Last Rites (Marcus Corvinus Book 6)

by David Wishart

  Ouch. The mantle. Or lack of one, rather. ‘Got you,’ I said, nodding. ‘Right. Right. Fine. Just follow me, then, and my wife’ll look after you while I change.’

  Perilla was reclining sedately on the couch in her receiving visitors pose. Thank the gods for a wife with social graces. I made the introductions and bolted upstairs to comply with the decencies.

  When I came down Servilia was sitting stiff as a ramrod on the most upright, least comfortable chair we’d got. She fixed me with a disapproving eye, and I noticed that Perilla was smiling brightly and looking ragged at the edges. Obviously a little of this lady went a long way.

  I lay down on my usual couch. ‘Now, Servilia,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It is more a question, Valerius Corvinus, of what I can do for you. I have some information regarding my deceased colleague Cornelia which, painful though it is for me to pass on, I consider relevant to your enquiries.’

  Uh-huh. I perked up; maybe letting the old sour-face over our threshold hadn’t been such a mistake after all. ‘Does – ah – Junia Torquata know you’re here?’ I said.

  Her thin lips set. ‘As a matter of fact, no. I have not consulted the chief Vestal, partly because the information is mine alone to give and partly because I am not at all sure that she would –’ She stopped.

  ‘That she would what?’ I prompted.

  Servilia gave me a long slow stare. ‘My reasons, Valerius Corvinus,’ she said, ‘are immaterial, and none of your concern. I would be grateful if you would simply allow me to provide you with the information and refrain from asking irrelevant questions. Is that agreed?’

  I was beginning to take a real dislike to Servilia. ‘Yeah. Yeah, okay,’ I said. ‘It’s agreed.’

  ‘Good.’ She glanced at Perilla. ‘Perhaps your wife could leave us. My Axeman is in call, so the proprieties would be observed. And I would prefer for the sake of the sisterhood that the fewer people who know of this the better.’

  I felt myself flushing. ‘Now just a minute, lady!’

  ‘That’s all right, Marcus.’ Perilla got up quickly. ‘I have some work to do anyway. A pleasure to meet you, Servilia.’

  The Vestal sniffed.

  When Perilla had gone I turned back to her. ‘Now,’ I said.

  ‘Cornelia was seeing a man. A young man. Clearly on a regular basis. And they were on terms of considerable intimacy.’

  A cold knot formed in my stomach. ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I saw them together myself.’ There was no mistaking the quiet satisfaction in Servilia’s voice. I felt my fist bunch. ‘Three days ago, the day before the girl’s death. The circumstances of the meeting were quite clandestine and completely unambiguous.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I kept my voice neutral. ‘You want to tell me the whole story?’ Sure she did; I couldn’t’ve stopped her with a blackjack. The sour old cat was enjoying every minute of this.

  ‘It was, as I said, three days ago. I was in my sitting-room, which opens on to a corridor off which Cornelia’s own set of rooms lay. I had occasion to…’ She hesitated. ‘That is, I decided to leave the room for a few moments. On opening my door I glimpsed a figure hurrying down the corridor ahead of me, wearing a heavy cloak and hood. Naturally I was suspicious.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I said.

  Her eye went into me like a gimlet. ‘Valerius Corvinus,’ she said, ‘I do not find this either easy or pleasant. However, I would be failing in my duty if I withheld important evidence merely because it pained me personally to give it. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Yeah, I understand you.’ I did, too: the woman was a nosy, self-righteous, interfering bitch. Unfortunately, she was a nosy, self-righteous, interfering bitch with information vital to the case. ‘My apologies. Carry on, Servilia.’

  ‘I fetched my own cloak and followed, being careful, of course, to avoid being seen. By this time I knew who the woman was: Cornelia was a very… well-proportioned girl’ – a genteel cough – ‘and quite recognisable, even in that garb. She went straight to the side door of the house, which isn’t often used, and slipped outside.’

  ‘And you followed her.’

  ‘I did. As I say, at a discreet distance, which was just as well because the girl was obviously concerned that she should not be observed. However, since this occurred at mid-morning there were plenty of people about, and I was able to escape her notice. Also, the distance involved was comparatively short; less than a hundred yards, in fact. To Pearl-sellers’ Porch. There was a young man waiting near one of the pillars. She went straight up to him and they… embraced.’

