Deadly Election

51

There was nothing useful I could say until I discovered more evidence. I agreed to write a notice in the Forum requesting information.

As we drafted out wording, first briefly describing the victim, I mused on how different physically this couple had been. Galeria had now lost weight, presumably through grief, but she remained heavy in the body. I reckoned she ate to fend off troubles. Despite mundane appearances, her life had been a constant swivel between outward complaisance and inner anxiety.

Niger, on the other hand, had been so thin because he lived on his nerves, a man in a precarious profession, yet he had been good at it and was probably more secure than he let himself admit. When we first met, I had thought Galeria mouldered at home in ignorance of his work, but it was clear today that Niger had brought worries to share with her. He had only refused to name the man who knew about the murder of Callistus Valens because of the obvious danger to her.

Would that man see my notice?

I took Galeria with me. I let her watch me select a decent place and carefully chalk up our request: Titus Niger, negotiator, fifty years old, slim build, found lately in the Porticus of Pompey, murdered. For information leading to his killer, his grieving friends will show their gratitude. Contact Flavia Albia, the Eagle Building, Fountain Court, the Aventine.

I remembered that his face was covered with acne scars, but I omitted that as a courtesy.

My original notice about Strongbox Man had been rubbed out by some apothecary to make space for his advert for virility pills. Rome contained quite enough virility.

After Galeria left me, I cleaned the wall and, as if scrawling arena graffiti, I wrote in different handwriting (I have several): Defaulter in puce tunic, I know you and where you live! The threat was meaningless, but it might shake him up.

I had not signed the notice, an omission that probably contravened civic regulations. It also seemed best not to leave a contact address. Apart from thwarting any advert-monitoring aedile, I did not want the killer turning up at my apartment. Rodan would probably let him in and serve him wine and almond biscuits.

I had not yet finished adorning public monuments. I do like to be thorough. I amused myself creating other anonymous works of art on behalf of Sextus Vibius. Faustus had not asked me for poster mischief, but he was an innocent. I played rough. The campaign was ending and we needed to turn screws. I discovered wall art came naturally to me.

Have a drink with Dillius, but be careful, he’ll want several!

Arulenus Crescens is the aedile for us, says the guild of good-time boys.

But he doesn’t pay up! sighs the eunuch Veronillus.

All the Forum purse-snatchers are supporting Trebonius Fulvo.

Some vicious rumour-monger had written Marinus misses his wife – or does he just miss thumping her? I scrubbed that out and chalked instead the subtly suggestive, Salvius Gratus is getting married: does his new wife know what I know about him? Dodge the fallout from that, supremely pompous brother of most annoying Laia!

I nearly put up Ennius is too fond of his mother but even I declined that one. It was the really polite way of phrasing a really scurrilous insult, but I knew my own mama would be disappointed in me. A good mother’s influence can be very far-reaching. Almost as far-reaching as that of a bad mother, as Ennius Verecundus and his sisters, the four stroppy Julias, undoubtedly had cause to know.

I strolled along to read the Daily Gazette. It told us the usual censored crud: news of far-fetched military victories by Our Master and God in Pannonia, celebrity births and scandalous elopements, relieved only by some wag denouncing on an unofficial pillar the absence of good poetry, worded as if advertising for a lost kitten: Last seen mewing plaintively in the Minervan Games, when shall our hearts be lightened again by cunningly wrought epithets, when thrilled by sweetly scampering meter – all is now flea-ridden flattery and squeaking drivel framed for tyrants. Someone must have listened to one of the Emperor’s praise-your-Master-and-win-a-prize-from-him competitions. This crtitic was so angry about literary standards, he was risking the order to commit judicial suicide. Whoever he was, I could rule out any candidates for magistracies, and that went from plebeian aedile right up to consul.

Feeling surly about public life (hardly an unusual mood for me), I returned to the Gazette. In the individual notices at the end, I saw that the Callistus family had formally announced their head of household’s death. No details of the attack on him were provided. In place of a funeral, they said a memorial would take place tonight, at a mausoleum on the Via Appia. I decided to go home, rest up for the afternoon, then join them for the ceremony. I could take Valens’s rings to give to them there.