The Accusers

XXXV

WE MADE one last attempt to tackle the three Metellus siblings. Helena and I went to ask the questions. We had sent a message in advance, saying we would like both sisters to be present as well as Negrinus. The women were there when we arrived, and both had their husbands for back-up. This was the first time we had seen the whole group of five assembled together. Canidianus Rufus, who had seemed eager to stay out of things when I had interviewed his wife Juliana about her role in her father's death, now appeared more at ease. The presence of Verginius Laco may have encouraged him. Helena agreed afterwards that the party all knew each other well, and they seemed fairly affectionate.

It was out of the question to demand that Saffia Donata join us, but I had said it would be helpful to invite Licinius Lutea. If asked, he did not show.

`Have you and your dear friend quarrelled?' I murmured to Negrinus.

He gave me one of his self-pitying exclamations. `Oh no! He still speaks to me when I can be useful!'

`Does he touch you for money?' I threw at him. Unlikely, now Negrinus was disinherited.

Negrinus went very still. `No. Lutea has never asked me for money.'

I was not yet ready to retort, So he just uses his ex-wife, does he? Negrinus, with a flash of his understated intelligence, looked rueful, as if he knew exactly what I thought.

At a glance from Helena I fell silent. She was to initiate the discussion, while I observed the parties.

She sat on a couch, a little way from me. Tall and graceful, she had dressed in the style of a senator's daughter, adorned with favourite semiprecious jewellery over a long-sleeved white winter gown, formally wound with a voluminous dark red stole. Holding a note tablet, she looked like a high-class secretary – one keeping minutes for an empress who was plotting people's downfalls.

`I maintain the records of our enquiries, so my husband has asked me to begin.' She rarely called me her husband, though that was the state I had reported in my Census return. We lived together. It was accurate. But Helena knew it always gave me a shock.

She caught my eye and smiled slightly. I felt my lips twitch.

`Falco and Associates will shortly defend Metellus Negrinus. They intend to pre-empt the charge that he killed his father by showing that somebody else did so: Calpurnia Cara. This is hard for you – but I imagine it will not be a surprise.'

People began to speak, but I held up a hand and stopped them.

`At the trial we shall need to show motive and opportunity,' Helena continued. `Metellus provided a motive by his will: his connection with Saffia. It is very unpleasant, but the issue of adultery and incest will come out in court. So what about opportunity? We no longer believe,' Helena announced in her measured tones, `the story we have been given about when Rubirius Metellus died. All of you concurred in the fabrication – that he retired to his bed and killed himself, on the day that his body was witnessed by the seven senators. I have to be blunt. That is nonsense.'

For a quiet woman she could be acidic. When Helena spoke in that calm, unexcited way, it made the saliva dry under my tongue.

`Rubirius Metellus was presented to his seven friends, dead in his bed. But we know that the body had by then been lying somewhere else for days. So was any of your fable true?' She looked around the group. `Did Metellus really have a last lunch with some of you? Did he ever discuss suicide? Were you sent from the room, Birdy because you were upset? Were you there – or in Lanuvium? Did Calpurnia rush off in annoyance because Metellus changed his mind? And did you, Juliana, sit quietly alongside your father while he. passed away?'

Nobody answered.

`I think not!' Helena retorted scathingly.

There was complete silence.

It was my turn now.

I addressed Negrinus. `Our case against your mother will have two bases: your father was killed with hemlock, which was Calpurnia's idea and which was bought by an agent of her legal adviser, Paccius.' That did seem to surprise them. `Then she concealed your father's death for days – perhaps until you came home from Lanuvium – finally revealing the corpse in a staged deathbed scene. These details should condemn her and clear you. It will still leave that huge question: why ever did the rest of you, knowing about the fake deathbed, all go along with it?'

Birdy just looked depressed. It was Verginius Laco, the oldest man present, who said smoothly with authority, `It is reprehensible – but everyone decided to say that Metellus committed suicide so they could save the family money.'

`I am sure you regret that!' I commented. `Will you testify?'

`I have nothing to say in court, Falco.'

I had already judged Laco to be scrupulous. So was he ducking out of perjury?

Helena turned over a sheet in her note-tablet. `I should mention that we believe there will be little money to save.' Attention returned to her again. `Our prosecutor will emphasise how Saffia has taken possession of most of your fortune and that the rest passes to Saffia by the will. The court has to infer blackmail. We shall call her as a witness, though we cannot at present ask her how much she will admit.'

None of them spoke.

`The truth is bound to come out,' I threatened, sounding confident.

There was high tension in the room. Perhaps we might have shocked them into a revelation. But the silence was interrupted. A troubled slave entered, to say a midwife had arrived with an urgent message for Negrinus from his ex-wife. Then two women pushed in past the slave. One had a tiny, fair-haired girl clutching at her skirts, the other carried a wrapped bundle.

I stood up. That was a mistake. For, in the traditional manner of seeking paternal acknowledgement, she marched forward and laid at my feet a neatly swaddled newborn baby.

Helena Justina's fine dark eyes met mine, full of amusement at my discomfiture.