Illegally Dead

18

I was over at Six Cedars fairly prompt the following morning. It was an old-fashioned working farm, which meant the farmhouse itself was part of a rambling complex of stables, workshops and storage rooms centred round a rough-cobbled courtyard that was definitely seriously bucolic in parts. I made my way carefully past the worst spots and knocked on the door. A slave opened it, a house-slave, sure, but not the neatly-tunic’d variety; strictly functional, like the rest of the place.

‘Yes, sir?’ he said.

‘Is the master in?’ I said.

‘Master’s up in the top field harvesting beets, sir. Mistress is in the solar, if you want to see her instead.’

‘Yeah, that’d be fine.’ What was her name? Bucca had told me. ‘Uh…Faenia, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, sir. Oh, no need to wait, I’ll take you straight through. Follow me, and mind your head. The lintels is a bit low.’

I went in. He wasn’t kidding: the place must’ve been built when Cato was in rompers, and not by anyone who’d much time for spacious rooms and high ceilings. Dark, too. He led me through a maze of stone-flagged corridors to a room at the end of a passage with a door that was six inches of solid oak.

‘Here we are, sir.’

He opened the door for me, and light spilled through: a big room full of old-fashioned, heavy furniture and with a big south-facing window. The woman sitting by an easel at the far end of it turned as I went in.

I’d never met Fimus, but as old Maecilius’s son he had to be in his late fifties at the very least. If so then his wife was a good fifteen or twenty years younger; no spring chicken, sure, but not much more than half way through her forties. She wasn’t a bad looker, either: her figure might be what you might charitably call ‘comfortable’, but she’d a pretty enough face and a nice smile.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Valerius Corvinus,’ I said. ‘I’m — ’

‘Oh. Lucius Hostilius’s death.’ The smile had set. She put down the paintbrush she’d been using, and it rolled unnoticed off the table and onto the floor. ‘A dreadful business. Shocking.’

I looked at the picture on the easel: one of these standard still lifes you get, with a dead hare and assorted vegetables. The actual bits and pieces were arranged on a small table in front of her, and there wasn’t much resemblance between them and the painting. Forget the hare: even the carrot looked suspect.

‘Unusual hobby,’ I said.

‘Yes. I’ve painted since I was a girl. One of our slaves taught me.’ She glanced towards a settle against the white-plastered wall, but then her eyes came back to me and she said: ‘What can I do for you, Valerius Corvinus?’

I was having to revise my ideas about Faenia pretty drastically. I’d expected a fairly typical Latin farmer’s wife, stolid, grey-haired and country-spoken, and this lady wasn’t her. Oh, sure, she had the rural Latin burr, but it’d been smoothed out so much as to be practically unnoticeable; and an artist? Not a very good one, granted, but all the same I reckoned you could count the number of artistic Latin farmers’ wives on the fingers of one hand and still have three or four left over. Not that there’d be all that many more Roman matrons ditto, mind you. ‘Uh…it’s a bit embarrassing,’ I said. ‘Your husband had a…call it a disagreement with Hostilius the day before he died. No hassle, lady, I’m just filling in the corners, but I was wondering if he’d care to tell me about it.’

Was it my imagination, or did the eyes shift? ‘Marcus is out in the fields at the moment,’ she said. ‘I can get one of the slaves to take you to him if — ’

‘Unless you can tell me about it yourself, of course. I understand it could’ve had something to do with a missing will.’

She stood up quickly; no smile now, there was a definite tremor in her voice and a redness in her cheeks. ‘No, I’m afraid you’d really have to speak to Marcus himself,’ she said. ‘It’s no problem, I’ll get Venustus to take you.’ She walked past me to the door, opened it and shouted: ‘Venustus!’

I hadn’t moved. ‘Your father-in-law stayed with you here?’ I said. ‘In this house?’

‘The…the other way round. We lived with him.’ She was sounding nervous as hell now, and her eyes were fixed on the corridor outside. ‘Venustus!’

‘Only your brother-in-law said that he’d made a new will just before he died, and that he thought your husband’s father had delivered it to his lawyers.’ I kept the conversational tone. ‘Maybe it didn’t get that far. Maybe it did.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe it never existed in the first place. It’d be nice to know for sure.’

I might as well have been talking to the wall for all the attention she was paying me. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said, and there was a definite tremor in her voice. ‘He must’ve gone back to the kitchen, and he’ll be out of earshot. I’ll show you to the front door myself and there’ll be someone outside who can take you to Marcus. Follow me, please.’

And she was off, without a backward glance. I went after her, but she didn’t slow her pace or turn her head until we reached the entrance lobby, and even then she checked only long enough to open the door.

There was a slave wheeling a barrowload of manure across the yard.

