“Apparently.”
I ate my bread gloomily. Helena, who was feeding the baby while seated on a leather box-backed couch, looked over. “What’s wrong, Marcus?”
“Something’s not right. Perella does not act this way. If she was sent by Anacrites specifically to eliminate Marcellinus—who knows why?—then her normal behavior pattern would be: stake out the ground, move in for the kill, then vanish.”
“Well, she has disappeared,” said Justinus, though Helena stayed silent.
“I meant, vanish from the whole area. Probably from the province.”
Justinus pushed back his dark floppy hair. “You suspect that Perella has not yet carried out her full mission?”
“That’s one theory,” I replied cautiously. “One I don’t want to think about. Let’s stick with the hope that promising she will dance for the boys tonight is just a ruse to give her time and space to make a getaway.”
“She must be stuck. People can only leave this province by sea,” Justinus pointed out. “You’re at the mercy of the tides and sailing ships for a fast exit.”
I managed a grin. “Sounds as if you’ve thought about this.”
“Every minute since we arrived, Falco!”
I drained a cup of lukewarm flavored wine, checking with Helena that she was ready to leave for the palace. “I’ll spend a day at the site, Quintus. You can come if you like, if you’ve nothing on here. There’s not much to lose now if people realize you’re on my team.”
“I would like to see the palace, after traveling all this way.”
“We can take it easy, then return to Novio this evening when the floor show is due to begin.”
“Wonderful.”
I grinned at Helena. “Your brother, who has graceful manners, manages to pretend he’ll be happy chaperoned by a chaste older man.”
“Oh, who’s that, then?” asked Helena dryly. “I thought he was going with you, Falco.”
Justinus, who knew how to look innocent, roused himself as if to go and fetch his traveling gear. Then he paused. “Is this the moment to mention someone you’re looking for?”
“Not Gloccus and Cotta?”
“No. You told me about that supervisor, the hard man I was not to approach alone.”
“Mandumerus? The gang leader Pomponius wanted to dangle from a man-made tree?”
Justinus nodded. “I think I saw him. I’m sure it must be him. He fitted your description—he was among the Britons from the site, heavily patterned with woad and a real ugly brute.”
“When was this, Quintus?” Helena put in.
“The same night Marcus came over and mentioned him.” That would be the night Pomponius was killed.
“Why not tell me earlier?”
“I haven’t seen you since. I went out for a drink after you had left.” Justinus managed to sound casual. And he was conveniently forgetting that he saw me last night. My assistants were growing casual. This could all go wrong.
“A drink?” asked his sister. “Or mooning at that bar girl?”
“Oh, she just reminds me of my own dear Claudia,” he lied.
Then he described what had happened. As he sat sipping what he alleged was a modest beaker of diluted beverage, a man who resembled my description of Mandumerus had entered the bar.
“Is this your favorite joint? Where Virginia gives the men the eye, and more, while Stupenda issues promises of what life is like among the gods? What’s it called—the Maggot’s Arse?”
“The River Trout,” said Justinus primly.
“Very nice. I do love fish.”
“Do you want to know about the Mandumerus look-alike or not?”
“Absolutely. What are you waiting for?”
“He seemed to have just come from out of town—I can’t say why exactly I thought that. Something about the way he plumped himself down as if he was either exhausted or really fired up.”
“What—‘Give me a drink, I’m desperate,’ you mean?”
“More or less his words, Marcus. The other men huddled round him. I won’t say they lowered their voices, because they didn’t say much; they just exchanged rather significant glances.”
“Were they keeping things from you as a stranger?”
“General caution, I would say.”
“And is this the bar where the Britons drink?”
“Yes. It’s none too pleasant.”
“But you and Larius fit in!” I sneered. “So had you seen this man before?”
“I think so. What caught my attention this time,” Justinus said, “was one quick gesture he made to his cronies as he sat down.”
“Go on?”
