I, Claudia

XXIV

He didn’t scoff, he didn’t blink, he didn’t roll his eyes. He didn’t even ask her why, he simply stared up at the vaulted ceiling for several minutes, then said, ‘Why don’t we go into the garden? It’s cooler.’

It was spoken so casually that Claudia began to wonder whether he’d heard her correctly. Still, he was a dark horse, this one, it wouldn’t hurt to humour him.

Considering how small this place is, she thought, following her host through the house, it’s little short of perfect. Splendid statuary, elegant friezes, expensive aromatics in the braziers, and the garden was probably as close to heaven as you can get here in Rome. Cool colonnades, shaded bowers, flowers planted like an artist’s palate, toning blues and whites, lilacs and pinks to give an impression of space in a minuscule plot. At one end, a very large cage contained a lot of very small birds, yellow, red, brown, green, all singing their tiny hearts out, while in front fish nibbled serenely in a pond fringed by lilies.

Claudia thought that, in time, if she put her mind to it, she could eventually learn to hate this place.

Orbilio indicated a seat by the pool. ‘Now suppose you level with me,’ he said at last.

‘Why, Cousin Markie, I just have!’

A truer word was never spoken, for hadn’t she spent two whole days and nights agonizing over this decision? By rights, Claudia Seferius ought to keep her pretty head down and her mouth tight shut, because surely Gaius’s suicide solved all her problems? Only she and the real murderer knew Gaius hadn’t been responsible for those gruesome killings and, faced with a closed case (not to mention a culprit who couldn’t contradict), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the murderer would be content to rest on his laurels. So! No more murders, barrels of money, what was the point in re-opening a case that was not only closed, it was locked, barred and bolted to boot? There was nothing to stop her from continuing her search, if she felt so inclined. A knife in the ribs, a poisonous mushroom, the method wasn’t important, only the outcome.

‘Well, that’s a good start, the Cousin Markie stuff. Explain that.’

Claudia twisted a curl round her little finger. ‘You started it, remember, pretending to Gaius we were related?’

‘Claudia, I was investigating a murder, for gods’ sakes. I had you placed at the scene of the crime and to continue those enquiries discreetly I needed to get as close as I could. That way at least I made contact with Gaius. Why didn’t you bite my head off and deny the relationship straight off?’

The curl unravelled. ‘Because that’s precisely what you were expecting,’ she said sweetly. ‘Now is this level enough for you?’

His mouth twitched at one side. ‘Tell me about yourself, Claudia. Before you married Gaius.’

‘Old, old history. What’s the point?’

‘Indulge me.’

‘Oh, don’t hold your breath for that, Orbilio, but as for my life story-I was born in Litemum twenty-four years ago. At fourteen I married Titus Posidonius, he was thirty at the time and a judge, posted up in Cremona. We had three bouncing babies before the plague swept through and killed my family and half the town.’ Claudia reached up and plucked a peach. ‘I do not, as everyone knows, care to be reminded of such painful memories.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ Orbilio draped one arm across the back of the bench. ‘Especially since you also died in that dreadful epidemic.’

The peach fell to the ground and splattered.

‘Then I’m the healthiest ghost you’re ever likely to meet.’ Although she had a feeling she was fast resembling one… ‘What are you driving at?’

Orbilio picked another peach, examined it carefully then tossed it across to her. ‘Nothing in particular. I’m simply making a point.’

Claudia’s finger traced a pattern on the fuzz. ‘I hate to be the one to break the news, Orbilio,’ she tossed the peach back, ‘but point-making is not one of your strengths.’

‘I asked you to level with me,’ he said slowly. ‘If you want me to take your claim seriously-’

‘Then you agree Gaius might have been murdered?’

‘I didn’t say that, I’m merely saying it’s about time you started telling the truth. Irrespective that this is my first murder case, I’ve solved every crime I’ve investigated so far be it theft, rape, arson or corruption. I do know what I’m doing, Claudia.’

