Ruso and the Root of All Evils

by Ruso

  Ruso stepped closer to her and murmured, ‘There must be a spare key to that office. How do the staff get in to clean and fill the lamps?’

  ‘They wait for that horrible man to let them in,’ said Claudia.

  Evidently security was not as lax here as in the Petreius household.

  31

  A large room in the west wing had been set aside for the laying-out of the body. Claudia stepped under the cypress boughs hung over the door, nodded to a couple of other women whom Ruso assumed to be neighbours paying respects and sat down with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes focused on nothing. Opposite her was a dishevelled, red-faced creature barely recognizable as Ennia. Between them, propped up against the far wall, surrounded by flickering lamps and looking a great deal calmer than everyone else in the room, was Severus.

  Ruso stationed himself next to Ennia. He waited until a suitable amount of wailing had taken place before crouching to repeat his condolences and murmuring, ‘May I speak with you?’

  When she did not seem to have heard, he leaned closer and repeated the question in her ear. Her expression did not change as she said, ‘You are in league with her. Go away.’

  He whispered, ‘I’m not responsible for this, Ennia.’

  ‘Then I want to know who is!’

  A hand gripped his shoulder as Zosimus breathed in his ear, ‘You heard the lady. Go.’

  Ruso got to his feet and left.

  As he passed the pond there was a faint ‘plop’. Leaning over, he could make out the silver flash of a fish through the ripples. A cough sounded from the direction of the house. Ruso glanced up to see the steward watching him from the top of the steps.

  As if this were not encouragement enough to leave, he now recognized the purposeful stride of his former father-in-law fast approaching along the gravel walkway.

  ‘Probus!’

  The man stopped. ‘Who let you in here?’

  Evidently Probus had not mellowed with time.

  At the reply ‘Claudia’, Probus’ mouth turned down as if he were refusing a loan to a potential client. ‘I don’t know what for,’ he said. ‘She’s sent for the investigators, you know.’

  ‘I came to see if I could help.’

  For some reason this seemed to annoy Probus even further. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the gatehouse. ‘Out!’

  ‘On my way,’ agreed Ruso, indicating the walking-stick. ‘It’s just taking me a bit of time.’

  ‘If you’re not gone in a minute there’ll be men here to help you.’

  Ruso said, ‘Sorry to hear about Justinus, by the way,’ but Probus was already striding towards the west wing, calling, ‘Claudia? It’s all right, I’ve got rid of him.’

  Ruso paused, leaning on his stick, to watch Probus mount the steps and give Zosimus a perfunctory nod. Then he turned and picked his way along the path towards the gatehouse with a deliberate lack of haste. It was a small and not very satisfying form of rebellion.

  He told himself that at least the steward’s insistence on waiting for orders would restrain Claudia’s urge to call in professional questioners. He supposed that was good news – for the staff, if not for him. As he approached the gate it occurred to him that he should have told somebody that Severus’ horse was being tended by the stable lad back at home. He would have to leave a message with the gatekeeper.

  The gatekeeper’s dog was eyeing his approach with interest when he was surprised by hasty footsteps crashing through gravel and a voice he did not recognize calling, ‘Sir! Please, doctor, sir!’

  A lanky youth in a grease-spattered tunic appeared from behind the gatehouse, halted, tried to decide what to do with his hands, finally clamped them behind his back and said, ‘I’m Flaccus, sir. I used to work in your kitchen.’

  Ruso stared at him. Claudia had indeed owned a kitchen-boy called Flaccus, but not one like this. Claudia’s boy was small and cheery. This one had hands and feet that were much too big for him, an anxious face made out of sharp angles and a sprinkling of acne. Ruso leaned on his stick and decided he was getting old. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘How are you getting on here?’

  ‘Very well, sir, thank you.’ Having got that out of the way, the youth took a deep breath. ‘Cook said I should come and talk to you, sir.’

  Ruso beckoned him away from the ears of the gatekeeper and the teeth of the dog. Safely behind an ornamental hedge that more or less concealed them from the house, he said, ‘To do with Severus?’