‘Onesimus!’

He stopped and tugged his forelock. ‘Yes, madam?’

‘Take Valerius Corvinus here to the master straight away, please. He’s in the top field. A pleasure to have met you, Valerius Corvinus. I hope Marcus can help you more than I can.’

She stepped back to let me past, her hand on the door to close it behind me. I turned and rested my own hand on the door-jamb.

‘Incidentally,’ I said. ‘You don’t happen to know a guy by the name of Castor, do you? Hostilius’s — ’

— but that was as far as I got before I had to whip my hand away and the door was closed quickly and firmly on a pair of very frightened eyes.

I stared at the woodwork, brain racing. Shit!

Fimus — Marcus Maecilius — was a big guy, huge limbed and shaggy as a bear, in heavy countryman’s boots and a rough, homespun tunic that looked like it’d started out in life as a sack for turnips and might be that again some day. He and his slaves — and a kid of about ten who was his spitting image in miniature — were topping beets and throwing them into a wagon. He looked up as I trudged across the remainder of the crop towards him. Right: I’d forgotten about Gabba’s Fimus/Polyphemus gag, but the second name fitted him as well. His single eye glared at me through a mass of tangled black hair.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Valerius Corvinus.’ I waved my thanks to the yard-slave who’d brought me and was turning to go back. ‘Looking into — ’

‘Lucius Hostilius’s death. I know. What’s it to do with me?’

Not exactly brimming over with cheerful welcome and bonhomie, this guy. Ah, well. ‘I, uh, was wondering if you could help me out over a couple of things,’ I said.

The stare rested a moment longer. Then he spat to one side, shoved his beet-topping knife into his belt and lumbered over. Close to, he had the same bucolic smell as his courtyard: score another one for the Castrimoenian nicknamers. ‘Carry on, lads,’ he growled over his shoulder to the slaves. ‘This won’t take long.’

I nodded towards the kid. ‘Your grandchild?’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ Then — maybe because he thought he was overdoing the unfriendly bit — ‘He belonged to my only son and daughter-in-law. They died of a fever eight years ago come August.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘These things happen. So what d’you want?’

‘I understand you had a run-in with Hostilius the afternoon of the day before he died,’ I said, keeping my voice as unthreatening as possible: Fimus Maecilius had as much chance of winning the All-Comers’ Friendliness Stakes as he did the Mr Charisma title or the Perfumiers’ Customer of the Year award, and his hand was resting casually on the knife hilt.

‘That’s right.’

I waited. Nothing more. ‘Uh…care to tell me what it was about?’ I said.

‘He accused me of keeping back a second will that Dad was supposed to’ve made in favour of that poncy brother of mine.’

‘And did you?’

That got me a long, hard stare. Finally, he said: ‘No. I didn’t.’ He turned away, cleared his throat and spat to one side. ‘Now if that’s all you wanted to know I’ve got work to do.’

‘So why did Hostilius think you had?’ I said.

He turned back, slowly. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Dad had no more time for that chancer than I have, never did. He wouldn’t’ve left him a penny if he hadn’t been kin. And what Lucius Hostilius might’ve thought was his own business. I don’t bear the man a grudge, mind, least of all now he’s dead, but he’d some queer ideas these last few months, did Hostilius. He wasn’t responsible for half what he said. You had to make allowances.’

‘So where do you think your brother got the idea from?’ I said.

‘Of Dad making the will? Or of me hiding it?’

‘Either. Both.’

He spat again. ‘Out of his own head, probably. Bucca was always full of piss and wind. Or it could’ve been that fancy lawyer of his over in Bovillae put him up to it. That Novius, I wouldn’t trust him to tell me the time of day.’

‘What about your brother’s offer? To split the cash with you and give you a third of what he got for his half of the property?’

I thought I’d gone too far. His head went down like a bull’s and his shoulders hunched. ‘Look, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘This is my land, all of it, every inch, and it stays that way. I’ve farmed it all my life, my father farmed it all his, so did his father and his grandfather, right the way back to when you fucking Romans were still sitting on your fucking seven hills minding their own fucking business. And when I go young Aulus over there’ — he nodded towards his grandson — ‘will farm it after me. Bucca can take his offer and stuff it. That answer you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said quietly. ‘Yeah, it’ll do.’ I’d been afraid he’d say that because it made things really, really nasty, but, well, that was life. You had to take it as it was. ‘Thanks for your help, pal. Sorry to’ve troubled you. Much obliged.’

He didn’t answer. I could feel his single eye boring into my back all the way across the field to the road.

The news was waiting for me when I got back home. A messenger had arrived from Libanius to say that a hunter and his dog had found a woman’s body in the woods near Caba, and if I was in before lunch would I ride up there asap.

Hell!