David Wishart - Old Bones

Perilla had raised her eyes, startled. I felt pretty knocked-back myself.

'Ah…hang on, there,' I said. 'You're saying Papatius killed Navius?'

Tanaquil frowned. 'But of course he did. We saw him ourselves.'

'You what? '

'Not the actual killing, of course.' Ramutha gave an acidulous sniff. 'We saw him as he went past.'

'He was following Navius,' Tanaquil bared her brown teeth at me, 'who was following the woman, no doubt to one of their dirty little assignations. Oh, she was quite blatant about it, wasn't she, Ramutha?'

' Quite blatant,' Ramutha agreed. She lifted her cup and sipped delicately. 'Personally, I don't blame Larth Papatius in the slightest. All that surprises me is that he didn't kill his bitch of a wife at the same time.'

Oh, gods! Oh dear, sweet gods!

Tanaquil picked up the knife and leaned forward, smiling.

'More cake?' she said.

Ten minutes later we were in the carriage heading for Nepos's. I was still feeling like someone had clouted me from behind with a blackjack.

'It can't be that obvious,' I said.

'Of course it can.' Perilla was looking relaxed. 'Crimes of passion are the commonest type. Husband murders lover, lover murders husband, wife murders husband…'

'Since when were you an expert, lady?'

'Admit it. You feel cheated.'

'Damn right I do! And that pair of harpies are cracked as a cut-price Corinthian vase!'

'They seemed quite sensible to me. Not exactly my type, but -'

My fist hit the cushion. 'Jupiter, Perilla! Papatius couldn't have done it!'

'Why not?' Yeah. Good question. I didn't answer. 'The thing's solved. Papatius killed the boy out of jealousy. All Priscus has to do is subpoena Tanaquil and Ramutha and have them tell their story to the judge. As far as we're concerned we can forget about it and get on with our holiday.'

'Looking round tombs?'

'Not all the time, no. Caere has some wonderful old temples.'

'Jupiter on a bloody see-saw!'

Perilla smiled. 'At least Priscus will be pleased when you tell him. He must be very worried.'

'Priscus has probably forgotten all about it by this time. Where everyday things like murder are concerned the guy's got the attention span of a gnat.'

'Marcus, you're grousing.'

'I am not -' I stopped. 'Yeah, okay. But we don't stay to lunch, right? I've had about all I can take for one day without adding food poisoning to the list.'

She leaned over and kissed me. 'All right,' she said. 'Is that Thupeltha, by the way?'

I looked out of the carriage window. We were passing the wineshop. Mamilius was sitting on the outside bench and Thupeltha had just put a jug of wine down beside him. Over in the far corner of the terrace a big bald-headed guy was lashing a fugitive vine tendril to the trellis. He looked up momentarily, then went on with what he was doing. Obviously the landlord himself, and what Tanaquil had said about him being a powerful man was right. Even his muscles had muscles.

'Yeah,' I said. 'That's her.'

'Then I see what your spinster friends meant. Men would find her very attractive.'

'You think so?'

'Oh, Corvinus!'

I grinned. 'All right, then, she's okay. A bit obvious.'

'And you were right about something else. If Navius was only in his early twenties then she is old enough to be his mother. She must be thirty-five if she's a day. That's interesting.'

'It is?'

'How many women do you know who take lovers younger than themselves? Present company excepted, of course.'

I gave another grin: Perilla's got eighteen months on me, although it doesn't show. 'Quite a few, as a matter of fact.'

'In the long term? And much younger?'

'Sure. Only in that case there's usually some sort of quid pro quo. The woman's generally ugly and loaded and the kid's a stud on his uppers. Nothing wrong with that. Both parties get what they're looking for, they're both happy and it's no concern of anyone else's.'

'But, Marcus, in this case Thupeltha isn't ugly, she's hardly, I would imagine, loaded, Navius strikes me as rather a mother's boy despite his reputation and as the owner of quite a sizeable property in his own right he can scarcely be described as on his uppers. Besides, I would assume that Papatius would be quite concerned, for one. And lastly this is not Rome or Athens. Liaisons like that belong to a more sophisticated world. They simply don't happen out in the country.'

Gods! When you translated that into simple Latin it actually made sense. 'You making something out of this?' I said.

'Not really. But it's worth thinking about, isn't it?'

'Yeah.' I frowned. 'Yeah, it is.’

When we arrived at Nepos's his foreman was in the yard supervising the daubing of the empty wine jars with pitch ready for the up-and-coming grape harvest, but he took time off to show us up. Nepos himself, Mother and Priscus were all in the atrium, as well as Mother's doctor hanger-on, the unhilarious Hilarion. I'd only met the guy once, but he'd given me a pain in my back molars the minute I'd set eyes on him.

'Marcus, dear.' Mother came over and turned her cheek for me to kiss. She was wearing a stunning yellow Coan silk mantle and she smelled of the hyacinth perfume that goes for a gold piece the bottle in the pricey Saeptan shops, if you can get it. 'And Perilla. How lovely.'

'We just dropped by to see how Meataxe was doing,' I said.

'Helvius Priscus is bearing up very well.' That was Hilarion. The guy was stroking his beard like it was a cat that had fastened itself to his expensive lambs-wool tunic. 'Although there is still a certain overpreponderance of phlegm in the brain that I am at present combatting with hot mustard poultices.'

'Is that right, now?' I said. I turned to Priscus. He was lying on one of the couches with a squishy bag of gunk tied to his forehead. 'How's the boy, Priscus?'

'Mmmaa…'

Hilarion coughed. 'The patient has also, temporarily, been forbidden to speak,' he said, 'the shock of yesterday having significantly depleted the air content of the blood vessels which, as you are no doubt aware, Valerius Corvinus, is essential to rational thought. To that end he has been forbidden lettuce and restricted to a diet of boiled pulses.'

'Yeah?' Jupiter! In my strictly non-medical opinion keeping Priscus off the salads and zipping up his mouth wasn't going to do a hell of a lot of good as far as improving his mental thought processes were concerned. And if air in the brain had anything to do with intelligence then the old bugger must've been starved of it at birth. 'You sure he wouldn't be better off in Caere, bashing tombs?'

'With the wind in the south and a superfluity of cerebral phlegm?' Hilarion gave what passed with him for a wry chuckle. The first time I'd heard it I'd thought the guy was pegging out. 'Hardly, hardly. My dear sir, I have no wish to offend, but you're obviously not a doctor.'

'Don't be silly, Marcus,' Mother said. She'd been listening to the old quack with dewy eyes and hands reverently clasped, and in a woman of Mother's intelligence it was sickening to watch. 'Hilarion knows what he's talking about. He is a genius.'

'Is that so?' Yeah, sure; and I was Asclepius's grandmother. I turned to the guy and gave him my best smile. 'Let me just say one thing, pal. If we're talking about wind then the only relevant bit around here is -'

'Marcus!'

Fortunately for family amity Nepos put his oar in at this point.

'Corvinus, my dear fellow,' he said, 'why don't you and I go along to my study for a while, eh?'

I let myself be led off; all the more willingly because Nepos picked up a jug of Falernian and a couple of cups on the way. That medical bastard would probably claim that, me being of a choleric, that is hot and dry, disposition Falernian was the worst thing I could inflict on my system. As far as I was concerned Hilarion could take the whole Hippocratic corpus and use it as an enema.