Trade Secrets

THIRTEEN

‘But how did he know?’ Perilla asked when I told her about Nigrinus and we’d gone through the usual Oh-Marcus-you-could’ve-been-killed routine. Me, so long as I come out the other end of things with all my bits still in working order, I’m pretty good about being attacked. It shows I’m doing something right somewhere. Not that it’s too pleasant at the time, mind. ‘How to find you, I mean,’ she added.

I’d changed out of the soaking, mud-stained tunic and was stretched out on the couch with a restorative cup of the Special. When he’d seen the condition my cloak was in – Nigrinus had dropped it when he ran, and it’d been lying in the gutter further up the street – Bathyllus had sniffed and consigned it to the rag-bag. A pity: I’d liked that cloak.

‘Yeah, good question,’ I said. I’d wondered about that myself. Seriously wondered. ‘Oh, sure, the Ostia side of things could’ve been accidental. The guy works at the docks there, so it’s just possible that he could’ve got wind of a nosey purple-striper from Rome asking awkward questions and trailed me to the wineshop. The business in Ardeatina Gate Street, though, that’s a different thing altogether. He couldn’t’ve tracked me there from Ostia off his own bat, no way.’

‘You mean he was acting on instructions from someone in Rome.’

‘And on information received. Yeah. It’s the only logical explanation. It’d still be tricky, mind, and it’d involve some fancy footwork, but it’s feasible. X in Rome – could be Annia, could be the brother, could be Poetelius, or a combination – knows I’m going to Ostia, and that the chances are I’ll stumble across the connection with the Porpoise, which for reasons unknown they really, really don’t want me to do. So they-’

‘Hold on, Marcus! I’ll allow you Annia and her brother, yes, but not Poetelius. He didn’t know you intended going to Ostia at all.’

‘Sure he did. Maybe not when, but he knew I knew about the accident, and he knew I’d be looking into it. That’d be enough. So X sends to Nigrinus, warning him that I’m coming, telling him to look out for me and to take appropriate action.’

‘It still doesn’t explain how this Nigrinus knew you’d be over at Ardeatina Gate Street this morning.’

I shrugged. ‘I gave Annia my address right at the start, and either of the other two could’ve got it from her easily enough, even if she isn’t involved herself. Given that X’s instructions to Nigrinus were to follow things through at the Rome end if need be – which they must’ve been – that’d be all he’d need to be able to tail me. Then it’d just be a case of jumping me and finishing the job the first chance he got.’

‘Do you think Annia is involved?’

Yeah, that was the question I’d been asking myself, and I still didn’t have a definite answer.

‘Lady, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘On the one hand, for things to make any kind of sense she’s got to be. There’s certainly steel there, and a brain, and where the cui bono’s concerned she has motive in spades. If anyone could plan a murder, I reckon she could.’

‘And the execution?’

‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘No, I don’t think she’d be quite up for that. But it doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t be in it alone, and she’d provide the necessary link.’

‘How so?’

‘The only other two front runners are Poetelius and Brother Annius, right?’

Perilla sniffed. ‘If you say so.’

I grinned. ‘OK. Possibly them. The problem is, neither fits the frame on his own. Sure, in Poetelius’s case he’s got the motive that his business partner’s a liability, and it’s turned out he had the opportunity as well, so in a way he’s by far the more likely. The guy’s no natural killer, not on relatively slim grounds like that, I’d take my oath there, but if he and Annia were having a serious affair – serious on both sides – then that’d be a completely different story. Tullius might not’ve cared about the hole-in-corner stuff, but I’d bet Poetelius did. He’s a pretty conventional guy, he’d want marriage, and without a divorce he couldn’t have it. Added to which, under the status quo Annia’s stuck with a philandering husband who only keeps her for her money and has no intentions of giving her up. Get rid of Tullius and all their problems are solved at a stroke. It’d be just too convenient a solution to ignore, especially with Annia behind him, maybe doing the pushing.’

‘If the affair existed in the first place. It all hinges on that.’

‘Sure. Granted. But then why would Tullius tell Marcia it did when it didn’t?’

