David Wishart - Old Bones

I let her get out of earshot before I turned back to Perilla.

'Okay,' I said. 'You can let your hair down now.'

Perilla smiled. 'Was it that obvious?'

'Only to me.'

'It really wasn't funny.' She glanced at the pile of dung steaming away next to the pristine whitewashed wall and started to giggle. 'Bathyllus will be furious.'

'We can tell him Mother's tame doctor recommended it as a cure for baldness.'

The giggle changed to a laugh, and I got up and kissed her; which was exactly when Bathyllus himself soft-shoed out looking serious as hell.

'Excuse me for interrupting, sir,' he said quietly. He hadn't even glanced at Corydon's offering, and that was odd, too, if you like: selective astigmatism may be one of the little guy's cultivated virtues, but selectively purblind he isn't, and he'd practically stepped in the stuff. We hadn't got the disapproving stare we're usually treated to when he catches us breaching his personal code of ethics, either.

Weird. Definitely weird.

'Oh, hi, Bathyllus.' I straightened while Perilla adjusted her mantle and put on her stiff Roman matron pose. 'Just the man. We, ah, seem to have had a bit of an accident here.' I didn't look at Perilla, but I heard the lady grunt. 'You want to bring a brush and dustpan?'

He fizzed for a while like Bathyllus never does. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'Certainly. In a moment.'

Still the perfect butler. There was something badly wrong here. I'd expected the biggest blow-out since Etna last erupted and I hadn't got even a sniff. So far as Bathyllus could ever look six yards out of the game the little guy was doing just that. I stopped grinning. Whatever this was, it was no joke.

'Hey, sunshine,' I said. 'You okay?'

'Yes, sir.' He cleared his throat. 'We've had a message from Licinius Nepos. Your stepfather has just committed a murder.'

I stared at him, my lower jaw scraping the terrace.

'He has what? '

‘Killed someone, sir.’ Bathyllus hesitated. ‘One of the locals. With a knife, as I understand.

Shit.

Nepos's villa wasn't far, no more than a couple of miles down the road in the opposite direction from Caere, at the end of a string of smaller properties with the collective name of Vetuliscum. Nepos was an old friend of my father's; Mother and Priscus stayed with him whenever the annual tomb-bash took them to Caere, and we'd've been doing the same if I hadn't remembered about Flatworm's place. In herself Mother's okay, just, but she had her mad chef Phormio with her, and sure as eggs are eggs we'd've been poisoned inside of a week. The fact that this time she'd added a parasitic Hippocratic doctor to her entourage didn't help much, either. If Phormio hadn't got us that bastard would've for sure: mad chefs are bad enough, but Hippocratics get you both ends of the digestive process and expect you to thank them while you're throwing up and dumping down. If you can speak at all, that is.

I'd done the walk for fun the day before, but this time I was in a hurry and I took a horse. My brain was buzzing all the way. This thing didn't make sense, because Priscus wouldn't hurt a fly. Priscus couldn't hurt a fly: the old bugger would've taken three days to find the fly-swatter, by which time he'd've forgotten what he wanted it for and wandered off instead down one of his esoteric byways chasing rogue Oscan datives. Mother, sure; I'd've believed Mother, easy, only if she ever decided to murder someone she wouldn't get caught; but Priscus? No way. It had to be a mistake.

Nepos was waiting for me at the door. The old guy looked worried as hell, which was a bad sign: even from the little I'd seen of him I had a lot of time for Nepos. He was no fool, for a start. Unlike Flatworm who only used his country villa for al-fresco screwing purposes and wouldn't recognise an endive outside of a salad if it jumped up and bit him he was a real countryman who knew his ground and what to do with it. How to make it pay, too, and that was what counted. Ask any farmer.

'Come on up, Corvinus,' he said. 'Titus is still a bit shocked and not quite himself, I'm afraid. And of course that damned Greek fellow would choose this morning to go into Caere.'

Yeah, well; that was one good thing, anyway. A doctor might've finished the poor sap off altogether, and personally I could do without Hilarion's company. It just showed you how stupid names can be. Cheerful was something the guy most definitely wasn't.

We went upstairs: like with a lot of the big working villas the living accommodation was two floors up, where things were quieter and less messy. Priscus was lying on a couch in the main sitting room with Mother beside him on a chair. I'd expected under the circumstances she'd be frayed at the edges, but she looked much as she always did: half her age, impeccably made up and poised as hell. If the Germans ever poured across the Rhine and fought their way looting and pillaging to Rome they'd find Mother sitting in the atrium waiting to serve them honeyed wine and upside-down cake. She'd insist the buggers wiped their boots on the mat before they came in, too.

She raised her cheek for me to kiss.

'Marcus, how lovely,' she said. 'It's good of you to come so promptly. Isn't it, Titus?'

'Mmmaaa!' Even under normal conditions Priscus was like something you'd find under the lid of a mummy case. Now the guy looked like he wouldn't even make the first five dynasties. He was wiry, mind. Whoever had put Priscus together might only have used string and glue, but all the bits were there and fully functional. Except whatever organ handles common sense, of course, but then you can't have everything. 'Hello, Marcus, my boy! Bit of a bugger, this, isn't it?'

'Titus!' Mother looked shocked, as well she might: personally I'd have bet a gold piece to a poke in the eye that the unworldly old prune didn't even know the word, let alone use it. Not quite himself was right.

I sat down on one of the other couches.

'So, Stepfather,' I said. 'Who did you kill?'

'He didn't kill anyone!' Mother snapped. 'Don't be silly!'

I sighed. 'Okay. So who didn't you kill?'

'A young fellow by the name of Attus Navius.' That was Nepos, and he sounded tired. 'He owns – owned – the land on either side of the Caere road two along from me, between Mamilius's place and Papatius's wineshop.'

'Uh-huh.' I knew where he was, at least with the wineshop: that I'd already found (surprise!). And Mamilius's would be the farmhouse that fronted onto the road just before the bridge that marked the edge of Nepos's property. 'That where it happened?'

'No.' Nepos had obviously decided to give me the details himself. Very wise, with Priscus as the only other option. 'You know Clusinus's track?' I shook my head. 'You'll have passed it on your way here. The first on the right as you come into Vetuliscum.'

I remembered the track now. It branched off just past the point where the line of rough country bordering the road to the north opened out into Vetuliscum proper. 'Leads up into the hills?'

Nepos grunted. 'That's the lad. Navius was up there in a gully a few hundred yards beyond the farm proper, stabbed through the heart. Titus was caught, ah' – he cleared his throat – 'standing over him with a knife in his hand.'

Jupiter with little bells on! I looked at Priscus in total disbelief. The guy gave an ovine bleat and tried a louche grin that didn't work.

'I'd just…mmaaa!…found him, Marcus, you see,' he explained. 'The whole thing was an accident. The purest chance.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'That I'd sort of assumed. And the knife?'

'I pulled it out, of course.'

Oh, joy in the morning! I wasn't hearing this, surely: no one could be that stupid, not even Priscus!