A Comedy of Terrors

by Lindsey Davis

  “Well, if the lock-up leads to Greius that will be a start.”

  I wanted a conference on this, but Tiberius shook himself. He brushed off his gloom and entirely changed the subject. “Anyway, while I was out this morning, I bought us our first oscillum.”

  Oscilla were plaques to hang up as festival decorations. The one Tiberius showed me had the mature Saturn with a full beard of ringlets; Suza would say some twisted the wrong way, so perhaps Saturn needed a hand with his curling rod. The hairy god was peering out from foliage full of nuts and berries, surrounded by neatly bound leafy garlands. He had big ears and a squint, but he looked amiable, for a deity who in mythology ate his own children.

  I dumped the knitting and, with Tiberius, walked around looking for the best place to hang his plaque. I again tried discussing my theories about Murrius and his brother. “You can imagine the situation. Greius may be their freedman. The two patrons started out in the loans business, but now they have given him a commission to go into new projects. It is always possible his methods—murder and arson—are harsher than the oldsters really like.”

  Tiberius nodded. He agreed the theory sounded good, but told me soberly, “I’m coming to the conclusion the nut mobster isn’t them.”

  “Ah! Still, run it past Morellus,” I urged. “We do know where Gaius Murrius lives. Maybe it’s time for an official visit.”

  “It would only be fishing,” Tiberius demurred. “No supporting facts.”

  “So? Morellus will say, ‘Who needs evidence?’ My information from his sister-in-law Berenike is that, now his wife has skipped, Murrius is back in the house. He is sitting in there, sweetheart, glowering at her parrot, all ready for you to interview.”

  At that point, unfortunately, we had to break off. We were interrupted by the arrival of my uncle, Lucius Petronius, and my aunt Maia. “Door, Rodan!” No answer. I let them in myself.

  “What—no door porter, Albia? Bit of a comedown in a swell pad like this!”

  They gave the impression they had enjoyed a good lunch, with Saturnalia drinks.

  Petro had brought a barrow, intent on fetching his share of forest greenery. My heart sank. Too many other people had already sent staff to collect what they wanted; my parents had been quick off the mark and Uncle Tullius never held back if he thought he was owed something. Sure enough, when we led Petro and Maia through into the yard, earlier scavengers had carried off everything except a few awkwardly bent cypress boughs amid a carpet of dropped needles. Where once there had been a mound of inviting softwood, little of use remained.

  Words occurred.

  The critical tirade that followed was pretty rude. It was all the worse because grouping family and friends together to share a special order had been Petro’s idea. According to him, he then did all the work with a forester (who was a hustler), negotiating price and delivery. The big old warhorse was perfectly aware he ought to have come round sooner; this only made him angrier. Having worked in a public position of authority, he would never admit that anything was his own fault. In fact, I suspected he had always been like that.

  Gaius and Lucius swung on the stable door, pretending to feed the donkey while they watched how to rant, and with wicked adult words.

  Petronius let rip. Maia backed him up. Even on a good day she would make the Furies look like frightened mice. Her time of life was increasing the aggravation. When Maia and Mother got together these days, my sisters would huddle out of the way with loud groans of “It’s the menopause!”

  “I carefully checked what your bloody caupona is decked up with!” my uncle raged. “Of course the Stargazer has been allowed everything they want.”

  “Even though Junia barely contributed to the whip-round!” Like my father, Maia loathed their bar-keeping sister, whom the younger siblings viewed as a mean-spirited, highly annoying amateur, who should never have been placed in charge of the family bar, or anywhere in the hospitality industry. Also, Junia could not cook, but always insisted on doing it. Plus, she was a snooty, selfish cow (whose menopause annoyingly seemed to have slid past without her even noticing it).

  Someone new was knocking. “Door, Rodan!” Rodan was too busy in his hut. “Grab some branches back off her—just take them from the Stargazer,” I suggested. “Junia must have sent her husband to pick out the best while Tiberius and I were not here. Door, Rodan!”