“He put one hand around his throat and imitated somebody choking—eyes bulging and tongue out.” Justinus copied it: the universal mime for being throttled or suffocated.
Or strangled, as Pomponius had been that night.
L
BACK AT the palace later, I detected an uneasy atmosphere. Verovolcus and his men must have returned last night, having found no sign of Perella. Word snaked around the site huts, naturally, that Marcellinus had been slaughtered in his bed. No doubt those who had benefitted personally from his constant home refurbishment were looking now to other scams to enhance their income. That would take up some of their time. The rest was given over to shinning up the scaffold on the old house, whence they leaned over showing their underwear, or in most cases their lack of it, while they whistled at passing women.
They were targeting one in particular: my nursemaid Camilla Hyspale. “Oh, Marcus Didius, those rude men are insulting me!”
“Try minding Julia indoors out of sight, then.”
“Of course, Marcus Didius.” That was strangely obedient. Had Maia taken the girl in hand?
“Beyond my scope,” Maia reported in an undertone. “She’s being nice because she hopes you will let her go out and spend this evening with a friend.”
“What friend?”
“No idea. She keeps running off to flirt with a man. Larius swears it isn’t him.”
“Should I let her go out tonight?” I consulted Helena.
“Of course,” she returned mildly. “So long as the friend is a matron, free from any hint of scandal, who will send her own chair for Hyspale!”
That seemed unlikely.
Julia was too busy to go indoors. Too young to be worried by men on scaffolds, she had her entire toy collection spread in the courtyard; rag doll, wooden doll with one leg missing, fashionably dressed ivory doll, push-along cart, clay animals, dolls’ dinner set, rattle, beanbag for throwing games, balls in three sizes, nodding antelope, and—dear gods—some swine with no care for her parents’ eardrums must have given her a flute. I won’t say my daughter was spoiled, but she was fortunate. Four grandparents doted on their dark-eyed toddler. Aunts vied with one another for her love. If a new toy was created in any corner of the Empire, Julia somehow acquired it. You wonder why we had brought every one on a thousand-mile journey? Sheer terror of her reaction if she discovered we had left any treasure behind.
Now our acquisitive two-year-old was absorbed in some well-ordered play.
Helena grabbed my arm and hissed with mock excitement, “Oh, look, darling! Julia Junilla is taking her very first inventory!”
“Well, that’s next Saturnalia sorted. Her present can be an abacus.”
“The child has expensive tastes,” Helena replied. “I think she would rather we supplied her with her own accountant.”
“Be more useful than her nurse!” scoffed Maia.
Maia had been standing in the open doorway to our suite, supervising Julia—or rather applying a jaundiced eye to Hyspale’s encounters with the men on the scaffold. The fellows would have had more to comment on if they could see Maia, but she stayed on the wrong side of the threshold so was out of sight. One member of my household knew how to behave modestly, if she wanted to.
She did, however, have a male follower. She had been talking to Sextius, the statue-seller. Well, she
had been letting him talk, without making her replies too objectionable. Sextius, still with the wary look he had always given Maia, had been telling her he had sold his cartload of statues.
At this news, Aelianus stuck his head out; he and Larius must have been lounging indoors. “Olympus, who bought them?” demanded Aelianus with professional interest.
“One of the contractors for the King’s bathhouse.”
Aelianus shot me a private smirk; apparently he thought little of the statues. Installing them in the royal changing room would be a huge joke.
“There should be plenty of water on hand for the works!” I commented. Unnerved by our presence, Sextius shambled off. If he had returned to the site hoping to inveigle himself into Maia’s confidence, it had failed.
Maia was only interested in hearing from me. She dragged me indoors. Having reassured myself that in our absence there had been no incidents, I gave her a brief update on Perella. I had to come clean about the Marcellinus death before my sister heard it from others. I played down the details. I stressed that this indicated Perella’s mission to Britain had been quite unconnected with us.
“Oh really!” scoffed Maia.
I went to my office. There I found Gaius, working on a batch of invoices and sipping mulsum. We had not spoken since I stormed off after accusing him of lying to me.