She drew her knees up along the length of seat, tucking the small of her back against the arm. The carved horns of the satyr’s head dug in something wicked, but she twisted another curl languorously round her finger.

‘So I was born in Bucentum? Hell, I’m not the only woman who’s forged her past.’ The curl sprang free. ‘Gaius knew all about it.’

‘Fibber!’

Her eyes said prove it. His eyes said if needs be. Her eyes won.

‘What about the will?’

Ah yes, the will. ‘Finance isn’t really the issue at the moment.’

‘It’s a motive.’

‘Orbilio, I have not hiked all the way up here this morning simply for you to dredge up my past and come to the conclusion I murdered my husband.’

‘Oh, sit down, I’m only teasing. Of course you couldn’t have done him in, you were at the Circus Maximus.’ He’d been checking. Dammit, the bastard had actually checked up on her! She wondered whether steam was physically coming out of her ears.

‘Incidentally, I know why Gaius brooked convention, and left everything to you.’

He did? How? The letter was sealed, no one else could have seen its contents except the scribe who wrote it. Had Orbilio bribed or bullied his way into reading it? That meant this oily little ferret had suspected Gaius for some time…

‘Tell me why you think he was murdered.’

What? The change of subject, swift and clean, took her by surprise. Claudia dabbed her hand in the pool. ‘Several reasons. For one, his character.’

‘Oh, come on, when Lucius died he went right downhill, and once he realized he was on the brink of arrest it swung the balance.’

‘I’ll ignore, for the moment, the fact that this accusation happened to stem from you, but don’t think I’ve forgotten-because if Gaius had killed himself, you’d have had an innocent man’s blood on your conscience. I’m presuming here that you know what a conscience is?’

‘According to your rules, it’s the fear of being found out, rather than any noble principles. Am I wrong?’

The look she shot him would have made a lesser man wince. ‘Two,’ she said pointedly, ‘his eyes were closed, his face was at peace.’

A wasp began buzzing round the splattered peach, and an expensive black leather sandal came down hard to squash it.

‘Most people who top themselves are looking for the ultimate peace,’ he said. ‘Maybe he found it.’

‘Orbilio, you think yourself smart, why don’t you tell me what corpses look like when they’ve been run through with a sword? Do they look happy? Well do they?’

Thank goodness he had the grace to look abashed. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Their faces remain contorted. However,’ he brightened visibly, ‘if it wasn’t a clean wound and he bled to death-and I heard there was a lot of blood-that would make a difference.’

‘I’ll concede that, but, point three, there was a large bruise on his head, consistent with his being knocked out cold. Probably by the small marble bust of Apollo he kept on his table.’

‘Don’t tell me, it had blood and hairs stuck all over it?’

‘Laugh if you want to, Orbilio, and I might be wrong about Apollo, but it seems a likely object to me.’ It’s what I’d have swung, had I wanted to clobber someone. ‘Gaius always kept it at the back of his table as a paperweight. When I went to his room it was on the side.’

The investigator’s eyes widened. ‘Anything else?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. Had Gaius decided to commit suicide, he’d have chosen any number of methods over that sword. It was his pride and joy, you see, and he might have died clutching it, but he would never, ever have killed himself with it and dishonoured the name of Seferius.’

Orbilio ran his hand over his stubble. ‘And that’s it?’

‘No. The most conclusive piece of evidence is this.’ There was a flurry of jade linen as Claudia fished around inside her stola.

‘Gaius’s suicide note?’ Orbilio snatched it out of her hand and read it aloud. ‘I’m sorry, my sweet, but this is for the best. Love always, Gaius.’

His face puckered into a frown as he read and re-read it. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t see anything wrong,’ he said. ‘In fact, it rather ties in with my case against him.’

‘Only superficially. Assuming Gaius would ever write anything so terribly trite, he never called me his sweet when we were alone, I was always his dove. And even you have to admit this was a particularly private moment.’

‘His mind was unbalanced.’

