David Wishart: Last Rites

Then of course the Cornelia business had come up…

That was the bit I stuck at. Sure, the mechanics of it were clear enough thanks to my drinking pal: Nomentanus had made himself known to Myrrhine and they’d arranged things between them. But I still didn’t know how he’d got the commission, who had given him it and why. Getting the answers to these questions would be a long hard slog. Even with Camillus on the team putting the screws on the bastard from above, with the woman herself dead I’d only got circumstantial evidence and Antistius’s word that the two had been in league. Like I say, tomcatting’s no crime and so long as he paid his bill the guy’s sex life was his own concern. If I simply faced him with what I’d got at the moment he’d throw me out on my ear and laugh while he did it. I had to have more.

Like, for example, a link with Aemilius Lepidus. That guy was involved; he had to be because he was the only one who fitted. But he and Nomentanus were chalk and cheese, character-wise. Lepidus – on the face of it, anyway – was one of the oldest and most highly respected senators in Rome, whereas Nomentanus was a brash young pusher. Sure, like I’d said to Perilla, Lepidus would have his finger on the pulse, he’d know that Nomentanus was on the make, potentially anyway; but that’s a hell of a long way from having the nerve to approach the guy cold re zeroing a Vestal. If it had been the daughter, now…

I stopped. I’d been walking up Ostia Incline towards the Circus. There’s a lot of traffic that way, tunics rather than mantles, and one of them – a big, beefy guy carrying half a cartload of onions on a string like they were a party garland – slammed into my back. I picked myself up and apologised. He went off muttering.

Hang on, now. I’d dismissed Lepida because, like I said, she wouldn’t have the financial clout to sub Nomentanus over the loans business. On the other hand, put that to one side temporarily and she was perfect. She was Nomentanus’s type, for a start: young, a go-getter and without a moral bone in her body. More important, if they were working together then boyfriend-poaching aside it would explain her sudden interest in Aemilia – for which read the layout of the Galba household – and why she’d dropped that lady like a hot brick after she’d got what she wanted. And there was one last thing. Alexis’s girlfriend Melissa had said that Lepida had a broad-striper steady she was keeping on a string. If the guy turned out to be Nomentanus then we were laughing.

Okay; assume he did. How would it work?

The father and the daughter were in it together; they had to be, for the financial angle to fit. Same scenario as before, or maybe with the variation that it was Lepida who’d stepped out of line rather than the old man. Yeah; that would make a lot more sense: that lady was wild, and whatever the reason behind this business was it had to be major. Exile, at best. Leave that for the present. Fine. So.

It’s the lady who makes the running. She’s in a jam, her brother’s found out somehow, he’s gone crying to Cornelia and he makes the mistake of telling his sister. Or she finds out some other way that the secret’s out; that aspect of things didn’t really matter. The brother she can handle – he’s family, he won’t split – but Cornelia’s an unknown quantity. They’ve never liked each other and Cornelia’s too much the goody-goody to be trusted. Lepida talks it over with her boyfriend Nomentanus, maybe makes a few promises, like for example she’ll marry him if he does what she wants. Nomentanus is no fool: sure, he’ll help – he’s got the perfect plan all lined up and waiting to go in any case – but he wants more. The guy’s broke, and in a few months he’s going to be hit with a bill that would make anyone’s eyes water. So he says, Fine; you go to Daddy, explain the situation – maybe not in detail, just that you need a million or two in cash to get you out of a hole. Call it a dowry.

Lepidus jumps at it; well, maybe not jumps exactly, but the guy’s killing two birds with one stone here: he saves the family honour and at the same time he gets his hell-cat of a daughter off his hands. He doesn’t, of course, know about the Vestal until it’s too late. By that time, naturally, he’s in it himself up to his aristocratic ears. He can’t blow the whistle on Nomentanus and his daughter, even if he wants to, because he’s an accomplice before the fact; after, as well, because to save his own neck he’s had to connive towards Niobe’s death into the bargain…

There are worse crimes than murder . His son had known, sure he had, even though he stopped short of accusing his father to his face. Why Lepidus had passed that on to me – barring the explanation I’d given Perilla – I didn’t know. Conscience, maybe. Lepidus couldn’t tell me the truth, sure, but at bottom he was an honest man, I’d bet on that. Not that it made him any the less guilty.

It all fitted; subject to the tie-in between Nomentanus and Lepida existing, of course. And proving that – or, if I was unlucky, disproving it – all depended on Alexis.

I despatched the guy on his secret mission straight away, together with his Winter Festival outfit, a snazzy gilt brooch for Melissa and a few quiet words of advice. We were halfway through a late breakfast before he showed up the next morning.

‘Hey, Alexis!’ I said. ‘How did it go, pal?’

Not that I needed to ask: he looked dead on his feet and totally happy. Mission accomplished; at least on Alexis’s side. And, I suspected, on Melissa’s.

‘Marvellous, sir,’ he said. Beamed.

‘Yeah, well, apart from that.’ I glanced at Perilla, who was grinning. ‘You don’t want to hear this, lady. Bribery, seduction, abuse of privilege, suborning of the household staff…’

‘I’m sure it was in a good cause, Marcus.’

‘The best. So.’ I turned back to Alexis. ‘Your girlfriend have time to give you the guy’s name, sunshine?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I kept my fingers crossed. ‘Sextius Nomentanus?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Bullseye! I gave a whoop. Jupiter, I’d got the bastard! In fact, I’d got all three of them together. There were still the whys and wherefores, mind, but these could wait. Now I was sure of my ground I could make my report to Furius Camillus and let him take it from here. Which reminded me: Camillus might well be back now, or at least his head slave would know when he was expected.

‘You feel up to another walk across town?’ I asked Alexis.

‘Oh, yes.’ He was still beaming. Walk, nothing: I’d’ve bet the guy could’ve floated. ‘Where to?’

‘The King’s House. Fix me up a meeting with the acting chief priest asap.’

‘Right away, sir.’ He left as if Cupid were twanging away at his heels. Well, if nothing else I’d brightened up one small life.

‘You’ve really solved it, Marcus?’ Perilla said, honeying a sesame bun.

‘Yeah.’ I stretched out. ‘Two days before the Festival, too. Perfect timing.’

‘So what will happen now?’

‘That’s up to Camillus. Or rather, the Senate; maybe even the emperor. One thing we can be sure of: they won’t sweep it under the carpet, not with a Vestal dead.’

‘Hmm.’ Perilla bit into her bun. ‘I can understand Nomentanus and Lepida, but not the father. You’re sure about Aemilius Lepidus? Absolutely certain?’

‘Sure I am. Like I said, the money’s a clincher. With gravy like that involved, Lepidus had to be part of it.’

‘He just seems most unlikely, that’s all. In terms of character.’

‘Come on, Perilla! I took you through the theory. The guy needn’t have known what he was getting himself into at the start. And by the time he did know there wasn’t anything he could do about it.’