Food for the Fishes

5

Them. The family. We.

I’d been given enough hints and I ought to’ve realised, sure. My appointment was with the widow Gellia, not with the whole boiling, but there they all were, reclining or sitting in the villa’s main atrium, stiff-faced as ancestral death masks. And watching each other closely out of the corners of their eyes, like in case any moment one of them would jump up and decamp with the family silver.

I couldn’t be wrong, no way; the body language and the general atmosphere made that clear from practically the moment I walked into the room. I knew, absolutely and irrevocably, that whatever the cause or causes of it might be all the members of the Murena family hated one another like poison.

No wonder they were all sitting here: not one of them trusted any of the rest further than they could spit.

Not that I suspected I was flavour of the month either, mind.

‘Ah, Corvinus, so you’ve arrived.’ That was the one I had met, Titus Chlorus. Stupid bloody observation, sure: the fish farm was only two hundred yards away the other side of the gardens, and Ligurius had taken me to the door, but I could see the reason for it. The guy was seriously nervous. He wasn’t the only one, either, by any means. Which was interesting.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Let me introduce you. My father’s widow, Gellia — ’

A hard-faced, brassy woman in a blonde wig and black eyebrows, early- to mid-thirties, sitting on a chair and sporting a mourning-mantle that practically knocked my eyes out. She gave me a frozen nod.

‘- sister Penelope. -’

In another chair to one side, slightly out of the circle. Odd. Early forties, probably, small and dumpy, ‘matron’ written all over her. Her white mantle wasn’t a patch on Gellia’s, and although she didn’t look exactly slovenly she clearly didn’t take much trouble over her appearance. She was the only one of the four, though, who was composed. Small, neat hands with only one ring on the engagement finger, resting motionless on the chair-arms.

‘- and my brother, Aulus Nerva.’

The youngest of the three siblings, probably mid-thirties. Like Chlorus, he was reclining on a couch. His mourning-mantle and stubble didn’t go well with the podgy lad-about-town face, overneat haircut and flashy signet ring. He was the only one of the four to be drinking. He raised his cup and, like Gellia, gave me the briefest of nods.

‘Take a seat, Corvinus,’ Chlorus said. ‘Some wine?’ He motioned to a slave standing by one of the side tables. I went over to the remaining couch and lay down. ‘Now. Apua’ — he corrected himself — ‘forgive me, Ligurius, rather, will have told you about how he found my father, so we can skip that part if you don’t mind, yes?’

‘“Apua”?’ I said.

Chlorus smiled. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a family nickname, one of my father’s coining. Father was fond of nicknames.’

Murena the eel-boss and Apua the anchovy-manager. Right. Quite a sense of humour the old bugger must’ve had. No doubt it creased them up when fish farm owners got together and swapped anecdotes. I reached out and took the cup of wine the slave handed me.

‘I understood the town officer already had someone in custody for killing my husband,’ Gellia said. Nice enough voice, but there was a nasal twang to it that I reckoned could get wearing after a while. Five minutes would do me.

I couldn’t complain about the actual comment, mind: straight to the point, no messing. The strange thing was that every eye in the room had zeroed in on her, and not with approval, either.

‘Gaius Trebbio. Right,’ I said. ‘Only I have personal reasons for thinking he couldn’t’ve done it.’ Was it my imagination, or was there a general sharpening of interest? ‘Besides, why should it be murder, lady? Why not an accident? I was told Licinius Murena had fainting fits.’

Gellia sat bolt upright in her chair. ‘Who told you that?’ she snapped.

Queer; me, if our positions had been reversed, I’d say an accidental death would’ve been better news than murder, and so, I’d bet, would ninety-nine percent of the world’s population. Gellia, though, seemed to take the suggestion as a personal insult. The strange thing was, I had the impression that at least two of the other three weren’t exactly taken with the suggestion either. With Penelope, I couldn’t tell. She just stared at Gellia with what looked like distaste and terminal boredom.

‘Ligurius,’ I said.

‘Did he, now?’ Chlorus said softly. I glanced at him. His eyes were on Gellia. ‘Well, well. Bravo, Anchovy!’

Gellia ignored him. ‘My husband,’ she said, ‘had several fancies about his health. That was all they were: fancies. For his age he was as strong as an ox.’

‘That’s not what Diodotus says.’ Chlorus said mildly. ‘Or for that matter, I’m afraid, what you — I use the plural, note — have been telling us for the past few months.’

She went brick red, and for a moment her composure cracked. ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ she snapped.

