Last Rites (Marcus Corvinus Book 6) Read online

  ‘“The Bitch”?’

  ‘Lepida.’ Uh-huh. The elder sister. She’d be the Lepida who’d been married to Drusus Caesar before the marriage was dissolved and Sejanus took her over as his mistress. She was in her late twenties now, still single and one of the hottest, fastest ladies in Rome. ‘That’s a joke, by the way. You can laugh if you like.’

  ‘Uh… what’s a joke, friend?’ He hadn’t laughed himself; hadn’t even sounded amused. I shifted on the couch. The lack of expression in his voice was getting to me seriously; it wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t healthy, no more than his lack of resentment at what anyone else would’ve seen as a covert accusation. This guy was Weird with a capital ‘W’, and he was making me nervous as a cat at a dog-breeders’ convention. More than anything else I wanted out of that room, out of that house…

  But I couldn’t go yet. Not now that he was talking.

  ‘Lepida. It means pleasant, agreeable. Lepida was a bitch when we were young, she’s still a bitch. The Bitch. Cornelia was the only sister I had. I couldn’t let her go, could I?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘We didn’t meet for almost five years. I saw her in the street sometimes. Sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. Then I saw her maid one day, buying a scarf in the Velabrum. I gave her a message, she brought one back. That was how it started. Then two months later Cornelia managed to slip away herself. We’ve been seeing each other ever since, whenever we can. I gave her the ring six years ago. When I came of age. She didn’t want to take it, but I insisted.’

  The question had to be asked, and the straighter the better. ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  He looked directly at me for the first time, his eyes wide.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’ But there was no surprise in his tone, or shock.

  ‘Cornelia was murdered. By a man disguised as one of the flutegirls attending the rites.’ I paused. He was staring at me now, but he didn’t speak. ‘You play the flute yourself, don’t you?’

  Silence. Then, suddenly, his face changed as the penny dropped and he was on his feet and headed for my throat, so fast that I only had time to stand up and raise my arms to catch him as he hit. He was heavier than he looked, in good condition, and more to the point he was angry as hell. It took me all my time and all my strength to prise his thumbs free of my windpipe, spin him round and get an arm-lock on him. He struggled for a bit then went limp against me like a sack of grain. I let go and he slid to the ground, then I stepped back and waited. He sat at my feet, his head in his hands.

  Minutes passed. Jupiter knew where the slaves had got to – we’d made enough noise to bring the whole household running – but no one came. Finally he looked up.

  ‘You think I murdered her.’ There was no anger left in his voice. It was chillingly calm like before, and it sent a shiver up my spine.

  There was no point playing games. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s what I think.’

  He scrambled to his feet. ‘Then you can go and fuck yourself.’

  Ouch. He meant it, too. Well, perhaps it was for the best. For a minute there I’d actually felt sorry for the guy.

  ‘Maybe you didn’t do the actual killing,’ I said. ‘The girl could’ve killed herself. But you were directly responsible.’

  He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time; didn’t speak, just looked. And his expression was sheer blank horror. Then he began to move his head slowly, numbly, back and forward, back and forward…

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

  The change was so sudden it was shocking. I had the weird feeling he was talking to himself, trying to convince himself, not me, and not doing too well. The hairs crawled on my scalp. What had I said to Perilla? Anyone crazy enough to kill a Vestal would show it in other ways…

  Maybe it was grief and lack of food, but from where I was standing and my experience of the guy so far Marcus Lepidus was short of a watertight roof by all the tiles and half the joists. And if ever I saw guilt written plain on a face, Lepidus’s was the one.

  At least there was no fight left in him now. I steered him gently to his couch and pushed him down on to it. He didn’t resist, just stared past me at nothing; or rather at something I couldn’t see and probably wouldn’t want to.

  ‘Okay.’ I moved gently on to the really shaky ground. ‘So what were you talking about, you and Cornelia? The day Servilia saw you?’ I waited. Nothing. His eyes had gone blank, like twin coin dies. ‘Come on, Lepidus! You were with the girl for a good twenty minutes. Servilia said you were asking her something; “pleading” was the word she used. So what was it?’ Nothing. I could’ve been talking to the fancy bronze statue in the corner. I sighed. ‘All right. We’ll leave it and move on. Second: why did you gatecrash the rites? And what exactly happened that evening?’