‘Balls!’

‘Claudia, he’d killed six men, don’t you get it? Stuck a dagger through their hearts, then chiselled their eyes out. The last one was still alive and screaming when he did it, for gods’ sakes.’

‘He didn’t do it, Marcus. He couldn’t have. I knew this man, he was as straight as the proverbial die, and if he had any tendencies to kill, it was through a business deal, not through the sword.’

Orbilio covered his face with his hands. ‘Claudia, you are seriously suggesting the murderer heard the scandal mooted about Gaius, and killed him so that he could take the rap instead?’

No.

‘Yes.’

‘Dammit, Claudia.’ He slammed his fist into the trunk of the peach tree. ‘When will you ever learn to trust me? I know everything. Do you understand what I’m saying? Everything.’

He leaned across, filled cupped hands with water and sluiced it over his face. The heady scent of roses drifted in the air as the birds trilled and the fountains splashed. He dried his face and the blood from his knuckles on his handkerchief.

‘What’s the real reason you want me to open the case? Is it because someone’s been picking off his family and you want them caught?’

She stared him out. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

What he was talking about, he said angrily, was Calpurnia, then Secundus, then Lucius and now Valeria’s baby. Four untimely deaths, if she hadn’t noticed, and she wasn’t to give him any bullshit about how high infant mortality is, three of them weren’t infants.

‘Coincidence,’ she said, carefully, pleating the hem of her tunic.

‘Coincidence be damned, Claudia.’ He shook his head. ‘By Jupiter you picked a right bloody family to marry into, didn’t you? Now tell me, honestly, why you want this case re-opened.’

With Gaius dead, she was positively rolling in it. More than she imagined. More than she had ever dreamed of. More, even, than the old linen merchant had left that common little Marcia cat, would you believe? So who cared that the authorities had mistakenly labelled him a murderer? Did it really matter? And that was the crunch. Because, to her astonishment, Claudia found that, when it came right down to it, yes it did matter. She knew Gaius hadn’t killed anyone, as surely as she knew who had killed Gaius. But the point was, unless the case was publicly reopened, a man who had worked hard all his life to get to the top through honesty, fairness and respectability stood to have his good name in tatters for ever. For all his faults, and they were considerable, Gaius Seferius did not deserve such an epitaph.

The revelation that she might actually have a conscience had come as something of a shock to say the least, and she certainly wasn’t prepared to share this experience with this…this womanizing monster.

‘First you tell me how you came to the conclusion that Gaius killed six of Rome’s finest and most upstanding citizens.’

‘We’re going round in circles here. Callisunus will make his announcement in the morning. Why don’t you wait for that?’

‘Patience isn’t one of my virtues, I’m afraid, although I excel at screaming rape. Remember, Cousin Markie? Clam up and you can expect a repeat performance of what happened last month at my house, except this time I’ll make it look more realistic.’

His shoulders slumped. ‘You win. The statement reads “Gaius Seferius murdered these men in the insane and mistaken belief that they were his wife’s lovers.” I know you don’t like it, but murder is murder and I couldn’t give a stuff about covering up Gaius’s reputation-’

She stood up and stretched her spine. I’m going to regret this, I can feel it in every single bone of my body. ‘Marcus, believe me, someone else killed those men. Now suppose I do level with you and say I was intending to kill this scumbag myself. I don’t know who he is-not yet, anyway-but I’m this close I can smell him.’

‘And are you levelling enough to explain why you should want to play judge, jury and executioner all at once?’

Her eyes flashed. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped, ‘but the point is, Gaius deserves to have his name cleared. Now an hour ago you were practically threatening to push cast-iron proof down my gullet. You can’t have it both ways.’

Orbilio stood up and walked over to where she was standing. He could smell her musky perfume, saw the sun sparkle on the tints in her hair watched, the pulse in her throat.

‘Let it drop, Claudia. No good can come of this.’ Was that husky voice his?

