Saffia Donata's other bedding was being carried to her apartment. Leaving the hysteria at the Metellus mansion to settle down, I walked along after the slaves who manhandled the mattress and pillows through the streets; at the apartment Lutea had found for her, they gained admittance to dump their burden, but then all of us were brusquely turned away. We could hear Saffia still in the throes of labour. This woman held the key to many puzzles. There too, I took my leave but grimly promised to return.
The crazy scenes I witnessed had helped me reach a conclusion. I could not prove my newly forming theory, but the stained and stinking coverlet seemed relevant to the Metellus death. I was coming to believe that Metellus senior had not, as we had always been told, retired to his bedroom to await his end, conducting a half-hearted suicide.
I did believe he had been poisoned.
Once I suspected Metellus had not died in his own bed, my task was to find out if he had been in the bed of someone else. The coverlet pointed to Saffia – but by then she had already left the house. Besides, if guilty, why would she draw attention to herself by whining for the return of her property? So my new theory was this: Metellus senior did not die in bed at all.
And that was fun to play with. It threw up a whole bunch of exciting possibilities.
XXIX
'Hemlock,' I said.
The vigiles doctor, a morose blue-chinned cur called Scythax, glared at me nastily. I won't say Scythax looked unhealthy, but he was so pale and haggard that if he arrived on a cargo ship from a foreign province, port officials would quarantine him.
He was eating his lunch. It was eggs on salad leaves. He pushed his bowl away slightly.
'How's that eye, Falco?' I grimaced. He perked up. 'Hemlock, you said?'
'The philosopher's oblivion. Tell me about it, Scythax.'
'Poison parsley,' sneered Scythax. He always looked down on anything to do with apothecaries. He enjoyed manipulating splints but hated ointments. Since the vigiles acted as a fire brigade, his unwillingness to soothe burns did hamper him, but he had worked with the Fourth Cohort as long as they could remember and the vigiles dislike changed. Scythax was marvellous with broken limbs and internal crushing, but no one went to him for a headache cure. His remedy when squad members had a heavy hangover was to shower them with very cold water. They preferred to sign out sick – but that meant Petronius Longus turned up at their lodgings, cursed them for drinking, and kicked them downstairs. He could do that even with his own head splitting.
Petronius and a couple of his lads were now lounging on benches. As I quizzed Scythax, they listened in, always glad to have me in their station house bringing some new jollity from my repertoire of crazy cases.
River-rat weed, my country relatives call it,' I told the doctor. 'I need to know, what happens to a victim, Scythax?'
'A long, slow, creeping, very permanent sleep, Falco.'
'Before the sleep, what are the symptoms?'
Scythax gave up on his food bowl. Petro and the vigiles came to attention too, mimicking their bone-setter, folding their arms with their heads cocked. 'All parts of the hemlock plant are poisonous, Falco, especially the seeds. The root is supposed to be harmless when young and fresh, but I have never tested that. The leaves -'He paused, looking at his lunch – 'have often been used to kill off the unwary when served up as a green garnish.'
I had no idea how the poison had been administered to Metellus. 'After it is ingested, how long to an effect?'
'I don't know.' It was the doctor's turn for grim humour. 'We don't get cases of poison making complaints at the visitors' desk.'
'Can you look up hemlock in a compendium? I'm consulting you about a crime, remember.'
For that I got a filthy look, but Scythax reluctantly found and pored over a scroll he kept in his infirmary cubicle. I waited. After a long interval of squinting at tiny Greek lettering in endless columns, sometimes accompanied by blotted diagrams of plants, he grunted. 'It works quickly. An initial reaction in as little as half an hour. Death then takes a few more hours. The method is paralysis. The muscles fail. The brain stays alert, but the subject slowly fades.'
'Any distressing side-effects?'
Scythax was sarcastic. 'Other than death?'
'Yes.'
'Vomiting. Evacuation of the bowels – with diarrhoea.'