  I waited. And waited. Even a refusal to tell or another brawl would’ve been better than what was happening. He’d simply frozen up on me. His face was set like a wax death-mask and he was staring into nothing, completely immobile. I leaned over and waved my hand in front of his eyes. He neither moved nor blinked. My spine went cold.

  Gods!

  Well, there was nothing more I could do, I was beginning to shake, and all I wanted was out. I stood up. No reaction. None. I moved to the door.

  With that open, I felt better. I took several deep breaths and turned round. Lepidus was still staring.

  ‘Did you kill her?’ I asked quietly.

  But he didn’t answer. I closed the door gently behind me.

  12.

  I left word with the slave to look after him and made my way down from the Quirinal. There wasn’t much I could do now except make my report to Camillus, who as acting chief priest was technically responsible for putting any prosecution into gear. I didn’t envy him. On the one hand, the murder of a Vestal was unheard of and it’d call, if anything did, for the guy responsible to be chopped; on the other hand Lepidus came from one of the top families in Rome and his father was one of the biggest wheels in the Senate. Also, he was clearly two buns short of a baker’s dozen to begin with. Both of these facts might well make a difference, and I was glad that whoever ended up fielding the mess and deciding how to deal with it, it wouldn’t be me.

  Camillus wasn’t in, either at home or at the King’s House where he had his office, so I left a message at both places asking him to get in touch as soon as he could and set off back to the Caelian. Mid-morning or not, I felt washed out: sure, we’d got our murderer, but it hadn’t exactly been a satisfying case. ‘Mess’ was right; there were too many loose ends flapping around for my liking, and that wasn’t good at all. Besides, I had an uncomfortable feeling that we’d screwed up somewhere along the line. Where precisely I wasn’t sure, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.

  Perilla was in the atrium. I planted a kiss on her upturned mouth and slumped down on to the couch opposite her.

  ‘Marcus?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I lay back and rubbed my eyes. They felt like someone had thrown sand in them. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘Really? Then why do you look like something the cat dragged in?’

  ‘The investigation’s over.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause; Perilla sounded as let down as I was. ‘Lepidus admitted killing the girl?’

  ‘No. But he was responsible, all right, I’d take my oath on that. The guy had “guilty” written all over him.’

  ‘Very well. So why did he do it?’

  ‘Jupiter knows. It must’ve been the pregnancy angle, although he denied it. They were close enough, and on his side he was head over heels in love with her.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Why the hell should there be a “but”?’

  ‘Don’t snap. Because if there isn’t then you’d sound more convinced. And convincing.’

  True. ‘Okay. Pregnancy just doesn’t fit. He’s the wrong type, she’s the wrong type, and everybody who knew them says it’s impossible.’


  ‘Then Lepidus must have had another reason.’

  ‘Perilla, there isn’t one, or none that I can see. Anyway, it doesn’t matter any more. The case is out of my hands and working out the whys and wherefores is up to Furius Camillus and the head city judge.’

  Perilla was quiet for a long time. Then she said softly, ‘You don’t think it was Lepidus after all, do you?’

  ‘Gods, lady, he has to be the killer! Nothing else fits! He’s the right age and class, the right physical type with the right skills, he was seeing her in secret, he gatecrashed the ceremony, he left the room the same time she did and if there was something between them, sexual or not, it explains how she could be decoyed into the back bedroom without giving the alarm. Also the guy’s a total fruitcake with as much grip on reality as a Minturnian prawn. What more do you want?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious. If Lepidus did kill the girl then I want to know why. And so do you.’

  Yeah. She was right; that was the bummer. Everything made sense bar that. Or a kind of sense, anyway. I shrugged. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s work it out. Forget the pregnancy and the affair, they won’t wash. What else is there?’

  ‘For a start, what he was doing at the rites in the first place.’

