David Wishart - No Cause for Concern

‘So you’ll want to lay your hands on Philotimus yourself,’ Fulvius said.

‘Uh…yeah.’ I was guarded. ‘That’d be a definite plus.’

‘Then you’re in luck. You’ll be in Ostia for the next couple of days?’

‘Sure. Longer, if need be. Why so?’

‘Because he left the last of your four crates in storage. I’ve just put it on board. And he’s sailing to Massilia with us himself. He arranged passage for two the last time I saw him, two months ago.’

‘Passage for two?’ Jupiter! I’d nailed Satrius!

‘That’s right. They may be here already, in fact. Staying in the lodging-house on the edge of town. That’s where I was to send a message to, when the boat was ready to leave.’

‘You happen to know who the other passenger is? Just for information.’

He told me.

The lodging-house Fulvius had mentioned was on the coast, clear of the harbour complex itself but still inside the town boundaries. You don’t see many places like that, but you do get them in the big ports: we’d stayed in one ourselves, in Brindisi, only a few months before when we’d gone to Alexandria. A variant on the country inn, but a lot more upmarket, catering for the travelling middle class who don’t happen to have friends or relatives nearby but’d rather not be eaten alive before they sail by fleas and bedbugs. They can be pretty swish, the better ones, with self-contained apartments and catering laid on.

This place wasn’t quite up to Brindisian standards, but it was pretty good all the same.

I went up to the guy on the reception desk.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a friend of mine, travelling to Massilia in the next few days.’ I gave him the details. ‘The boat’s the Seagull, if it’s any help. The captain was to send the message about sailing times here.’

‘No problem, sir.’ He smiled. ‘They checked in a few hours ago.’ Yeah, well, it would be ‘they’, still; young Paetinius would’ve been going too, if he hadn’t presently been stiffening in an outhouse next to the harbour-master’s office. ‘Suite three, on the first floor.’

I went up, found the right door and knocked.

Cleia opened it. She looked at me, and her jaw dropped. I put my finger to my lips.

‘Who is it?’ Sempronia said, from inside. Then, when I pushed past the girl, she saw me.

She was lying on one of the room’s two couches with a bowl of grapes on the table in front of her. She put down the one she’d been holding and just stared.

I closed the door.

‘Cleia, go into the bedroom.’ Sempronia’s eyes hadn’t left my face. ‘Stay there, please.’ The maid meekly did as she was told, shutting the door behind her. ‘Where’s Publius, Corvinus?

‘Dead.’

She just nodded. Her expression didn’t change. I felt the first stirrings of anger: oh, sure, the guy had tried to kill me, but the poor bastard deserved more recognition than that. Not that her reaction was unexpected. I doubted if this bitch had ever given anyone else a second thought in her life. She was Eutacticus’s daughter, all right, in spades.

‘How did you know?’ she said. Her voice was as empty of emotion as her expression, and she might’ve been asking me what the weather was like.

‘I didn’t. Or not before the captain of the Seagull told me Philotimus would be travelling with his wife. It wasn’t too difficult to put two and two together after that.’

‘No, I suppose not. Sit down. Would you like a grape?’

I didn’t move. ‘You and Astrapton killed Titus, right?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She took a grape from the bowl herself and chewed it. ‘It was quite easy. He was besotted with me.’

‘Why?’

‘Why did he have to die, you mean?’ She shrugged. ‘His slave Lynchus had found out that Astrapton was embezzling money from my father. How, I don’t know, but Lynchus always was a sneak, prying into things that were no concern of his, and clever for a slave. Lynchus passed the information on to Titus, and he brought it straight to me. After the argument, he was planning to run off and join his uncle anyway, and he arranged to meet me in the grotto for one last time before he left. That part of it was simple. He didn’t suspect a thing.’

‘You and Astrapton were lovers?’

She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t quite put it quite as strongly as that. I let him think so, and he was amusing. Call him an amusement, if you like. Like Titus was. Anyway, our interests coincided. He needed a bolt-hole to escape to, I wanted to get away, with enough money to be independent for the rest of my life.’

‘Convenient.’

For the first time, there was a flash of emotion in her eyes. ‘Don’t judge me, Corvinus! I’ve always loathed my father; he’s a loathsome man. And marriage to Statius Liber, stuck down in Beneventum and used as a way of producing children, would’ve been a living death. Joining with Astrapton was the perfect business arrangement. And Paetinius and Mother jumped at it. As a way of getting their revenge on my father, it was ideal.’

‘He’d’ve traced you eventually. Eutacticus.’

She shrugged. ‘Massilia’s a long way away, outwith even Father’s reach. Mother’s family, the Sestii, are big over there. And we chose the last trip of the season, before the sea-lanes closed for the winter, so we’d have plenty of time to prepare. I’d’ve been safe enough.’

‘Married to Astrapton?’

‘No. I told you, he was only an amusement. I would have worked something out.’

‘Another convenient death?’

‘Probably. It didn’t come to that, though, did it? Or rather, it did. Just a bit earlier than I’d expected, that’s all.’

Jupiter! She was a cold bitch, right enough! ‘What about Satrius? You set him up, right?’

‘Of course. That was your doing, Corvinus. As was most of it. If you hadn’t stuck your nose in my father wouldn’t’ve known about the embezzlement side of things until we were safely away, and Astrapton wouldn’t’ve had to disappear earlier than planned. As it was, he fitted in quite well, and it gave me the breathing-space I needed.’ She took another grape. ‘The business with the Suburan girlfriend was absolutely genuine, by the way; I’d known all about it from the start, and I didn’t mind, because if anyone had somehow been curious about his current entanglements it would’ve thrown them off the scent. The only lie involved Alexander. Yes, he told Satrius where to find him, but he did it the same morning Satrius told my father, not the day before, and by that time Publius had already been round to the flat and killed him.’

‘So Alexander had to die too.’

‘Mm.’ She ate the grape. ‘That was easy to manage. I did it myself, in fact. Once the body was found, I simply engineered a private word with Satrius and told him that I knew, through Cleia, that he’d had the information where to find Astrapton for almost a day before he’d passed it on, and that I intended telling my father. Satrius wasn’t a complete fool. He may have suspected something, but he knew his word alone wouldn’t weigh over mine, and in any case he couldn’t take the risk. So he ran.’

‘Taking the heat off so that you could slip quietly down to Ostia.’

‘Yes. Breathing-space, as I said. I only needed another couple of days, after all. I sent Cleia to you with strict instructions what to say, knowing that you’d think the case was over. Or at least, thinking it for the time it would’ve taken Father to trace Satrius, by which time the truth wouldn’t matter because I’d be safely away. Only then you turned up and mentioned that you were going down to Ostia yourself. I knew you knew the name ‘Seagull’- Astrapton was a fool to put that in writing, even though it might’ve seemed safe enough at the time – and the risk that you’d made the connection was too great to ignore, especially since time was running out.’