Shit!
‘If my husband finds out there’ll be trouble! You can tell Aulus from me that –’
I backed away, one hand reaching for the doorhandle. ‘I said: no hassle. Honestly. Thanks for your help.’
‘How I’m going to explain this to Publius I just do not know! He knows I’m not friendly with anyone called Catia, and that fool Eupolis said right out when he came into the dining-room that you’d –’
I escaped while she was in mid-flow, past the door-slave and out the front door. Jupiter in bloody rompers! Well, I’d done my best, and I’d got what I came for, but I suspected that the next time Aulus Nerva came calling - if he ever did - he’d be lucky to get clear with his eyes unscratched-out. Not that I’d much sympathy.
Fuck; where did that leave us now?
. . .
The sun had gone down in earnest when I reached the villa. Gods, I was knackered! Two hard days in a row, and the case in shreds. I stabled the mare, noticing while I did it that the carriage was back. Bathyllus was waiting by the door with the usual jug of wine.
‘Satisfactory trip, sir?’ he said.
There was no answer to that, not one that wouldn’t’ve made the little bald guy’s hair curl, so I didn’t make one. It wasn’t his fault everything had just gone down the tubes.
Perilla was sitting reading under a candelabrum in the atrium.
‘Oh, hello, Marcus,’ she said brightly. ‘Enjoy your day?’
I grunted, kissed her, took the winecup and jug over to the couch opposite, and lay down.
‘Ah.’ She let the book roll up and put it aside. ‘I’ll take that as a “no”, then.’
‘We’re stymied, lady. One hundred percent, gold-plated, spit-on-your-granny screwed. The whole case has gone pear-shaped.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, dear. It can’t be as bad as that, surely.’
I took a gulp of the Special. ‘Nerva’s out of the game. He was comforting a lonely office widow in Bauli. Which she’s just confirmed. Oh, sure, he might by some stretch of the imagination have killed Chlorus, but he couldn’t’ve done the other two murders.’ I punched the couch-back. ‘Hell’s bloody bells and fucking upper canines!’
‘I see. Then who’s left?’
‘Search me. Tattius and Chlorus are dead, Ligurius is alibied, so’s the doctor. Aquillius Florus wouldn’t have the guts to kill a chicken. That leaves Gellia and Penelope. Both of them have motive enough, sure, but I’d bet a sack of gold pieces to a plugged copper that Penelope’s no murderess.’
‘That leaves Gellia, then.’
‘Yeah.’ I took another morose swallow and refilled the cup. ‘Only can you see that lady in her fancy mantle and three-hour hairdo stalking Chlorus through the streets of Baiae and slitting his throat in an alley? Or hanging about in the shrubbery for Tattius to come along then stabbing him through the heart? Because I fucking can’t.’
‘Don’t swear, dear. It’s not necessary,’ Perilla said. ‘Anyway, I’ve never met the woman. I can’t judge.’
‘Take my word for it. If she didn’t have help from Florus or the doctor, then Gellia’s a non-runner.’
‘You’re sure about Diodotus?’ Perilla was twisting her curl. ‘After all, he only has an alibi for the first murder. And Gellia could have done that one herself.’
‘Diodotus is clean. He’s got more sense than to get himself mixed up with a bubblehead like that. And I don’t think he likes the woman much, let alone fancies her.’
‘Florus, then. Despite appearances.’
‘Florus has as much backbone as a slug. You’ve seen him for yourself, Perilla. You think he could commit a cold-blooded murder without pissing himself and dropping the knife out of sheer funk before he used it? Let alone three of them?’
‘Very well. Then it must be Penelope.’
‘Or someone outside the circle altogether. In which case we’re right back to where we started.’
I took a third gulp of the Special.
‘Hmm.’ Perilla was looking thoughtful. ‘I did wonder, Marcus. Apropos of that. Why Penelope?’
‘Why Penelope what?’
‘No. Her name. I’ve always found that curious, and we’ve never really asked ourselves where she got it from.’
