Last Rites (Marcus Corvinus Book 6) Page 6

  ‘Sure I’m hedging! I’ve been mauled often enough to know when hedging’s called for!’

  ‘Don’t snap. There’s no need for it.’

  ‘Right. Fine.’ I downed another mouthful of the Setinian and filled the cup. ‘So. Cornelia is pregnant and X is the guy responsible. He knows the score because she’s told him, and he also knows that when the fact becomes apparent he’s in trouble up to his eyebrows. Sure, she might do the noble thing and refuse to divulge his name, but he can’t depend on that. Pregnant women don’t always act rationally, especially if they’re Vestals and all they’ve got to look forward to when the happy news breaks is a pit near the Colline Gate. And just as there’s only one penalty for her there’s only one for him: to be flogged to death publicly in Cattlemarket Square. So X has no option but to cover his tracks.

  ‘He chooses the night of the Good Goddess ceremony for the reasons I’ve already given: getting into the house initially may be difficult, but once he is in everything’s comparatively easy-peasy. He dresses up as a flutegirl –’ I stopped: Perilla was frowning. ‘You got a comment, lady?’

  ‘Not at the moment, Marcus. Go on, please.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Okay. He dresses up as a flutegirl and takes part in the rite. Cornelia – and this is important – doesn’t know he’s there; probably he stays well in the background, keeps his head down and his face hidden. When the rite’s over he watches and waits his chance; sooner or later, if he’s lucky, Cornelia’s going to leave the room to take care of the demands of nature. When that happens he slips out into the porch, runs round to the garden door and lies in wait for her in the hall passage near the latrine. When she comes out he attracts her attention and calls her over. Now he’s got no reason to carry on with the charade; in fact for the next bit of the plan to work she has to recognise him. Which she does. Cornelia isn’t going to give the alarm; he’s her lover, after all, and she wouldn’t want him caught. Besides, she trusts him. He takes her into one of the bedrooms. Okay. Now the scenario can go two ways. Either he kills her straight off with the knife he’s brought with him for the purpose or he persuades her to kill herself. The end result’s the same. And once Cornelia is dead he pulls the bolts and does a runner.’ I paused and looked at Perilla. ‘So. What do you think?’

  She was winding a lock of her hair round her finger. A good sign; she does that either when she’s tired or when she can’t think of a comeback. Great! It seemed I wasn’t going to be vaporised with sarcasm this time after all.

  ‘It works, Marcus,’ she said finally. ‘Certainly it explains the knife. The main difficulty, as you say, is the pregnancy.’

  ‘Yeah. Only I can’t get round that.’

  ‘What if X had another reason for seeing Cornelia alive as a threat to him?’

  Hey! ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘You say Torquata told you that the girl had had something on her mind the last few days. What if she’d… I don’t know; seen something, heard something involving X that put it in her power to harm him in some way. And she was swithering over whether or not to report it.’

  ‘It’d have to be something pretty big. Whoever X is, he’d think twice about killing a Vestal in cold blood. More than twice, for all sorts of reasons. Unless he’s totally out of his tree, and that sort of thing gets you noticed in other ways.’

  ‘Admitted. We can’t even begin to guess the nature of the reason itself. But it is possible in general terms, would you say?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s possible.’

  ‘Very well. Taking that as a modification to your theory, where does it lead us? The first part’s fine: X insinuates himself into the rite, waits for Cornelia to leave the room and takes the back way into the hall. He watches for the girl to come out of the latrine and –’ She stopped. ‘No. No, that’s a problem. If X isn’t Cornelia’s lover then he can’t just lure her into the bedroom on the pretext that they have to talk. She’d be at the least suspicious and, if she did see through his disguise, she would certainly have given the alarm.’

  ‘What about the original idea? That he made a noise, intentionally this time, that brought her within grabbing distance? It’d be risky, sure, but again it’s possible. From the look of the girl I’d say she was no shrinking violet, and if she thought the house was sealed the likelihood that she’d be facing a male intruder wouldn’t’ve entered her head.’