  “That’s them all over!” Maia glowered. She had children still at home and Petro’s little grandson, all looking forward to decorations they had been promised. “Gaius Baebius is always the guts who grabs the best sweetmeats off the dish. This is absolutely typical—but I am surprised at you, Albia, letting those hustlers get away with it.”

  “Door, Rodan! Oh, I’ll go myself.”

  “Don’t you walk away when I’m yelling at you!” Uncle Petro stopped me, with a relaxation into humour.

  I said I wasn’t scared of him. My father always maintained Petro was a big softie. Lucius Petronius damned Falco for that, then claimed Falco was a clown, he’d been saying so for thirty years.

  We tried shepherding them back out of the yard. “Mint tea?” I proposed brightly.

  Without bothering to answer, they carried on carrying on. This was family life at a festive time so I knew better than to try soothing them. Tiberius, too, was keeping quiet. His expression implied that once his eccentric wife’s crazy relations had worn themselves out, he might come up with a peaceful solution—one he had not yet thought of.

  Petronius and Maia continued to give their colourful feelings full rein, so I still could not go to the door. They might have kept it up all afternoon, especially since they now had several hours of free time when they had planned to be at home, putting up their decorations.

  I was waiting until they ran out of bombast, then I would apologise. However, I was spared the humiliation. A crisis occurred instead. A commotion in our yard, with screams from our little ones, took us all back there at a run.

  XLI

  We had intruders, intruders I recognised: Murrius and his heavies. One man was sitting up high on the wall with his thick, hairy legs dangling, having second thoughts about whether to jump down. Three more toughs, following their leader, had simply walked in through the door from the street. Tiberius had unlocked it earlier, so Petronius could barrow out his branches, had there been any to take home. When we appeared, most of the intruders tried to look like innocents who only wanted to ask us the way to Dogfish Alley.

  Rodan had already attacked the ground-level group. He thought they were there to steal his purse. Since that purse was the nearest he had ever come to a winner’s trophy, he leaped into action for once. Running from his hut, he had grasped the much-derided heavy spear he owned, then shoved it through the muscly shoulder of the nearest invader.

  The wounded man spun round and round, holding onto the spear head as if afraid for his neck artery. He was now adding more blood from cut fingers. I could not tell if he wanted to withdraw the fatal finial himself or hold it there for safe medical removal, but as he circled, the spear’s long shaft kept crashing into his companions. These large men were yelling at him to stand still, while they also tried to fend off the manic Rodan. He had found the spade from Fountain Court. He was rampaging around the yard, smashing it on anyone in reach.

  Maia and I grabbed a child apiece. We dumped the stunned little boys in the stable. “Stay in there. Calm down. Yes, you can watch.” The donkey had other ideas: they had to push against Merky for space, while she poked her large head over the half-door nosily. Gaius and Lucius stopped screaming. Nothing like this had ever happened during their quiet country lives in Fidenae. Merky started braying, as if she wanted to trot out and join in.

  Petronius always reckoned to be the first in any ruckus to knock someone out cold. With his long career of breaking up street fights and apprehending criminals, he believed himself the expert. Though clumsier these days, he charged around the builders’ yard. Once Petro began grabbing arms and cloaks to swing o
ne thief against another, there were so many circling bodies, our yard looked like a planetarium.

  Tiberius sidestepped niftily around Petro, to begin remonstrating with Gaius Murrius, whom he must remember from fining him at the Cosmographer. Murrius was standing bemused, not fighting. The men he had brought were his usual backing crew, the ones I’d seen fetching the money from Laetilla’s house. Rushing up with Gratus and Fornix, Paris must have recognised them too. Not really a fighter, whenever a wide-shouldered, wrist-strapped thug came near enough to bop he darted in and hit out, then nipped back to the sidelines again. When one target turned after him, Maia and I grabbed the man and used his own momentum to spin him off course. He banged up against Rodan’s battering spade, though Rodan dropped it and turned tail. Petronius took on the pursuer.