  I poured myself a cup of Setinian from the jug beside me. ‘Lady, we’re going round in circles. He went to kill Cornelia. It’s the –’

  ‘Assume for a moment that he didn’t. Kill Cornelia, that is. Where would that idea take us?’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Let’s go over the facts, Marcus. First of all, Servilia saw Cornelia talking to Lepidus in Pearl-sellers’ Porch. Lepidus admits to this, and also to the existence of a long-term relationship. Second, Junia Torquata tells us that she has been preoccupied and moody for some time. Third, the day after the meeting Lepidus disguises himself as a flutegirl and attends the rites at the Galba house. Fourth, in the course of the evening, Cornelia makes an excuse and leaves the room. Shortly afterwards Lepidus also slips out via the garden porch. He does not reappear. Shortly after that, Cornelia is found dead in the back bedroom. The natural assumption is that Lepidus killed her, but that is all it is, an assumption. He had the opportunity, certainly; but, equally certainly if we discount a sexual link between the two, he had no obvious motive, especially since from what you say he was strongly attached to the girl. And if he had no motive then the means, too, is problematical at best.’

  I frowned. ‘Uh… run that last one past me again.’

  ‘Marcus, if Lepidus didn’t attend the rites with the express purpose of killing Cornelia, then where did the knife come from?’

  I sat back. Shit; she was right! I’d forgotten the knife! Without a pre-existing motive, the reason for that being there went down the tubes as well. And as the basis for a murder charge one out of three just wasn’t good enough. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the ball. Where do you want to play it?’

  ‘Let’s imagine that on the night of the ceremony – for some reason – Lepidus needs to talk to Cornelia urgently. I doubt that the meeting was prearranged, because Cornelia would have realised that it involved profanation of the rites and refused to agree. So the decision was his, and he took it unilaterally.’

  ‘Hang on, Perilla. They’d talked only the day before. And it would’ve taken Lepidus time to set the scam up, assuming he had the contacts to do it.’ Hell; that was another thing. How did Thalia fit into all this? ‘Twenty-four hours just isn’t enough notice.’

  ‘That is a problem, I grant you.’ The lady had on her prim expression. ‘However, we’ll leave it for the present. Very well. Cornelia goes out and Lepidus follows. She could, of course, still be unaware of his presence in the house but there is a possibility that by this stage she knows he’s there. In any event, they meet and talk. Lepidus leaves by the back door and Cornelia is murdered.’

  I shifted on the couch. ‘No. that wouldn’t work. She would’ve bolted the door behind him. Unless –’ I stopped.

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless they didn’t talk. Because Cornelia was already dead when Lepidus got to her.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Perilla looked thoughtful. ‘Would the murderer have had enough time?’

  ‘I don’t know. The two were seen leaving the room by different people. There could’ve been a gap, sure. But timing wouldn’t’ve been an issue. Remember, whoever the murderer was they wouldn’t know Lepidus was on his way.’ I took a swallow of wine. ‘Or rather I’m assuming they wouldn’t. Still, the theory would fit the facts. Also why Lepidus didn’t catch on right away when I said I was looking into the girl’s death. As far as he was concerned, there wouldn’t’ve been any murder; Cornelia had committed suicide. It’d explain his reaction when I accused him of being responsible for her death, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at it from his side. Jupiter knows what the secret was that they shared, but it was obviously major league, and one gets you ten it was the reason why Lepidus gatecrashed the party. Maybe there’d been some last-minute development, something that couldn’t wait and he had to talk to her straight away. Only the murderer got in first. Sure the guy would feel responsible; he’d saddled her with the problem in the first place. And –’

  ‘Marcus, dear, you can’t have it both ways. You’ve just said that Lepidus thought Cornelia had committed suicide. Now you’re telling me he knew murder was a possibility.’

  I sighed and rubbed my eyes again. ‘Look, I don’t know what I’m telling you, okay? This is all off-the-top-of-the-head stuff, and it may be a mare’s-nest anyway.’

  ‘There’s another thing.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We’re back to the problem of the murderer. If it wasn’t Lepidus – the “flutegirl” – then who was it?’

