See Delphi and Die

XXVI

As we settled into our new positions, I noticed that the Sertorius boy was lurking about, hiding behind a pillar as if pretending to stalk us. Then I spotted the girl too, making a better job of being unobtrusive. On her own, she would have got away with it. Helvia took it upon herself to shoo them off. Indus, the shorter male, said the brats had been a menace from day one. He once caught the boy going through his things. Indus' expression as he recalled this incident seemed to confirm he was a fugitive, scared of discovery.

As an assembly of five, we fell naturally into two sub-groups. Helena attached herself to the widow and was soon discussing Helvia's travelling. To go overseas we knew she must possess funds, though not as lavish as those enjoyed by Cleonymus and Cleonyma. A decent friend used to accompany her, a woman her own age who spoke several languages, but after an unfortunate experience in the souk at Alexandria, that ended. Now Helvia brought instead a little slave girl, who was always the first in any party to be struck down by the foreign food, and who lost Helvia's luggage every time they hit a new port.

Helvia had chosen to travel with Seven Sights because she wanted to meet new men. She came right out with this. Helena wondered whether the married ones might be a problem – or those travelling alone, who were married but failed to mention it? Helvia seemed surprised by this suggestion. When she glanced in alarm at Indus and Marinus, they were much amused. I guessed that already on this trip each had made it plain to Helvia that he was not interested in her (or thought he had. With that cleared up, they had convinced themselves it was safe to be friendly with the widow. I would not have felt so confident.

Marinus fancied his chances as a raconteur. This was a real nuisance. We were trying to elicit cold facts from people who were unused to being questioned and my patter was geared to stop them telling lies. I was less efficient at interrupting this stream of anecdotes about lost participants (got up late, missed the mule train, missed the boat, just

lost their way, locals handing out wrong information, guides who were ignorant, abusive, too clingy, or who reneged and left hapless travellers on their own in the middle of deserts, earthquakes, civil wars, or simply in the middle of Arcadia, which, despite its reputation for temples and a pastoral ambience, apparently contains nothing of interest.

We had already taken in a great deal of information, and a seafood lunch; I was helpless. Soon Marinus was even sidetracking himself, with a long, shocking tale of an innocent family, who had never been abroad before, being abducted by a psychopath (on a dark night on a remote mountain pass, naturally. When he launched into an incident with a crocodile, even Indus joined in. He was a hunched man, with long, lank hair and dark skin lesions. He had kept quiet until that point, perhaps because of the aspersions that Aulus had cast. If he was on the run for some sort of fraud or political disgrace, he would not want to attract my attention. But now he too set ofFon reminiscences.

The worst thing I've seen is feeding time at Crocodilopolis. The poor chief croc there is supposed to be a god. You bring him hampers of stuff- bread and cakes, and wine to wash it down. He waddles out all covered with perfumes and jewellery, though looking apprehensive, if you ask me. The keepers wrench his jaws apart and force in the goodies – and sometimes he has hardly gobbled up one load when a new crowd arrive and bring him more to gorge on. When I saw him, he was so fat, he could hardly move. Can't say the priests were exactly slender either!"

"Of course they have their teeth drawn. declared Marinus.

"Do you mean the priests?" Looking over from where she sat with Helvia, Helena found her voice, stopping the flow of stories with this deadpan jest. "Marcus, did Indus and Marinus have any intimate conversations with Statianus? Were they able to entice anything out of him?"

"Sadly, not much there to entice," Marinus apologised, giving in and returning to our real subject. "Nice boy – but when the brains and spirit were handed out in that family, they must have passed him by."

"Sad for Valeria?" Helena asked Helvia.

"No, they were well matched, in my opinion. Valeria was a sweet little thing, but scatty."

"A bit lacking in judgement?"

"Utterly. She was fresh from the nursery, Helena. I don't think her mother can ever have taken her on so much as a morning drive to meet a friend and drink mint tea."

"Her parents were dead. She had a guardian, Helvia, but you know how that works – so often a formality. I suspect she was brought up solely by slaves and perhaps freedwomen."

Helvia sighed. "With hindsight, I feel dreadful that I never took her under my wing." More tartly, she added, "Well, she would not have wanted me. In her eyes she was a married woman, travelling with her husband; she knew nothing, but thought she knew everything."

"Was she rude to you? Not give you the respect due a widow?"

"A little dismissive.

"She was rude to you, Helvia!" Indus spelled it out. "She was rude, at one time or another, to most people."

"But probably had no idea she was doing it," Marinus defended Valeria. The scatty girl must have been his type, I reckoned. Was it significant? "She was outspoken even to her husband. She had a sharp tongue. If her killer propositioned her, she would have straightaway let rip with a riposte."

"Perhaps that helped madden him?" I suggested.

"She could be a superior little madam," Indus agreed. "What was she? Nineteen, with no background and no real money. Neither of them had any clout. As newly-weds, they attracted a lot of attention; we made a fuss of them. They could have sat back and enjoyed it, and had a really good time. Instead they rubbed people up the wrong way; they insulted the guides, irritated us, and were fractious with each other. It was nothing too much, but just what you don't want when you are on the road in uncomfortable conditions."

"So," I said, "they had alienated people. When the girl first went missing, Statianus had to look for her himself; then when he was accused of her murder…?"

"Oh that was when we rallied. It was not his fault. That idiotic magistrate needed a kick up the posterior."

"So do you people know where Statianus has gone now?" Helena asked them, still hoping for news of her brother too. But they all shook their heads.

We seemed to have extracted as much as they could tell us, so we enquired about the two men themselves. Marinus owned up immediately that he was a widower, on the lookout for a new wife. We joked that since Helvia was in the same position, many would think that a neat solution.

"Oh Marinus is out of the question. He talks far too much!" Despite her wispy hair and uncontrolled drapery, Helvia was absolutely blunt.

"I do," Marinus admitted without rancour. "And / am hoping for a ladyfriend who owns half of Campania!" Helvia cast her eyes down, as if defeated.

"What about you, Indus?" Helena slipped in. "Are you on the lookout for a wealthy new wife, or looking over your shoulder for some over-officious auditor?" She made it humorous. Indus took it that way – apparently.

"Oh I like to be a man of mystery, dear lady."

"We all think he is a runaway bigamist!" giggled Helvia. So the rumours about Indus were openly mentioned – and he liked to let those rumours hover.

"You know the old maxim. never confess – and you'll never regret."

"Deny and you'll get a black eye!" I retaliated.

After a few moments' silence, Helena sat up slightly. "Statianus and Aelianus are missing; so is someone else," she said. "We were told you had a third man travelling by himself- whom nobody has mentioned at all. Wasn't there a Turcianus Opimus in your group? Our information is that he says this is "his last chance to see the world."

The silence lingered.

"Has nobody told you?" Helvia seemed wobbly.

The two men glanced at each other. It was rather ominous. Indus puffed out his cheeks, blew air awkwardly, then said nothing. Helvia by now was twisting her transparent stole between both hands, apparently distressed. We looked to Marinus, who always had too much to say, and screwed out of him the fatal words. Turcianus has died."