  ‘Hmm. All right. And being a man he would have the physical strength to overpower her, plus the advantage of surprise. Very well, Marcus; we’ll accept that with reservations. Having decoyed the girl into the hall, he grabs her, covers her mouth, pulls her into the bedroom and stabs her, being careful to choose the throat to give the impression of suicide. He then straightens the body to ensure there’s no suggestion of a struggle, places the girl’s hands round the hilt of the knife and leaves through the back door.’

  Yeah; it would work. It would work very well. And the big plus was that it got us over the pregnancy question. Sure, it left the matter of the guy’s reasons wide open, but like Perilla said we couldn’t even begin to guess at these anyway. And the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling. That was always a good sign. I reached for the jug and topped up my cup.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Okay. Let’s move on to who X is.’

  Perilla frowned. ‘That’s the real puzzle,’ she said. ‘Oh, not his name, just who he is. The murderer doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Run that past me again, lady. In simple Latin this time.’

  ‘It’s a matter of class. Whichever of the theories you choose X had to belong to the same social stratum as the women. Neither Vestals nor senior consuls’ wives mix with the lower classes, so there would be no opportunity for… connection, if you like.’

  ‘I see. Okay. Agreed.’

  ‘Also, he knew the layout of the house; he had to, to be able to plan his movements in advance. That again argues a certain inside knowledge that could only be gained by social intimacy, which in itself would entail parity of social standing. Of course, the house slaves themselves would have the information, but I think we can safely rule them out on grounds of motive.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Gods! What had happened to the simple Latin? ‘So what you’re saying is that the murderer was a friend of the family. Or at least he was familiar enough with the house to know the floor plan in detail.’ That was looking good for the Aemilia angle; it was her house, and if the guy were her lover she’d have orchestrated his movements herself. On the other hand, if Cornelia had been the target he’d’ve had to get his information some other way, and sorting that problem out would be a real bummer. ‘Okay. So our X is a top-drawer nobleman with an in to the Galba household, young enough and pretty enough to be able to pass for a woman at close range. Great! That should –’

  ‘Wait a moment, Marcus. I haven’t finished. On the other hand, he shows features which definitely do not fit the average upper-class gentleman.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘To begin with, how many of your acquaintances can play the flute? Or any other instrument, for that matter? Not just adequately, but well enough to be accepted by professionals as an equal?’

  ‘Uh…’ Hell’s teeth! I hadn’t thought of that! And the lady was right; sure, some families – especially the ones with strong Greek connections and artistic leanings – encourage their sprogs to play a musical instrument or sing, but for the Roman aristocracy in general there’s always been something very suspect about the performing arts. If I’d ever told Dad I wanted to learn the harp he’d’ve started checking my clothes chests for bras.

  ‘Together with that, how did X know so much about the fluteplayers’ booking arrangements? Enough to ensure that he would be able to take the place of one of the girls who was herself a last-minute appointment and be accepted as such by the others? And not only take the girl’s place but convince them that he was a close friend of the actual girl in question?’

  Thalia! Bugger! We kept going back to Thalia! That lady I just had to meet
. If anyone held the key to all this it was her. ‘You got anything else to throw into the pot, lady?’ I said sourly. ‘Or should I just give the case up now?’

  She ignored me. ‘Third and last – although it’s a very small point in comparison – there’s that knife of yours. You’re right; it is not a high-class Roman’s weapon. Oh, I’m not saying that a nobleman would have used a blade from Toletum with gold studs and an amethyst in the hilt but, as you remarked, that particular knife combines cheapness with careful and laborious attention. As a murder weapon for someone of the same social standing as the victim it just doesn’t fit.’

  Jupiter on wheels! ‘You finished now, Perilla?’

  ‘I think so. Unless you can think of anything further.’

  ‘Uh, no. No, lady, I’d say that about covered it for the time being.’ I cleared my throat. One of my cardinal rules is never, never, to let Perilla know how smart she is; the lady can be really insufferable, especially when she’s right. Which is ninety-nine per cent of the time. I’ve found the best tactic is simply to change the subject. ‘Did, uh, Bathyllus say anything about dinner, by the way?’