  Flaccus nodded.

  ‘Speak up,’ he urged, warmed by the thought that the boy still trusted him. ‘What do you know?’

  The boy looked alarmed. ‘Oh no, sir. I don’t know anything. Nobody knows anything. Cook says to ask what’s going to happen to us, sir.’

  Ruso looked him up and down. Flaccus the little kitchen-boy, no longer cheery – and with good reason. By law, all the household slaves who had been under the same roof as a murdered master should be put to death for failing to save him – even if they could not possibly have helped. The Emperor Nero, notorious for much else besides, had once called in troops to enforce the execution of four hundred men, women and children whose only crime was to be owned by a man who had been done away with by one of their comrades. It was a lesson not easily forgotten.

  Ruso suspected that the law might not apply when the victim was secretly poisoned off the premises – a crime against which his staff would stand little chance of protecting him – but that was a fine distinction unlikely to comfort a household in fear of their lives. He said, ‘Flaccus, I want you to think carefully about this. Do you think anyone here was involved in the death of the Senator’s agent?’

  ‘Absolutely not, sir!’

  Of course not. What else could the lad say? ‘Did you see him on the morning he died?’

  Flaccus looked uneasy.

  ‘I need to know exactly what happened to him that morning.’

  The boy stared down at feet that overhung the ends of his sandals. His shoulders shifted uneasily. ‘Cook didn’t say …’ His voice trailed into silence.

  ‘Just tell me what you know,’ urged Ruso, silently cursing Nero and every long-dead member of the Senate who had agreed with him.

  ‘But I don’t know anything, sir. I was bringing in the firewood when Master Severus came in.’

  ‘Into the kitchen?’

  Flaccus nodded. ‘Please don’t go asking them, sir. Cook will kill me.’

  ‘Just tell me what he did in the kitchen, and I won’t need to.’ Ruso hoped, for the boy’s sake, that this was true.

  ‘He just came for his breakfast. Bread and cheese and an apple.’ The boy looked up. ‘There wasn’t nothing wrong with it, sir. It was the same as what everybody had.’

  ‘Did he usually fetch his own breakfast?’

  ‘People are always in and out of the kitchen, sir. Cook gets fed up with it.’

  ‘And did he look well?’

  Flaccus, clearly regretting ever admitting to remembering Ruso, said, ‘He never looked well, sir.’

  ‘Who was in the kitchen yesterday morning?’

  ‘Just the staff, sir.’

  ‘Nobody unusual?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Not wishing to imply a suspicion of the widow, Ruso tried, ‘How about Claudia or Ennia?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir!’ This, apparently, would have been a memorable event. Neither of these two had ever been seen in the kitchen before mid-morning.

  Ruso frowned. This was not proving as helpful as he had hoped. ‘You’re sure he just had the same food and drink as everyone else?’

  ‘Not the drink, sir. He always has – had his own medicine. The cook mixes him up honey and rosewater. Just that, sir. Nothing that would do no harm.’

  ‘And nobody else drinks it?’

  Flaccus shook his head. ‘No, sir. Well – not usually. But after Master Severus died, the steward came down to the kitchen and asked a lot of questions. And he made us all eat the food and share out the re
st of the medicine. That’s how we knew Severus must have been poisoned. But nobody was ill.’

  So Zosimus, the responsible steward, had been making inquiries of his own. Personally Ruso would not have risked poisoning the entire staff by sharing everything out, but presumably he had been hoping to force a confession. ‘Well, it looks as though he’s satisfied himself that none of you was involved.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Flaccus did not seem particularly cheered by this news. ‘But when Cook asked him what’s going to happen to us he just said we’ve got to wait for orders from Rome.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ said Ruso. ‘Severus didn’t die under this roof. That may be a good thing for you, if not for me. But I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us.’

  Flaccus sniffed. ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘What I do know is that it’s not going to be helped by listening to worrying gossip. Now go back to your duties and try to ignore anything you hear, because if none of us knows until we hear from Rome, nothing you’re told can be true, can it?’