‘It’s just a pet-name, lady. Every family uses them. Actually, she’s a Licinia.’ Something tugged at my subconscious, but when I reached for it it was gone. ‘What does that matter?’
‘It’s just...’ She hesitated. ‘Probably not at all. But what does “Penelope” mean to you? The name, on its own?’
‘Ulysses’s wife, of course. Gods, Perilla, what the hell does –?’
‘Yes. Who waited for twenty years for her husband to come home, spurning the suitors. The faithful wife. Patient Penelope.’
Patient Penelope. Twenty years. The tug had become an itch, and everything had gone very still.
I sat up.
‘Go on, lady,’ I said quietly.
‘I don’t think I can. There isn’t anything more, really, just that. But it has been puzzling me, and it is curious, isn’t it? I mean, when you consider that so much of this business has come back to names. Murena, dead in a tank of moray eels. Ligurius, the manager, with the nickname Anchovy. Tattius, Oistrus. And didn’t you say that the old man had given the rest of his family nicknames too?’
The itch was there in spades, and I was getting that slow, cold feeling spreading through me that was my subconscious’s way of telling me something was important, somewhere. Oh, shit! So he had! Gellia was the Butterfly, Nerva the Scoundrel and Chlorus the Scowler. So why not Penelope? Just because it was a harmless, everyday girl’s pet-name didn’t mean –
Hang on, Corvinus! Think! Saenius, when he’d talked about her, had called her Licinia. So had Philippus, who’d known her when he was Murena’s door-slave. Both Philippus and Saenius were talking about the girl as a teenager, before or immediately after her mother’s death and the trial. Why hadn’t they called her Penelope? Girls got their pet-names when they were kids, not on the verge of adulthood. Look at Catia’s Hebe. She was really Licinilla - which she’d have to be, being Chlorus’s daughter, that or Licinia again - but Catia had said that that had been too much of a mouthful, so they hadn’t used it right from the start.
Giving pet-names didn’t always happen. That was just the point. It hadn’t, as far as I could see, happened where our Licinia was concerned until she was well into her teens...
So why had teenage Licinia, settled with her name, suddenly become Penelope?
The hook caught me right in the gut, along with the answer.
‘Because it wasn’t a pet-name at all,’ I said. ‘It was a nickname, like all the rest of them. A fucking nickname!’
‘Marcus!’
I ignored her. It made sense; Jupiter Best and Greatest, did it make sense! ‘Murena gave it to her,’ I said. ‘After she was betrothed to Tattius. And he used it - the rest of the family used it - ever after. They still do.’
Perilla was looking puzzled. ‘But Penelope uses it herself, dear,’ she said. ‘If it was a nickname and she hated her father, then surely if he gave her it then –’
‘Penelope used it because it fitted, and she didn’t mind. Quite the reverse, she was proud of it. In fact, she preferred it to Licinia, because Licinia connected her with her father.’
‘But why did Murena give her it in the first place? Surely calling a girl Penelope is a compliment, if anything.’
I shook my head. ‘Not the way he meant it. It couldn’t’ve been, ipso facto, because none of the bastard’s other nicknames were complimentary. There was always something nasty about them, and my guess is that Murena was about as fond of his daughter as she was of him. He nicknamed her Penelope as a sneer because she was faithful and patient. Twenty-eight years patient, as it turned out. And she didn’t give in to the suitors, not really, not in herself. She still hasn’t.’ Gods! I’d been an idiot! A total, purblind fucking moron! She’d told me! She’d told me he
rself, the very first time I’d interviewed her, right down to using the guy’s actual name, even if she had lied about the rest of it...
The silly, silly man. Right. I’d go with her on that one all down the line. That made two of us.
‘Marcus?’ Perilla was staring at me anxiously. ‘Marcus, what is it?’
‘I know who committed the murders,’ I said. ‘All three. And why.’
She asked me the obvious question. So I told her.
27
I didn’t go round to the Tattius villa next morning until well after breakfast. There was no point in hurrying now. Besides, to yank the lady out of bed for what amounted to an official confrontation would’ve been unnecessary and cruel, and I felt bad enough already about how this business was ending to risk that. Why the hell couldn’t the killer have been Nerva? Him I could’ve handed over to the praetor’s rep without a qualm, and society could’ve done without the bugger, easy.
