Deadly Election

39

When I saw Callistus Primus, he made reference to him breaking down in sobs yesterday. He acted as if he assumed I had come to ask after his cousin Firmus, given that our auction had provided the occasion of his wounding. For a mad moment, Primus seemed on the verge of wanting to sue us. I shot him an evil look, then reminded him whose guards had hit Firmus and who had told them to do it, in my hearing. We settled on him telling me Firmus was slowly recovering and me telling him Trebonius denied having killed Valens.

‘Trebonius claims he received death threats and he assumes one of your family sent them.’

‘No.’

‘On oath?’

‘All the gods are my witness.’

‘Can you vouch for your brother and cousin?’

‘Yes. And my father. Why would we?’

‘I agree. It would have been stupid. While he was in the running, Volusius Firmus was favourite. You had no need to blackmail or beat up anybody else. And neither, as I see it, did anybody lean unfairly on you. Firmus dropped out due to-’

‘Reasons beyond our control.’

‘In dealing with the Emperor, Primus, reasons are beyond anyone’s control, as even the admired Abascantus has been shown … So, talk to me sensibly, please, about why you suspect your father has been murdered. Start at when he left Rome.’

Primus confirmed what I had mostly worked out. His father had set off on a normal summer visit to their estate in the country, at Crustumerium. When he failed to send back messages as usual, the brothers had despatched a slave, who returned to say Valens had never arrived at the farm.

‘Something was very wrong,’ I prompted, as Primus fell silent, musing. ‘You were shocked and anxious, so you wanted someone other than a slave to go. You hired Niger to look into it? Someone more responsible who, you hoped, would check more carefully. But why didn’t you or your brother go yourselves if you were so worried?’

‘We had no idea it was so serious, and we were tied up here. My father had left us work, trying to make good our losses after the useless bid by our cousin. Firmus as well; too many tasks in Rome. Your auction was only one of our schemes – and bear in mind, this action was what my father wanted.’

‘So you chose Niger. A man of affairs who acted as an agent for various people here on the Caelian. He had a good reputation, but had not worked for you before. How were you introduced to him?’

‘My sister-in-law, Julia Laurentina, obtained his name from someone who recommended him. He seemed reliable. Efficient. Diplomatic. He went out to our estate for us but came back with bad news, worse than we thought: not only my father but his whole entourage seemed to have utterly vanished on the journey. Niger could not even find the litter he went in. Someone along the route claimed to have seen it standing empty by the roadside, but by the time Niger went there it had disappeared. Some farmhand has appropriated it. It’s been cut up for firewood or turned into a hay wagon,’ Primus concluded bitterly.

I thought it not impossible the farmhand could be tracked down. Now we knew the gravity of the situation, more stringent enquiries might flush someone out. Faustus might organise it. ‘Who was with your father? Slaves? Would they have turned on him?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘If something bad happened, say an ambush or robbery, they may have simply run away.’

‘Possibly.’

‘Did he have valuables in his luggage?’

‘Nothing significant. He doubles everything he needs at the estate and here. He goes so frequently, he travels light. It’s a one-day journey if you really push it – he expected to reach his own bed that night. He had no need to carry cash.’

‘Thieves might not know that.’

‘No, but he has made the same journey many times for forty years.’

Primus looked so miserable I was gentle with him. ‘I am sorry. Sorry about your father, and sorry to have to press you for answers. But you do want to know what has happened. So, tell me, what made you fear the body in the strongbox might be him?’

‘By the time you told me a corpse had been found, I knew something terrible must have happened to my father. If he’s alive, why have we not heard from him? If he was taken ill, he would have sent a slave back to tell us. If he was kidnapped, where is the ransom demand? He must be dead. And whoever did that knows something about us, knew we had a chest in storage. Our father, put in our strongbox: some twisted person thinks that is neat.’

‘Apparently so. But who?’ I asked. ‘You were in such confusion over your father going missing, you genuinely reckoned Trebonius and Arulenus might be responsible?’

‘Before Firmus had to drop out of the election, they did bluster and make menaces. Arulenus offered to break my cousin’s legs. Plenty of people heard him.’

‘You could have made a formal complaint.’