‘Marcus, you really are naive sometimes. Marcia may have been bored and looking for some excitement, but she was a respectable married woman. There’s a big difference between starting a relationship with a man who has a faithful wife at home and one whose wife already has a lover of her own. If Tullius wanted to seduce Marcia, then presenting himself as a husband in a loveless marriage would be a natural ploy for him to use.’

I frowned. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I suppose that’s possible. Even so-’

‘How about your second possibility? The brother?’

‘That’s just pure gut feeling. Annius is a cold bastard, and as far as temperament goes I’d back him as a killer over Poetelius any time. If Annius is our man, though, then his sister really has to be mixed up in this, because the only motive he’s got is sheer altruism. Not that that’s a barrier necessarily, because they’re obviously pretty close.’

‘Would that be enough?’

‘Maybe not in itself. But remember, lady, we’re dealing with business families here, and they take the financial side of things very seriously. Annia’s already bankrolling her husband’s company on a month-to-month basis and watching him in effect throw the money away to finance his tomcatting. I’m guessing, sure, but let’s say things have got worse recently – as, from what Poetelius told me, they probably have -and he’s pressing her to release some of the capital. Her brother’s a businessman himself, he’d be a natural for her to go to for advice. And being the guy he is, unlike in Poetelius’s case, I reckon where Annius is concerned that might be enough to swing it. Opportunity – well, we don’t know anything about his movements at all, do we? The day of the murder, he could’ve been anywhere.’

‘Hmm.’ She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: ‘Marcus, you do realize that none of this explains the Ostia connection, don’t you? Quite the contrary. And there’s no room for Correllius at all. Where does he fit in? If indeed he does.’

I took a swig of wine, and made a face. ‘Yeah. That’s the stumbling block, and it’s a biggie. Correllius must fit in somewhere, that’s for sure. And the fact that he and Tullius were both stabbed – taking Correllius’s stabbing as murder, which to all intents and purposes it was as far as the perp was concerned – we’re almost certainly looking for a single killer. Ostia’s starting to look like a major lead, but for it to work then Annia must be on the level. Or the chances are that she is, at any rate, because if she was responsible at least in part for her husband’s death then why the hell put me on to it in the first place? Plus, when I talked to her today I’d swear she genuinely didn’t know any more about it than she told me.’ I set the wine-cup down. ‘Ah, hell. Leave it. Maybe Agron’ll come up with something on the Siddius front. And then I’ve got this lady’s maid to see. If we’re really, really lucky, she’ll be able to give us a good description of the guy at the Pollio, in which case we might be home and clear.’

Perilla was twisting her hair. ‘You’re absolutely sure that Annia, her brother and Poetelius are the only likely suspects?’

I stared at her. ‘Yeah, more or less. If you discount Vecilius, but I thought we’d agreed that solution was too simple.’

‘I don’t mean Vecilius.’

‘Jupiter, lady! Who else is there?’

‘Marcia. Or rather, Marcia and her husband.’

‘Perilla, that’s crazy! Marcia was long gone, helping her mother in the cookshop by the Capenan Gate. And the day of the murder Festus was either at the pottery or over there with her.’

‘So she told you, certainly. You don’t have any definite proof of that, though, do you? They both had a motive, after all. And setting it up would be easy. Marcia could’ve persuaded Tullius into a meeting at the shrine, say by suggesting she might be willing to discuss sharing him with his new girlfriend. And then Festus would’ve done the actual killing.’

Oh, shit. It was possible, sure it was. The lady was right. All the information I had for Marcia’s and Festus’s movements and actions on the two days in question came from the pair themselves. And even then there’d been a discrepancy, with Festus telling me he’d filled in the missing few hours on the day of the murder with a visit to the Temple of Mercury.

‘What about the Ostia side of things?’ I said. ‘Neither Marcia nor Festus has anything to do with-’ I stopped.

‘Marcus? Marcus!’

‘When I talked to the local Watch Commander – Memmius – he said that when Festus had married her Marcia had been a widow from out of town. If “out of town” was Ostia, as well it might be, then she’d still have connections there.’ Gods! ‘Oh, it could be coincidence, and the accident on the quayside happened two days before Annia sent her the letter, but all it’d take for that not to matter would be that Marcia already knew she’d been ditched and made her own arrangements. There’d still be the problem of how she worked things, sure, but it’s at least feasible.’