  Reinforcements: Suza and Glaphyra peered through the doorway from the house. Suza screamed, which was not helpful in itself, though she had a piercing shriek, like a knife scraping a dish. It caused one man to cover his ears, which left him vulnerable. Glaphyra stomped into the yard. Enraged on behalf of her charges, our nurse came at him, a whirling, hard-breathing, indignant human machine in flapping sandals, which she had undone while knitting because her feet swelled if she sat for too long. In her arms she was wielding her weapon of choice. Grasping this by the narrow end, its ankle, she swung it and viciously smashed the man’s head with its muscular thigh. He went down in a soft heap, like a startled pigeon: felled by a false leg.

  “I hope you are dead, you nasty fellow!” Glaphyra told the body at her feet, which might still live but showed no inclination move.

  “Oh, heavens, he’s croaked!” cried Suza, though she too ran up, tore the leg from the nurse, and kicked him with its foot, repeatedly. The fine metal-clad prosthetic made a well-balanced tool. He curled into a foetal position under the onslaught. “Well, that’s cured him. He might have been one of those horrible pigs who came in and stole Sheep!”

  To my shame, I had forgotten all about Sheep.

  The loud clang of bronze on bonce caused other combatants to pause. In the lull we heard Tiberius, full of hauteur as a householder who happened to be a magistrate (until next week), demanding to know what the hell clause of which ancient statute had given Murrius permission to break into our house through the back gate with a bunch of dingy followers?

  To the rebuke, Murrius responded feebly: “I did knock at the front door, but nobody would answer.”

  Though believable, it was hardly the retort of a master criminal.

  * * *

  For Gaius Murrius worse was to follow. Through the open back gate there suddenly entered a jaunty troop from the Fourth Cohort of Vigiles. Fresh from smashing up the Lumber Room, half the red-tunics were carrying stolen items, which, fired up by excitement, they did not bother to hide behind their backs. At their head stomped Morellus, triumphal. Under one arm he was carrying, backside first, a large, once furry animal of the panthera genus. It might have been an ordinary spotted cat at one time, but it was a rare black specimen now. It looked so beaten-up it was never more to be classed as what my father derisively calls “a decorator’s piece.”

  With care, Morellus stood up the leopard on its long legs in the yard, letting everyone stop fighting and gather round to look at its seared pelt and fixed expression. He joyously informed us that while—following information received—his day shift were proceeding with a raid on an unlicensed chandler’s bunker in a bad part of the Aventine, they had found a large number of sulphur matches—long splints of wood tipped with flammable material, which could be lit from a fire or a hot poker, then carried about to light people’s lamps. One of his lads checked whether these were viable (that is, items to take home) or worthless goods (to confiscate on “trading standards” grounds). He burned his fingers, dropped a match, and it landed on the animal with these sad results, despite the ever-caring vigiles rolling the leopard in a dusty curtain to put him out. The once striking feature piece was now pathetic. Most of its fur was singed off, a split had appeared around its middle, from which natron poured out in a caustic flow, and somebody had given the creature a cauliflower ear. The vigiles had failed to find anyone to arrest and the prized leopard was ruined.

  Morellus had brought the leopard away, with the dubious hope it would serve as an introduction to questioning its owner. This looked unlikely. Murrius tottered forwards to kneel by his expensive mummy, inspecting the damage. There was no hope of repair. His stylish puss was defunct. Unable to bear touching the remains, he extended his arms over the beast as if in prayer, moaning faintly.

  “Murrius,” Tiberius uttered to Morellus. “Loan shark by heritage. Thought by Albia to be our nut-scam mobster. You would never think a man who can give orders for murder would be so cut up about a big stuffed toy.”

  “Diddums,” Morellus murmured, as the distressed owner continued with his grief. “I’d have told my boys to be more careful, if I’d thought he was so fond of it!”

  XLII

  Murrius wrenched himself upright. He looked streetwards, though he cannot have thought he would be allowed to leave. The three men who had come into the yard with him began edging away as if preparing to bolt; the man on the wall had disappeared and must have jumped down into the street. The one with the spear in him had had its shaft snapped off by my uncle so he could run away more easily; Petro was not without kindness. “Don’t pull out the head yourself or you’ll die at once.”