I sniffed. 'They never tell you that in the lofty story of Socrates.'
'In the Greece of antiquity, the innocent were allowed their dignity.' Scythax, a man of grandiose gloom added, 'Unlike here!' He came from slave stock, and may well have had Greek origins. 'I assure you, the tragic death of Socrates will have been accompanied by gruesome effects.'
I was satisfied. 'Gruesome effects' had certainly been inflicted on Saffia Donata's embroidered coverlet. 'Would you appear as an expert witness in court for me?'
'Get lost, Falco.'
'I shall have you issued with a subpoena then.'
'You'll have to find him first,' commented Petro. 'I'm not having him hanging around the bloody Basilica; we need him here.'
'What about my case? I'm trying to nail a killer.'
'And my lads need their grazes dabbed clean.'
'Oh pardon me.' I looked down my nose at him. 'I'll have to hire some damned informer to deliver the summons, I suppose.'
They all laughed.
XXX
Some days an informer spends in endless walking. In the pursuit of comfort, I always wore hobnailed, well-worn-in boots.
My plans to pursue the issue of lethal herbage had to be put on hold; there was no time to work out how Metellus had been persuaded to imbibe or digest the hemlock, or else how it came to be administered secretly. I had promised Honorius he could come with me that afternoon to investigate the clown who had been deprived of performing at Metellus senior's funeral.
Sadly for Honorius, the logistics were against him. I was now up at the vigiles' station-house on the Aventine crest; he was right down by the river at my house. The vigiles had given me a bread roll and a drink, so I did not need to go home for lunch. Then I knew where to find Biltis; her hangout had been listed in Aelianus' original notes. The funeral firm operated in the Fifth Region, so when I left Petro's squad, it was least effort just to plod down from the Aventine at the eastern edge, skirt the Circus Maximus at its rounded end, and head off past the Capena Gate to the Fifth. Honorius would have to miss the fun.
I had already made this tiresome hike twice, going to and coming back from the Metellus house. By the time I encountered the mourner I was in a bad mood. Biltis was, as Aelianus had tersely noted, a woman who pressed too close and took too much interest in anyone who had to interview her. She was shabby and shapeless, with restless dark eyes and a mole on her chin, and was dressed in a style that proved funeral mourners are just as overpaid as you always suspect when you are arranging some loved one's last farewell. Plenty of bills that people were too distressed to query must have helped provide the glass bead edging on the woman's brightly coloured dress and the faddy fringe on her lush crimson stole.
'Of course I wear dingy tones when I'm working,' she explained, no doubt aware I was sizing up how much her zingingly gay apparel must have cost. 'All the effort goes into dishevelling the hair to tear – Some mourners use a wig, to spare their scalps, but I had some false hair fall off once. Right in the street. It doesn't impress the bereaved. Well, they are paying, aren't they? And with Tiasus they hope they are paying for quality. You have to avoid discourtesy.'
'Quite.'
'You don't have much to say for yourself, do you?'
'True.' I was listening. We had doubts about her reliability. I was trying to evaluate her from the stream of chat.
'I liked the other one.' That was a first for Aelianus. I would enjoy telling him.
'Would it be rude to ask what happened to your eye?' asked Biltis.
'Why not? Everyone else does!' I made no effort to tell the woman.
Miffed, she shut up. Now it was my turn. I ran throu
gh what she had told Aelianus about the family tensions at the Metellus funeral: strife among the relatives and Carina's outburst about her father having been murdered. Biltis confirmed the routine details too: the procession to the Via Appia and burning of the bier at the mausoleum, where Negrinus had presided with Juliana's husband and a friend who was presumably Licinius Lutea. The chief clown they had first intended to use in the procession was called Spindex. He worked for Tiasus regularly, though Biltis said it was ages since anyone had seen him.
'He went all huffy when he was dumped by the Metelli. Tiasus sent him one or two commissions afterwards but he failed to confirm or show up. He just dropped out of sight.'