‘In fact, I can remember you yourself saying only four days ago — ’

‘How dare you!’ Looking at her, I’d’ve said that Gellia was within a copper piece’s-worth of throwing herself at Chlorus’s throat. ‘I never — !’

‘Oh, yes you did.’ Chlorus was completely at his ease. ‘I remember it distinctly. You told me four days ago, when I called round about the cost of repairs to Number Three Tank, that Father had taken a giddy turn after breakfast, and you were quite concerned. There’s no point in denying it now. That will do no good at all.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Nerva murmured. ‘Don’t you believe her, Corvinus. She always was a little liar, and now she’s got Dad safely dead — ’

Gellia whirled round. ‘Aulus, you complete — !’

I held up a hand. ‘Lady? Gentlemen?’ Shit; what was I into here? Revelations were one thing, but at this galloping rate there’d be blood on the tiles before we’d even started. ‘Maybe we could keep this reasonably amicable, okay?’

Gellia subsided. Fancy wig or not, made up to the eyeballs or not, she was no looker in herself, and a complexion that currently would’ve given a beetroot a run for its money didn’t help things much, either. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Valerius Corvinus,’ she said, cut-glass tones back in spades. ‘What must you think of us?’

‘In your case that should be pretty obvious, I’d imagine,’ Nerva said. ‘And he’d probably be right.’

Gellia ignored him, but her colour heightened. ‘You have some questions,’ she said stiffly to me. ‘Perhaps you could ask them.’

‘Ah…okay.’ I cleared my throat. Maybe we’d better do this formal at that: it was probably safer. I felt like I was like a kid poking at the workings of a military catapult: the slightest mis-prod and the thing would go off. ‘The night your husband died. I understand he took a bag of scraps down to the farm to feed the fish.’

‘Yes. He did that every evening. He was quite fond of the brutes, the gods know why.’

‘Right. What time would that be?’

‘An hour or so after sunset, after we’d finished dinner. That was when he usually went.’

‘He was pretty well normal at the time? Nothing unusual?’

‘Not at all normal. He was rather upset, as it happens. By events earlier in the day.’ She smiled unpleasantly, and her eyes rested on Nerva. I glanced at him. He was glaring at her with complete loathing.

‘Ah…what events would these be, now?’ I said.

‘Perhaps you’d better ask Aulus.’

I looked at Nerva and got a stare blank as a marble statue’s. I waited. Nothing. Well, we’d get there eventually, no doubt. I turned back to Gellia. ‘And you didn’t realise he hadn’t come in again?’ I said.

‘No. I went off to bed shortly afterwards. We have separate bedrooms.’

‘What about the house slaves?’

‘Lucius was a late owl. He enjoyed the dark. Sometimes he’d take a walk along the beach before he went to bed, and the slaves were ordered not to wait up. He was very considerate that way.’

‘No one else missed him?’ I looked at Chlorus.

‘None of us lives here, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know Father was dead until Gellia’ — he smiled at her- ‘sent to tell us the next day. She was the only one present at the time of Father’s death.’ He paused, and then said carefully: ‘Of the family, that is.’

Gellia shot him a vicious look but said nothing.

‘There was someone else in the house?’ I said.

‘No, of course there wasn’t,’ Gellia said tightly, her eyes still on Chlorus. ‘Barring the slaves.’

‘You’re sure?’ Nerva muttered. ‘No doctors, for instance?’

The lady’s glare flashed back to him, but this time she didn’t speak.

We were on sensitive ground here. The reason was obvious: Chlorus and company, or he and his brother at least, because it would seem that Penelope was staying out of things, suspected that their stepmother was having an affair with this doctor and that the pair of them were responsible for Murena’s death. Not all that likely, on the face of it, not from what I’d heard so far, anyway: common sense said Gellia would hardly invite a lover round for a nightcap with her husband at home, especially if she intended to stiff Murena before they turned in for the night. On the other hand, this was Baiae, and morals were looser in the fleshpots of the south. Common sense, in Baiae, didn’t always feature. The murder aside, it was a big villa. I wondered how far apart their separate bedrooms were and what were the chances of interruption.

There again, there was a lot of mud-slinging going on here. Far too much for on-the-spot assessment.

‘Fine,’ I said. Let’s get back to something we knew about. Or at least something there didn’t seem to be much argument over. I’d given Nerva his chance, and if he didn’t want to take it then that was up to him. ‘So Murena was, ah, “upset” when he went down to the fish farm? By events earlier in the day?’