‘Would you prefer me to go straight to that foul-mouthed boss of yours?’

‘Claudia, you’ve got so much rope you’re hanging yourself, can’t you see that? Must I spell it out? Very well, but don’t blame me if you don’t like the story. Shortly before he was killed, I overheard Paternus gossiping in the baths saying you weren’t what you seemed, and it got me thinking that maybe I should check up on you. I have to say it didn’t take long to root out that Claudia Posidonius may not have died in Cremona, but she was a damned sick woman when she left. Her tomb is about twenty miles south, isn’t that correct?’

Claudia shrugged noncommittally.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘Besides,’ he added quietly, ‘you can’t honestly expect a red-blooded man to believe you’ve kept a figure like that after three children, can you?’

She turned away to study a butterfly feeding on a poppy. If that was supposed to be a compliment, he could bloody well stick it in his ear. She’d had it up to here with compliments. Gaius wasn’t even buried and letters had come flooding in. Some were condolences, admittedly, but half of Rome’s bachelors had wasted little time in winging off proposals of marriage. Some were clients of Gaius’s, one even was a client of hers. As if she’d marry a pervert like Flamininus the censor, for heaven’s sake! Who was married already, the twisted little tick. He wasn’t the only one, of course. There was Ligarius, who had got it into his thick skull that now she was free they could carry on where they’d left off. Left off from what? They’d never been more than friends, certainly never lovers. Was the man completely mad? There were seventeen proposals in all, ranging from senators to centurions, the latest from that clot Balbus, who could only be after her money because in three months he’d have bored her to death. Juno, it would be funny if it wasn’t so bloody pathetic! ‘What else did your grubby investigations turn up?’

‘Precisely what you’d expect them to, I’m afraid. Once I knew you were an imposter I was…curious. Since you were there the day Quintus Crassus was killed.’

The butterfly was long gone, but Claudia continued to stare at the poppy. ‘So you make up some feeble story about your house burning down and move in with us?’

‘I was on to something, and if that’s what it took to save lives I frankly couldn’t give a toss.’

‘I’d think before I boasted if I were you, Orbilio. Two men were butchered within five days of that clever little scheme.’

‘They were scheduled to die anyway, don’t you understand? Claudia, when I said I know about your past, I meant all of it.’

‘All of what? A mother who worked in a dyer’s, a father who was an orderly in the army? Big deal.’

‘I’m talking about Genoa, for pity’s sake. The poverty, the dancing, the-’

‘-the men.’ She might as well finish it for him. Claudia felt her knees turn to water. The colour must have drained down to them from her face. There was a long silence before she could bring herself to ask, ‘How did you find out?’

‘There was an anonymous letter on Gaius’s desk-’

‘You two-faced son of a bitch, you said you hadn’t searched the house!’

‘That was as far as I’d got. Going through Gaius’s papers like that, it made me feel…dirty.’

Funny, there are some things in life you just can’t legislate for. ‘There’s a certain irony in this situation, Orbilio. You see, my mother-in-law wrote that, and she’s a venomous old bitch who makes mischief for the sheer hell of it.’

‘I think you’re wrong. That letter was penned by an educated hand and I’ve checked this family out. Larentia is illiterate and even if she dictated it… The words, the grammar the careful phrasing? No, she didn’t send that.’

Come to think of it, Larentia sounded puzzled at the time. Why didn’t I pick up on that? If Orbilio could work it out, I bloody well should have. Serves you right, a little voice answered. You shouldn’t have assumed Gaius threw it away, even though he promised. You knew he was preoccupied over Lucius, you stupid cow, you should have checked.

‘And then there was Ligarius. Your steward mentioned he was hanging around in the street every night. It was only a question of following him to his tavern, throwing in your name, and that was it. The floodgates opened.’

Bastard. Her swore he’d never let her down. Men!

‘So the night he burst in, you clonked him over the head to spare my blushes. How frightfully gallant.’

