David Wishart - No Cause for Concern

‘He hated Titus’s guts, certainly. But it’s a long way from hating someone’s guts to murdering them.’

Yeah. True. Still… ‘Anyone else?’

‘No.’ Eutacticus gave me his crocodile’s smile. ‘Where enemies are concerned, Corvinus, if we were talking about me, if I’d been the one lying out there, I could give you a suspect list as long as your arm. But Titus…no, there’s no one else.’

Right. Even so, that little speech had suggested another line of possibilities that I hadn’t thought of up until then. However, that one could wait. ‘Fine. Then let’s try a completely different angle. Tell me about Astrapton himself.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He your ex-slave or did you bring him in from outside?’

‘The second. He’s been with me for just under five years.’ Eutacticus was frowning. ‘What’s this got to do with Titus? I told you, there was no connection.’

‘Nothing directly. I’m just fishing for ideas. Suppose -’

There was a knock on the door and Critias came in.

‘The gate slave says that Astrapton went through about half an hour ago, sir,’ he said.

Eutacticus swore. ‘He say where he was going?’

‘No, sir. But he turned in the direction of town, and he seems to have been in a particular hurry.’

‘Put the word out. I want that bastard found and brought back. That’s top priority.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Critias left, closing the door behind him.

‘So that’s that, Corvinus. You were right, he’s done a runner.’ Eutacticus swore again. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him, I promise you that. Now. What were you saying?’

‘Yeah. Just suppose Astrapton’s taking off didn’t have anything to do with Titus’s death. Or not directly, anyway. What other reason could he have?’

‘That’s obvious. It would be where any accountant was concerned. He’d been fiddling the books and knew he’d been caught.’

‘Had he?’

‘Not to my knowledge. But Astrapton is a sharp cookie, the best accountant I’ve ever had. More, he oversees the incomings and outgoings over the whole stretch of my business dealings, so he’d have a lot of scope. And as long as he wasn’t too greedy he could get away with it, barring a detailed audit. Which is what’s going to be arranged before the day’s out, whether we find the bastard or not.’

‘Fine. Meanwhile: he got any weaknesses that you know of?’

‘Weaknesses?’

‘Women. Boys. Gambling. That sort of thing. Things that if they got known about, or got out of hand, could lead him into trouble.’

Eutacticus frowned. ‘We talking blackmail here?’

‘Something like that. Anything like that, really. I said, I’m just fishing for ideas. You tell me.’

‘Women or boys I don’t know. Probably the first, if anything. I do know he likes to gamble, but then he’s a Greek, what do you expect? As long as he does it with his own money that’s fine with me.’

Well, it wasn’t much of a strand to follow up, but it was better than nothing. Certainly if Astrapton didn’t have a direct reason for muddying the waters re young Titus’s disappearance then being leaned on by the guilty third party was a viable motive. ‘You care to amplify?’ I said.

‘“ Amplify?”’

‘Names of friends with a similar hobby? His favourite bookie? Clubs he frequents? That sort of thing.’

‘I don’t know offhand myself. But I’ll find out. And believe me, Corvinus, if the information is there then you’ll have it. That I absolutely guarantee.’

Yeah; I could believe that; Eutacticus had ways of asking questions that I didn’t even like to think about. At least now he was on my side. Or claimed to be, anyway.

I stood up. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘You know where to find me. Any developments, just send a skivvy.’

I went downstairs. They’d laid young Titus out in the atrium, his feet towards the floor; not the slave, of course, he’d be elsewhere. I cut off my token scrap of hair, put it in the basket provided, and burned a pinch of incense on the small brazier beside the funeral couch.

Then I set off home.

Perilla was upstairs in her study slaving over her anapaests. Or whatever compositional metre she was currently into. Me, unless the annual accounts are involved, when I need to use the desk space for laying out the tablets and catching the torn-out clumps of hair, I like to be comfortable, which means I loll around on a couch with a handy table next to it for the wine cup; the lady is definitely the sitting-up-straight-at-a-desk type. So that’s where she was. I gave her the usual back-home kiss, carried my cup over to the rarely-used reading couch and lolled.

She closed the note-tablet and put down her pen.

‘So,’ she said. ‘You have your bodies.’

‘Yeah. Unfortunately. Be careful what you wish for, right?’ I gave her the run-down.

‘And you think this Astrapton was responsible?’ she said when I’d finished.

‘Give me a chance, lady! I don’t know! It looks that way at present, sure, or at least that he was seriously involved. The problem is that he didn’t have a smidgeon of motive. Direct motive, anyway. He didn’t have much in the way of opportunity, either. These little details aside, the guy’s perfect.’

‘How do you mean, no opportunity? He lived in the same house as Luscius.’

I sighed and picked up the winecup. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re Astrapton. You’ve decided, for whatever reason, to kill your boss’s stepson. You want to lure your victim to an out-of-the-way part of the garden. Trouble is, he’s never had anything to do with you and doesn’t want to, so he’s hardly likely to agree to a meeting. Also, time’s short, because he’s heading for the tall timber. How do you do it?’

‘Ah.’

‘“ Ah” is right.’ I took a smug swig of the wine.

‘Actually, I can think of three possibilities.’

I almost choked. ‘ What? ’

‘Theoretical ones, at least.’

Jupiter! ‘Theoretical’s fine with me. Go ahead. The floor is yours.’

‘First. You say that Luscius and Sempronia used the grotto as a meeting-place, and that she couldn’t be absolutely certain that no one else knew this. If Astrapton did, then what was to stop him writing a note purporting to come from her arranging to meet at the grotto, and passing it on to Luscius?’

‘He’d smell a rat straight off. He’d know she wouldn’t use Astrapton as a courier.’

‘There are other ways. Astrapton is resident in the house, yes?’

‘Yeah, I assume so.’

‘Then it wouldn’t be beyond possibility for him to, say, slip the note under Luscius’s bedroom door during the night. Naturally I don’t know the layout of the house itself and where the bedrooms are located in respect of one another, so that might not be feasible in practice. But the principle holds good. If the meeting was timed for before dawn, or slightly after, there would be no chance of the deception being discovered before it was too late. And it’d explain why Luscius didn’t arrange to say goodbye to Sempronia and tell her where he was going. As far as he was concerned, an arrangement to meet had already been made, by Sempronia herself.’

‘Would Astrapton have known her handwriting? He’d’ve had to, to forge a note.’

Perilla shrugged. ‘Again, I don’t know. Possibly, possibly not; I said, it’s only a theory, to be modified by the facts. But in any case I doubt if Luscius would be unduly suspicious. After all, why should he be? As far as he knew, the relationship was still a secret, one or two words would be enough, and they needn’t’ve included a signature. In fact, they probably wouldn’t, for safety’s sake. So unless the forgery was crude in the extreme Luscius wouldn’t’ve given it a second glance.’