  ‘I asked him to wait until sunset. I want to watch the clock.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ I was beginning to have serious doubts about that thing where Perilla was concerned. It was the fruit juice cocktails all over again; when the lady gets an obsession you can’t shift it, and this obsession wasn’t healthy. I got up from the couch and walked over to the mass of gleaming bronze piping in the corner. The little Victory’s pointer was about halfway between the twelve and the very top of the scale. Half an hour to go, then. My stomach rumbled. ‘You think we could maybe just have the starters to be going on with?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Marcus. If we go into the dining-room now by the time we’ve settled down and Bathyllus has brought them it’ll be so close to sunset that we’ll miss the changeover. Which reminds me: we’ll need a stepladder and a bucket to transfer the water back up to the cistern. Bathyllus can do that while I operate the ducks.’

  Oh, bugger. Double bugger. I went over to the passageway that led to the kitchen and yelled, ‘Bathyllus!’

  He was there in two drips of a clepsydra. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’re on bucket duty tonight, little guy. One bucket, one stepladder front and centre spit-spot. Got it?’

  Bathyllus glanced at the water clock and gave the thing his best sniff. ‘I’ll send Alexis immediately, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Not Alexis, pal. You.’

  ‘But sir, as your head slave it’s not my place to –’

  I held up my hand. He stopped. ‘Listen, sunshine. We’re all in this together, right? If I have to put off dinner until a little fucking bronze titan taps his little ditto anvil with his little ditto hammer then the whole world suffers with me. Which prompts a thought. When you bring the bucket and the ladder have the rest of the staff up here too. We may as well all watch this scientific marvel together.’

  Bathyllus was fizzing quietly. ‘Meton’s going to be very upset, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s serving rissoles of wild boar marinated in cumin, wine must and juniper and they need to be –’

  ‘Tell Meton from me he can take the very largest and most succulent of his rissoles and –’

  ‘Marcus!’ Perilla snapped.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Jupiter in rompers! I just hoped these bloody all-singing-all-dancing clepsydras didn’t catch on. If we had to do everything on the ting of a titan Rome and the entire civilised world would grind to a halt.

  We waited. And we waited. And we waited. Lysias the coach driver, impregnating the air of the room with the smell of wet horse, looked as bored as I felt. Alexis – the smartest of the bunch – looked interested. Bathyllus, clutching his bucket, looked pained and put-upon. And Meton, flexing his great size-ten hands and muttering darkly to himself, looked like he was mentally weighing the comparative merits of aconite and ground death’s-cap mushroom as an additive to the rissole seasoning. Yeah, maybe insisting on Meton showing up had been a mistake after all.

  Behind them a Greek chorus of five or six minions, skivvies and assorted Other Ranks were having trouble enough just looking human.

  The little Victory at the top of its pole suddenly trembled. A collective breath was drawn. One of the female skivvies was sick with excitement and had to be removed.

  Perilla clapped her hands. ‘Oh, Marcus!’ she said. ‘I think it’s starting!’

  ‘Yeah.’ I had to admit, the excitement was getting to me, too. It was like the bit at the races just before the president drops the napkin.

  Then everything happened at once. The little titan raised his hammer and brought it down with a ting! on the anvil. The drip… drip… drip became an intestinal gurgle and the Victory figure plummeted towards the bottom of her pole. And at the base of the whole contraption…

  Tinkletinkletinklepssss…

  At the base of the whole contraption the two flying cherubs were pissing into the basin. I grinned. Yeah, well, I supposed if you wanted the voiding of the water to look natural then that would be the obvious way to arrange things.

  There was a terrible silence. Finally one of the minions sniggered and got a look from Bathyllus that made me wince just from the side-burn.

  Perilla had gone red. She was glaring at the cherubs like they were doing it on purpose.

  ‘Marcus,’ she said, ‘that is gross!’

  I straightened my face. ‘Don’t blame me, lady. You bought it, it’s your clock. You should’ve inspected the plumbing arrangements in the shop.’