‘And the Correllius side of things?’

‘Lady, I told you: I don’t know yet. So get off my back, OK? Correllius was Ostian, we’re talking Ostia, that’s as far as it goes at this stage.’

‘Very well. Then how about the spat with Hermia? Surely if Marcia knew that Tullius was being unfaithful already, before the letter arrived, then she’d already have confronted her.’

‘Look, Perilla, this was your theory originally, not mine, so cut it out, right? I know there are problems. But we’ve got problems all down the line in this case, so what’s different?’

She smiled. ‘I’m simply raising reasonable objections, dear. Actually, if it did arise from a deliberate decision on her part as opposed to being a spur-of-the-moment reaction like she told you then it would make perfect sense. After all, now Festus knew about the affair there was nothing lost, and the result of the spat was that Vecilius was out for Tullius’s blood too.’

‘Vecilius walked in on them. She couldn’t’ve known he’d turn up.’

‘Even so.’ She stretched. ‘You said yourself it’s only a theory. And yes, I’m sure there’re lots of problems with it we haven’t even considered yet.’

Yeah, there were. Still, it ticked a lot of the boxes. Too many, certainly, to dismiss it out of hand. And Memmius had also said that where Marcia was concerned, her husband couldn’t look past her. Love and the desire for revenge are powerful motives in anyone’s book. Add contrition on the wife’s part – and whatever lies she’d told me, I was sure Marcia’s contrition was genuine – and you’ve got a pretty strong incentive for murder. The hows and whys would come, no doubt, if they were there. Or, of course, the whole thing might be a load of horse feathers. You pays your money and you takes your choice. We’d just have to see what transpired.

‘So we’ll be going through to Ostia shortly, will we?’ Perilla said. ‘And for quite a while, probably, things being as they are.’

‘Hmm?’ I looked up from my wine-cup. ‘I will, lady, sure. Why the hell would you want to tag along? A straw mattress on Agron and Cass’s floor isn’t exactly much of an inducement.’

‘Oh, I’ve been thinking about that, dear, since you mentioned the Correllius connection this morning and it became a likely possibility. You know Caesia Fulvina?’

‘One of your poetry-klatsch pals. Yeah, you’ve mentioned her. Why?’

‘She and her husband have a villa on the coast half a mile from the town. They only use it in the summer, so it’s empty at present, apart from the caretaker staff.’

‘Hey!’ I brightened. ‘You think she’d lend it to us?’ I had to admit that the prospect of dossing down at Agron’s hadn’t exactly had me rubbing my hands.

‘She already has, if and when we want it. I went round to see her this morning, just after you left.’

‘Brilliant!’ I got up, went over, and kissed her. ‘Lady, that is brilliant!’ A sudden thought struck me. ‘What about the kids? Clarus and Marilla? Would they be coming too, or would they be staying here?’ Probably the former: I couldn’t envisage Marilla passing up the opportunity to be cheek-by-jowl with a developing case, particularly one she had, now, a vested interest in. Probably a hands-on opportunity, too; certainly that was an aspect of things I’d have to fight her over. Bugger.

‘Ah.’ Perilla smiled. ‘Actually that was another thing I was going to mention. There was a message waiting when I got back, from Lupercus.’ Lupercus was Clarus and Marilla’s major-domo in Castrimoenium. ‘The locum that Clarus arranged to cover his practice has come down with mumps, so I’m afraid they’ll have to cut the holiday short. Not that it matters all that much: they were only staying for a few days in any case, and Castrimoenium is only a few hours’ drive away. They can come back another time, or of course we can go down to them.’

‘Mumps,’ I said. ‘Really. How many adults come down with mumps?’

‘Quite fortuitous, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it is. Very. Uh … you’re not a witch, are you, lady, by any chance?’

‘No, dear. Of course not. You’d’ve noticed.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I would.’ I went back over to my couch and drained my wine-cup. ‘The Princess is going to throw a fit.’

‘She won’t be happy, no. But it might be good for her in the end to know that she can’t get her own way all the time. And Clarus won’t mind. I suspect he might even be rather relieved to get back to normal.’