“Oh, I see, Iggidunus waives his ban on serving this office, so long as I’m not here!”
Gaius grinned warily over his beaker rim. “You have to know how to handle him, Falco.”
“That’s what I was always told about women. Applying it to the drinks boy never cropped up before.” I gazed at him. “Magnus says I got you all wrong. Apparently you are honest, helpful, and an all-round model of probity.”
“Well, I am on the right side,” he claimed.
I told him what we had discovered at the Marcellinus villa. The missing supplies that we would be fetching back today should improve chances of balancing the site account. Gaius cheered up.
“So tell me about helping Magnus. In particular, explain why you never told me what you were up to.”
Gaius looked shy. “Not allowed to, Falco.”
“Not allowed? Look, I’m tired. Murder depresses me. So does blatant corruption, actually. Magnus said I should ask you what’s what.”
The clerk still kept mum.
“Gaius, I like hearing that you are straight, but it is not enough. Explain your role. I won’t allow mystery men to meddle in this project.”
“Is that a threat, Falco?”
“I can dismiss you, yes. Dalmatia’s a long way to trundle home in disgrace, with no transport and your pay held up.”
Dalmatia was where he had said his mother lived.
Somebody else in this province had a Dalamatian birthplace: a highly placed British official. “Your father’s highest position was as a third-grade tax inspector in a one-ox town in Dalmatia” was how I once put it to the man defiantly. I was stroppy in those days. “No one but the governor carries more weight in Britain than you. …”
“Flavius Hilaris!” I exclaimed. How could I have forgotten him? After all, he had lent us his town house in Noviomagus. Once my mission was completed, Helena wanted us to visit him and his wife in Londinium.
Gaius had flushed slightly. “The Financial Procurator?”
“A fine man. My wife’s uncle, did you know? He was born in Narona.”
“Is that so?” murmured Gaius.
“Skip the bluff.”
“Lots of people come from my province, Falco.”
“Not so many end up here. What are you—twenties? What did you work on before the palace, Gaius?”
“Forum feasibility study.”
“Not the forum in Novio? I’ve seen that; it must have been planned on the back of a whelk bill—one that someone then lost. Where, Gaius?”
“Londinium,” he admitted.
“Under the nose of the provincial governor—and of his right-hand man! Hilaris is fair. He knows how to select staff. He’s not given to favorites. But being from Dalmatia would endear you, I bet. And if he thought you showed promise—well! His speciality, for your information, is the rare one of weeding out graft. That was how I met him; it was how I met my wife, so I’m unlikely to forget. So tell me, are you working undercover here for the Procurator in Londinium?”
“He would have told you, surely?” The clerk, who would have been sworn to silence for his own safety, tried one last gambit.
“I’m sure he meant to keep me fully informed,” I answered starchily.
“Administrative hitch?” murmured Gaius, starting to reveal his amusement.
“Absolutely. And Helena Justina’s uncle in his curule chair is a mischievous swine!”
We seemed to understand one another, so I left it at that. Gaius was well placed to observe what happened on this site, but he was fairly junior. He was doing good work. I would tell Hilaris that. To enhance future control, it was best to leave the planted clerk here if possible, maintaining his cover. So I winked in a friendly manner and continued with my own work.
I spent a couple of hours drafting a report on the site problems, and my thoughts on their future resolution. From time to time, people came in with dockets for me to sign as project manager, though things seemed quiet. Cyprianus was off-site of course, taking transports to collect Magnus and the materials we were retrieving from the Marcellinus villa. Not much was happening here.
When I wanted air, I took a walk around. The place today was full of abandoned barrows and half-dug trenches. I could either regard it as a site where everything had gone into limbo because of a real emergency—or as a perfectly normal building scheme where, as so often, nobody had bothered to turn up.
Investigations acquire their own momentum when they start going well. Discover enough, and new connections then quickly become apparent. It may even help to surround yourself with well-chosen, intelligent assistants.
