David Wishart: Last Rites

‘Right. Right.’ The foreman’s smile had slipped: I had the impression Archimedes here felt his professional integrity was being compromised, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. ‘Advancing the daytime duck to the limit of its screw opens the system completely. I would advise you, madam, never to try this yourself or allow your slaves to do so. The mechanism is extremely delicate and although the operation is completely safe in competent hands it is best left to a trained hydraulics engineer such as myself.’ Yeah; and I’d bet consultation fees were sky-high into the bargain. This looked like costing me an arm and a leg.

He twisted the valve. Water gurgled alarmingly in the pipes, wheels spun, the winged figure lurched upwards on its pole and the titan suddenly went crazy.

Tingtingtingtingting…

When the pointer touched the six the guy turned the valve back and it stopped. Well, so far so good. Maybe the thing worked after all.

The gurgling changed to a steady drip … drip … drip.

‘You, uh, wouldn’t have a silent model, would you, friend?’ I said.

He glared at me. ‘No, sir, I wouldn’t. This clepsydra is the most advanced of its kind.’

Yeah, right. Even so, the drips were getting on my nerves already. ‘Fine. Fine,’ I said. ‘Just asking.’

‘Indeed.’ He turned back to Perilla. ‘As you can see, madam, it is now in the standard operating mode. I have set the duck for the kalends of December. This notch here’ – he pointed – ‘represents the corresponding night-duck position. The instrument is now fully functional and should require no further attention apart from the ongoing procedures I have outlined. However in the unlikely event that you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Zosimus, the ladder.’

They left.

Perilla lay down on the reading couch. ‘Well, Marcus,’ she said. ‘Tell me about your morning.’

I told her. The basics, anyway.

‘But that’s dreadful! The poor girl! You think it was suicide?’

‘It’s a prime possibility, sure.’ The jug of wine was beside me, at the end of my own couch. I topped up the cup and took a slug. The clock went drip … drip … drip in its corner while I tried to ignore it. ‘There’s the way she died, for a start. And there was no sign of a struggle. The main problem with suicide is why.’

‘Pregnancy?’ Perilla’s no fool; given the shocking fact that a Vestal had killed herself, pregnancy’s the obvious reason. After all, there’s no way of hiding it and as I say the girl would end up dead in any case. Added to which, a knife in the throat’s a lot cleaner than having to climb down into a pit and wait while they pile the earth on top of you.

‘Torquata says no. Absolutely no. Lucius Arruntius agrees, and they’re both very smart cookies who’ve known the girl all her life. Her maid said the same and almost scratched my eyes out for suggesting it. Still, there’s the ring.’

‘The ring?’

I told her about the man’s signet ring Cornelia had been wearing around her neck.

‘It could be an innocent keepsake, Marcus. Her father’s, perhaps.’

‘Her father’s still alive. Besides, Torquata denied all knowledge. She may’ve been covering up, sure, but if the thing had been innocent and she’d known it was she wouldn’t’ve had any reason to. That ring bugs me. Also there was the girl’s state of mind. Something was worrying her the last few days, even Torquata had to admit that.’

‘You know Junia Torquata’s niece is engaged to Prince Gaius, incidentally?’ Perilla had poured herself something from a jug on her own side table. It’d be some whacky fruit juice or other; she was working through everything on offer in Delicatessen Market off the Sacred Way. What they had for December I just didn’t like to think. ‘Junia Claudilla. Her brother Marcus’s girl.’

‘Yeah?’ Marcus Junius Silanus was the only one of that family I hadn’t run foul of, and if he was anything like his brothers and had passed it on to his daughter then maybe I was wasting my sympathy. Still, I wouldn’t wish marriage to that loopy egocentric bastard on anyone. ‘Since when?’

‘Official word has just come from Capri.’ Perilla sipped at her cup. ‘Bathyllus told me.’ Oh. Right. That put the news up in the death and taxes bracket as far as reliability went. The slave grapevine is shit-hot, and Bathyllus is never wrong. Never. ‘So. Suicide is a distinct possibility, whatever the motive. Death while the balance of the mind was disturbed. Have you any reason to think otherwise?’

I scowled into my wine. ‘All I’ve got is a door, lady, with three pulled bolts. And a half-gaga slavewoman’s word that it was originally locked.’

Perilla sat up. ‘Explain.’

I explained, ‘The thing is,’ I finished, ‘it could all be wishful thinking. Torquata wants the girl to have been murdered so bad that it hurts, because then she needn’t ask herself why she committed suicide. The problem is, who the hell would murder a Vestal? And everything else points to a self-killing, which – granted we don’t know the reason – makes perfect sense otherwise.’

‘All right. Take murder as a working theory. Where does it get you?’

I drained the cup and poured myself some more wine from the jug. I was still trying to ignore the drip … drip … drip from the corner. Hell, maybe I wouldn’t notice it after a few days. If I was still sane enough to notice anything, that was. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s think about the door. It wasn’t locked, it was bolted, so it had to have been opened from the inside. That means either someone let themselves out after killing the girl or someone on the inside let another person in. Which do you want to start with?’

‘The first.’

‘Fine. In that case it’s an inside job, because the house was sealed for the rite. We’ve got fifty-nine suspects, all women. Five of them are Vestals, thirty are the cream of Roman society and the rest are professional flutegirls and assorted household slaves. You want to pick a category?’

‘Ah.’

‘“Ah” is right.’

She sniffed. ‘You’re not helping, Marcus. Very well. I may not have to choose. If the killer let herself out then ipso facto she wouldn’t be in the house after the murder, would she?’

‘Perilla, the rite was over. What we have is a free-for-all party with sixty guests and the food and booze running free. I’d say, barring the Vestals and maybe the flutegirls who came as a group, any given woman could’ve slipped away and no one would be any the wiser. And by the time I arrived they’d all gone home in any case, so there was no way of checking.’

‘Oh.’ Perilla turned the cup in her hands. ‘Then again, an additional complication is that the murderess needn’t have slipped away at all, need she? She could simply have pulled the bolts on the back door as a blind and gone back to where she came from. Is that a possibility?’

Rats; I hadn’t thought of that particular twist. This was a real bugger. ‘Yeah, it’s possible,’ I said. ‘In fact there were three ways of getting to and from the atrium that I could see: one along the bath suite corridor, one through the garden and the third via the upper floors.’

‘Hmm.’ Perilla frowned. ‘All right. Let’s leave it and try your second option. That someone inside the house opened the door to the girl’s killer.’

‘Okay.’ I settled back against the cushions. ‘That theory’s more promising because it means the suspect field is wide open; the actual killer could’ve been anyone, male or female, from any background. The problem is, who opened the door?’

‘Could it have been left unbolted from the beginning?’