Enemies at Home

14

Diana Aventina!

That blew everything apart. All previous theories had to be reassessed.

Disappointingly, it turned out that Aviola had not been a bigamist. He had been previously married but divorced.

Hermes erupted into an outburst where he claimed the ex-wife was a schemer who had sworn Aviola would not get away with his remarriage. From the moment it was announced, she tried to poison him against his new bride. She was famously vindictive and would stop at nothing, even murder.

I downplayed all this. Alleged evil scheming needed to be thought about later, in private. Damaging someone’s reputation unfairly carries a high premium in Rome, even if you are right to defame them. The worse a person is, the more likely they are to demand compensation and the higher their claim. I knew my legal uncles would advise restraint.

Cautiously, I prised out the facts. Galla Simplicia had married Valerius Aviola in their youth, a marriage that lasted long enough to produce three children. They divorced way back, yet remained in contact because of those children. Young at the time of the split, they were brought up by their mother; she received money for their maintenance and had grown rather too used to this income. She had property of her own but particularly liked Aviola’s handsome and comfortable Campanian villa, where until now she had been allowed to visit, using the excuse that she was taking the children to their family’s holiday home.

‘How old are they now?’

‘All in their twenties.’

‘So maintenance payments to their mother ought to have stopped anyway!’ I bet the new wife had pointed that out to Aviola.

Hermes said there had never been any question that, as Galla Simplicia now claimed, Aviola had gifted the villa to her. It was well known in their circle that it was his own favourite house. He went down there every summer, and it was natural he would want to take a new wife soon after their wedding. Hermes told me (as Sextus Simplicius had not) that this villa specifically formed part of the bequest from Aviola to Mucia Lucilia in his new will. If he died, he intended that the second wife should have it.

I wondered what his previous will had said. Clearly Galla Simplicia would have angled for it. But possibly the villa had been assigned to the children — and probably they would acquire it now.

I could see exactly why Mucia Lucilia had refused to share the place with Galla Simplicia. I would have done the same. Mucia needed to take charge.

I guessed how sourly Mucia must have viewed the heavily entrenched ex-wife, together with Aviola’s now grown-up children. Anyone could guess how much those children must be under their mother’s influence.

But there was a reverse slant. Aviola’s new marriage, after so many years of easy coexistence, would have destabilised the ex-wife’s position. Since they divorced so long before, this change may have surprised her, caught her out. An extreme reaction might have occurred, just as Hermes claimed — yet was it likely?

‘She and Aviola had a screaming row. She tried to bully him, using her children.’ Hermes flushed scarlet with indignation again, even to his outstanding ears.

‘What are the children like?’ Spoiled brats, or I was losing my touch.

‘Ghastly,’ he snapped back. As I thought. ‘Expecting to sponge off their father for life.’

‘Boys? Girls?’

‘Useless boy, two insipid girls. Galla was terrified their father would lose interest, especially if Mucia Lucilia were to bear children who might supplant hers.’

A reasonable fear. Many an older father prefers the fresh little infants of his still-warm second marriage to the ruder, more demanding children of a troubled first union. Galla’s three were old enough to have gone through their charmless adolescence, which can leave permanent bad feeling; in any case, Aviola may never have known his children well. Babies lie in their cradles blowing bubbles like helpless darlings who won’t cost any money, or cause family quarrels, or ever stop loving their besotted papa … Meanwhile the determined second wives are right on the scene, constantly reinforcing the new brood’s claims.

‘Galla Simplicia is a shrewd woman?’

‘Brutally,’ snarled Hermes.

‘Even so, to want two people dead seems extraordinary, let alone make it happen in such a terrible way. Are you certain Galla would do that?’

‘Absolutely!’ he assured me.

Without enthusiasm, I mused aloud that I would now have to trek to Campania, in order to interview this woman. Hermes barked with harsh laughter. According to him, Galla Simplicia would have heard that Aviola was dead, and was bound to be hot-footing it to Rome to make a claim on the estate.

‘Sit tight and you will soon meet her, whirling in to cause trouble!’

I could hardly wait.