  ‘“Embraced”? You mean they kissed each other?’

  Servilia’s colour rose. ‘It was more of a hug, but still very indecorous behaviour for a Vestal; indeed, blasphemously indecorous. I… waited and watched under cover of a trinket stall while they talked, I would say for upwards of twenty minutes. Their heads were very close together as if they were whispering; Cornelia, of course, was hooded but the man was not. They became quite animated.’

  ‘“Animated”?’

  ‘Excited. But not pleasantly so. I could not see Cornelia’s expression, naturally, but I had the impression that the man was pleading with her about something. Several times he touched her arm.’

  ‘And that was all you saw?’

  ‘That was all. They embraced again and Cornelia ran down the steps and back, I presume, to the House of the Vestals, since she was there when I returned. The young man went off in the other direction.’

  My scalp was prickling. Forget the obvious let-out clause of a long-lost brother and a fraternal hug: Cornelia, I knew, had been an only child. So the next question was the crucial one. ‘You, uh, you’d recognise the guy again if you saw him?’

  She smiled; not a nice smile. ‘Oh, yes. Valerius Corvinus. Of course I would. His name is Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.’

  11.

  It was too late to do anything about it that day, but I was down at the chief priest’s house early next morning interviewing Junia Torquata. I was pretty angry.

  ‘You knew!’ I said.

  She was watching me calmly. Furius Camillus was out on priestly business and we were on our own in the chilly atrium, but the affront to propriety didn’t seem to worry her and I was past caring.

  ‘I did not know,’ she said quietly. ‘Servilia did not think fit to tell me.’

  ‘I don’t mean about the meeting.’ I’d been pacing around the room. Now I pulled up a chair that looked two hundred years older than Cleopatra and sat down facing her. ‘You knew the guy existed and they’d been friends for years, yet you never mentioned him. I’ll bet you recognised the ring, for a start.’

  ‘Yes, the ring was young Marcus Lepidus’s. Although I hadn’t seen it for a long time. How Cornelia got it, or why she was wearing it round her neck, I have no idea.’

  ‘Right.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Let’s start at the beginning with the basic facts. When her parents split up, remarried and moved away from Rome, Cornelia went to live with Marcus Lepidus Senior’s family. True?’

  ‘She was only four at the time. Neither parent particularly wanted her in their new ménage, and Lepidus Senior was her uncle. It was a natural arrangement.’

  Shit. I’d been told about the Lepidus connection! When I’d asked Furius Camillus about Cornelia he’d mentioned Lepidus himself, only I’d assumed it was just a slip of the tongue and he’d meant the girl’s actual father Lentulus. Fool! ‘Lepidus had – or has, rather, because the guy’s still alive – two children of his own, a daughter and a son. The son, Marcus, was two years younger than Cornelia. They grew up together.’

  ‘Only for the next four years. Cornelia became a Vestal when she was eight. Marcus, of course, would be six. At which point, naturally, the tie was severed and Cornelia moved to the House of the Vestals. Four years, Corvinus, hardly justifies the term “growing up together”.’

  ‘Don’t split hairs, lady! Obviou
sly the two were very close. They kept up the friendship, only any one-to-one meetings had to be secret because they weren’t brother and sister by blood, or even stepbrother and stepsister. They kept it up until practically the day the girl died. What I want to know is exactly how close they got to each other.’

  Torquata sat up. ‘Corvinus!’

  But I’d had enough; certainly too much to be frozen out. ‘Come on, Torquata!’ I snapped. ‘Up to now largely thanks to you I’ve been working on the assumption either that Cornelia was killed by a stranger or, if she did know the man, a sexual connection between the two of them was unlikely. Now I find out, no thanks to you, that there’s a prime candidate who’s been seeing her regularly since they were kids together.’

  ‘In public, certainly, and perhaps even as a fellow guest at the more respectable private dinner parties. I don’t deny that. Vestals, as you know, are not cloistered. However –’

  ‘Junia Torquata, I’m not talking about those sorts of meetings and well you know it! I’m talking about the sort of rendezvous Servilia witnessed.’

