Food for the Fishes

17

I was thinking hard on the way back. If my slinger pal had been around to try it on at any point he’d’ve nailed me, easy.

So Tattius had defended Murena in the Fadia trial, had he? In retrospect, it made perfect sense: assuming the guy had legal training — which he must’ve had — that was the way things naturally went: if you’re in trouble, legal trouble, the first person you approach to conduct your defence is a close friend or an ex-colleague; a social equal or a superior. And Murena and Tattius had both been aediles together, so Tattius would’ve been Murena’s logical choice. Only in that case the rotten smell wasn’t confined to Murena, far from it: whatever sharp practice had been perpetrated twenty-eight years back, Decimus Tattius had been in it up to the neck. That I’d bet on, a gold piece to a corn plaster. And the result had been that Tattius hadn’t been welcome in Rome any longer either.

Okay. A scenario. Let’s say Penelope was right; Murena took the opportunity of his wife’s sleepwalking to push her downstairs and end the marriage. Why he did it — whether for Saenius’s reasons or mine — wasn’t all that important, but the fact was that the guy had committed deliberate murder. His problem was Penelope. I’d bet that Murena hadn’t realised his daughter was there and watching until it was too late, and now instead of being commiserated with as the sorrowing but now-happily-released widower he’d found himself facing a murder rap and the better-than-likely prospect of spending the rest of his days twiddling his thumbs in Lusitania.

Enter Decimus Tattius. He reviews the case. He can argue, fair enough, that Penelope was mistaken: what she saw was Murena trying to grab his wife before she fell. That might do the job okay, sure, but Penelope, even as a kid, would’ve been no pushover in the witness box for a cross-examining counsel. Also, I’d bet — seeing that Fadia’s brother had lodged an accusation in the first place — that Murena’s attitude to his wife and her illness up to that point hadn’t exactly overflowed with altruistic concern: I wondered, for a start, about the exact details of these previous ‘suicide’ attempts that Ligurius had mentioned. The thing would come down to the jury’s choice on who to believe, Murena or his daughter, and that edge was too slim for comfort. So what Tattius needs, like the tragedians who’ve got their knickers in a twist plot-wise at the end of a play, is the old god-on-a-crane routine: a surprise witness, with no personal axe to grind, who saw the whole thing but was invisible to the other players. And he comes up with the door-slave, Philippus.

Whether or not Philippus actually saw anything wasn’t really relevant; the important thing was that it was possible, because his cubby would’ve been in sight of the stairs. So. Tattius approaches him quietly and suggests a deal: he comes forward off his own bat and gives evidence that’ll back the defence’s case and Tattius guarantees he’ll be set up for life. It won’t be easy, mind — Philippus would know all about the slave’s-evidence-only-under-torture rule — but slaves are a pretty tough breed, and freedom and the promise of serious financial backing once the cap’s on is a powerful incentive. Also, although we were talking thirty years back and I’d only met the guy as a man, I’d judge that Philippus would be just the sort to jump at the chance. He’d hated Murena, sure — he still did — but even in his teens he’d’ve been ambitious and enough of a thinker to see the possibilities. So he agrees.

Did Murena know about the scam? Probably not, or not to begin with, at least: like Penelope, he hadn’t known a third witness existed. But if the guy’s evidence got him off the hook then he wasn’t going to object, was he? And after the trial he’d be a fool to open his mouth at all.

Okay. So far so good. The verdict’s been given, Murena’s home and dry, legally at least. Then his good friend Tattius puts the bite on. He tells him about the scam; or rather — I stopped myself — he tells him about the deal with Philippus. The door-slave lied: sure, he saw what happened, but what he saw was Murena giving his wife that fatal shove. Tattius is suffering a bad attack of conscience. He did what he did out of friendship, concealing the truth in the process, but maybe he shouldn’t have, and now he’s sorely tempted to go to Fadia’s brother and reveal all in a paroxysm of remorse.

On the other hand — he says — that wouldn’t do anyone much good, would it? Fadia’s dead, and that perhaps is a blessing. Murena’s been punished enough by having the society door slammed in his face, and he, Tattius, is effectively in the same position. Maybe he should just leave things as they are. What does Murena think? Of course, he has suffered considerable personal damage as a result of his act of friendship, and he’s sure that Murena realises this and is anxious to make it up. He’s not greedy. He’ll settle for marriage with Murena’s daughter, a hefty dowry, a not-too-onerous partnership in Murena’s lucrative family fish farm business on advantageous financial terms, and a lump sum to defray expenses incurred by his promise to Philippus. Which he must fulfil, naturally, because who knows whether the young man might not have a crisis of conscience himself and decide to spill the beans to Fadia’s brother, especially since he hates Murena’s guts…?

