Food for the Fishes

26

It was getting late now, but Perilla and company wouldn’t be back for dinner anyhow. I walked back home, had a quick snack while the stable lads got the mare ready and rode out to Bauli with Nerva’s note to Rufina in my belt-pouch.

I felt like crying, but this was something that couldn’t wait, and putting it off would just make matters worse. If the bastard’s alibi checked — and I had a horrible suspicion that it was going to — then we were well and truly screwed.

I found the place no bother: a small, newly-built, squeaky-clean villa on the Misenum road the far side of Bauli itself, on the very edge of the fashionable stretch; the sort a middle-ranking government clerk would buy to show that he knew exactly which rung he was on on the Establishment ladder and how the residence of a conscientious, sober-minded middle-ranking government clerk should look. Which I reckoned would sum up Rufina’s husband in a nutshell.

Even the flower beds were colour-co-ordinated.

‘Uh…is the mistress at home?’ I said to the slave who opened the door.

‘She’s at dinner, sir.’ The guy gave me an unwelcoming look. Fair enough: dinnertime wasn’t exactly within the usual visiting hours. ‘With the master.’

Hell. ‘This’ll only take five minutes,’ I said. ‘The name’s Valerius Corvinus. She doesn’t know me but I wondered if I could have a word with her in private.’

‘What about?’

‘A mutual friend asked me to call round in passing. Name of Catia. Seemingly there’s been some mix-up over the dates for a women’s honey-wine klatsch.’ Thin, sure, but it was the best I could think of on the way over. And the mention of Catia should get me a hearing if nothing else. Assuming the lady knew about her.

It seemed she did. Not that that made me persona any more grata, mind. When Rufina stormed into the little sitting-room where the slave had taken me to wait she was purpled up to the eyeballs and fit to be tied.

A stunner, though. I had to admit that. Mid twenties, five foot two, curves like a Praxiteles Venus and a bust that wouldn’t’ve disgraced the Leda on Nerva’s wall. Currently, it was heaving. Rufina was not pleased.

She closed the door carefully behind her. ‘Valerius Corvinus,’ she hissed, ‘I don’t know why you’re here, but — ’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, handing over the note. ‘Maybe you’d better read this first.’

She snatched it out of my hand, tore it open and read it. I’d dictated it myself, and stood over Nerva while he wrote it, so I knew the contents were pretty bald: just who I was, a request for Rufina to answer my questions truthfully, and Nerva’s signature. No mention of an alibi.

‘Well?’ she snapped. Her colouring had gone up another notch. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘Aulus Nerva says he was here on the night of the twentieth, six days ago, again two nights back and all of this morning. Was he?’

‘Valerius Corvinus!’

The hell with that. I wasn’t in any mood for going round the houses. ‘Just answer the question, lady,’ I said. ‘Please. It’s important.’

‘I don’t see why I should — !’

‘Was he here or not?’

She fizzed for a bit, biting her lip and glancing nervously towards the door. Finally, she nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, he was, as it happens.’

‘All night? The first two, I mean?’

‘He…arrived just before dinner on the first occasion and stayed until the morning. On the second, he was slightly later, but not by much. Today…yes, Publius was at home last night, but Aulus…called round after he’d left for the day to Misenum.’ She’d coloured up like a beetroot and she thrust the note back at me like it was red hot. ‘Now I want to know what right you have to walk in here and — ’

‘That’s all, lady.’ I shoved the note back in my belt-pouch. ‘Thanks a lot. No hassle.’

Shit!

‘If my husband finds out there’ll be trouble! You can tell Aulus from me that — ’

I backed away, one hand reaching for the doorhandle. ‘I said: no hassle. Honestly. Thanks for your help.’

‘How I’m going to explain this to Publius I just do not know! He knows I’m not friendly with anyone called Catia, and that fool Eupolis said right out when he came into the dining-room that you’d — ’

I escaped while she was in mid-flow, past the door-slave and out the front door. Jupiter in bloody rompers! Well, I’d done my best, and I’d got what I came for, but I suspected that the next time Aulus Nerva came calling — if he ever did — he’d be lucky to get clear with his eyes unscratched-out. Not that I’d much sympathy.

Fuck; where did that leave us now?

The sun had gone down in earnest when I reached the villa. Gods, I was knackered! Two hard days in a row, and the case in shreds. I stabled the mare, noticing while I did it that the carriage was back. Bathyllus was waiting by the door with the usual jug of wine.

‘Satisfactory trip, sir?’ he said.

There was no answer to that, not one that wouldn’t’ve made the little bald guy’s hair curl, so I didn’t make one. It wasn’t his fault everything had just gone down the tubes.

Perilla was sitting reading under a candelabrum in the atrium.

‘Oh, hello, Marcus,’ she said brightly. ‘Enjoy your day?’

I grunted, kissed her, took the winecup and jug over to the couch opposite, and lay down.

‘Ah.’ She let the book roll up and put it aside. ‘I’ll take that as a “no”, then.’

‘We’re stymied, lady. One hundred percent, gold-plated, spit-on-your-granny screwed. The whole case has gone pear-shaped.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, dear. It can’t be as bad as that, surely.’

I took a gulp of the Special. ‘Nerva’s out of the game. He was comforting a lonely office widow in Bauli. Which she’s just confirmed. Oh, sure, he might by some stretch of the imagination have killed Chlorus, but he couldn’t’ve done the other two murders.’ I punched the couch-back. ‘Hell’s bloody bells and fucking upper canines!’

‘I see. Then who’s left?’