That I would believe. Still, when they rolled in later Marilla was definitely not going to be a happy bunny. Speaking of which-

‘Meton vouchsafe anything about the timing for dinner today?’ I said.

‘Actually, it’ll be later than usual. Marilla and Clarus wanted to take little Marcus over to Caesar’s Gardens on the other side of the river.’ She sniffed. ‘I told Marilla that the weather was too unsettled today for a long trip, and of course I was right, but you know her, she insisted. In any case, she persuaded Meton to delay dinner until an hour after sunset, so that they didn’t have to hurry back. I was sure you wouldn’t mind.’

Jupiter! Me, if I’d suggested to our touchy chef that he postpone a meal without a cast-iron reason and at least three days’ notice in writing I’d be taking my life in my hands. But then Meton, as I say, like Bathyllus, had always had a soft spot for the Princess. And, although the Sprog wasn’t quite up to roasted pheasant with a saffron nut sauce as yet, he got positively gooey over young Marcus. As gooey as Meton ever got over anything but a top-grade sturgeon, that is, but even so …

‘Uh-uh. I don’t mind at all,’ I said. ‘In fact it’ll give me time to go round and see this lady’s maid. There’s a fair chunk of the afternoon left yet, and she’s just up by the Carinae.’

‘Very well, dear.’ Perilla got up too. ‘Meanwhile I’ll start making the preparations for the Ostia trip. You’ll want to go quite soon, won’t you?’

‘Yeah. Within the next couple of days, if that’s possible.’

‘Oh, yes. As I said, Fulvina told me we could have the villa at any time we liked. It’ll just be a case of sending a messenger ahead to warn the staff that we’re coming. And I’d imagine that Clarus will want to get back to Castrimoenium straight away.’

Smug as hell. Still, she had a right to be this time round, I supposed.

‘Fair enough, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

I went to see Picentina.

The house was tucked away in a side alley off the main drag. I knocked at the door and it was opened by a young slave in a natty lime-green tunic.

‘The name’s Valerius Corvinus,’ I said. ‘You have a lady’s maid here called Picentina?’

His eyes widened, which was more than the gap in the doorway did. Well, the guy couldn’t get many purple-stripers turning up on his doorstep asking for one of the bought help, could he, now?

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact we do.’

‘Could I talk to her, do you think?’

He hesitated. ‘That would be up to the mistress, sir. Could I ask your business, please?’

‘It’s about a stabbing she witnessed – possibly witnessed – two or three days ago at the Pollio Library.’

‘Oh, that!’ A barely concealed sniff. ‘If you’d like to wait in the lobby, I’ll tell the mistress you’re here.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. I went in and he closed the door behind me, then trotted off to do that small thing.

I looked around. Pretty poky, as lobbies went, but decorated to kill, with an outsize fresco on the wall showing the tradesmen’s god Mercury hob-nobbing with a bald-headed guy in a plain mantle standing in the middle of what was clearly a shoemaking workshop: various slaves round about him were doing cobblery things involving bits of leather, lasts, hammers, and bradawls. No prizes for guessing what business the master of the house was in anyway, and he clearly wanted his visitors to know he was doing pretty well out of it.

The slave in the lime-green tunic came back.

‘The mistress will see you,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

We went through to the atrium. The lady herself was sitting with her back to me in a chair by the ornamental pool, completely swathed from the neck down in a sheet, while a young girl – Picentina, presumably – applied make-up to the face under the elaborately coiffeured wig.

‘Ah … Publilia Clementa?’ I said.

‘Yes. That’s right.’ The head never moved. I went round the front where we could see each other properly. Mistake. Me, if I’d been Picentina, I’d’ve used a trowel; not the most prepossessing of females, Publilia Clementa, with a face like one of her husband’s less successful productions and in need of all the artificial help it could get. ‘Who are you?’

‘Valerius Corvinus.’

‘Yes, I know your name, but who exactly are you?’

‘Uh …’

‘You’re very well-turned-out for a Watchman. Quite spruce. And are you entitled to that purple stripe?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’ Jupiter! ‘And I’m not part of the Watch, as it happens. I’m just doing a favour for the Palatine District Commander. He’s a friend of mine.’