'So why, exactly, was he omitted from the Metellus do?'
Exactly must have worried her. From pretending to be the expert on everything, she started to look shifty.
'Don't worry then,' I said. 'I can ask Spindex himself, if I find him. I hope he didn't go off into retirement at some homestead in a remote province.
'Oh he has no connections,' Biltis assured me. 'He has no friends and never mentions family.'
'Probably because he spends his days being rude,' I suggested.
'And is he rude!' the woman exclaimed. 'You won't find better than Spindex for rooting out the worst in human nature. Once he gets the dirt, he does not hold back.'
'Do you know how he finds his material?'
'Digging.'
'Do it himself?'
'Half and half, I think. With a senatorial family, he would never get direct access. He has a pal with contacts, who helps him out.'
'I thought you said Spindex has no friends? What pal?'
'Don't know. Spindex keeps to himself.'
'And you don't know the helper's name?'
'No. I tried to find out, but Spindex got stand-offish.'
'Why did you want to find out?'
'Just nosy!' Biltis admitted with a grin.
I sympathised with the clown. People like Biltis crowd in, finding out your weaknesses along with your dearest secrets. Then they turn against you, or poison your other relationships. In the army I had met men who worked the same way.
Still, Biltis had discovered the clown's home address. She even insisted on taking me on a route march to the road where he lived and pointing out his building. We set off under grey January skies, observed by a few chilly pigeons. Spindex had a billet which turned out to be a long walk from the Fifth, all the way back to the Twelfth District. He lived opposite the Aventine, in the shadow of the Servian Walls, close to the Aqua Marcia.
'See, I had to bring you,' Biltis crowed. 'This is a terrible hole. You'd never have found your way around.'
'You're talking about my birthplace, woman.' I cursed myself for giving away something personal.
If I had not insisted she leave, Biltis would have trodden on my heels all the way up to the clown's room, where she would have sat on my knee making saucy interventions while I asked him questions. I said bluntly that I didn't need anyone to hold my note-tablet and after the obvious lewd retort from the mourner, I managed to shed her.
Alone, I approached a narrow opening that provided dark stairs upwards from the street. As she waved goodbye from outside one of the shops that flanked this entrance, Biltis called after me that Spindex was a disorderly, filthy type. 'You'll find his room, easy -just follow the smell.'
I grunted and went up the cramped stone steps. This was not a tenement approach, but a narrow insert between commercial premises. I guessed Spindex had solitary attic lodgings on the third floor, beyond the living quarters that lay above owner-occupied shops, which would be accessed from within those shops. Only Spindex and his visitors ever came up this way.
Biltis was right, perhaps more right than she knew. The reek on the staircase was strong, growing worse every day no doubt. This smell was very particular; in my line of work, it was familiar. Filled with foreboding, I tramped up and found the apartment. I was sure before I even opened the door that Spindex would be there inside. And I knew he would be dead.
XXXI
Being a funeral clown must have all the glamour and high rewards of being an informer. There was hardly any light on the stairs. I crashed into empty wine containers on the landing. Then I entered a meagre apartment. Two dark rooms – one for being awake in misery and one for sleeping with nightmares. No cooking or washing facilities. A high-up filthy window let in a square of murky sunlight. Either the occupant had been habitually untidy, or I was looking at evidence of a struggle. It was hard to tell which. Even at my lowest ebb in my bachelor days, I had never kept my room like this. I liked to tidy up sometimes, in case a woman could be inveigled in.
This was the horrid abode of a loner; he had never visited a laundry nor bought proper meals. Nor would he have kept records of his work; I knew before I started, there would be nothing here for me. I saw not a scroll or tablet in the place; Spindex must have kept everything in his head. Easy enough. Funerals are short-term projects, of course.
I passed a table, littered with the stale relics of a drinking session. Two dirty beakers lay on their sides; one of them had rolled to the floor. There were empty flagons everywhere, plus a half-filled one with its bung abandoned in a dish of dried-up olives. Their roughly chewed stones had been spat everywhere.