  The boy managed a wan smile. ‘No, sir.’

  A sizeable gang of dingily attired visitors was rolling up the drive as Ruso left, presumably on the way to offer condolences to the grieving widow and sister. The gatekeeper’s face was impassive as he asserted that he couldn’t answer questions without permission from the steward, but his one eye was bright. Ruso suspected these were the most interesting couple of days he had had in a very long time.

  32

  Fuscus would not want a suspected poisoner visiting potential voters on his behalf, but Ruso called on the pretext of collecting the canvassing list anyway. The gods alone knew what that message to Rome had contained, especially since Probus had been the one to tell Fuscus the bad news about the murder. He needed to put his own side of the story to the nearest member of the Gabinii as soon as possible.

  This time he was left to wait out on one of the benches facing the street. He was not sorry. The ache in his foot was so persistent that he was relieved to lean back against ‘Vote for Gabinius Fuscus!’, stretch both legs out in front of him and close his eyes.

  He was conscious of the warm wall hard against his back. Of the smell of fried eggs and old vegetables. Of the passing slap of sandals, and the cackle of an old woman laughing. Of a small voice at the back of his mind that was telling him he was in serious trouble.

  The only way to prove to the Senator’s investigator that he had not murdered Severus would be to present the real culprit. Despite his bold assurances to Claudia that he had dealt with this sort of thing before, this was a situation unlike anything he had faced in Britannia. His assertion that he knew what he was doing had been little more than wishful thinking. He did not know the proper way to conduct a murder investigation. Indeed, he did not even know if there was a proper way.

  Ruso propped the heel of his sore foot on the toes of the whole one and tried to reflect on his experiences in Britannia. There must be some conclusions he could draw: some fruit of his experience that he could bring to this current crisis.

  The business of the murdered bar girls in Deva had taught him that no one in authority could be expected to investigate a crime if it were not in his own interests to do so. From the mysterious affair of the antlered god who had caused mayhem on the border, he had learned … what had he learned? That the north of Britannia was a dangerous place. That Tilla’s idea of loyalty was not the same as his own. And in both cases, that the truth only seemed to emerge after a great deal of unproductive, uncomfortable and unwilling blundering about. Precisely the sort of blundering about that a man suspected of murder was unlikely to be free to undertake.

  He had just reached this unhelpful conclusion when a hoarse voice announced, ‘You’re that doctor!’

  He opened his eyes to see the hulking figure of one of Probus’ security guards, a retired gladiator whose hefty shoulders and flattened nose served to deter both burglars and clients seeking loans without collateral.

  ‘Remember me?’

  Ruso straightened his back, put both feet on the ground and prepared to fend off whatever trouble the man had been sent to make. ‘You work for Probus.’

  ‘You come to the house courting Miss Claudia.’

  ‘So I did,’ agreed Ruso, although it was hard now to remember why. All the signs had been there from the beginning.

  ‘I thought you might want to know, sir, my lad’s done well for himself. He’s in Municipal Water Distribution.’

  Ruso gave a smile that acknowledged the man’s obvious pride, wondered which lad they were talking about and said he was delighted to hear it.

  ‘Not a scrap of bother with the leg, sir. Not even a limp.’

  Something stirred in the recesses of Ruso’s memory. ‘Broken femur, wasn’t it?’

  The mangled face split into a grin. ‘That’s the one. Only eight years old, he was. You done a lovely job, sir.’

  The father’s delight was clear, as was his gratitude, and Ruso felt his spirits lift. It was good to be reminded of a time when he had done something right.

  ‘I’m glad to see you after all these years, sir,’ continued the man. The bench swayed as he seated himself next to Ruso. ‘I reckon I owe you a favour.’ The reason for the unexpected familiarity became clear when he leaned closer and murmured, ‘If you don’t mind me saying, sir, there’s something you ought to know. But you won’t have to let on who told you.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Ruso promised, his spirits rising even further. He was not alone in the battle to clear his name. There were people here who remembered him. People who were willing to help. He had come home.

