Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

I refused to understand her. At moments like this, I like to be my mother’s daughter: educated, well-off, well-mannered, sweet-natured … Well, maybe not sweet-natured. I pursed my lips slightly, but I folded my hands gently at my waist and raised my eyebrows, looking merely amused at her tone of voice. Then I simply waited. I wanted to see how far she would commit herself.

It was an interesting situation. Menendra clearly struggled, as if she was addressing me in a foreign language. The codes she normally used with people she bullied-and I reckoned bullying was her medium-were not working. She was desperate to make me comply; she did not know how to go about it. She had a reputation, but I seemed to have no fear of it. She saw that an open offensive would be counterproductive. Since I was a magistrate’s woman, anything stronger than wheedling would be risky, because Faustus could come down very heavily on her.

I refused to help. Let her flounder. Let her wonder whether I was too dense to see what she meant-or actually laughing up my sleeve at her.

“Now listen, dearie. You just tell that man of yours, whatever happened was a long time ago and it’s better for everyone not to stir it all up again.”

“Why don’t you tell him?” Even to myself I sounded haughty. “Of course he will ask what is it to you? Were you involved? What do you know about the people we have found dead?” I paused for a single beat. “Did you kill them?”

Still controlling her manner, Menendra gave me a reproachful look. “Now, you don’t want to go around accusing people of killings.”

I stopped being a nice senator’s granddaughter. “It’s what I do.”

She blinked.

I smiled with false sweetness. “We seem to have got off on the wrong foot. Shall we try again? I am formally investigating the events that led to six bodies being buried in the courtyard of this bar. Manlius Faustus, the plebeian aedile, wants to know who they are and who put them there. Apparently, you don’t think we should interfere, but you’re too late. As soon as the first bones turned up, that was the end of keeping things quiet. So, before we discuss the corpses, Menendra, why don’t you tell me about yourself and your connection with the Hesperides? I have heard you act as a supplier to the local bars. Fruit was mentioned.”

“ Fruit? ” Menendra now definitely thought I was making mock.

If what she really supplied was flesh for the upstairs-room trade, “fruit” could be a witty word for it. But Menendra lacked my sense of humor. I noticed that after her first outburst of disgust, she failed to correct me. To me, that confirmed what she traded was sexual. “I am in commerce, yes that’s right. I work with all the neighborhood bars. They all know me very well.” But for what? She had no intention of explaining.

“And they don’t mess with you!” Flattery was worth a try. But again she completely ignored it. This was a hard, shrewd woman who expected to be in control.

“Were you at the Garden of the Hesperides on the night the six people died?”

“I was not.” Menendra spoke with a nasty smirk, daring me to try to prove otherwise. I felt sure she would lie to me. If I was ever to put her at the scene that evening, someone else would have to tell me. First I would have to find them, then convince them it was safe to risk Menendra’s wrath.

“Did you know Rufia?”

“Who told you that?”

“I can’t remember,” I bluffed. A wise informer protected her sources. Otherwise, if Menendra got to them with her hints about keeping quiet, backed up with her heavies’ meaningful looks, those sources would dry up rapidly. “Several people.”

“Yes, I knew Rufia, knew her very well. What of it?”

“Do you believe one of those bodies they dug up is her?”

“Well she vanished, didn’t she?”

“She did so quite unexpectedly?”

“I heard that.”

“Somebody tried to burgle her old room last night. I wonder what they were looking for?”

“Oh, what can it have been?” sneered Menendra, not even troubling to deny her involvement.

“Rufia isn’t the only puzzle. There are five more bodies. That night she disappeared a group of salesmen were in the bar. You’re in commerce. Do you know anything about them, or who they were?”

“I never heard about any salesmen.” Really? Nothing she said was reliable; she actually flaunted that.

“Rufia looked after them.”

“You seem to know all about it, Flavia Albia!”

I knew damn all, and this witness was not helping. I recognized what was going on. Her aim was to find out how much I did know, but not to enlighten me further.

I toughened up again. “Oh I think you are the one who knows, Menendra. So if I can hand out quiet advice myself, it is let me find out by my own civilized methods. Don’t compel me to call in the men with hot irons and weights.”

“You don’t scare me!” She leaned toward me, full of menace. “I said, leave it all alone!” She intended to petrify me. She turned to her two heavies, her intention plain.

“Call them off, Menendra.” Measuring distances by eye, I let her know I could get to her before her men could get to me. Then I spoke like a street urchin who had taken part in every kind of street fight: “Scram them! Or I’ll pull out your eyes with my bare hands before your brutes can move a step.”

Everything shifted.

I took a step forward, pointing my right forefinger. “Move them back!” My tone made her believe I would carry out my threat to her eyes. It almost made me believe it too. That’s all you need.

Now she saw that I too had an unforgiving past. No one crossed her; nobody crossed me.

After a beat of disbelief, she made a slight, angry movement to her men; the heavies slowly walked across to the Medusa, leaving us.

A chill sweat trickled down my neck and under my tunic, but I made sure no anxiety showed. I was not so foolish as to think I had outfaced this woman. “That’s good. Now answer my questions, Menendra. Better to speak to me than officials. It’s your choice, but you are not stupid.”

Her chin came up though she did not object.

“Tell me how things were in those days, back when Rufia vanished. Thales owned the Hesperides, Rufia worked there. What about you? Were you providing your ‘supplies’ in those days?”

“Not me.”

“Too young? You hadn’t started?”

“I built up my little business afterward,” she acknowledged.

I looked her up and down. From the way she dressed, her business could not be so little; she was comfortably decked out. “Everything was more casual back then?” That was what the woman at the snacks stall had told me.

“I suppose so.”

“Where do you come from, Menendra? Where were you born?”

“Lycia.” In the northeastern Mediterranean. Pirate country. Not much else there.

“Slave or free?”

“I am no slave!”

“Never have been?”

“Wash your mouth out.” I saw her scanning me, wondering. Plenty of people assumed I myself must have slave origins. It was a possibility. I would have to live the rest of my life not knowing. In moments of depression, I felt that any slave had better luck than me; at least they understood their place in the world. Still, I was a happy bride now. Happy and fortunate. Happy, fortunate and free.

“All right. So you came to Rome of your own accord, for the pickings-was that when you met Rufia?” She begrudged me a curt nod. “You were friends?”

“She was decent to me. Took me under her wing. Taught me how to survive here.”

“Oh, all girls together then? I’m trying to imagine how it was.”

“You’re wrong.” Menendra cackled as she anticipated my discomfiture when she explained. “Way wrong. Rufia was hardly a girl. She must have been easily fifty. Could have been older. She had worked at the Hesperides for decades. She was older than Old Thales himself, and she looked every day of it. She was like a grandmother to me. So you haven’t been seeing the picture at all, have you, dearie?”