I said.

‘But an apology is urgent, Corvinus.’ She took a sip of her own wine, her eyes on mine above the rim of the cup. ‘Very urgent. I couldn’t let you go on thinking badly of me, could I? I had to bring you round and say sorry face to face.’ She smiled. ‘If that’s the position you prefer, naturally.’

Game, set and match to Bathyllus. I stood up. ‘Look, thanks for the wine,’ I said, ‘but – ’

‘You mean you don’t want to make love to me?’

I almost dropped the cup. ‘Uh…’

Her smile hadn’t wavered. She raised one elegant shoulder and turned away. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘It was just a thought. Don’t let it worry you.’

Suddenly I felt angry. ‘Was that it, lady?’ I said. ‘The reason for bringing me all the way up here?’

‘But of course it was.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact. ‘What other reason could there be? If you want to change your mind, naturally, now or at any future date, then -’

‘Jupiter, cut it out!’

She laughed. ‘You’re as stuffy as my father, Corvinus, deep down, aren’t you? I told you, it was only a thought. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, not one bit.’ Her hand smoothed the velvet. The nails were long and carefully manicured. ‘Very well, we’ll talk about something else, just so your journey isn’t completely wasted. Or my time. How is the investigation going?’

She had flair, I’d give her that. A minute before she’d been propositioning me, now she could’ve been a dowager making polite conversation over the cakes and honey wine. Despite my anger – flair or not, I still didn’t like or trust her – I found myself grinning. And sitting down again. ‘Yeah. Yeah, okay,’ I said. ‘You know Niobe’s dead?’ The girl had been with Cornelia before she’d gone for a Vestal. Maybe she’d even been a Lepidi slave. Certainly Lepida would’ve known her.

If she had it didn’t show; not in the form of sympathy, anyway. Mind you, I doubt if anything would faze this lady. ‘Murdered?’ she said. She might’ve been asking the price of meat.

‘Yeah. She was found yesterday in an alleyway behind the House of the Vestals. Her throat had been cut.’

We were neither of us ready for a refill, but Lepida got up to fetch the wine jug and poured a little into each of our cups. The jade pendant on her necklace that had been snuggling inside her cleavage swung free and brushed my wrist. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘Really?’ she said cheerfully. ‘Well, it doesn’t surprise me.’

Maybe it was her tone, but something cold touched the back of my neck. ‘Is that so, now?’ I said. ‘You care to tell me why not?’

‘It was bound to happen sooner or later, that or something similar.’ Her shoulder lifted again. ‘She probably brought it on herself; Niobe always was a self-sacrificer, especially on Cornelia’s altar. One of nature’s victims.’

Not much of an obituary, but I reckoned that was about all the kid could expect from that quarter. ‘She died because she knew the secret Cornelia shared with your brother,’ I said. ‘You happen to know what that might’ve been?’

‘No. I told you before.’ Another shrug. ‘Or my father said he didn’t, I can’t remember which now and it doesn’t matter anyway because neither of us does. As you may have noticed, Corvinus, we’re not a togetherness family. Dear Marcus would’ve torn out his tongue before he confided in either Father or me, and the reticence was quite mutual. Common. Whatever the appropriate term is.’

I was within an inch of really losing my temper: this total callousness and all these shrugs, physical and metaphorical, were beginning to get to me. ‘Does anything really interest you, Lepida?’ I said. Anger or not, it was a genuine question. ‘What do you think is important?’ She was staring at me like I was talking Babylonian. Maybe in her view I was. ‘What would you kill for?’

The gods knew where that last question came from, but she laughed. ‘Oh, dear, how terribly serious! Very well. Your answers are, in order, nothing for very long, except perhaps fucking; nothing very much, except, again, fucking; and nothing, full stop. Unless for the fun of it, just once, to see what it felt like and for no other reason whatsoever. Will those do you or do you want me to make some up so you don’t feel quite so shocked?’

I took a mouthful of wine and swallowed it slowly. ‘No, lady,’ I said quietly. ‘They’ll do fine. If they’re genuine.’

‘Oh, they’re quite genuine, I guarantee it.’ She was watching me with a slight, crooked smile. ‘Absolutely. So, now. You think the same person who killed Cornelia killed Niobe?’

‘It’s a logical assumption, yeah. Especially since there’s another corpse. A flutegirl called Thalia.’

‘Her throat was slit as well?’ She hadn’t even blinked. I didn’t answer. ‘And all three deaths had something to do with my brother?’

‘Something he knew, certainly. And shared with Cornelia, who shared it with her maid.’

‘What was Niobe doing in the alleyway?’

The question was a non sequitur, except if you looked at it in a certain way in which case it made perfect sense. Uh-huh; so she did have some curiosity after all. I wondered how much the lady’s studied boredom was real and how much was put on. There was a brain behind those carefully made-up eyes, that was sure, and brains need to work. ‘She was on her way to meet someone,’ I said. ‘Or at least she thought she was.’

‘Do you know who?’

I’d been waiting for that particular question. I put my hand inside my mantle and took out the note I’d brought with me. ‘Your brother,’ I said.

That got through; she gave a little gasp. ‘My brother ? But Marcus was dead!’

It could’ve been acting, sure, but the surprise in her voice sounded genuine. ‘She didn’t know that at the time,’ I said. ‘And this was delivered the day before, while he was still alive.’

‘It was found with Niobe’s body?’

‘No. She left it with a friend.’ I passed the note over. ‘The killer forged your brother’s signature to bring the girl outside. At least, that’s what I think.’

Lepida unfolded the slip of paper and read it. Her brow creased, and then she laughed. ‘Well, now, Valerius Corvinus,’ she said softly. ‘Do you really? How very interesting.’

The last word was drawled: conscious irony. The hairs at the nape of my neck stirred. ‘Hold on, lady,’ I said. ‘You mean the signature’s genuine?’

‘Quite genuine.’ She handed the note back. ‘It isn’t my brother’s, though.’

I frowned. ‘You’ve lost me. Who else’s would it be?’

‘My father’s, of course.’

Gods…

Yeah, sure, when you thought about it it made perfect sense: father and son shared the same name. I just hadn’t thought of the alternative explanation, that was all. But why would Marcus Lepidus Senior, aristo and one of Rome’s most respected ex-consuls, fix up a clandestine meeting with Niobe?

Apart from the obvious reason, of course. But there again if he’d signed his own name in his own hand and then murdered the kid, or had her murdered, while leaving the note undestroyed, or at least unaccounted for, then the man was a fool. And Marcus Aemilius Lepidus Senior, the guy Augustus himself had tipped as prime emperor material, was no fool.

Unless of course he was clever enough and desperate enough to risk a double bluff…

I must still have been glazed over because Lepida laughed as she leaned across and patted me on the cheek.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never thought Father had it in him. Making illicit trysts in back alleys with slave-girls and then slitting their throats. How very plebeian. Does this mean he murdered the others, too? Cornelia and this flutegirl of yours?’