Instead I got this.
The door-slave passed me on to Stentor, who took me through to Penelope’s sitting-room. She was there already, in her mourning mantle, and she looked up as I came in. There must’ve been something about my face that told her why I’d come, because when our eyes met I saw her flinch and then sort of settle into herself, like a boxer who’s taken a hard punch shakes his head to clear it and squares up again for the rest of the match.
‘Stentor,’ she said quietly. ‘That message I asked you to deliver. Do it now, please.’
‘Yes, madam.’ He bowed and went out.
I watched him go. Yeah, he’d told me he was the mistress’s slave, not the master’s. And I knew now who the friend had been who’d given him to her as a wedding present. I considered my options. I could stop him, sure, but it wouldn’t matter in the end, however it panned out, and I hadn’t cared much for any of them. Either from personal acquaintance or, in the first one’s case, by repute. Leave it.
I turned back. Penelope hadn’t moved. She was sitting still as marble. I nodded, slightly, and it seemed that some of the stiffness went out of her.
‘Valerius Corvinus,’ she said. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Ligurius,’ I said.
She’d been well prepared for it. This time, she didn’t even blink. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Have a seat.’
I sat down on the chair facing. The window-doors were open again and there was the hint of a breeze blowing in from the garden.
‘He was the Quintus you mentioned,’ I said. ‘The one who you were promised to originally. Only he wasn’t a cousin, and he didn’t die of fever.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She looked down at her hand, at the plain brass ring on her engagement finger, the only one she wore. ‘How did you find out?’
‘Your name. Penelope. Ulysses’s wife.’
She nodded. ‘Ah. So simple.’
‘Your father gave it to you, didn’t he? As a nickname, when you were betrothed to your husband?’
‘Yes.’ She was quite composed. ‘I told him I’d do what he wanted, marry Decimus, but that I’d always regard myself as engaged to Quintus.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He laughed. Said I could please myself who I thought I was engaged to, as long as the marriage went ahead. Then he said he was minded to call me Penelope in future. The faithful Penelope. I told him I didn’t care, that I’d welcome it, in fact. He didn’t like that.’
‘The original engagement. It was official?’
‘Yes. Of long standing, although not a well-publicised one. Gaius and I had been brought up together as children. Gaius’s father was the manager of the farm before him, and his grandfather before that. Not slaves, never slaves, and by that time they were almost family. We’d loved each other for years. It wouldn’t’ve mattered to Father if we’d married: he had two sons already, and an engagement to someone of Gaius’s class would save him an expensive dowry. That was the way he thought.’
‘And Gaius - Ligurius - accepted the situation?’
She smiled. ‘He had no choice. I told you, when we talked before. He was an employee, I was the master’s daughter. Running away together would’ve been pointless, and at least we’d still see each other.’
‘You didn’t...continue the relationship?’
‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Not in the way you mean it. That wouldn’t have been right. But Gaius never married. We saw each other, secretly, from time to time - we still do, of course - though never in compromising circumstances. And Gaius gave me Stentor, so we could keep in touch that way as well. He cost him nearly a year’s wages.’
Jupiter, this was weird! ‘So Ligurius carried on as your father’s manager while you married his partner? And you never started a proper affair?’
‘Never. I suspect Father knew all along that we still kept up, but if he did he didn’t care. He despised Gaius. He called him Anchovy, little fish. Something not worth bothering about.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I know. How did Ligurius feel about that?’
‘He shrugged it off. Gaius despised my father at least as much as he despised him. He expressed his contempt by doing his job to his own satisfaction and simply ignoring my father otherwise. And my husband.’
‘Murena never thought of sacking him?’
Penelope’s eyes flashed, but she answered in the same level voice. ‘No. Or at least, not to my knowledge. If he had, or if he’d even tried to, he knew I’d make the whole affair public at once, whatever the cost. It might not have caused him any legal problems after all that time, but it would’ve finished him socially in Baiae.’