‘We did! Father wanted to sue the swine. Arulenus knew we intended to do it. The only reason we refrained is that everyone knows he is already bankrupted by legal suits from that mistress he preyed on and lied to. But fear of a court case seemed another reason those two might go after our father.’

I thought not. A defendant doesn’t usually kill his opponent, or they won’t get any compensation in the case.

‘Well, they still deny it. I myself have only spoken to Trebonius Fulvo but the pair seem to back each other up. Arulenus is to be formally questioned. Did your father have any other enemies?’

‘Let me tell you, my father was the sweetest man on the Caelian.’

Primus spoke so fervently I believed him. ‘Yes, everyone I speak to seems to have liked him. And, Primus, I can see how terribly his absence has affected you.’

Partly to distract him, I asked Primus if his mother was alive. She had died a couple of years ago. Before that, the couple had been married for over thirty years, a long and loving partnership that produced a close, happy family. Their sons were clearly decent. Their nephew also; Firmus had always lived with them because Callistus Valens and his father, whose name was Callistus Volusius, were brothers; after both his own parents died, Firmus was treated like a third son by Callistus Valens.

As I already knew, all three in the younger generation were married. Secundus had no children. Julia Laurentina, wife of Volusius Firmus, was expecting her first child, although so far it was only known to close members of the family. ‘She has yet to tell her mother!’ I commented, thinking of Julia Verecunda declaring to Sextus Vibius that she had no daughters pregnant.

‘Laurentina doesn’t get on with her mother!’ answered Primus, rather forcefully.

‘I gather few people do. When their paths crossed at the auction, I gained the impression the ferocious Verecunda thinks little of her son-in-law?’ I meant Firmus, though in the Forum she had behaved the same to Vibius. Primus humphed and told me I was correct. I said that must have made life difficult while Firmus was standing for aedile, as a rival to her son. Primus agreed it had, though he implied no one regarded Ennius, then or now, as a meaningful candidate. I asked, ‘Do you mind if I ask how Firmus and Julia Laurentina came to be married? Was it against her mother’s wishes, or have relations deteriorated since?’

I thought an odd expression crossed his face. ‘There was a brief period of thaw once,’ Primus said, ‘which quickly ended. But Julia Laurentina became a loyal wife, to her mother’s intense irritation. She has been pregnant before, though sadly none survived. Should a child be born safely now, all connections with Verecunda will terminate. None of us would want her evil influence to affect an infant.’ He was hard and definite about that.

Completing my survey, I said I knew Primus himself had a daughter.

‘I do.’ He did not elaborate.

Nevertheless, I asked whether his daughter had been close to her missing grandfather. At that point, Callistus Primus had to choke back tears again. He told me that his daughter, Julia Valentina, had nearly gone to the country also. She and her grandfather were extremely close (she had been named after him) and she would have been company for him.

He found it ghastly to contemplate. If his young daughter had gone for this holiday, she would probably have suffered the same fate as Valens. Had the girl been travelling in the litter with her grandparent, she too might have ended up trussed with rope, with her frail body also shoved into the old strongbox. I recalled the inoffensive, normal thirteen-year-old I glimpsed on my last visit here, and could understand her father’s agitation.

I did wonder about the girl being yet another Julia, but I had already asked too many questions. Twiglets in the Callistus family tree hardly had bearing on my enquiries.

The two men I interviewed that morning, Primus and Trebonius, had similarities. They were of a type, typical plebeians. Both men ran businesses, with all the masculine bonhomie that brings, solid men, self-confident. They knew their work; they also knew it was necessary to act well, to impress colleagues and customers. I recognised that – I played the part myself, in a quieter, ‘more suitably female’ way. Trebonius Fulvo had carried himself well today, as ever; Callistus Primus was deflated, temporarily crushed by bereavement. I liked him more, more than I cared for Trebonius, and more than the first time I met him.

Before I left, I reminded Primus of that. ‘I came to ask you about the body, immediately after we found it. You said, “Why don’t you just shove the remains on a rubbish heap like anybody sensible?” I think now you understand why.’

Callistus Primus agreed sadly.

He said if I could help discover anything about his father’s fate, the family would be grateful. I promised to do all I could and to tell them anything I found out.