Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

“Don’t they all?”

“Where are her paints and powders then?” For heavens’ sake, everyone owns at least a pot of cream. Rufia almost certainly had to wash the Hesperides’ bowls and beakers, because I could not imagine Nipius and Natalis doing that; so she would have had dry, cracked hands.

“I told you, I’ve taken nothing!”

“I was not accusing you.”

“She kept her stuff at the bar where she worked, I suppose. That was where she would have wanted to look nice. Nice for the customers.”

Hmm! “Did she ever have a boyfriend?”

“I never knew of one.”

“And she never wore jewelry?” People who do, however basic it is, generally have more than one piece so they can swap around.

“Don’t look at me! She had a bangle that she always wore. I never took it.”

Fine.

“I was just thinking,” I said sadly after a while, “this is so little to show for a life.”

The woman from downstairs settled; she liked me showing sympathy. “I took her pillow. That was all I ever came and took out. For the old one down below, when he has trouble sleeping. I could have returned it if she ever came back.”

“She is never coming back.” I wondered whether to say we thought we had found Rufia’s body, but stalled at the woman’s next remark.

“No. That’s what the other one said.”

She had turned around and was making her way downstairs again. Although our discussion about Rufia ought to have been sad, she seemed to take it matter-of-factly. I cast a rapid glance back at the room before I started down but there was nothing there to detain me longer.

“Who was it?” I demanded, once we reached the ground again. “This other one?”

“That Menendra. I told you, I didn’t take to her.”

“She came here, and recently?”

“She came yesterday.”

“ Yesterday? What did she want?”

“To see the room, like you. Only I just showed her from the doorway and wouldn’t let her go inside. I never liked her attitude.”

“You knew her already? I have been told she was something to do with Rufia, I don’t know what that was-friends, or they worked together?”

“They worked. That was all. I met her once with Rufia. That was enough for me, thank Juno.”

The landlady had a tight mouth, disapproving of the other woman. Somehow I knew she regarded me more favorably. With luck, she would talk to me.

“I have not met Menendra yet, though I shall have to.” I spoke openly, on equal terms. “I am not sure what to expect. Can you tell me what she’s like?”

“Pushy. You won’t like her. I can tell you’re not that kind.” That would be news to my friends and family, who all thought me an obstreperous fiend.

“Is she foreign like some of the others?”

“Something. Speaks with a funny accent. Don’t they all?”

“Barmaids, you mean?”

She let out a hard laugh, loaded with meaning. “And the rest!”

“She is a prostitute?”

Now my informant retracted. “Not for me to say!” Her voice told me, however, just how she regarded Menendra; whether she thought the same of Rufia was unclear, though I thought not.

“So why did this Menendra come now? Why was she interested in Rufia’s room?”

The worn landlady drew herself up, becoming a pillar of rectitude. “That I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to know her reasons. But what I can say is this, young lady. That Menendra came here in the morning. I gave her the runaround and saw her on her way, quick as I could. The same night, and yes I mean last night, someone else came and they tried to break in on us!”

I was shocked. This was a harmless couple with nothing to steal. “That’s terrible. What did you do?”

“Our son was here,” she replied, relishing this. “Bad luck for them! He calls in to see us most days. He had his three big dogs with him-they are sloppy things but they bark loud. So whoever it was, they stopped trying to get in the door and they scrammed.”

“Did any of you see them properly?”

“No, they hopped it too quick. Our lad ran down the alley after them, but it was no good. He’ll be back this evening,” she assured me, seeing I felt great concern for the besieged couple, especially the frail old man. “He’s going to bring materials to make the door safer. One of the dogs will stay here with us; the other two cry if they’re not in their own bed.”

Rome was full of mosaics saying beware of the dog, with portraits of fierce curs in big spiked collars. Few houses actually had a guard dog, or if they owned one, he was gentler than his portrait. Of course we had the usual men who wanted to look tough, leading about horrible curs they could not properly handle-and also families with much-loved pets who wanted to greet strangers with ferocious licking.

“That’s good. All good. I’m very glad you have someone to look out for you.” I let the woman see me thinking hard. “What’s your name?”

“Annina.”

“Look, Annina, if the people who tried to break in had something to do with Menendra’s visit, they must want to find something.”

“That was what we thought.” These people were savvy. She and her husband and son had debated this. Their conclusions were the same as mine. The burglars and Menendra were connected, and they all wanted something. Something they thought Rufia had had, something they wanted to get to before me.

“Did any of you go up and search?”

“We know there’s nothing.”

“May I take another look?”

She nodded at once, almost as if she had been hoping I would ask. She let me go back by myself. This time I searched hard, scoured the room like a professional. I went through everywhere, hunting for hidey-holes. Not simply under the mattress and behind the cupboard, but seeking out loose boards, removable bricks, hollows in plaster above architraves. I found the secret places that Rufia may have used when she lived there. But they were all empty.

As I left Mucky Mule Mews I remembered to stay alert. When preoc- cupied by odd discoveries, it is all too easy to become so abstracted you fall prey to villains. Wise informers wait to start their brooding.

Even so, I was wondering what people might think Rufia could have left behind.

I walked carefully back to the Vicus Longus. The main thoroughfare, which had once seemed so insalubrious, suddenly felt familiar, populated and safe. I took a long breath and relaxed, as if I had narrowly escaped a scare. It was ridiculous. Nothing had happened, not to me. But I had enough experience to know what was possible in obscure places.

I went along to where Tiberius and I had enjoyed breakfast. I sat down with refreshments, fruit juice and a complimentary almond biscuit. Of the two who ran the stall, the mother was alone today, so she joined me in the sunlight. We exchanged names. She was Lepida, a good Latin designation, so I asked whether she had lived around here long.

“Born and bred.”

“That seems fairly unusual. A lot of people I’ve spoken to are incomers.”

“Too many slaves and foreigners,” Lepida grumbled. It was a classic complaint: unwanted low-class persons flooding in from overseas, taking all the work.

I decided not to mention Britain. With brown hair and despite blue-gray eyes, I had no really alien features. No stuck-out Pictish ears, no eastern steppes high cheekbones, no unusual skin tone. No one could tell my origins, unless I told them. Any bright occupant of the Empire can soon pick up Roman gestures and habits, learn to speak conventionally, then blend in. If anything, what marked me out was having too well-bred an accent nowadays.

I kicked out to scatter pigeons as they pecked too near. One of the automatic traits you soon learn eating out in the Mediterranean.