Ode To A Banker

by Lindsey Davis

  ‘Don’t insult my expertise!’

  ‘Just don’t get into any rucks, Falco.’

  ‘Demand a contract,’ Helena instructed me, not bothering to say it in an undertone.

  X

  WORD HAD spread. The crime scene was almost inaccessible behind a large crowd of Aventine dead-enders who had suddenly developed an interest in reading. Their after-lunch entertainment was to present themselves at the scroll-shop like potential customers, browsing the book baskets and keeping their eyes peeled for excitement - preferably in the forin of blood.

  Considering Petro’s claims of undermanning, there was a commendable vigiles presence. The red tunics were here in force, mingling with the ghouls, always nosy about a new kind of location. It would not last. Once the investigation lost its novelty, it would be hard finding one of these lads for anything routine. They were mainly ex-slaves, short but wide or wiry, each handy in a fight and none of them men to cross. Joining the vigiles was a desperate measure. The work was dangerous, the community hostile, and those who escaped being fried in fires were likely to end up having their necks broken by bullyboys on the streets.

  I forced a passage through the gawpers outside. Taking more interest in the layout than last time, I noticed that the scroll-shop and a shoemender’s next door appeared to form the frontage of the same property. They were part of a row of small, mostly run-down-looking businesses, some no doubt with rooms at the back or on the upper floor where their proprietors lived.

  ‘Falco.’ I announced myself to the vigiles loafing in the shop. ‘Assigned to this case by Petronius Longus. Round up these sightseers. Check out whether anyone saw anything; if so, I’ll speak to them. Make the rest clear off.’

  I heard muttering, but Petro’s name carried weight.

  I barged through the press in the shop and into the scriptorium. The workers were standing about looking anxious. Euschemon, the freedman who had propositioned me to sell my work, was leaning his backside against a table. It looked as if he slumped there whilst under interrogation by Fusculus, one of Petro’s best men. I knew Fusculus well. Seeing me, he gave a cheery wave, pressed Euschemon in the chest with the flat of his hand to warn him to stay put, and then carne across.

  ‘Falco! He nobbled you then?’ The bastards must have discussed me earlier.

  ‘I gather Marcus Rubella is sunning himself in Campania, and the rest of you have forgotten how to do any work. That’s why you need me?’

  ‘It’s July. The Espartos have to douse fewer fires at night, but everyone is feeling hot and stinky and we’re inundated with tunic thieves at all the public baths.’

  ‘Well, lost underwear must be your priority! And Rubella would not want you getting bloodstains on your unifonns, while sorting out a slaying. He would hate to approve the dockets requisitioning new togs.’

  ‘Rubella’s all right, Falco.’

  ‘Change of heart? Do I gather he’s been in post long enough to stop hammering everyone because he’s new? Now you all regard him as lover-boy?’

  ‘We regard him as trouble,’ Fusculus replied gently.

  Tiberius Fusculus, heavy but fit, a cheery soul, was now Petro’s second-in-command, having grabbed the position after Petro shunted on Martinus, the previous lazy incumbent Fusculus was shaping up well, though his preferred element was not major crime but the thousands of elaborate fiddles and dodges that small-time crooks invented. Admiring the madness and light-fingered skill of flyboy purse-shifters and skallydiddlers, he had made an intense study of confidence tricks. Recognising Forum swindles would not help much here. As with all murders, the chances were that some obvious culprit had flared up and swiped a relative or close associate in a sudden fit of pique. Still, Fusculus would, if his services were available to me, search out clues to whoever had lost his or her temper as diligently as I could wish.

  ‘Are you on my complement?’ I asked bluntly.

  ‘For about half a day.’ Not long enough, if this turned out to be the one case in fifty that was complicated. ‘What’s the plan, Falco?’

  ‘How far have you gone?’

  ‘Corpse is still in situ. I’ll introduce you when you like. He’s not rushing off anywhere. This lot all claim they were together out here throughout the relevant period.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘After you left in a huff this morning -‘ He grinned; I just grinned back. ‘The deceased said he was going to work on manuscripts and went into his house… I glanced around while Fusculus was talking. There was, as Petro had mentioned, a doorway and a corridor which obviously led further inside the property. But if Aurelius Chrysippus was a rich man, that could hardly be the main entrance. Petro had described it as a grand abode. There must be formal access elsewhere.

