Ode to a Banker

XV

There was a popina on the next street corner, one of those grim stand-up foodshops with crude mock marble countertops on which to bruise your elbows. All but one of the big pots were uncovered and empty, and the other had a cloth over it to discourage orders. The grumbling proprietor took great pleasure in telling us he could not serve eatables. Apparently the vigiles had given him a bollocking for selling hot stews. The Emperor had banned them. It was dressed up as some sort of public health move; more likely a subtle plan to get workers off the streets and back in their workshops – and to deter people from sitting down and discussing the government.

'Everything's banned except pulses.'

'Ugh!' muttered I, being no lover of lentils. I had spent too much time on suveillance, gloomily leaning against a caupona counter and toying with a lukewarm bowl of pallid slush while I waited for some suspect to emerge from his comfortable lair – not to mention too many hours afterwards picking leguminous grains from my teeth.

Privately I made a note that this ban might affect business at Flora's – so Maia might not want to take on Pa's caupona after all.

'I gather you had the red tunics here, just when the alarin was raised about the death at the scriptorium?'

'Too right. The bastards put the block on today's menu right at lunchtime. I was furious, but it's an edict so I couldn't say much. A woman started screaming her head off. Then the vigiles rushed off to investigate the excitement and by the time I had finished clearing the counters, there was nothing to see. I missed all the fun. My counter-hand ran down there; he said it was gruesome -'

'That's enough!' I gave a tactful nod towards Euschemon, whom he probably knew. The popina owner subsided with a grouse. His counter-hand was absent now; perhaps sent home when the hot food was cleared away.

Euschemon had shambled after me from the house in silence. I bought him a cup of pressed fruitjuice, which seemed the only thingon offer. It was not bad, though the fruit used was debatable. The bill, written out for me with unusual formality, cancelled any pleasure in the taste. We leaned on the counter; I glared at the owner until he slunk into the back room.

'I'm Falco; you remember?' He managed half a nod. 'I called at the scriptorium this morning, Euschemon. You were out; I saw Chrysippus.' I did not mention my disagreement with him. It seemed a long time ago. 'That must have been just before he went in to work in his library. Now I have been appointed the official investigator for vigiles. I'll have to ask you some questions.'

He just held his cup. He seemed in a daze, malleable – but perhaps unreliable too.

'Let's do some scene setting – at what point did you arrive back?'

He had to search for breath to answer me. He dragged out his words: 'I came back at midday. During the fuss, but I did not realise that at first.'

I swigged some juice and tried to pep him up. 'How far had things got – were the vigiles already at the house?'

'Yes; they must have been indoors. I thought there was rather a crowd outside, but I must have been preoccupied.

'With what?' I grilled him sternly.

'Oh… the meaning of life and the price of ink.' Sensing he might be in trouble, Euschemon woke up a bit. 'How hot was the weather, what colour olives had I chosen for my lunchpack, whose damned dog had left us a message on the pavement right outside the shop. Intellectual pursuits.' He had more of a sense of humour than I had previously realised.

'Surely your staff knew what was going on indoors?'

'No. In fact, nobody had heard any noise. They would have noticed the fracas in the street from the shop, but they were all in the scriptorium. The lads were battened down, you see, just having their lunchbreak.'

'Was the scroll-shop closed then?'

'Yes. We always pull the rolling door across and shut light down. The scribes have to concentrate so hard when they are copying, they need a complete full stop. They get their food. Some play dice, or they have a nap in the heat of the day.'

'Is the shutter actually locked in place?'

'Have to do it, or people try to force their way in even though they can see we have packed up for lunch. No consideration-'

'So nobody could have come in that way – or gone out?'

He realised I meant the killer. 'No,' he said sombrely.

'Would the shop have closed pretty early?'

'If I know the scribes, and given that I myself was not there, yes.'

'Hmm. So around the time of the death, that exit was blocked off…' If the killer made no attempt to use that route, maybe he knew the scriptorium routine. 'So how did you get indoors when you returned?'

'I banged on the shutter.'

'They unlocked again?'

'Only because it was me. I ducked in, and we jammed it back.'

'And when you arrived, the staff did not seem at all disturbed?'

'No. They were surprised when I asked if they knew what was going on in the street. I had realised the crowd was outside the master's house door -'

'Where's that?'

'Further down. Past the bootmender. You can see the portico.' I squinted round; beyond the scriptorium and another shop entrance, I noted important stonework intruding onto the pavement. 'I was going to go and speak to Chrysippus about it when one of the vigiles burst in, from the house corridor.'

'By that time he was well dead. So all the previous action had been muffled? You were out, and the scribes missed everything until after the body's discovery?' Euschemon nodded again, still like a man dreaming. 'It have to check that nobody came through the scriptorium after Chrysippus went indoors,' I mused.