‘Search me. Tattius and Chlorus are dead, Ligurius is alibied, so’s the doctor. Aquillius Florus wouldn’t have the guts to kill a chicken. That leaves Gellia and Penelope. Both of them have motive enough, sure, but I’d bet a sack of gold pieces to a plugged copper that Penelope’s no murderess.’

‘That leaves Gellia, then.’

‘Yeah.’ I took another morose swallow and refilled the cup. ‘Only can you see that lady in her fancy mantle and three-hour hairdo stalking Chlorus through the streets of Baiae and slitting his throat in an alley? Or hanging about in the shrubbery for Tattius to come along then stabbing him through the heart? Because I fucking can’t.’

‘Don’t swear, dear. It’s not necessary,’ Perilla said. ‘Anyway, I’ve never met the woman. I can’t judge.’

‘Take my word for it. If she didn’t have help from Florus or the doctor, then Gellia’s a non-runner.’

‘You’re sure about Diodotus?’ Perilla was twisting her curl. ‘After all, he only has an alibi for the first murder. And Gellia could have done that one herself.’

‘Diodotus is clean. He’s got more sense than to get himself mixed up with a bubblehead like that. And I don’t think he likes the woman much, let alone fancies her.’

‘Florus, then. Despite appearances.’

‘Florus has as much backbone as a slug. You’ve seen him for yourself, Perilla. You think he could commit a cold-blooded murder without pissing himself and dropping the knife out of sheer funk before he used it? Let alone three of them?’

‘Very well. Then it must be Penelope.’

‘Or someone outside the circle altogether. In which case we’re right back to where we started.’

I took a third gulp of the Special.

‘Hmm.’ Perilla was looking thoughtful. ‘I did wonder, Marcus. Apropos of that. Why Penelope?’

‘Why Penelope what?’

‘No. Her name. I’ve always found that curious, and we’ve never really asked ourselves where she got it from.’

‘It’s just a pet-name, lady. Every family uses them. Actually, she’s a Licinia.’ Something tugged at my subconscious, but when I reached for it it was gone. ‘What does that matter?’

‘It’s just…’ She hesitated. ‘Probably not at all. But what does “Penelope” mean to you? The name, on its own?’

‘Ulysses’s wife, of course. Gods, Perilla, what the hell does — ?’

‘Yes. Who waited for twenty years for her husband to come home, spurning the suitors. The faithful wife. Patient Penelope.’

Patient Penelope. Twenty years. The tug had become an itch, and everything had gone very still.

I sat up.

‘Go on, lady,’ I said quietly.

‘I don’t think I can. There isn’t anything more, really, just that. But it has been puzzling me, and it is curious, isn’t it? I mean, when you consider that so much of this business has come back to names. Murena, dead in a tank of moray eels. Ligurius, the manager, with the nickname Anchovy. Tattius, Oistrus. And didn’t you say that the old man had given the rest of his family nicknames too?’

The itch was there in spades, and I was getting that slow, cold feeling spreading through me that was my subconscious’s way of telling me something was important, somewhere. Oh, shit! So he had! Gellia was the Butterfly, Nerva the Scoundrel and Chlorus the Scowler. So why not Penelope? Just because it was a harmless, everyday girl’s pet-name didn’t mean -

Hang on, Corvinus! Think! Saenius, when he’d talked about her, had called her Licinia. So had Philippus, who’d known her when he was Murena’s door-slave. Both Philippus and Saenius were talking about the girl as a teenager, before or immediately after her mother’s death and the trial. Why hadn’t they called her Penelope? Girls got their pet-names when they were kids, not on the verge of adulthood. Look at Catia’s Hebe. She was really Licinilla — which she’d have to be, being Chlorus’s daughter, that or Licinia again — but Catia had said that that had been too much of a mouthful, so they hadn’t used it right from the start.

Giving pet-names didn’t always happen. That was just the point. It hadn’t, as far as I could see, happened where our Licinia was concerned until she was well into her teens…

So why had teenage Licinia, settled with her name, suddenly become Penelope?

The hook caught me right in the gut, along with the answer.

‘Because it wasn’t a pet-name at all,’ I said. ‘It was a nickname, like all the rest of them. A fucking nickname!’

‘Marcus!’

I ignored her. It made sense; Jupiter Best and Greatest, did it make sense! ‘Murena gave it to her,’ I said. ‘After she was betrothed to Tattius. And he used it — the rest of the family used it — ever after. They still do.’

Perilla was looking puzzled. ‘But Penelope uses it herself, dear,’ she said. ‘If it was a nickname and she hated her father, then surely if he gave her it then — ’

‘Penelope used it because it fitted, and she didn’t mind. Quite the reverse, she was proud of it. In fact, she preferred it to Licinia, because Licinia connected her with her father.’

‘But why did Murena give her it in the first place? Surely calling a girl Penelope is a compliment, if anything.’

I shook my head. ‘Not the way he meant it. It couldn’t’ve been, ipso facto, because none of the bastard’s other nicknames were complimentary. There was always something nasty about them, and my guess is that Murena was about as fond of his daughter as she was of him. He nicknamed her Penelope as a sneer because she was faithful and patient. Twenty-eight years patient, as it turned out. And she didn’t give in to the suitors, not really, not in herself. She still hasn’t.’ Gods! I’d been an idiot! A total, purblind fucking moron! She’d told me! She’d told me herself, the very first time I’d interviewed her, right down to using the guy’s actual name, even if she had lied about the rest of it…

The silly, silly man. Right. I’d go with her on that one all down the line. That made two of us.

‘Marcus?’ Perilla was staring at me anxiously. ‘Marcus, what is it?’

‘I know who committed the murders,’ I said. ‘All three. And why.’

She asked me the obvious question. So I told her.