David Wishart - No Cause for Concern

It wasn’t far, just down the hill: a swanky place that you’d’ve taken for a private residence if it hadn’t been for the dozen-odd tables on the lawn and the waiters going back and forth with trays of food and drinks. We hadn’t quite hit the lunchtime spot yet, so apart from a couple of elderly narrow-stripers cornering the sylphium market between them I had the place to myself.

A waiter came over. ‘Good morning, sir. What can I get you?’

‘A cup of your best Velletrian would do fine, pal,’ I said, pulling up a stool at the nearest table.

His delicately-trimmed eyebrows lifted. ‘Just a cup?’

‘As ever is.’

‘Anything to eat?’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

‘A cup of wine. Thank you, sir.’ He sniffed and turned to go.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. He turned back. ‘You happen to know someone by the name of Quintus Bellarius?’

‘Of course, sir. He’s a regular customer.’ With just the smidgeon of a stress on ‘regular’.

‘Know where I can find him?’

‘His father’s house is just down the hill. About two hundred yards, on the right.’

Well, that couldn’t be handier. ‘Thanks, pal.’

The Velletrian was as good as I remembered it. And as expensive. I took my time over it, then headed off towards the Bellarius place.

Quintus Bellarius was a little chubby guy who looked like he’d roll back up if you pushed him over. When the slave showed me through, he was sitting in a gazebo in the garden, holding a wax tablet and chewing on the blunt end of a stylus. His tunic was scruffier even than my own personal favourite that Perilla had unilaterally got rid of in one of her sporadic clothing purges, and its predominant colour was ink.

Not in the running for Snappily-Dressed Playboy of the Month, then.

‘You don’t happen to know a two-syllable synonym for “besotted”, do you?’ he said before I’d even spoken.

‘Ah… “Stricken”?’

He beamed and made a note on the tablet. ‘Yeah. “Stricken” is perfect. I like “stricken”. You’re a poet?’

‘Uh, uh. Not me. That’s my wife’s department.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Rufia Perilla. I’m -’

He set the tablet down on the table beside him. ‘Wow! Ovidius Naso’s stepdaughter?’

‘Yeah. That’s her.’

The slave who’d brought me was still hovering.

‘Callias, fetch us some wine, would you?’ Bellarius said to him. ‘And a stool for…?’ He looked at me inquiringly.

‘Corvinus. Valerius Corvinus.’

The slave left.

‘You think you could give me an introduction?’ Bellarius said. ‘To your wife, I mean.’ He was practically salivating.

I grinned. No ulterior motive there: the guy’s interest was purely artistic, I was sure of that. Definitely not your standard sharp lad about town, this one. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I could manage that.’

‘Great! Now. What was it you wanted again?’

‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me something about your friend Titus Luscius.’

‘Titus? What about him?’

‘You know he’s disappeared?’

‘How do you mean, “disappeared”?’

I shrugged. ‘Just that. He left home seven days ago without telling anyone he was going, and he hasn’t been back since. His mother’s asked me to find him. You happen to know where he might be?’

He was staring at me. ‘Not a clue.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘We had a jug of wine together at the Three Elms. That’d be, what, about ten or twelve days ago. You say he told nobody?’

‘No one in the family, anyway.’

‘That’s not like Titus. He doesn’t get on with his stepfather, sure, but his mother and stepsister are a different thing altogether.’

‘He didn’t even drop any hints to you? When you last saw him, I mean.’

‘Uh-uh.’

‘And he didn’t seem, ah, worried about anything in particular? Or out of the ordinary in any way?’

‘No, he was fine. We just chatted, like we always do.’

The slave came back with the stool and the wine tray. I sat down. The wine was Caecuban. Good Caecuban. I didn’t know what Bellarius Senior did for a living, but he obviously wasn’t short of a silver piece or two.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go over the possibilities. Where could he have gone? If, say, he’d had a bust-up with his stepfather and decided to leave home in a hurry.’

He shot me a look. ‘That what happened?’

‘Probably. The bust-up, certainly, the day before he left.’

‘Over the adoption business?’

I nodded. ‘He told you about that?’

‘Oh, sure. That’d been going on for months. Years, even, practically since his mother’s wedding. Titus wasn’t having any of it. His stepfather’s a crook. Not just someone who’ll cut a corner to make a bit of extra profit, every businessman in Rome does that, my father included, but an actual crook. Titus has no time for him. He doesn’t want to be any more involved than he has to be.’

Yeah, that’s what Sempronia had told me, and it was nice to have it confirmed. Speaking of which: ‘Ah… He gets on well with his stepsister, does he? Sempronia?’ I couldn’t break a confidence, but there was no harm in fishing.

‘Sure. In fact, from the way he talks about her I’d say better than well.’

‘He talks about her a lot, then?’

Bellarius took a swallow of his wine before answering. ‘No. No, he doesn’t, hardly at all, which is pretty odd, really, particularly when he’s so upfront where his mother and Eutacticus are concerned. But when he does… Titus isn’t one for girls, Corvinus. Not that he’s the other way inclined, I don’t mean that at all, it’s just that he takes them too seriously.’ He grinned. ‘Unlike me. And if he is interested in Sempronia then I don’t blame him because by all accounts she’s a stunner. So I don’t pry, and when he gets a bit carried away over a cup or two of wine I just play dumb and change the subject. Right?’

Right. Bellarius might not know a synonym for “besotted”, but ingenu or not the guy was no fool.

‘Besides, she’s engaged to Statius Liber, down in Beneventum. Which is a pity, really. I’ve met him – our fathers do a lot of deals together – and he’s a complete prat.’

‘So,’ I said. ‘Let’s get back to these possibilities. About where he might be.’

‘You could try his uncle Sextus. He heads an acting troupe, and Titus’s said more than once he wouldn’t mind joining up with them if things got too bad. I don’t know where you’d find him, though.’

‘Bacanae. I was there a couple of days ago. No luck.’

‘Then I’m sorry. That was my best shot. In fact, it was my only shot. Titus isn’t really your outgoing type, he doesn’t have any other relatives that I know of or even any particular friends apart from me. Certainly not one he’d ask to put him up if he left home.’

‘How about enemies?’ I was clutching at straws here, and I knew it. But there weren’t many avenues left to explore, and that was one angle we hadn’t covered.

‘That’s a lot easier. Publius Paetinius.’

Prompt. Too prompt for comfort; he hadn’t even paused to think. And the tone was matter-of-fact, like the answer was obvious.

‘Who’s Publius Paetinius?’

‘Sestia Galla’s son.’ I must’ve looked blank, because he said: ‘Sestia Galla was Eutacticus’s first wife. After they divorced, she married again. Bastard Publius was the happy product.’

That last bit had come out with more than a smidgeon of overtones. ‘Hang on, pal,’ I said. ‘Okay, fair enough, there was a family connection of a sort between the two, but it doesn’t explain the enemies business. Couples get divorced and remarry all the time. That doesn’t mean to say the kids of the separate menages have to be at each other’s throats. Not without a reason.’