'The vigiles asked us that,' Euschemon told me. 'The scribes all said they saw nobody.'

'You believe them?'

He nodded. 'They would have been glad to be left in peace.'

'Not happy workers?'

'Ordinary ones.' He realised why I was probing. 'They do the job, but they like it best with no supervisor on their backs. It's natural.'

'True.' I drained my cup. 'Did you go in and see the body?'

He nodded, very slowly. The horror had yet to leave him. Maybe it never would. His life had paused today, at that moment when a keyed-up vigilis rampaged down the corridor and interrupted the quiet lunchbreak. He would probably never entirely recapture the old rhythms of his existence.

He stared at me. 'I had never seen anything like it,' he said. 'I couldn't -' He gave up, waving his hands helplessly, lost for words.

I let him recover for a moment, then tackled him on more general background: 'I have to find out who did it. Give me some help, will you. Start with the business. It's doing well, apparently?'

Euschemon drew back slightly. 'I only deal with the authors and organise the copyists.'

'Man management.' I was being polite, but relentless. 'So did any of the men you managed have anything against our victim?'

'Not the scribes.'

'The authors?'

'Authors are a complaining lot, Falco.'

'Any complaints specifically?' He shrugged, and I answered for myself: 'Poor payment and dismissive critiques!' He pulled a slight face, acknowledging the truth of it.'No grudge important enough to make a creative person kill?'

'Oh, I shouldn't think so. You don't lose your temper just because your writing is poorly received.'Really?

'So how were sales?' I asked lightly.

Euschemon replied in a dry tone, 'As usual: if you listen to people who commission material, they have a lively stable of writers and are expecting shortly to ruin their competitors. The competitors, however, will accuse them of teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. If you ask the scroll-shops, life is a long struggle; manuscripts are hard to come by at reasonable prices and customers don't want to know. If you look around, people are nonetheless reading – although probably not reading what the critics are praising.'

'So who wins?'

'Don't ask me. I work in a scriptorium – for a pittance.'

'Why do you do it then? Are you a freedman of Chrysippus?'

'Yes, and my patron gives me a lot of responsibility.'

'Job satisfaction is so wonderful! You're very loyal. And trustworthy, and useful – is that all?'

'Love of literature,' he said. I bet. He could just as well have been selling anchovies or cauliflowers.

I changed elbows, giving myself a view up the Clivus Publicius instead of down it. 'So. The scroll business would appear to be doing well. Patronage pays.' Euschemon did not comment. 'I saw the house,' I pointed out. 'Very nice!'

'Taste and quality,' he agreed.

'Not so sure that applies to the wife,' I suggested.

'He thought so.'

'True love?'

'I don't want to gossip. But she would not kill him. I don't believe that.'

'Were they happy? Old man and his darling? Was it solid? Was it real?'

'Real enough,' said Euschemon. 'He left a wife of thirty years for Vibia. The new marriage meant everything to him – and Vibia relished what she had achieved.'

'Define it?'

'A powerful man, with money and social position, who was publicly devoted to her. He took her around and showed her off -'

'And he let her spend? All a woman could desire! So did she have a lover too?' Euschemon pulled a face, revolted by my cynicism. We would see. I smiled wryly. 'So you don't think Vibia had a reason to kill him? Not even for the money?'

He looked even more shocked. 'Oh no! That's horrible, Falco.'

'Pretty common too,' I disillusioned him.

'I don't want to discuss this.'

'Then tell me about the first wife, and the darling son.'

'Lysa,' he began carefully, 'is a tough woman.'

'The wife of thirty years? They tend to be. She kept Chrysippus in order – until Vibia snaked into his life?'

'Lysa had helped him build his business empire.'

'Aha!'

'And is, of course, the mother of his son,' Euschemon said.

'Vengeful?'

'She opposed the divorce, I heard.'

'But she had no choice. In Rome divorce is a fact, the moment one party withdraws from a marriage. So, she was cruelly abandoned after devoting her life to Chrysippus' interests. That would have enraged her. Was Lysa sufficiently vengeful to kill him?'

'She had a lot to say when the split happened. But I believe she had accepted the situation,' protested Euschemon. Even he could hear it sounded feeble, obviously.

'What about Diomedes? Bit of a mother's boy?'

'A decent young man.'

'Wet, you mean?'

'You're a brute, Falco.'

'Proud of it. So we have an enraged witch, now past her prime, pushing a beloved only offspring who is something of a weed, while the ageing tyrant moves on elsewhere, and the new young princess simpers… Like a Greek tragedy. And I do believe there is a chorus of cultivated poets, as in all the best Athenian plays – I need the names of the authors who enjoyed Chrysippus' patronage, please.'

Euschemon blenched. 'Are our authors suspects?' He seemed almost protective – but then they were an investment.

