The Accusers

XXIX

‘HEMLOCK,' I said.

The vigiles doctor, a morose blue-chinned cur called Scythax, glared at me nastily. I won't say Scythax looked unhealthy, but he was so pale and haggard that if he arrived on a cargo ship from a foreign province, port officials would quarantine him.

He was eating his lunch. It was eggs on salad leaves. He pushed his bowl away slightly.

`How's that eye, Falco?' I grimaced. He perked up. `Hemlock, you said?'

`The philosopher's oblivion. Tell me about it, Scythax.'

`Poison parsley,' sneered Scythax. He always looked down on anything to do with apothecaries. He enjoyed manipulating splints but hated ointments. Since the vigiles acted as a fire brigade, his unwillingness to soothe burns did hamper him, but he had worked with the Fourth Cohort as long as they could remember and the vigiles dislike changed. Scythax was marvellous with broken limbs and internal crushing, but no one went to him for a headache cure. His remedy when squad members had a heavy hangover was to shower them with very cold water. They preferred to sign out sick – but that meant Petronius Longus turned up at their lodgings, cursed them for drinking, and kicked them downstairs. He could do that even with his own head splitting.

Petronius and a couple of his lads were now lounging on benches. As I quizzed Scythax, they listened in, always glad to have me in their station house bringing some new jollity from my repertoire of crazy cases.

River-rat weed, my country relatives call it,' I told the doctor. `I need to know, what happens to a victim, Scythax?'

`A long, slow, creeping, very permanent sleep, Falco.'

`Before the sleep, what are the symptoms?'

Scythax gave up on his food bowl. Petro and the vigiles came to attention too, mimicking their bone-setter, folding their arms with their heads cocked. `All parts of the hemlock plant are poisonous, Falco, especially the seeds. The root is supposed to be harmless when young and fresh, but I have never tested that. The leaves -'He paused, looking at his lunch – `have often been used to kill off the unwary when served up as a green garnish.'

I had no idea how the poison had been administered to Metellus. `After it is ingested, how long to an effect?'

`I don't know.' It was the doctor's turn for grim humour. `We don't get cases of poison making complaints at the visitors' desk.'

`Can you look up hemlock in a compendium? I'm consulting you about a crime, remember.'

For that I got a filthy look, but Scythax reluctantly found and pored over a scroll he kept in his infirmary cubicle. I waited. After a long interval of squinting at tiny Greek lettering in endless columns, sometimes accompanied by blotted diagrams of plants, he grunted. `It works quickly. An initial reaction in as little as half an hour. Death then takes a few more hours. The method is paralysis. The muscles fail. The brain stays alert, but the subject slowly fades.'

`Any distressing side-effects?'

Scythax was sarcastic. `Other than death?'

`Yes.'

`Vomiting. Evacuation of the bowels – with diarrhoea.'

I sniffed. `They never tell you that in the lofty story of Socrates.'

`In the Greece of antiquity, the innocent were allowed their dignity.' Scythax, a man of grandiose gloom added, `Unlike here!' He came from slave stock, and may well have had Greek origins. `I assure you, the tragic death of Socrates will have been accompanied by gruesome effects.'

I was satisfied. `Gruesome effects' had certainly been inflicted on Saffia Donata's embroidered coverlet. `Would you appear as an expert witness in court for me?'

`Get lost, Falco.'

`I shall have you issued with a subpoena then.'

`You'll have to find him first,' commented Petro. `I'm not having him hanging around the bloody Basilica; we need him here.'

`What about my case? I'm trying to nail a killer.'

`And my lads need their grazes dabbed clean.'

`Oh pardon me.' I looked down my nose at him. `I'll have to hire some damned informer to deliver the summons, I suppose.'

They all laughed.