  ‘Listen, Corvinus, when I go shopping for statuary I am not in the habit of minutely examining the figure’s –’ She stopped and bit her lower lip. I waited. I knew what was going to happen next; it was just a matter of time. ‘However it is rather… I mean… if you think of…’

  Which was as far as the lady got before the giggles took her. We sat down on the nearest couch and hugged each other until our sides stopped hurting.

  Finally I looked up. The atrium was empty except for Bathyllus, the bucket and the stepladder, and every hair in the little guy’s nostrils was quivering with disapproval. Bad sign; bad sign. Bathyllus has a list of many heinous social gaffes and outright crimes in that card index that he calls a brain, but we’d just committed the worst of the lot, for which there was no forgiveness: we had abandoned our seigneurial gravitas before the entire assembled staff.

  This was going to take us months to live down.

  ‘Uh, they’ve gone,’ I said.

  Silence. Finally, Bathyllus said, ‘Yes, sir.’ You could’ve used his tone to pickle mummies.

  ‘I’m, ah, sorry about that, little guy.’ Perilla started giggling again and I elbowed her in the ribs. ‘It was just, uh, unexpected, you know?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Quite, sir.’ Ice was beginning to glister in the ornamental pool.

  I indicated the bucket. ‘You, ah, can get Alexis to handle that, pal. Or maybe one of the skivvies. The mistress’ll see to the ducks when she’s feeling more herself.’ I clapped a hand over Perilla’s mouth just in time and held it there while she gave way to another spasm. ‘Which had better be pretty damn soon if she wants to make the Winter Festival with her wedding ring still in place.’

  Bathyllus’s grade-A glare can freeze the balls off an imperial legate at twenty yards. The one we got now might’ve managed thirty. ‘Thank you, sir. Madam. Will that be all?’

  ‘Yeah. Tell Meton we’re ready to eat.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ He stalked off.

  Ouch.

  8.

  Bathyllus was still pretty sniffy next morning. He wasn’t having anything to do with the clock, either, so I made a unilateral decision and handed control of the thing – under Perilla – to Alexis. There isn’t much gardening to be done in December (the garden’s Alexis’s province; his choice, not mine) and like I say he’s the smartest of the Corvinus ménage with a genuine interest in what’s going on outside his own narrow world.

&nb
sp; Me, I’d a busy schedule lined up. First was another trip to the fluteplayers’ guildhouse to arrange a meeting with Thalia. Second, over to the House of the Vestals – or rather to the chief priest’s house next door, because rough uncouth men weren’t allowed across that hallowed threshold – to give Junia Torquata an update on the latest developments; that I wasn’t looking forward to. Third…

  Third was Caelius Crispus. That little encounter wasn’t going to be a barrel of laughs either. Crispus and I went way back, and he’d loathed my and Perilla’s corporate guts ever since the lady had got him thrown out of Rome’s premier bachelor club on the Pincian. Threatening to slit his throat, losing him his Treasury job and putting the screws on him three months back when he was the praetor’s rep for the Caere district hadn’t helped much, either. Still, Crispus was my best bet when it came to the Aemilia angle, because when it came to rooting through the dirty linen basket Caelius Crispus was a greasy neck ahead of the field. He might be on his way up – repping for an out-of-city judge was a pretty prestigious job for someone with his antecedents, or lack of them – but the reason was still who he knew. Or more to the point what he knew about who that they’d rather he didn’t and were willing to pay in money or position for the privilege of keeping the lid on.

  Celer, the fussy little expediter, was in residence when I got to the guildhouse.

  ‘Ah, Valerius Corvinus,’ he beamed. ‘Did you find Aegle?’

  ‘Sure. No problem.’

  ‘Oh, that is good!’

  I rubbed the side of my nose with a silver piece. ‘Actually, I’ve got another favour to ask you. That Thalia girl. She been around since we last spoke?’

  The smile slipped. ‘What would you want with Thalia in particular, sir? I understood that –’

  ‘Just a few questions,’ I said smoothly. ‘Aegle told me the girl might be the best one to answer them. You seen her yesterday or today?’

  ‘To tell the truth, no I haven’t.’ Now the guy was looking slightly peeved. ‘Which is very annoying, because she has a booking tonight and there’ve been some changes to the original arrangements.’