‘Indeed. Well, keep it short. As you can see, I’m extremely busy. My husband and I are attending a very important official dinner this evening. A guild dinner. He is the current guild president.’

‘Actually, I wanted to talk to your maid if that’s convenient.’ The girl looked up, cosmetics pad poised. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’

‘About this silly stabbing business at the Pollio. Yes, my door-slave told me that too. Very well.’ Then, to the girl: ‘Get on with it, spit-spot. Tell the man what you saw.’

‘Ah … maybe we could go somewhere private?’ I said.

‘Certainly not! Your reason for calling may be as innocent as you say, but I will take no chances. You will conduct the interview in my presence, please.’

Gods! Still, if that was the way she wanted it, it was no skin off my nose. I turned to the girl.

‘You like to tell the story in your own way, Picentina?’ I said. ‘Just as it happened, OK? Right from the start. You were in the Pollio gardens, yes?’

The girl put the make-up stuff down on the ledge beside the pool.

‘’S right,’ she said. ‘The mistress sent me there while she was, like, chatting to her young man.’

‘We’ll leave the incidental details aside if you don’t mind, Picentina,’ Publilia snapped. ‘She means Quintus Rubrius, Corvinus. A charming boy, one of my husband’s clerks. Very cultured. He happens to have a great interest in art, as I do myself, and we met in the Porch quite by chance. Now just get on with it, girl!’

‘Yeah, so anyway,’ the maid went on. ‘I was coming down the path from the Porch, like, and I sees this man standing behind another man, a fat old gentleman, sitting on one of the benches, like, sort of slumped against one end. Very close, they were, practically touching, like. He looks up and sees me, the first man does, I mean, and then he like walks away quickly. That’s it, really, I didn’t pay no more attention to the fat old gentleman ’cos he was asleep, or at least I thought he was at the time, like. When I went back there next day to ask about the mistress’s missing earring and heard he’d like actually been murdered you could of knocked me down with a feather. And the thought that I’d, like, seen the monster what done it fair made my skin crawl.’

‘Can you describe him at all?’ I said. ‘The, uh, monster?’

‘Oh, he was ever so rough-looking. And I’ll never forget the look he gave me when he, like, saw me coming towards him.’ She shuddered, delicately. ‘He had, like, these sort of mad, staring eyes, proper sink-holes of depravity, they were, that like bored straight through you. You could tell at once he was a ruthless killer.’

Yeah. Right. Gods! ‘Age?’

‘Oh, oldish. Not nearly as old as the other man, like, but too old for me, I noticed that straight off. But he was like fit, you know? Well-built, like. Sort of rugged and solid. He’d a lot of, like, muscle under his tunic. And he kept himself in shape, you could tell that by how he moved. Sort of rippled, like. Lithe as a cat stalking what it might devour. It brought me out all over in goosebumps.’ She paused. ‘Lovely crinkly hair he had, though. Bit like yours, sir, matter of fact.’

‘Tall? Short?’

‘Like, sort of medium. Tallish rather than shortish. I prefer them tall, me. Especially the crinkly haired ones.’

She gave me a dazzling smile. I ignored it.

‘Clothes?’

‘Just the tunic, like. Nothing special, plain grey wool incarnadined with the blood from the, like, dastardly deed he’d just perpetrated.’

‘Anything else about him you can remember?’

‘No.’ She sighed. ‘That was it, really. It was all over in a minute, like.’

Yeah, well, I was lucky to have got what I had, if you, like, made allowances for the verbal tic and discounted the Alexandrian bodice-ripper bits. Still, a lady’s maid’s job couldn’t have much excitement in it, so if she’d been milking it for all it was worth I couldn’t blame her. And the description fitted Nigrinus, that was certainly true; the only false note was that ‘oldish’, but to someone like Picentina anyone older than, say, thirty would qualify for an over-the-hill tag. Particularly where her obvious area of interest lay.

‘There, now. If you have all the information you want, Valerius Corvinus,’ Clementa said frostily, ‘perhaps you’ll allow the girl to return to her proper duties and get back to yours. Good luck with your investigations. So nice to have met you.’

I let myself out.