Finished Business

TWO

‘Alexander the Great?’ I said.

Perilla smiled. ‘Oh, yes, dear. Everyone knows about Naevia Postuma’s little eccentricity. The wives, anyway. It’s a harmless aberration, really, and in every other respect she’s absolutely normal.’

‘Jupiter!’

‘Of course, there was the occasion when she saw a white horse come through the floor at a diplomatic dinner. The king of Commagene was most surprised.’

‘Yeah, I’d imagine he would be.’

‘He’d thought it was a camel.’ I gave her a look, and she laughed. ‘I’m joking, Marcus. About the camel, that is. The horse was real enough, if you know what I mean.’

Bathyllus reappeared. ‘Can I get you something to drink, madam?’ he said.

‘Fruit juice, please, Bathyllus.’

‘You, sir?’

‘No, I’m fine, pal.’ Then, as he turned to go: ‘Hey, Bathyllus. That goat’s milk. Neither of us touches the stuff. So where did it come from?’

‘I understand Meton uses it to bathe his feet in, sir. He says it does wonders for softening hard skin.’

‘Ah … right. Right.’ Well, that cleared that one up. I just hoped he’d used fresh, but knowing the evil-minded bastard as I did, I wouldn’t take any bets. Southern-slopes-sourced Hymettus honey my, ah, foot. ‘Off you go, sunshine.’

He went.

‘So,’ Perilla said. ‘What’s this about a murder?’

I told her what little I knew. ‘Only six gets you ten it was no such thing. If the man was silly enough to go furkling about at the foot of an old tower when his builders told him it wasn’t safe, then it’s not surprising he got himself brained. Oh, sure, I’ll go through the motions, talk to the family like Naevia Postuma wants, but if everything seems above board then Alexander of Macedon can go and chase himself.’

‘What about this?’ Perilla held up the book-roll. ‘Don’t you find that a bit odd?’

I shrugged. ‘If you knew the guy, then-’

‘But I didn’t, Marcus. Or only very slightly, because his interest was philosophy, not poetry. We may have met at the occasional literary get-together and exchanged a few words, but that was all. I certainly haven’t seen him recently.’

‘So why should he leave you something in his will? Particularly at such short notice?’

‘I have no idea. Perhaps the letter will explain.’ She broke the seal, opened it and scanned the lines. ‘No. No, it doesn’t. See for yourself.’ She handed it over.

I read it through. It was frustratingly short and to the point.

The day before the Ides of November, Lucius Naevius Surdinus to Rufia Perilla, greetings.

I send you this in the hope that it may prove interesting. My best wishes to your husband, Marcus Valerius Corvinus. I have not seen him since he was a boy, barring that one occasion when we exchanged a few words at his cousin’s daughter’s wedding, but I have the fondest memories of his father. He was a most agreeable gentleman, and the best of neighbours.

I laid it aside, frowning. ‘Dated four days ago, the day before he died. And it doesn’t make any sense,’ I said. ‘Dad’s house was on the Palatine, not the Vatican, so unless the guy has moved, they were never neighbours. And if Dad was anything, he certainly wasn’t “agreeable”.’

‘Come on, Marcus! Just because the two of you didn’t get on together, at least not until latterly, that doesn’t mean to say that everyone shared your opinion. Personally I found him perfectly charming.’

I grinned. ‘Yeah, well. Maybe. But it’s still not an adjective that springs readily to mind. And I can’t remember Surdinus being at the wedding at all, let alone chatting to the guy.’

‘There were over three hundred guests, dear, so that’s hardly surprising, is it? And you know what kind of condition you were in by the end.’

‘Even so.’

Messalina’s wedding had been the year before, a month after our adopted daughter Marilla had got hitched to Clarus over in Castrimoenium. Me, I don’t normally go for these big society bashes, and I’ve never had much to do with that side of the family: when he was alive (he’d been dead now for just shy of twenty years), Cousin Barbatus had been too much like Dad in many ways, a poker-rectumed pillar of the establishment, and we’d had absolutely nothing in common. Messalina I’d just kept clear of, particularly when she’d hit marriageable age, because that lady was pure mad and bad. This was her second marriage, and what had come as a surprise to everyone was the identity of the groom. The emperor’s uncle Claudius didn’t seem much of a catch on the face of it — he was more than twice her age, to begin with, and a twitching, stammering idiot into the bargain — but no doubt the link with the imperial family made up for that. I doubted whether it would last, though, at least on his side, because the phrase not suited was putting it mildly: my guess was that young Messalina would’ve been looking around for better entertainment than her new husband could provide practically as soon as the nuts were thrown. As far as the actual wedding itself went, Perilla was right: all I could remember of it was being bored out of my skull, downing too much booze, and spending the next two days heaving my guts out after being stupid enough to try the bears’ paws braised in wine lees and honey. All in all, not a memory to treasure.

‘What about the book?’ I said. ‘Thingummy’s Commentary. Anything odd about that?’

Perilla unrolled it and skimmed her way through — it was only a couple of dozen pages long — while I waited.

‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Or at least nothing I can see. It’s exactly what it says it is, and rather a cheap copy at that. Certainly not one worth leaving specifically in anyone’s will.’

‘Annotations? Margin notes?’

‘Absolutely none. In fact, judging from its general condition it may never have been opened.’

‘Maybe eccentricity runs in the family.’

‘Naevius Surdinus wasn’t particularly eccentric, dear, at least as far as I could judge from scant acquaintance. Egotistical, self-opinionated, domineering and bad-tempered, yes, but not eccentric.’

Well, nobody’s perfect. ‘Hmm. A puzzle, then. File and forget, for the present, at least.’ Bathyllus had come back in with her fruit juice. ‘By the way, sunshine,’ I said to him as he set it down, ‘you happen to know where old Naevius Surdinus’s place is? Exactly, I mean.’

‘Of course, sir.’ Silly question; any major-domo worth his salt — and Bathyllus rated a good ton of it — carries a list of the top five hundred’s addresses around in his head. ‘On the Vatican. The hill itself, at the southern end, bordering on Agrippina’s Gardens.’

Prime site: Agrippina’s Gardens were an imperial estate as of six or seven years back, and consequently any property bordering on them had social cachet in spades, not to mention top-rate resale value. We were talking serious money here.

‘So you’re going over there, are you, Marcus?’ Perilla sipped her juice. At least it wasn’t buffalo’s milk. Or goat’s.

‘Yeah. I’ll do that tomorrow. Like I said, it’s probably a fool’s errand, but if it means getting Naevia Postuma off my back, I may as well give it a shot. Besides, I haven’t got anything better to do, have I?’

Alexander, wherever he was, would be delighted.