‘So you knew about Philippus’s deal with Tattius?’
‘Yes, I knew. Too late to do anything about it, but I knew. And I didn’t - don’t - blame Philippus. He was a slave, he took the only chance of betterment that offered. And the result was that my father was being punished after all, in a way. Besides, Gaius is an excellent manager. The farm would have gone into liquidation long since if it weren’t for him. My father knew that too.’
‘Okay.’ I shifted in my chair. ‘What about the actual killing? Your father’s, I mean. Tell me about that.’
‘It was an accident. Or partly so.’ For the first time, she lowered her eyes. ‘There had been an...estrangement for several months between Decimus and my father. Father had bought the Juventius estate and he was planning to build a hotel. It would’ve cost money, of course, a lot of money, and although Father was reasonably well off he couldn’t afford to do it without making economies elsewhere. He told Decimus that he intended to plough the profits from the business for a year or so - all the profits, barring the minimum living expenses - back into funds, to finance the project. My husband was a very greedy man, Corvinus, and also a very stupid one. He accepted the situation at first, or said he did, although with a very bad grace. Finally - we’re talking a few days before the...death, you understand - he had a terrible argument with my father, in Gaius’s presence, over what he called his ‘allowance’. My father was not a man to be bullied. He told Decimus that he was fed up supporting him and that if he didn’t like it he knew what he could do. He also said - and I believe he was joking, but that’s the way Father was when he was angry - that he was surprised that his daughter stayed married to him, and that if she was thinking of a divorce then she had his blessing. Gaius, as I say, heard all of this. He thought things over later and without telling me decided - rather foolishly - that perhaps the time had come to approach my father and suggest we get married after all.’
‘So he went to see him. Privately, and when he knew there’d be no slaves around to overhear. When Murena went down in the evening after dinner to feed the fish.’
‘Yes. He had his own key to the fish farm gate, of course, so he didn’t have to go through the villa entrance.’
‘What happened then?’
‘They talked, and Father laughed at him. Like he always did. Said he hadn’t been serious, and he’d never consider a little fish like Gaius marrying his dau
ghter, under any circumstances. Gaius lost his temper and hit him.’
‘And Murena fell into the tank.’
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: ‘Yes.’
‘He could still have pulled him out.’
‘He tried to. He got one of those poles with the nets on the end; you know, the ones the slaves use to take out the fish.’ I nodded. ‘Anyway, he was clumsy, and Father was struggling too hard because he couldn’t swim. Besides, the eels got in the way. The end of the pole caught him on the head and knocked him out. Gaius panicked. He tried to use the net end to snare him in, but the net was too small and Father was too heavy. He only succeeded in pushing the body deeper and further away. By the time he did manage to get him close enough to the edge to grab his mantle it was too late, and Father had drowned.’
‘So he decided to leave him where he was, for the eels.’
Her eyes came up, and there were tears in them. Not for her father, though; I knew she wouldn’t cry for him. ‘There was nothing more he could do, Corvinus! Father was dead, Gaius had killed him and as I say he panicked. He went back to the gate and let himself out.’
Yeah, well; it all made sense. Mind you, I had my doubts about the details. I was getting this second hand, from a woman who was in love with him. Me, I wouldn’t’ve put it past Ligurius to have at least helped nature take its course. Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t’ve blamed him much, either. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘What about Chlorus?’
A definite hesitation. ‘Titus’s death was...unfortunate,’ she said finally. ‘But there was nothing Gaius could do there either. He had to kill him.’
Right. Anyway, I reckoned that now I could answer that question myself. ‘Chlorus needed to give himself an alibi,’ I said. ‘He had one already, sure, but it wasn’t one he wanted to use. He was out that evening at his mistress’s, and that was something he didn’t want to become public knowledge. So he went to Ligurius, explained the situation in confidence, and asked him to do him a small favour: say that they’d been together that evening discussing a defaulting customer. Which they genuinely had done, only not that night, the one before. Am I right?’
Food for the Fishes (Marcus Corvinus Book 10) Page 25