David Wishart - Last Rites

I took a swallow of Massic to cover a grin. I’d a lot of time for young Alexis. For a start, he was the most un-slavelike slave I’d ever come across. A thinker, too serious for his own good, but with a fair saving slice of the poet grafted on, plus a sense of humour. Articulate, too. From front-of-house slaves like Bathyllus you expect that sort of thing, but not from gardeners: manuring doesn’t demand all that much in the way of conversational skills, and most of these guys are hard put to it even to grunt. Mind you, taking on the garden had been Alexis’s own choice, right from the start: he got on better with plants than people. Which made this turn of events even more surprising.

‘Uh… she good-looking?’ I said.

His Adam’s apple bobbed painfully. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I suppose you could call her that.’

Oh, Cupid in rompers! What had I unleashed? The kid was definitely smitten. This Melissa must be quite something; although there again she could just as well have a wall-eye, chronic halitosis and a limp. Where women were concerned Alexis’s opinion was about as valuable as a beetle’s on metaphysics.

‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘You, uh, think you could prise your lecherous thoughts away from her body long enough to tell me what you found out, sunshine?’ I said mildly.

Now that was definitely a blush. I could see it spreading up from his neck to the roots of his hair, taking in the ears on the way and making them stand out like crimson pot-lids. ‘I wasn’t…’ he began. ‘I didn’t… that is, I wouldn’t…’

‘Alexis. Read my lips. Joke, pal. Okay?’

The blush slowly subsided. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Go ahead, then.’

He took a deep breath. ‘The lady certainly wasn’t at the rites, sir. She spent the night with a friend.’ The blush made a brief reappearance. Obviously sex was a sensitive topic with Alexis at present. ‘And before you ask, sir, no, I don’t know his name. Melissa wouldn’t be drawn on the details of the lady’s love life, not as far as names were concerned at any rate.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I sipped my wine. ‘She give you anything on that angle, then? Anything at all?’

‘Not much, sir. I doubt if she would’ve in any case, even if – as she did – her mistress hadn’t expressly warned her against it. As I told you, Melissa is a-’

‘Nice girl,’ I finished drily. ‘Right. Got you.’

‘She did let out, however, that the lady… spreads her favours rather indiscriminately.’

Surprise, surprise. ‘She happen to mention anyone current?’

‘Again no names. She does have a steady, which was where she spent the night of the rites, but he isn’t exclusive. Although I understand that he’d like to be.’

Bigger the fool him, I thought. Long term, that lady would be poison. ‘Any other details?’

‘No, sir. I’m afraid not.’

Well, I couldn’t expect much more given the time I’d allowed him anyway, and considering his mind couldn’t’ve been more than half on the job the kid had done marvels. ‘Fine. Now what about the Aemilia angle?’

‘I was a bit more successful there.’ Alexis topped up my cup. ‘The lady Lepida called on the lady Aemilia at the end of last month. Precisely three days before the kalends, in fact. Melissa remembered the date exactly because on the day previous when she was sent to ask whether the lady was receiving visitors she used the excuse to visit a friend in the Subura. It was the other girl’s birthday and-’

I’d sat up sharply. ‘Hang on, sunshine. Run that past me again. And leave out the ladies to save time. Also the birthday girl, okay?’

Alexis half smiled. ‘Certainly, sir. The l… Lepida first visited the consul’s wife some eleven days ago. She was invited again two days later but had other commitments, since when-’

‘What was that about Melissa going round on her own?’

‘Her mistress sent her to check whether Aemilia would be at home the next day, sir. It’s standard practice.’

‘Yeah, I know that.’ My neck was prickling. ‘That’s not the point. Alexis, you’re saying Lepida made the running? She asked for the visit, not Aemilia?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Alexis’s brow furrowed. ‘I suppose so, anyway. Although Melissa didn’t actually say-’

I waved him to silence. Shit! For Lepida to make the first move rather than Aemilia didn’t add up; not given her claim that Aemilia had initiated the acquaintance for reasons of social cachet. Of course, if Lepida was casing the joint to plan the murder…

This needed thinking about. If Lepida had lied to me about Aemilia being the driving force behind the acquaintanceship, then the chances of her being involved in Cornelia’s death had just taken a considerable hike. Especially given the time factor: three days before the kalends was only five before the murder. And if Lepida couldn’t stand Aemilia, as she obviously couldn’t, and as weaselling out of a second invite indicated, then why the hell, if she didn’t have an ulterior motive, had she made overtures of friendship in the first place?

Alexis was staring at me. ‘Sorry, sunshine,’ I said. ‘Carry on. What about the visit itself? Did Melissa give you any details?’

‘There wasn’t much to tell. It was just the usual society chit-chat. Oh, except that Aemilia had another visitor, but Melissa had known he’d be there already. In fact, her mistress had asked her specifically to check that he’d be present before confirming the arrangements.’

‘Yeah? And who was that, now?’

‘One of the consul’s finance officers. Licinius Murena.’

Aemilia’s boyfriend. I almost laughed. Hell; there went that theory in spades. If Lepida knew Murena would be filling the third couch that day I didn’t need to look any further for a motive: the lady was poaching. And although she hadn’t given me an exact date when she’d told me she’d had the guy on her own couch I could make a pretty good guess: given the speed she operated, some time in the three days between Aemilia’s cake-and-honey-wine klatch and the kalends. Certainly no later. Sure, he could be the steady Alexis had mentioned, in which case the liaison still had its potentially sinister side, but I doubted it. Despite what Lepida had said, Galba was no has-been; that was just the cat talking. The guy was a firm favourite of our next emperor, and from what I’d seen of Murena himself he wasn’t the sort of man who’d give up the security of being the one and only of a complaisant aristo’s sex-starved wife for a more precarious existence as the far from exclusive lover of that hell-cat. And as far as Lepida herself was concerned, I doubted if the lady looked very far beyond her next lay. She certainly wouldn’t bother exerting herself to perpetrate anything as far removed from that as murder. Mind you, I could be wrong, of course.

Well, some you win, some you lose, and there’s no use crying.

‘You get anything else?’ I said. ‘About young Marcus, say, or the father?’

Alexis shook his head. ‘The households are kept pretty much separate.’ Surprise! ‘Melissa wasn’t too cut up about Lepidus Junior’s death, either.’ I caught a flash of embarrassment. ‘I understand he…er… made rather free with the younger slaves. Female and male.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t ask about Melissa herself, sir.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘The father’s a hard master, but he’s fair. Old-fashioned, sir, if you like. He’s not a well man, despite appearances. The rumour in the slaves’ quarters is he might not last another year.’ Another hesitation. ‘The girl did let drop one more piece of information, by the way. About the consul’s wife.’

‘Yeah?’

The blush was back. ‘It seems she has a liking at times for rougher partners, sir. Slaves and freedmen.’