  ‘Servilia is a –’ Torquata stopped and bit her lip, then went on more carefully. ‘Servilia did not like Cornelia. A product of one of those petty jealousies I mentioned. The meeting may have been an isolated incident and the rest the result of my sister-in-Vesta’s overheated imagination. Certainly I knew nothing of any unaccompanied trysts, or I would naturally have put a stop to them.’

  ‘What Servilia saw doesn’t sound like an isolated incident to me, lady. And if it wasn’t, that makes a big difference. Sure, the girl was a Vestal, but Lepidus Junior was no direct blood relation, and the two obviously liked each other a lot or they wouldn’t’ve got together. The meeting could’ve been an innocent brother-sister level but it could equally be an assignation between lovers. Whether you like it or not sex is back on the cards, and the pregnancy angle with it.’

  ‘Corvinus, I have already told you that under no circumstances would Cornelia have broken her vows. And young Marcus Lepidus is neither a seducer nor a murderer, especially of a girl who was both his cousin and a Vestal virgin. I have known him from birth and I can assure you of that fact categorically.’

  There was something wrong. Maybe it was something in her eye or in her tone, I didn’t know, but it was false as hell. However certain her words sounded, I’d bet a sturgeon to a pickled mussel that Torquata wasn’t as hundred-per-cent convinced of the truth of them as she wanted me to think she was. And the reason was she still knew something that I didn’t and was terrified that I’d find it out. So what the hell was it?

  Then I remembered her shock the last time I’d been here with Camillus, and what exactly it had been that we’d been discussing; and the hairs stirred on my neck as the answer hit me.

  Oh, Jupiter! Jupiter best and greatest! We’d got our murderer!

  ‘Marcus Lepidus can play the flute, can’t he?’ I said quietly.

  Torquata stiffened. She closed her eyes and I thought she was going to faint, but then she opened them again and stared straight at me without blinking, her face expressionless. She was a fighter, the chief Vestal, I’d give her that. Even when she was beaten.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact he can. Very well indeed. The Aemilii Lepidi have always had strong musical interests. And of course the Cornelii connection was an added incentive. The Cornelii were Graecophiles from the first.’

  I stood up. Well, that put the lid on it: Marcus Lepidus was our man. The why and the how were details that could be cleared up later by the chief city judge. Sure, there’d be the question of alibi or lack of it and maybe a few small loose ends no one would ever tie in, but the simple fact that Lepidus was the killer was plain enough. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks for your help, Junia Torquata. I’ll see you –’

  She reached out and gripped my wrist. Gods, the lady was strong! I could almost feel the bones grating.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  ‘Torquata,’ I said gently, not moving, ‘it’s finished.’ I felt sorry as hell for her, but there was no more to be said. ‘The guy’s guilty six ways from nothing. He has to be.’

  ‘Marcus Lepidus did not kill Cornelia.’

  ‘Fine. Give me firm proof – give me any proof at all to weigh against what we’ve got – and I’ll scratch him off the list.’ Silence. ‘Yeah. Right. Now if you’ll let me have my arm back I’ll –’

  ‘Talk to him. Let him put his side of the story.’

  ‘You admit there is a story?’

  She hesitated. ‘Marcus was… very fond of Cornelia, yes. As a sister, I mean. He’s a very weak boy in many ways, sensitive and easily dominated, which perhaps explains his reputation.’ Jupiter! I wondered whether the chief Vestal wasn’t showing unexpected pseudo-maternal astigmatism here. Sure, I’d never met young Marcus Lepidus, but I’d heard of him, and ‘reputation’ was right in spades. The kid was neck and neck with the fastest set in the city, and whatever Torquata said he was no sweet little cowslip. ‘I won’t beg you, Corvinus, because I’m acting in the interests of truth. Also I admit that the facts would all seem to be pointing to one conclusion. However, I think it would be very, very foolish to condemn the boy without a hearing. Go and see him. See him now.’

  I sighed. Yeah, well; it wouldn’t serve any useful purpose, I knew, but what can you say?

