Caveat emptor

13

What we think happened, sir-”

“Stop!” ordered Valens. “Don’t start by telling him what we think. Tell him what we know.”

The short apprentice’s face turned pink. He took a deep breath, glanced at the oddly angled form of Julius Asper lying facedown on the table, and started again. “The patient looks to have been in good health, sir. Well, I mean not that good, obviously, not in the end, otherwise…”

Ruso, who had already spotted the damage previously hidden by the hair and the foul mud of the alleyway, wondered how Tilla was coping with the woman who had become a mother and a widow on the same day. Across the hall in the dining room, Firmus and the outraged magistrate were being plied with more wine by Valens’s only remaining slave. In here, the apprentice cleared his throat and struggled on. “There are some bruises on his back and his right forearm, and a depressed fracture to the rear of the left temporal bone, sir. We think-” He stopped and looked at Valens, who murmured, “Carry on.”

“The injuries look two or three days old, sir, but he hasn’t been dead for more than a day. The head injury was-I mean, it could have been-” The youth stammered to a halt.

“Could have been what?” prompted Valens.

“I don’t know how to do this, master,” the youth confessed. “I mean, we know what it looks like, but we can’t be certain, can we? Or am I supposed to say we are?”

“No,” said Valens. “Well done. You’ve said what you can see. Now state your conclusions with enough confidence to show that you know what you’re talking about, but not so much that you get the blame if you turn out to be wrong.”

The youth looked as if Valens had just addressed him in a foreign language.

“Try the injuries are consistent with…” suggested Ruso. “I find that’s usually a good way to start.”

“Yes, sir,” said the youth, not obviously reassured. Apparently Asper’s injuries were consistent with his having been hit with a “-what did you call it, master?”

“A blunt instrument,” Valens prompted.

“We thought it might have been an accident,” put in the tall one before anyone could ask. “But then we looked at the bruising across the shoulder here. It’s the same shape as the head injury but a different angle. Do you see, sir?”

“Somebody’s taken a couple of swipes at him,” agreed Ruso, walking around the table and bringing an imaginary weapon down across a long streak of purple flesh with his right hand. Then he tried again with his left.

“Can you tell which hand it was, sir?” asked the tall one.

“No,” admitted Ruso.

“The bruising on the forearm would be where he’s tried to defend himself,” put in Valens. “It’s all about the same age.”

Ruso tried to picture the way the man and his assailant had moved around each other. The tall apprentice evidently had the same idea. He grabbed his companion, turned him around to face the wall, and said, “Imagine I’m coming at you with a stick.” Before the shorter lad could complain, his companion began to wield his imaginary stick with such enthusiasm that the short apprentice dodged and crashed into the table, nearly ending up on top of the victim.

“Not in here!” snapped Valens, grabbing the lad and hauling him to his feet.

“Sorry, sir,” put in the tall one cheerfully. “I forgot how clumsy he is.”

For a brief moment, Ruso saw an image of Valens as an apprentice.

“Fetch a comb and tell the kitchen boy to find a clean tunic to lay him out in,” ordered Valens. “Something respectable. And not one of my new ones.”

When they had gone, he sighed. “It’s hard work having apprentices, Ruso. They’re either fighting like two year olds or drooping around the place like a pair of maiden aunts. You can’t tell them to get lost or dump them on somebody else like you can in the army. You have to keep finding things that they can do without killing anybody.”

Ruso pulled the illegible letter out of his belt. “Try giving them this to decipher,” he suggested. “Tell them it might help us catch a murderer.”

“Really?”

“Or it might be deranged gibberish.” Ruso bent to examine the injury to the skull. “I’m relieved about the cause of death,” he admitted. “I did wonder if his landlord had done away with him because I’d been around offering a reward.”

“That would be awkward.”

“But this corroborates the story I’ve been told. And it fits with the seepage stain on his pillow.” He straightened up and pulled the sheet back over the body. “If you tell the visitors, I’ll explain to the wife.”

“With pleasure.” Valens plunged his hands into the washbowl and reached for a towel. “By the way, I hope I’m getting a decent fee for this? I’m assuming you can claim it back?”

“I wouldn’t assume anything,” said Ruso, confident that he needed the remains of the ten denarii more than Valens did. “We’re working for the finance office now.”