'Suspected of bad verse, probably. But that's not a civil crime. Names?'

'There is a small group we support, authors drawn from across the literary range. Avienus, the respected historian; Constrictus, an epic poet – rather dull perhaps; Turius, who is trying to write a Utopia, though I believe he's unwell – at least, he thinks he is; then there's Urbanus Trypho, the playwright-'

I stopped him. 'I've heard of Urbanus!'

'He is very successful. A Briton, if you can believe that. Not half as provincial as people suppose. Extremely successful,' Euschemon commented, a touch sadly. 'To be honest, Chrysippus had slightly underestimated his appeal. We ought to have imposed a much more rigorous royalty structure there.'

'Tragic for you! But Urbanus is laughing all the way to his Forum bank. If he receives his deserts from the ticket office, he'll be content – and this rare human condition may put him in the clear for the killing. Have you mentioned everyone?'

'Almost. We also have the famous Pacuvius – Scrutator, the satirist. Something of a handful, but immensely clever – as he is all too aware. Scrutator is a pen name.'

'Pseudonym for what?'

'Shitbag,' said Euschemon with rare but intense bile. His loathing was so deeply ingrained he had no need to dwell on it, but reverted to an equable mood immediately afterwards.

'He's your favourite!' I commented lightly. I could pursue the reason discreetly later. 'Are all these writers employed on the same terms that Chrysippus offered me?'

Euschemon coloured up slightly. 'Well, no, Falco. These are our regulars, the mainstay of our moderns list -'

'You do pay them?' He did not reply, sensitive perhaps to my own – different – position regarding the poems the scriptorium had tried to commission. 'But do you pay them enough?'

'We pay them the going rate,' said Euschemon defensively.

'How much is that?'

'Confidential.'

'How wise. You don't want writers comparing. It could lead to them noticing discrepancies. And that might lead to jealousy.' jealousy being the oldest and most frequent motive for murder.

The list sounded familiar. I took out Passus' written round-up of today's visitors to Chrysippus. 'Well, well. All the men you have named saw your master this morning! What can you tell me about that?' Euschemon looked shifty. 'Don't mess me about,' I warned.

'We were reviewing our future publication lists.'

'It was planned? They had appointments?'

'Informally. Chrysippus did business in the Greek way – a casual meeting, a friendly chat about family matters, politics, the social news. Then he would come to the matter in hand, almost as an afterthought. People would have known he wanted to see them, and they would have dropped in at the house.'

'So which of them likes nettle flan?'

'What?'

'Nothing. Any of these fellows have a black mark by their names?' Euschemon looked puzzled. 'Which of them, had you decided, was about to he dropped from your catalogue?'

'None.'

'No problems at all with them?'

'Oh, with authors there will always be problems! They will be only too happy to grumble. You ask them, Falco. One or two needed encouragement, let's say. Chrysippus will have handled it tactfully.'

'Do as I tell you, or the bread supply is cut off?'

'Please don't be crude.'

'This may seem cruder: could a disgruntled author have shoved a scroll rod up his patron's nose?'

Euschemon went rigid. 'I prefer to believe we are patrons to men of refinement.'

'If you believe that, you are deluding yourself, my friend.'

'If Chrysippus was planning changes, he had not told me. As his manager, I waited to hear what he wanted.'

'Did you have different critical standards?' I guessed.

'Different tastes sometimes.' Euschemon seemed a loyal type. 'If you want to probe into what was discussed this morning individually, only the authors know that.'

I thought of sending a runner to all the authors, commanding them to present themselves before me this evening in Fountain Court. That would perhaps allow me to tackle them at a stage when only the murderer knew Chrysippus had been killed – but it did not give me time to dissuade Helena from beating me to pieces over the intrusion. Five authors in sequence was not her idea of a family evening. Nor mine. Work has its place, but Hades, a man needs a home life.

They could wait. I would seek them out tomorrow. It was urgent (to stop them conferring), though not the most urgent thing I had to do. Before anything else now I had to interview Lysa, the aggrieved first wife.

She lived in a neat villa, large enough to have internal gardens, in a prosperous area. Unfortunately, when I found the address, I was met by two men Fusculus had sent ahead, who told me both the ex-wife and her son were out. Needless to say, no one knew where. And it was a certainty, they would both turn up at their home that evening just when I wanted to be in my own apartment having dinner myself. With prescient gloom, I told the vigiles to come and fetch me as soon as the missing relatives turned up.

So much for my home life, I thought glumly. But when I reached the apartment, the evening was ruined in any case: Helena was holding off the barbarian attack with a glint in her eyes that said I had reappeared in the nick of time. We had been invaded by my sister Junia, complete with Ajax, her untrained and unrestrainable dog, her ghastly husband Gaius Baebius, and their deaf but noisy son.