  The Lepidus place was a big, old, rambling house with a big, old, rambling garden that took up a sizeable slice of the Quirinal; which figured, because the Aemilii Lepidi were one of the oldest, richest and most aristocratic families in Rome. Not to mention exclusive. Like I say, I’d never met the son but I knew the father slightly. Certainly I knew of him: Marcus Aemilius Lepidus Senior had been on the defence bench at the Piso trial – in fact he’d been the only straight-shooter involved in that fiasco – and before that his name had been one of the ones Augustus had suggested was fit to have the title ‘emperor’ tacked in front of it. Mind you, the sharp old bugger had added the footnote that he wouldn’t’ve touched the job wearing three sets of gloves. Which tells you something about Lepidus Senior.

  I knocked on the door – a huge slab of ancient oak banded with iron – and the door-slave opened up. Not your usual cheeky type; the guy was solid oak like the door itself, and he obviously took his job seriously. I introduced myself.

  ‘The master at home?’ I said. ‘The young master?’

  ‘He’s in mourning, sir. I doubt if he’s receiving visitors.’

  ‘Give him my apologies, but say it’s important. Very important.’

  ‘Very well, sir. If you’d care to wait.’ The door-slave led me through and left me in a gleaming marble atrium the size of a racetrack. There were statues there that wouldn’t’ve looked out of place in the Wart’s villa on Capri, and the ornamental pool was big enough to stage a mock sea fight. Rich was right.

  The slave reappeared. ‘Would you follow me, sir?’

  We went down an expensively panelled corridor paved with coloured marble that ended up at what was in effect a separate self-contained suite facing on to the garden. The slave stopped at a door, knocked and opened it. We were in a small reading-room.

  ‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus, sir,’ he said gently.

  The guy lying on the couch looked terrible. The mourning didn’t help, mind – that much stubble doesn’t lend anyone an air of sharpness and insouciance – but his tunic was creased and rumpled like he’d slept in it and his face was red and puffy. I could see what Torquata had meant: he had soft, almost feminine features, long eyelashes and a weak mouth and chin. Not one of life’s forceful characters, that was sure. A follower, not a leader. He’d’ve made a good flutegirl, though.

  He got up. The slave left, closing the door behind him.

  ‘What can I do for you, Corvinus?’ His voice was flat and dead. ‘Venustus said it was important.’

  I cleared my throat. Hell, the guy might be guilty, but he was obviously also suffering. I wasn’t going to enjoy this. ‘It’s about Cornelia
. I’m… looking into her death. As a favour to the chief Vestal.’

  ‘Looking into her death?’ Something shifted in his eyes. He waved me to another couch, then sat down again on his own one, his movements jerky. ‘But it was suicide, wasn’t it? They told me it was suicide.’

  I hadn’t moved. ‘The Vestal Servilia said she’d seen you talking to her the day before she died. Outside Pearl-sellers’ Porch.’

  His mouth went slack with shock. ‘She said what?’

  ‘You deny it?’

  I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but finally, quietly, he said, ‘No. I don’t deny it. But –’

  ‘Or that you’d been seeing her regularly over a period of years?’

  Another pause, even longer. ‘No.’ His voice was a ghost’s. ‘Not that either.’

  ‘Cornelia was wearing a ring on a cord round her neck. Was it yours?’

  ‘A ring?’

  ‘With two clasped hands.’

  He swallowed. His eyes were glittering. ‘Yes. That was mine. I gave it to her years ago, a keepsake. I didn’t… didn’t know she… carried it around with her… but certainly –’ He broke off and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Valerius Corvinus, but I’m very tired and very upset and I really don’t know what you want of me. I’d like you to go.’

  ‘Not yet.’ I tried to make the words as unthreatening as possible. Maybe he didn’t know, but in that case he was one of the poorest guessers I’d ever come across. ‘I have to ask you what exactly your relationship with Cornelia was.’

  ‘But that’s simple.’ He half smiled. Or maybe that was what he tried to do but it didn’t come out right; maybe he was the one who was simple. ‘I loved her, of course.’

  I loved her, of course. Jupiter best and greatest! My stomach went cold. I crossed over to the other couch and sat down. ‘The girl was a Vestal,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Yes, I know that. Of course I do.’ The half-smile was still there, and it just looked… wrong. My skin crawled. ‘That was the problem. She came when I was two. She was chosen to be a Vestal when I was six. That’s all I had of her, Corvinus, four years, before I was left alone with the Bitch. I can’t even remember half of them.’