Yeah; it would work. Murena would be firmly over a barrel, not just from the blackmail side but from the noblesse oblige one as well: whether he liked it or not — and I’d bet he didn’t — Tattius was owed. And it would explain everything: why the partnership, why Murena nicknamed Tattius Oistrus, how Philippus managed to buy his own freedom and get his start in business, and why he and Murena would have nothing to do with each other subsequently.

It would also explain why Penelope hated her father so much. If she guessed there’d been some skulduggery at the trial — and I’d bet she did — then knowing she was part of the price for getting him off and was married to the bastard responsible must’ve seriously rubbed salt into the wound. Hatred wouldn’t cover it by half.

I’d have to have another talk with Penelope.

Well, I was on the right side of Baiae and Tattius’s villa wasn’t that far out of my way. There wasn’t no time like the present.

I went through the gilded-fish gates and up the carriage drive. A second view of the place didn’t do anything to alter my first impressions: the villa definitely had a seedy look to it, as if money available for spending on repairs and upkeep wasn’t too plentiful, and Tattius had had to cut serious corners, even to the extent of selling off some of the decoration he’d started out with. That, given what I knew now, was significant: if he had been milking his partner over the odds then I reckoned the milk supply had been running short recently. Which raised some interesting questions; like, had Murena finally decided to put the mockers on it himself, and if so how would Tattius have reacted? Had there, maybe, been a quarrel, with Murena claiming that he needed a slice of the cash hitherto allocated as conscience-money to finance expensive business ventures such as his hotel project? And if there had been, and it had happened the night of the murder, then maybe Tattius’s temper had got the better of him…

It was a theory, sure, and if it didn’t provide the bastard with exactly a prior motive at least it put him well in the running.

The door-slave was sitting outside, the same one as previously. He was still, as far as I could see, wearing the same threadbare tunic.

‘I’m afraid the master’s not at home, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s away on business at the moment.’

‘No problem, sunshine,’ I said. ‘I wanted to talk to the mistress. Is she around?’

‘Yes, sir. If you’d care to wait I’ll see if she’s receiving.’

He went inside while I kicked my heels on the portico. Business, eh? That didn’t sound like Tattius. Still, like any man with a private income he wouldn’t be at home all the time. And I doubted that his domestic circumstances would prove much of a tie.

The slave came back out. ‘The mistress will see you, sir,’ he said. ‘If you’d care to follow me?’

She was sitting in a small room overlooking the overgrown back garden, with sliding window-doors that were half open to let in the fresh air. I could tell, from the decor, that it was where she spent most of her time: it had a lived-in feel to it, and there were little female touches like vases of flowers on the tables and what must’ve been her collection of dolls as a kid arranged round a household shrine in the corner. She stood up when I came in: neatly-dressed, but still very much the dumpy matron.

‘Valerius Corvinus,’ she said. ‘This is a surprise. I’m afraid Decimus is in Neapolis, if you wanted to talk to him. He won’t be back until late this evening.’

‘No, that’s okay,’ I said. ‘It was you I wanted to see.’

‘Really?’ She sat down again. ‘And why should that be? You look rather travel-stained. Make yourself comfortable. Stentor here will bring you some wine.’

The slave bowed and left. I pulled up another chair. ‘Uh…I’ve been talking to an old guy out on the Bauli road who used to be a lawyer in Rome. About the trial that was held a year after your mother’s death.’

There was a long silence while she just stared at me. Her face was expressionless.

‘And?’ she said finally.

This was the tricky part. ‘I understand you gave evidence for the prosecution.’

She sat back. ‘Corvinus,’ she said, ‘let’s be clear about this. I know that my father murdered my mother. I was there, I saw him do it, and I’ve always maintained that he did it. It’s why I hated him, one of the reasons anyway. The details may be new to you, but not the result; I told you at the time of our first meeting that I was glad he was dead and I hoped he was rotting in hell. Do you expect me to retract that statement now?’

‘No.’ I shifted in my chair. ‘But what I didn’t know then was that your husband was counsel for the defence. And that…well, let’s just say that there was something screwy about the evidence he produced.’

‘You mean the slave’s? Philippus’s?’ She was perfectly calm.

‘Yeah.’

‘Then of course there was. Philippus lied, and the lie led to my father’s acquittal. It was as simple as that.’

