David Wishart: Trade Secrets

Well, I supposed the chances of the local wineshop owner not knowing about the murder had been pretty slim, after all. I was just lucky the gossipy bastard also had a nasty, muck-raking streak a yard wide. Even so, I’d no desire at this point to complicate matters. I finished my wine at a gulp and stood up.

‘Thanks, pal,’ I said. ‘Be seeing you.’

‘Pleasure. Call again.’

I went out. I’d talk to the third supplier, Vibius, sure, while I was in the area, but at this point I suspected that it’d just be a matter of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. I’d got my killer cold.

Case over. Done and dusted.

Like Poetelius had told me, Vibius’s pottery was further along the road, past the Emporium and opposite the end of the Aemilian Porch. Just as at Festus’s place, there were the usual bread-and-butter amphoras and rough clay storage jars piled up in the yard outside, but when I went in most of the racks held the sort of items you’d only find in shops specializing in upmarket tableware and fine decorative goods. Pretty expensive shops at that: from what I could see, the stuff was first-rate, pick-of-the-range formal dinner party rather than everyday domestic standard for the dishes, and birthday-present quality for the vases. Yeah; Poetelius had said that the guy was a master craftsman, in a different league from Festus altogether. Losing the contract to an also-ran when you were producing work like this must’ve rankled.

It didn’t seem to have hurt him in the longer term, anyway. The place was busy enough, with five or six slaves bringing up one-off pots and jars on the wheel and a dozen more working at the benches packing moulds and glazing or painting the biscuit-fired pieces. I paused to watch one old guy in a freedman’s cap who was using a tiny brush to paint the lid of a cosmetic box no more than three inches long and wide with a scene involving nymphs and satyrs. Lovely stuff.

Finally, he put the brush down and turned towards me.

‘Yes, sir?’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I was looking for the owner,’ I said. ‘Titus Vibius. He around at present?’

‘I’m afraid not. But if you’re a customer then perhaps I can help you myself.’

Ah, well, I couldn’t be lucky every time. ‘No, it’s a private matter. You have any idea when he’ll be in? Or where I can find him?’

‘That I don’t know. But you could try his house, sir, on the off-chance that he might be there. Down the road a little on the Porch side. The one with the red-painted door.’

‘Thanks, pal.’ I left him to his finicky work and went back out into the street.

I found the house – like Vecilius’s, a two-storey property with a garden to the side – and knocked. A couple of minutes later, it was opened by an elderly slave.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘The master at home?’ I said.

‘He is. Who shall I say?’ I gave him my name, and then repeated it louder when he cupped his hand to his ear. ‘Thank you. The master’s in his study, sir. If you’d like to come in and wait, I’ll fetch him for you.’

No lobby and atrium here – the place wasn’t big enough – but it was a lot more spacious than a tenement flat in the town proper would be; one of those older upper-working-class houses you get on the outskirts, with two or three rooms off a central corridor ending in a staircase leading up to the first-floor landing. The slave opened the door on the left.

‘In here, sir,’ he said.

‘Who is it, Silvius?’

I looked up. A girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, was leaning over the balustrade. Quite a looker: brunette, and from what I could see of her with quite a nice figure.

‘A Valerius Corvinus, miss. Come to see your father.’

‘Oh.’ She disappeared, and I heard a door close upstairs.

‘Sir?’ The slave was standing aside, waiting.

‘Uh … right. I’m sorry.’ I went past him into the room.

‘The master won’t keep you a moment. Make yourself at home, please.’

He shuffled off, closing the door behind him.

There was a couch and a couple of chairs, which was about all the available floor space could manage; simple, but good quality. I sat on one of the chairs and looked round. The same description applied to the decor; nothing flashy, but one wall had a very nice fresco of deer in a wooded landscape, and the others were plain-colour-washed with a frieze of acanthus at the top and painted-in panelling at the bottom. In the corner opposite me was a small table with a pottery vase full of narcissi, in the same style as the vases I’d seen on display in Vibius’s workshop. Someone had good taste; probably his wife.

A couple of minutes later the door opened again and a guy in his early fifties came in. Tall, thin, slightly stooped, grizzled hair, dressed in a lounging-tunic.

‘Valerius Corvinus?’

‘That’s me.’ I stood up.

‘What can I do for you?’ Vibius waved me down again and sat on the other chair. ‘If it’s business, you’d do better talking to my foreman at the workshop. He handles most of the orders these days.’

‘No, it’s not, actually. Or rather, not that kind of business.’ I went through my usual spiel. ‘I’m acting for a lady by the name of Annia, Gaius Tullius’s widow.’

His eyes widened. ‘Widow? Tullius is dead?’

‘Yeah. You didn’t know?’

‘Why should I? And in what way are you “acting for” her?’

‘Tullius was murdered. Four days ago, in an alleyway near the Trigemina Gate.’

‘Merciful heavens!’ Well, the surprise seemed genuine enough. And he was right; there wasn’t any reason why he should know. ‘Who did it?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. Like I said, I’m going around asking questions on his wife’s behalf.’

‘So why talk to me? It’s more than a year since I saw him last.’

‘So I’d heard. No hassle, I’m just being thorough, and it won’t take long. You got ten minutes to spare?’

‘Certainly. More, if you need them. But I’ll tell you now that you’re wasting your time. There’s nothing I can say that will help you.’ He paused. ‘And I’ll tell you something else, Valerius Corvinus. If and when you find out who the killer is, you bring him round here and I’ll be honoured to shake the man’s hand.’

I blinked; there’d been real venom behind the words, not just casual dislike, and coming suddenly from this gentle-looking, soft-spoken guy it put me off my stride.

‘According to Tullius’s partner, Poetelius, you used to be one of the firm’s main suppliers,’ I said.

‘That’s right. For ten years, or thereabouts, practically since they set up in business. I supplied Tullius’s father, too, before he died.’

‘Care to tell me what happened? Why you decided to part company with them?’

‘It’s simple enough, and the parting company was no doing of mine. Fourteen months ago the contract came up for renewal. Tullius told me he was awarding it elsewhere. End of story.’

‘He give you a reason?’

The barest smidgeon of hesitation. ‘No. No, he didn’t.’

‘And you weren’t expecting the decision?’

‘No, again. In fact, just a couple of months previously he’d talked about doubling the existing order. That made things even worse.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘We were working flat out as it was. With double the order I couldn’t deliver fast enough and still guarantee the same quality, so before the new contract could be signed I had to expand – buy more slaves, suitably skilled ones, install an extra kiln, order and pay for extra materials, make a dozen other improvements. That doesn’t come cheap, especially when it all has to be done on only two months’ warning. I wasn’t exactly living hand-to-mouth at the time, but I didn’t have nearly enough ready cash to meet the expense, which meant I had to borrow.’