  ‘About your sister.’

  Ruso’s optimism collapsed. If rumours were circulating about Severus’ designs on Flora, it could reflect badly on her no matter how innocent she might be. He would have to find a way to defend Flora’s reputation as well as his own.

  What the guard proceeded to tell him, however, was completely unexpected. It had nothing to do with Flora. It was that Marcia had recently approached Probus in the hope of borrowing against her forthcoming dowry.

  ‘What? Are you absolutely sure?’

  The man did not know how much Marcia had sought, but according to what he had overheard, she had already consulted several financiers. Probus had refused her request, as presumably had all the others.

  ‘Good,’ said Ruso, wondering why nobody else had had the decency to warn the family. ‘I appreciate you telling me.’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’ The man got to his feet. ‘It weren’t me what told you, though. I don’t want no trouble.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Ruso agreed. And then, with foreboding, ‘I’ll talk to her.’

  ‘Ruso!’ There was no embrace this time. Fuscus remained seated. He reached for a grape, frowned at it and tossed it aside. ‘I thought you’d be here before now.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Really? They didn’t tell me. What’s all this about you poisoning my relative?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Ruso offered condolences on the death of Severus and briefly wondered why Fuscus was not over at the estate paying his respects. Presumably he had more important things to do. ‘Severus was taken ill at my house,’ he explained. ‘I did what I could for him, but it was pretty hopeless without knowing what he’d taken.’

  Fuscus sighed and closed his eyes. ‘A great tragedy. A terrible loss to our family. A man in the prime of life. Whoever did this deserves the worst possible punishment. It’s a shame we won’t have time for a trial before the games. We could have had the murderer fed to the beasts. Very slowly.’

  ‘They’ve had other doctors look at the body,’ said Ruso, ‘but I don’t think they’ve come up with much. His widow and his sister have asked me to try and track down whoever did it.’ It was almost true. Just after she had told him to go away, Ennia had said she wanted to know who was responsible for her brother’s death.

  Fuscus opened his eyes. ‘Last time you
were in here asking about a ship. No wonder you don’t know much about poisons if you waste all your time poking about with things that don’t concern you.’

  ‘If I don’t concern myself with this, people will think it was me.’

  Fuscus’ hand paused in mid-air. ‘Probus told me it was you.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  There was a pause while Fuscus popped another grape into his mouth and said round it, ‘I’m reserving judgement. Until we get instructions from my cousin the Senator.’

  ‘Do you still want me to talk to the veterans?’

  ‘What?’ Fuscus spat out the pips. ‘Of course not. Stay away from them. Don’t even mention my name. I’ll get my publicity men to paint the signs out and we’ll find somebody else.’

  Signs? ‘But I didn’t do it.’

  ‘In fact, stay out of town altogether. It looks bad.’

  ‘I had no reason to kill Severus,’ insisted Ruso. ‘You know that. You were going to persuade him not to bankrupt me.’

  Fuscus shifted in his chair. ‘I don’t think you understood me there, Ruso. I said I’d do my best to support you, but if you remember, I also said my hands were tied.’ He shook his head. ‘A man in my position can’t be seen to be influencing the course of the law. Not even for the son of a dear old friend. We’re dealing with principles. Principles are what raise us above the barbarians.’

  ‘What if I told you Severus and I were about to do a deal and he was going to abandon the seizure order, so I’d have been crazy to murder him?’

  Fuscus’ eyes widened. ‘Why didn’t you say so? If there’s a witnessed and sealed agreement –’

  ‘There wasn’t time.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Fuscus in a tone that implied he did not believe a word of it. ‘You’ll just have to explain it all to my cousin the Senator’s man. Assuming he sends one. If not I may have my own men carry out an investigation.’

  ‘I’m intending to get it sorted out before then.’

  ‘Forget it, Ruso. It doesn’t matter what the widow and the sister want. The investigation has to be independent. None of the suspects must be involved. Understand?’