  My husband took charge. It was his yard. To a building contractor, yard-possession was paramount. “Manlius Faustus, aedile. I believe I have fined you.”

  “Possible.” Murrius had clearly forgotten.

  “Public gambling,” spelled out Tiberius, with as much distaste as if naming a sexual perversion. “You are in my yard.” A worse sin. “This man is Titus Morellus, inquiry chief of the Vigiles’ Fourth Cohort. We would like to discuss certain matters with you, Murrius. We don’t need your bully-boys. Send them home.”

  To my surprise, Murrius did. The two walking-wounded shouldered their speared comrade. Murrius called after them to tell his brother, though apparently not wanting reinforcements. He appeared unflustered by Tiberius proposing a formal interview. A cynic might think being interrogated was a regular occurrence. “How can I help you?” he asked, like a good-mannered haberdasher. “Is there a problem, Officers?”

  At the same time as the enforcers left, the vigiles took the nod from Morellus. They also left the yard, and were either going to have further fisticuffs with the Murrius heavies, or more likely would start drinking with them. I waved my household back to their duties. Glaphyra took the boys. My uncle and aunt picked up any greenery they thought fit to use, briefly helped by Rodan, though he quickly disappeared. Petro sent Maia home with the barrow; he skulked behind, yearning to be back in post with the right to conduct the interview.

  I went over to the donkey. This left Murrius with Faustus and Morellus, all standing, like three fixed points in a triangle, around what was left of the leopard. Unsupported, it keeled over.

  Plenty of crooks are defiant. Most bad men swear and spit, as they refuse to cooperate. A few show more self-assurance, which generally means they have committed such serious crimes they are already expecting justice to catch up. However, such types are often confident that, even with abundant evidence, their crack lawyers will get any charges quashed.

  Murrius seemed to be one of these. He dealt with the authorities so politely it was almost as if they were people on the same side in a disappointing world. He called them “Officer” and “Aedile” with cloying frequency.

  Ignoring this, Faustus and Morellus bluntly put their suspicions: he and his brother were their prime suspects for a spate of vicious crimes, which involved repressive commercial acts, ugly street violence, illegitimate trade tactics, the knowing supply of faulty goods, arson and murder—murder that included infanticide.

  A true professional, Murrius pretended shock. Fingering his awful necklace, he replied routinely: the
y were mistaken. He claimed it was a calumny against honest men of business. Like their father and grandfather before them, he and his brother were upright Romans who lent money to those who needed it; they used entirely legal methods, for the benefit of the less fortunate and the feckless.

  He made their established family business sound like a social service, run by kindly do-gooders. He even claimed they had the backing of trade guilds, civic leaders and local temples. I was expecting him to tell us next that the high-minded matrons in the Good Goddess cult thought them wonderful public benefactors, at which point I would have thrown up.

  This was not the dangerous tough his wife had described to me, but a much more insidious character. Murrius insisted that welcome financial assistance was all he and his brother ever supplied. He asked whether Faustus and Morellus had anything to back their astonishing theories about nut-scamming. Well, they said, him keeping his leopard among sacks of mouldy nuts for one thing. Of course, he knew nothing of the sacks’ contents; they belonged to someone else, in a lock-up where he had innocently borrowed space. Eventually, Murrius suggested that Faustus and Morellus put in writing any points they wished to raise; his brother and he could run matters past their legal team in case they had inadvertently broken rules or edicts.

  Titus Morellus, past master of blather, tried tough talk: “We know what you’ve done. You had a nut-seller killed and you cremated another alive, along with his whole family.”

  “What would be the point of that?” Murrius responded, with raised eyebrows. “My brother and I never harm people we deal with. On the contrary, we need them alive to pay us. If we hear of anyone in difficulty, we always try to help them find a workable way out.”

  “Forcing them into prostitution and theft! Don’t tell me no loan shark ever sends a vicious message, if anyone resists.”

  Tiberius stepped in, because this was going nowhere: “We are looking for the murderous scum who acts as a fixer. An agent called Greius—apparently he works for you.”