‘Chivalry’s always been my downfall.’ Slowly Orbilio crossed to the aviary, keeping his back turned towards her. ‘Same as I didn’t want to believe it was you in the tenement last month.’

‘I thought we’d established it was Melissa.’

‘Melissa, yes, Melissa. I was searching her room for money, remember? It occurred to me Crassus might not have been tied up by the man who killed him, suppose something kinky was going on? Could Melissa have been offering such a service? Why not? And suppose Gaius was her pimp, the man who tipped her the wink about which punters were willing and how much to charge? When I heard about her selling the brooch and found the green tunic, it all fell into place.’

He paused. A rock seemed to have lodged in his throat as he remembered seeing Callisunus with his twin.

‘But I was wrong. A man will see only what he wants to see, and I wanted to believe it was Melissa with those men, not you, but the evidence was piled against it. Rufus was so cocksure the woman he’d seen wore a stola, I couldn’t shake him on it. Now a slave might pull on a fine linen tunic and pass as freeborn, but she’d never dare don that distinguishing symbol of Roman motherhood the stola. Whichever way I tried, you see, there was only one solution. It was you. You were in the tenement, Claudia. You found Crassus’s body. Because you were working again.’

‘Rubbish. Why would I do a thing like that?’

‘To pay off Lucan. That debt stood at well over two thousand sesterces the night young Otho called to pay his respects. Correct me if I’m wrong, Claudia, those six men were tricks.’

Vulgar word. Claudia tossed her head in disdain. What the hell. No one can prove Gaius didn’t know my background, the will’s still valid. Nothing can take that away. It means moving on, of course, but I’ve done it before and no doubt I’ll do it again.

‘So now you know the risks I’m running by re-opening the case.’ She hoped from that distance he couldn’t hear the quiver in her voice.

Orbilio turned round. There was little trace of the boyish charm on his pinched features. ‘Tell me one thing, Claudia, and answer me honestly. Do you have a lover?’

‘A lover? With that list of punters? Do me a favour!’ His face relaxed, as though a weight had been lifted from his mind. The dancing light in his eyes was back as he squared his shoulders. ‘Then I categorically refuse to re-open the case. You see, if you don’t have a lover, who else would kill for you?’

‘No one’s killing for me, they’re just picking off my clients. I’ve told you, I don’t know who it is yet, but it has to be one of them. I’ve…eliminated all bar six.’

‘How many were there? All right, all right, you don’t have to answer that. All the same, I can’t buy it. Sorry, Claudia, I don’t believe Gaius was set up by one of your punters.’

Neither do I.

‘I want his name cleared, that’s all. If you re-open the case, that will happen automatically.’

‘Good grief, how many times do I have to tell you before it sinks in? Gaius killed them!’

‘Orbilio, are you being dense deliberately? Why should he do a thing like that?’

‘I’ve just proved it, for gods’ sakes. He loved you, isn’t that enough? You were sleeping with these men-’

‘I was not! They want to be spanked, beaten, whipped, you name it, but believe me, these guys don’t want sex.’

‘Really? You mean you didn’t…’ Orbilio cleared his throat. ‘Stop splitting hairs. The point is, Gaius and you had separate rooms, he thought they were getting what he wasn’t so-wallop! Exit the competition.’

Claudia put her hands on her hips, cocked her head on one side and smiled. ‘You know, Marcus, we seem to have come by a convoluted route, but I think we’re finally getting there. Haven’t I been telling you all along Gaius didn’t have a motive for killing these men?’

‘For crying out loud, woman, I’ve just given you one!’

‘Uh-uh. You’ve merely talked yourself out of one. Gaius didn’t love me, I was another of his trophies, that’s all. He married me for my looks and my character, another symbol of his success. Now why do you suppose I was so keen to get rid of the oik? Did you really think I couldn’t handle whatever he might let slip? No, Marcus, I wanted that boy out of the house before Gaius could lay his pudgy white paws on him.’

She paused and looked up at him. ‘Now are you beginning to understand?’