  ‘Someone in the house, obviously, who was at the party and –’ I stopped as the implication hit me. ‘Oh, Jupiter!’

  ‘Jupiter is right. One man in disguise at the ceremony is enough. If Lepidus wasn’t the killer then it must have been a woman after all.’

  Someone coughed. I turned round. Bathyllus had oiled in on my blind side.

  ‘Yeah, little guy,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The clock repairers are here, sir.’

  Bugger; I’d forgotten about the clock. In the midst of life we are in domestic crisis.

  ‘Oh, good.’ Perilla got up. ‘Send them in, Bathyllus.’

  ‘Them’ was right, just: the smoothie foreman and Zosimus the Water-Carrier. Evidently call-out after installation didn’t rate the full five-star treatment.

  ‘Good morning, madam.’ The foreman ignored me and beamed at Perilla. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

  ‘Your fancy clock decided to restructure the calendar and bypass half of yesterday,’ I said.

  The smile wavered and I detected the slight gritting of professional teeth. He turned to me slowly. ‘That’s most unlikely, sir,’ he said. ‘Spontaneously, I mean.’

  Uh-huh. This guy was beginning to annoy me. ‘Are you calling me a liar, friend?’

  ‘Marcus!’ That was Perilla.

  ‘Not at all, sir.’ Beam. ‘All I’m saying is that there are built-in safeguards to the mechanism which are normally idiot-proof, although of course they may be overridden should the id…’ – he coughed – ‘ah, should the owner be misguided enough to choose so to do. Sir.’

  Hell. I didn’t need this; none of it. ‘Just fix the clock, pal, okay?’ I said.

  ‘Certainly. Zosimus?’ The other guy hefted the huge bag of tools he was carrying and followed him over to the clepsydra. ‘Ah. I see. As I thought. Tchtchtch. Well, sir, I would say the problem was obvious.’ He picked up the broken duck which I’d left on the pedestal. ‘Naturally you can’t expect a sensitive instrument like this to function if you go breaking bits off it. Aha-ha-ha.’

  ‘It wasn’t fucking functioning in the first place, sunshine! And if the fucking duck had been properly –’

  ‘Marcus, let me ha
ndle this, please.’ Perilla gave the man a brilliant smile. ‘What my husband means is that the malfunction preceded the damage to the valve and was quite unconnected to it. The clock certainly seemed to be going faster than it ought to have done. Considerably faster.’

  ‘Mmm. How fast is fast, madam?’

  Perilla told him while I glowered.

  ‘Strange. Most unusual. It definitely sounds like a hardware problem.’

  ‘“Hardware”?’ Perilla said.

  ‘Forgive me, madam. A professional term. I meant a problem with the component parts of the machine as opposed to the hydraulics per se. Machine parts, being metal, are hard while water is – ah –

  ‘Soft,’ I said. ‘Yeah. Got you.’ Hell! Engineers!

  ‘Quite, sir.’ He bent down to examine the valve. ‘Zosimus, the Number Four probe, please.’

  The hairy member of the team furkled around in his bag and brought out a small bronze instrument with a sickle-shaped end. His boss inserted it into the gap the duck had left and rotated it gently, then grunted.

  ‘There’s your trouble, madam,’ he said. ‘They’ve fitted an ASD valve instead of an Anaximandrian one.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Can you believe that? Bloody Greek cowboys, eh, Zosimus? Forgive my language.’

  ‘And that makes a difference, does it?’

  The guy exchanged a quick look with Zosimus which involved two sets of raised eyes, a shrug and a quivering mouth.

  ‘Oh, yes, madam. Quite definitely. Aha-ha-ha. I’m not – aha-ha-ha – surprised you had problems. Wouldn’t you agree, Zosimus?’

  ‘Bound to, ma’am. An ASD valve in a clock like this is just asking for trouble.’

  ‘Oh-ha-ha-ha!’

  ‘Hoo-hoo-hoo!’

  Jupiter! Whatever the joke was, it was a good one; they were both practically rolling. I gave them time for another few thigh-slaps then said. ‘Uh… you care to compose yourself and explain, pal?’