First Gaius softened up enough to try ingratiating himself. “How’s the tooth, Falco?”
“It was all right until you just mentioned it.”
“Sorry!”
“I tried to tweeze it out myself, but it’s too deep. Have to ask Alexas to recommend a pain-free puller.”
“There’s a new sign up showing a dogtooth, down by the Nemesis. It must be a barber-surgeon, Falco. Just what you want.”
“Could you hear any screams?” I shuddered. “Is the Nemesis a drinking dive?”
“Owner with a sense of humor.” Gaius grinned.
I had lost mine. “Informers are famous for their irony—but I don’t want my gnasher wrenched out next door to a hovel called after the goddess of inescapable retribution!”
“Her wrath is averted by spitting,” he assured me. “That should be easy during deep gum dentistry.”
“Spare me, Gaius!”
I carried on scratching away with my stylus. I was using a tablet that had a rather thin wax sheet. I must remember that my words might show up on the blackboard. However lucid and elegantly phrased, I did not want them being read by the wrong people; my discarded tablets must be burned after use, not tipped into a rubbish pit.
“About that other problem of yours, Falco,” said Gaius after a while.
“Which of many?”
“The two men you want to find.”
I looked up. “Gloccus and bloody Cotta?” I set down my stylus in a neat north-south line on the table. Gaius looked nervous. “Speak, oracle!”
“I just wondered about that uncle Alexas has.” I stared. “Well, he might know them, Falco.”
“Oh, is that all? Know them? I thought you were about to say he was one of them! Anyway, Alexas has always said he’s never heard of Gloccus and Cotta.”
“Oh well, then!” There was a small silence. “He could be lying,” offered Gaius.
“Now you sound as cynical as me.”
“Must be contagious.”
“His uncle is called Lobullus.”
“Oh, that’s what Alexas says, is it, Falco?”
“He does. However,” I said with a wry smile, “Alexas could be lying about that too!”
“For instance”—Gaius made a great point of proffering the reasonable solution—“his uncle may be a citizen with more than one name.”
“If he builds bathhouses, I bet his clients call him a few choice ones. Or he might be using an alias to avoid lawsuits. …” I put down my stylus, considering the proposition. “Do you know Alexas? Apart from his own job, is he from a medical family?”
“No idea, Falco.”
“And you don’t know what part of the Empire he hails from?”
“No.” Gaius looked crestfallen. It was temporary. “I know! I could ask my pal who keeps the personnel lists. Alexas should have filled in a next-of-kin record. That would give his home city.”
“Yes—and it will say who wants his funeral ashes, if I find out he has fibbed to me!”
By an odd quirk, in an earlier conversation with Alexas about deaths on-site, I might even have nudged him into supplying these details myself.
Camillus Justinus stuck his head into the office at about midmorning. I introduced him to Gaius; they acknowledged each other suspiciously.
“Falco, I’ve just seen a man I recognize,” Justinus informed me. “I’ve come to tell you immediately this time. Larius says he is the King’s project representative.”
“Verovolcus? What about him?”
“Thought you might like to know I’ve seen him before—he was drinking with Mandumerus,” Justinus explained.
“Oh, those two have always been thick as ticks,” Gaius contributed. He looked smug—until I tore into him for not mentioning their alliance earlier.
“Mandumerus and Verovolcus are best friends?”
“From the cradle, Falco.”
“Is it a lead?” asked Justinus meekly.
“It is—but I’m not thanking you!”
I ran both hands through my hair, feeling the curls coarsened and sticky after exposure to the salty coastal air. I wanted a three-hour bath, with a full technical massage, in a first-class establishment—in Rome. One with manicure girls who looked like haughty princesses, and three kinds of pastry-sellers. I wanted to exit onto travertine marble steps, in early evening, when hot sun still ripped off the paving slabs. Then I wanted to go home for dinner: in my own house on the Aventine.
A Body in the Bathhouse Page 29