Silence; long silence. Chlorus coughed and glanced sideways at Nerva. If looks could kill then the one Nerva was giving Gellia would’ve fried the lady to a crisp.

‘Yes,’ she said. She looked back at Nerva and smiled. Then she said slowly: ‘He had had a terrible argument with Aulus, you see. Just before dinner. Isn’t that so, Aulus?’

Nerva sat up straight on his couch and tried a smile of his own. It didn’t work. ‘It wasn’t an argument,’ he said. ‘I was just — ’

‘It sounded like an argument to me. I could hear the raised voices all the way from the study,’ Gellia said. ‘Gambling debts again, was it? Or one of your business schemes? Lucius wouldn’t tell me.’

Nerva had coloured up. ‘What we talked about had nothing to do with my father’s death!’

‘Possibly not.’ Gellia’s eyes came back to me, and she smiled again. ‘However, the fact remains that you were closeted with him for a good half hour and you parted on most unpleasant terms. That’s quite enough for me.’

‘I was gone long before he was killed!’

‘Of course you were.’ Gellia sniffed. ‘In such a temper, too. I was almost frightened.’

Nerva turned away. I heard him murmur ‘Bitch!’ into his winecup.

‘Of course, Corvinus,’ Gellia carried on sweetly, ignoring him, ‘Aulus isn’t the only one in the family to have money problems. Titus here has a daughter getting married in three months’ time, little Hebe, quite a society affair, and now with poor Lucius dead as the eldest son he can easily afford to — ’

‘That’s enough!’ Chlorus was on his feet. Cold fish or not, he was as angry as his brother. ‘Gellia, you’ll stop this…this ridiculous — !’

‘There’s no need to get excited, dear. I’m just apprising Valerius Corvinus of the facts.’

‘True enough, Titus,’ Nerva said. ‘Dowries come pretty expensive. Especially in Hebe’s case.’

I looked from one to the other. Gods. Forget a three-way ball game; I felt like I was watching one of those free-for-alls in the arena where the aim is to end up still breathing when everyone else is a bloodied corpse on the sand. We’d got way beyond ordinary family sniping and backbiting here, and in nothing flat, what was more. It was almost as if the three of them had had their knives ready-whetted, and just been waiting for the chance to plant them. The accusations might be veiled, sure, for the most part, but they were accusations none the less, made deliberately with one eye on me and with a cool viciousness that had nothing to do with simple point-scoring. This was for real.

The only member of the group who didn’t seem to be playing the game was dumpy Penelope. She hadn’t spoken or even moved since Chlorus had introduced her, and she’d been watching the proceedings from her chair on the sidelines with an expression of complete contempt. Now she turned to me.

‘As you can see, Corvinus,’ she said mildly, ‘we’re a very close, loving family. We all thought the world of Father, and his death has come as a terrible shock to all of us.’

That stopped the other three in mid-flow, and they all turned to glare at her. Nerva set down his cup.

‘You hated his guts,’ he said brutally.

‘Yes.’ She nodded. Her tone didn’t change. It was completely matter-of-fact. ‘Yes, you’re quite right. I hated him and I always will. In that I’m no different from the rest of you, but at least I admit it. Whoever killed Father he only got what he deserved. I’m glad he’s dead and I hope he rots in hell.’

‘Penelope!’ Gellia snapped. ‘You’ll take that back!’

‘No I won’t.’ She stood up. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be getting off home. A pleasure to have met you, Valerius Corvinus.’

She left. We stared at each other in silence. Finally, Chlorus cleared his throat. ‘You’ll have to forgive my sister,’ he said. ‘She’s…naturally, she’s upset, very upset by Father’s death, as we all are. And I hope I don’t need to tell you that there’s absolutely no truth in — ’

‘Right.’ I stood up too. The hell with more questions; my brain was whirling, I felt faintly nauseated, and all I wanted to do was get away and think. ‘Well, maybe I should be going myself. Unless there’s anything else you can tell me?’ I hoped not; I really hoped not: I’d had enough of this vicious shower to last me until the Winter Festival, and then some.

Their relief was palpable; obviously, after Penelope’s little outburst, a truce was in progress. Nerva grunted, picked up his wine-cup and took a hefty swig.

‘That’s all, Corvinus,’ he said.

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ Gellia gave me a brittle, company-manners smile, as if the four-way spat had never been. ‘I’m afraid we know little more about Titus’s death than you do. If we can help in any way in future, of course, then please don’t hesitate to ask.’

Nerva grunted again.

‘I’ll show you out,’ Chlorus said.