A Body In The Bath House

XL

I tossed him the brush from the bath house. He caught it one handed, the other hand still holding the finer one he had been working with, plus his thumb palette. "That's your pig's bristle?"

"LL. That's me. Larius Lollius."

"Thank Juno you were not born under a laurel tree," I scoffed. "A third L would have been obscene."

"Two names are sufficient for me and Mark Antony."

"Listen, bigshot, when you've finished aligning yourself with the famous, you are to get yourself to Novio and ensure that your luscious Virginia is not bribed to forget your romantic alibi."

Larius looked coy. "She'll remember. I said she was a disappointment. I didn't mention my own performance."

I reined in my reaction and merely answered quietly, "Ask somebody sophisticated to explain about two-way pleasure. Incidentally, how is dear Ollia?" Ollia was his wife.

"Fine when we parted company," Larius said tersely.

"You parted? Is this a permanent phase? Had the union of you two fresh hopefuls produced offspring?"

"Not as far as I know."

"Still, I hate to see young love waning."

"Skip the family talk," he chided me. He did not ask after Helena, though they had met. While he and Ollia had been assuring the world they shared eternal devotion, the world had prophesied that the teenagers were doomed then also decreed that I was a philandering louse, destined to abandon my woman. Assuming I could manage it before Helena ditched me first… Larius cut through my wandering thoughts. "We need to know why people want to frame me for Pomponius."

"They are not framing you," I told him. "They are implicating me."

He brightened up. "How's that?"

"I bring my nephew on site and he kills the top man? That's bound to diminish my status as the Emperor's troubleshooter!"

"Status bollocks!" Since I List saw him when he was fourteen Larius had coarsened up. Tin not connected with your work. Blandus brought me here. I've come to do miniatures- and I do not want to be dragged into any of your slimy political stews."

"You are already neck deep in fish-pickle sauce. Have you told people you are my nephew?"

"Why not?"

"You should have told me first!"

"You were never there to tell."

"All right. Larius, how did anyone else acquire this paintbrush?"

"From the hut while I was out, I suppose. I leave everything here."

"Any chance Pomponius himself might have borrowed it?"

"What, to tickle his balls at the baths?" mocked Larius. "Or cleaning his ears out. I hear it's a new fashion among the arty fraternity- better than a plebeian scoop."

"Answer the question."

"As for pinching a brush, I don't suppose that snooty beggar ever knew where our site huts were."

"What happened when you wanted to show him a proposed design?"

"We carried sketches to the great man's audience chamber and waited in a queue for two hours."

"You did not like Pomponius?"

"Architects? I never do," scoffed Larius offhandedly. "Loathing self important people is a churlish habit I picked up from you."

"And why are you so ripe for incrimination, happy nephew? Whom have you upset?"

"What, me?"

"Is Camillus Justinus the only man you've beaten up recently?"

"Oh yes."

"Have you slept with anybody other than Virginia?"

"Certainly not!" He was a real rogue. A total hypocrite.

"Has Virginia another lover?"

"Famous for it, I should say."

"So is she attached to anyone who bears grudges?"

"She's a girl who gets herself attached. No one regular, if that's any help."

"And what about you, Larius? Everyone knows you? Everyone knows what you're like nowadays?"

"What do you mean- what I'm like?"

"Start with layabout," I suggested cruelly. "Try a wine-swigging, fornicating, quarrelsome byword for trouble."

"You're thinking of my uncle," said Larius, as ever surprising me with sudden caustic repartee.

"True."

"I get around," confessed the lad. I remembered him as a shy, poetry-loving dreamer the single-minded romantic who had once spurned my dirty profession in favour of high ideals and art. Now he had learned to hold his own in rough company- and to despise me.

"You'd better come along to my quarters," I said quietly. "On reflection, I'm taking you into custody until this is sorted out. Let's get this clear- I have young children and polite nursing mothers in my party, not to mention the noble Aelianus withering away from his doggie bite, so we'll have no drinking and no riots."

"I see you've gone staid," sneered Larius.

"Another thing," I ordered him. "Keep your damn hands off my children's nurse!"

"Who's that?" he asked, full of rosebud ignorance. He knew who I meant. He did not fool me. He was born on the Aventine, into the feckless Didii.

To be honest, his attitude gave me a nostalgic pang.