The clown's body was lying on a narrow bed in the second room. From the awkward posture, I thought he might have been dragged in and dumped there after death. It looked as though he had been strangled, but it was hard to be sure. Spindex had not been seen by the Tiasus crew for months; death must have occurred way back then. I did not linger. I called in the vigiles to deal with the remains. We were just within the boundary of the Fourth Cohort, as it happened.
Petronius Longus thanked me for the task with a growl of insincerity but promised to investigate as best he could. His men, braver than I was, came out from the apartment and confirmed that a tight ligature was buried in the fleshy neck of the corpse. Tough cord: cut and brought here for the purpose, probably. Our chances of learning who committed the crime were slim, given the time lapse.
Even while we still stood around cursing, the investigation team found out from local shopkeepers that their last awareness of the clown alive had been of him roaring back drunk from a bar, with somebody. They did not see the visitor. No one had heard the person leave.
Surprise!
The vigiles might or might not pursue this further. We had probably learned all we could hope for. The death of a low-grade entertainer, about whom nobody cares enough even to discover why he has gone missing from his work, carries little importance in Rome.
There was no point enquiring whether a funeral satirist had enemies. Petronius pointed out wryly that at least we knew most of the people Spindex brazenly mocked had predeceased him, so they were not suspects. Their relatives would be unlikely to complain, Petro believed. Everyone always knows already that the dead man was a serial seducer who lied to political colleagues, ran up hefty debts at a brothel, deliberately farted in the Basilica and was known by an obscene name behind his back. The fun is being at last free to enjoy it – with the stiffened dead lying there, unable to retaliate.
'Do you suppose, Falco, this clown was rubbed off the tablet because of something he knew?'
'Who can say? It could just have been a pointless row when he was sozzled.'
'So what do you think it was?'
'Oh – elimination due to something he knew.'
'Well thanks again! Do I stand any chance of learning what, or proving it?' wondered Petro.
'Do you ever, lad?'
That was too metaphysical, so we went for a drink. Long practice made this an essential part of enquiries. We asked the barkeeper if he had had Spindex among his customers. He said every barman this side of the Esquiline could boast that – until about three months ago. Could it be nearer four months? I asked, and he shrugged agreement. As I had thought, that would take us back to the time of the Metellus funeral. Of course a defence lawyer would
call it mere coincidence.
Noticing the clown's absence from lolling on his bar counter, the barman had deduced that Spindex must be dead. He said it was nice to remember the old misery for a moment, and gave us a free beaker. 'I can just see him crouched here, scratching at his fleas…'
I tried not to feel itchy.
'Did Spindex have a regular boozing partner?' asked Petro. We had told no one yet that Spindex had been murdered.
'Not often. He sometimes had his head together with another fellow, plotting scandal they could use at funerals.'
'Would they buy wine and take it back to the clown's lodgings?'
'Oh Spindex bought a take-out flagon every night. However late he finished here, he'd get in a spare. Sometimes he emptied it before he got home, so he'd go in another bar and buy another one.'
'But did he ever go home with his friend, the plotter?'
The barman gazed at Petronius for a while. 'Was there a fight or something?'
'Do you have a reason to think that's likely?'
'I sell liquor – so I know life. So what happened to Spindex?'
'He had a fight or something,' confirmed Petronius tersely. The barman pulled a face, half surprised, half not surprised. Petro voiced the usual message: 'If you hear anything, contact me, will you? You know the main station house. I work in the Thirteenth -' The Fourth Cohort covered two regions, controlled here in the Twelfth, but Petronius based himself in the out-station. I won't say it was to avoid the tribune – but Rubella worked from the main building and Petronius loathed him. 'Any message gets passed over to me.'
I stretched, dropping coins in the gratuities bowl. 'And we would dearly like to know who his fellow-plotter was. People may gossip.:
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