‘You’re saying he didn’t see what happened after all?’

‘No. He may well have done. That wasn’t what I meant. But if he did see then he lied about what he saw.’

‘You didn’t know he was downstairs in the hall, then?’

‘No. Not at all. Not until the trial when Decimus produced him as a witness. It was possible, certainly; there were no lamps downstairs, and the atrium was in darkness. He came out of his cubby later, of course, after my mother…fell, but whether he was awake and watching beforehand I don’t know.’

‘What about the landing itself? That was lit?’

‘Yes. We always kept a candelabrum outside my mother’s room, plus another two either end of the gallery. In case of the sleepwalking.’

‘So he could’ve seen, right enough, if he’d been there? Although he wouldn’t’ve been seen himself?’

‘Oh, yes. Perfectly clearly. As could I, which is why I know he must’ve been lying.’ She gave me a straight look. ‘It wasn’t a grab, Corvinus, not even a fumbled one as my father claimed. I was within three feet of him, and I couldn’t have been mistaken. My father pushed my mother downstairs deliberately. I’ve no doubt of that, no doubt at all.’

Gods, I’d been right about the lady being no slouch as far as sticking to her story was concerned. Tattius had needed all the help he could get. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Fair enough. Now what about the…the aftermath.’ I chose the word carefully. ‘After the trial. Your father engaged you to Tattius?’

Her eyes closed, briefly, and her lips tightened. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Almost immediately.’

‘There hadn’t been any’ — I hesitated — ‘any prior warning? I mean, you were what, fifteen at the time?’

‘Sixteen. I’d just had my sixteenth birthday.’

The right age for an engagement, maybe a bit over. ‘He hadn’t suggested it before?’

‘No. But then of course he couldn’t have, because — ’ She stopped. ‘Never mind. It’s not important.’

I frowned; why the hell couldn’t he have suggested it? Oh, sure, any engagement to Tattius, old enough easy to be the girl’s father himself, might not be on the cards at the time, but a lot of girls are married by sixteen, and the subject of a future husband usually comes up long before then. So why the couldn’t have?

Unless of course…

‘He couldn’t’ve suggested it because you were engaged already,’ I said quietly. ‘So when he did engage you to Tattius, he had to break the prior engagement.’

Long silence. Finally, she glanced down at her right hand. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re very astute, Valerius Corvinus.’

‘Who was he?’

‘His name was Quintus. A cousin in Ostia that I’d practically grown up with and been in love with for years. It was mutual. It didn’t matter in the end, because he married someone else shortly afterwards and died two years later. One of those summer fevers.’

Oh, shit; here was another reason why she should hate Murena. ‘You didn’t object? Refuse to marry Tattius?’

She stared at me. ‘Of course I objected! What do you think? But my father was my father, my mother was dead and my elder brother Titus couldn’t have cared less. And Quintus, as it happened, being from a junior branch of the family very much dependent on ours, wasn’t in any position to insist that Father honoured his commitments. What choice do you think I had?’

Yeah; right. She might be a strong-minded lady, but you couldn’t go against seven hundred-odd years of social conventions. The simple answer was No choice at all.

There was a knock at the door, and the slave came in with the wine tray — two cups, I noticed. Well, I didn’t blame her. We sat in silence while the guy poured, bowed and left.

‘Uh…just a question,’ I said: it had to be asked, and now was as good — or as bad — a time as any. ‘Where were you? The night your father died?’

‘At home. Here.’ She took a swallow of the wine, and I took a sip myself. It was almost neat. ‘I spend a lot of my time here. My husband has his own quarters.’

‘Was he at home too?’

‘That I can’t say. You’d have to ask him, or one of the slaves.’

‘Philippus said he’d bought his own freedom.’

‘I can’t comment on that either. Possibly he did: certainly my father wasn’t the most generous of men, or the most grateful. In any case, between the time of my mother’s death and my marriage I had as little to do with him as possible.’

‘One more question.’ I didn’t have to ask it, but I’d be interested in her reaction. ‘Who do you think killed your father?’

Pause; long pause. She set the cup down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But whoever did it has my blessing, and always will. He deserved to die. He deserved it twenty-nine years ago. My only regret is that whoever killed him didn’t do it sooner.’

There was nothing else to say. I got up, made my thanks, and left.

When I got home Bathyllus was waiting with the news — gleaned by Phormio on his daily shopping trip to the market — that Titus Chlorus had been found early that morning in an alleyway with his throat cut.