Venus in copper

Chapter XL

As I rode the hired mule south again, part of me was now saying this case would not be over until I had solved it, even if I had to wort without a fee. That was the brave and noble part. Another part (thinking of Viridovix) merely fell sordid and tired.

I went home. There was no point going anywhere else. In particular, there was no point tangling with Severina Zotica until I had some unbreakable hold over that freckled female snake.

Half an hour later she knocked on my door. I was thinking. To help, I was doing something practical.

'Holiday, Falco?'

'Mending a chair.' I was in a pedantic, bad-tempered mood.

She stared at the battered wicker article, which had a semicircular back curving into boudoir arms. 'That's a woman's chair.'

'Maybe when I've mended the chair I'll get a woman to go with it.'

The redhead smiled nervously.

She was wearing not black exactly, but some dark purple berry-juice shade; in her unconventional way this managed to imply greater respect for the dead than Pollia and Atilia had shown with all their yardage of dramatic white.

I continued my work. The job had turned into one of those treasures where you start off intending to wind bad a few strands of loose material, but end up dismantling half the piece of furniture and rebuilding it from scratch. I had already spent two hours on it.

To fend off Severina's annoying curiosity I snapped, 'The chair comes from my sister Galla. My mother produced some new cane. It's a pig of a job. And all the time I'm doing it I know that once Galla sees the thing serviceable, she will coo "Ooh, Marcus, you are clever!"-and ask to have her chair back again.'

'You have the cane too dry,' Severina informed me. You ought to dampen it with a sponge -'

'I can manage without advice.' The cane I was weaving snapped, halfway along a row. I fetched a wet sponge.

Severina found herself a stool 'You go to a lot of trouble.'

'Thoroughness pays.'

She sat quiet, waiting for me to calm down. I had no intention of obliging. 'An aedile came to see me today, on behalf of the Pincian Hill magistrate.'

I negotiated a tough end change, tugging at the cane to keep the work taut. 'No doubt you bamboozled him. I repositioned the chair between my knees.

'I answered his questions.'

'And he blithely went away?'

Severina looked prim. 'Perhaps some people can see that without a motive, accusing me is illogical.'

'Perhaps the Praetor likes a holiday in August. I soothed my aching fingers on the wet sponge. 'Anyway, here's another bonus: so long as you can fend off this aedile of his, no one else will bother you.'

'What?'

I got up from my knees, righted the chair, and sat in it. That put me higher than her slight, neat, shawl-wrapped figure as she still hugged her knees on my stool. 'I'm off the case, Zotica. Pollia and Atilia have dispensed with my services.'

'Stupid of them!' Severina said. 'Anyone who cared about Novus would have let you carry on.'

'They always did seem strangely half-hearted.'

'I'm not surprised.' I suppressed any reaction. Whatever was to follow could only mean trouble. Still, with Severina that was nothing new. 'The fact they have dismissed you,' she continued, 'proves everything I say.'

'How's that?'

'Pollia and Atilia hired you to throw suspicion on me.'

'Why?'

'To disguise their own ambitions.'

'What ambitions would those be?'

Severina took a deep breath. 'There was serious friction between the three freedmen. Crepito and Felix disagreed with the way Novus handled their business affairs. Novus hated trouble, and wanted to end the partnership.'

Much as I distrusted her, this reminded me what Viridovix had said about sensing disagreement among the freeman following their dinner. 'The other two would lose badly if he broke with them?'

'Novus had always been the leader; he had all the initiative and ideas.'

'So he would take a large sector of their business away with him?'

'Exactly. Meeting me had not improved matters; if he married-especially if we had children-his present heirs would suffer.'

'Felix and Crepito?'

'Felix and Crepito's son. Atilia is obsessive about the boy; she was relying on an inheritance to found the child's career.'

'What about Pollia?'

'Pollia wants to plunder her husband's share of the cash.'

What she said was making sense. I hated that: having established in my own mind that Severina was a villainess, I could not bring myself to readjust. 'Are you claiming that the freedmen, or their wives, would go so far as to kill Novus?'

'Maybe they were all in it together.'

'Don't judge other people by your own perverted standards! But I have to agree, the timing of the murder-when you and Novus had just announced the date of your wedding-does look significant.'

Severina clapped her small white hands triumphantly. 'But it's worse than that: I told you Novus had enemies.' She had told me a number of things that were probably lies. I laughed. 'Listen to me, Falco!' I made a small gesture of apology, yet she kept me in suspense for a moment, sulkily.

'What enemies?'

'Apart from Crepito and Felix, he had also antagonised Appius Priscillus.

'Do I gather he runs a rival organisation with overlapping interests? Tell me about that, Severina. What was the form at last night's dinner?'

'A reconciliation; I've already told you. It was Priscillus I tried to warn you about before.'

'He was threatening Novus?'

'Novus, and the other two as well. That was why Atilia hardly lets her son out of her sight-one of the threats was to abduct him.' I knew Atilia took the child to school herself, which was highly unusual.

'So which of these multiple suspects are you fingering?' I asked sarcastically.

'That's the problem-I just don't know. Falco, what would you say if I asked to hire you myself?'

I'd call for help, probably. 'Frankly the last thing I want is a commission from a professional bride-especially when she's midway between husbands, and tends to react unpredictably-'

'You mean what nearly happened last night?' Severina coloured.

'We can both forget last night.' My voice sounded lower than I had intended. I noticed that she started slightly, so her shawl slipped back, revealing her flame-coloured hair. 'We were drunk.' Severina gave me a straighter look that I liked.

'Will you work for me?' she insisted.

'I'll think about it.'

'That means no.'

'It means I'll think about it!'

At that moment I was ready to throw the gold-digger downstairs. (In fact I was in two minds whether to give up my career altogether, hire a booth and take up chair mending…)

There was a knock; Severina must have left my outer door ajar, and before I could answer it was pushed open. A man staggered in, gasping. His predicament was clear.

He had just struggled up two flights of stairs-to deliver the biggest fish I ever saw.