  ‘So Chrysippus was being studious. Then what?’

  ‘A couple of hours later a slave was surprised to see the master’s lunch still sitting on a salver, untouched. Somebody then found the body and the screaming started. One of our sections was just up the street, dressing down the owner of a popina for a food offence. Our lads heard the racket, but did not have the sense to scarper without looking. So we’re landed.’

  ‘No,’ I said calmly. ‘I’m landed. Still, that should assist your clear-up figures.’

  ‘You reckon you’re the bod for it?’ Fusculus chortled genially.

  ‘A natural.’

  ‘Right, I’ll get the drinks in, ready to celebrate.’

  ‘You’re a hero. So what have you done so far without me?’

  He waved at the scriptorium staff. ‘I’ve been taking statements from this piteous bunch. Everyone who was in the main house when we arrived has been confined to quarters; there’s no guarantee we collared them all, though. A couple of our lads have begun working through the house slaves for any information of interest.’

  ‘What’s the set-up domestically? Was he a family man?’

  ‘That I’ve yet to find out.’

  I nodded at Euschemon. ‘Anything to say for himself?’

  ‘No.’ Fusculus half-turned, letting Euschemon hear him ‘Tight as a clam. But he’s only had the gentle treatment so far.’

  ‘Hear that?’ I winked at the scriptorium manager, hinting at unspeakable brutality to come. ‘Think about it! I’ll speak to you later. I shall expect a sensible story. Mean time, stick there, where you’re parked.’ Euschemon frowned uncertainly I raised my voice: ‘Don’t budge!’

  Fusculus motioned a ranker to watch Euschemon, while he and I went into the main property to inspect the scene of death.

  XI

  A SHORT, DARK, undecorated corridor with a slabbed stone floor led us straight out into the library. Light flooded down from rectangular openings high above. It was very quiet. Exterior noise was muffled by thick stone walls They would baffle interior noise too. A man being attacked here could call for help in vain.

  The plain approach had done nothing to prepare us for the vast scale of this room. Three tiers of slim columns mounted to the ceiling vaults, decorously topped with white capitals in all three classical orders: Ionic, Doric, Corinthian. Between the columns were pigeonholes, sized for complete scroll sets, rising so high that short wooden ladders stood against the walls to aid retrieval of the upper works. The pigeonholes were stuffed full with papyri. For a moment all I could take in were the quantities of scrolls, many of them huge fat things that looked of some age - collections of high-quality literature, without doubt. Unique, perhaps. Occasional busts of Greek playwrights and philosophers gazed down on the scene from niches. Poor replicas that my father would have sneered at. Too many heads of that well-known scribbler, ‘Unknown Poet’. It was words that counted here. Words, and whether they were saleable. Who wrote them came a poor second in importance.

  The terrible sight on which the bald reproductions were staring down certainly gave me a chill. Once my eyes fell on the corpse, it was hard to look anywhere else. My companion, who had seen this once, stood quiet and let me take it in.

 
‘Jupiter,’ I remarked quietly. It was hardly adequate.

  ‘He was face down. We turned him over,’ Fusculus said after a while. ‘I can put him back as we found him, if you like.’

  ‘Don’t bother for me.’

  We both continued staring. Then Fusculus blew out his cheeks and I murmured, ‘Jupiter!’ again.

  The open centre of the room was chaos. It should have been an area of peaceful study. A couple of high-backed, armless pedagogues’chairs must have normally served readers. They and their plush seat cushions now lay overturned on the exquisite geometric marble tiles. The floor was black and white. A pattern of great mathematical beauty, radiating outwards in meticulous arcs from a central medallion that I could not see because the body covered it. Ravishing work by a master mosaicist - now spattered with blood and soaked in pools of spilled - no, thrown, poured, deliberately hurled - black ink. Ink and some other substance - thick, brownish and oily, with a strong though rather pleasant scent.

  Aurelius Chrysippus lay face up in this mess. I recognised the grey hair and spade-shaped beard. I tried not to look at his face. Someone had closed his eyes. One sandalled foot was bent under the other leg, probably a result of the vigiles flipping the body. The other foot was bare. Its sandal lay two strides away, dragged off, with a strap broken. That would have happened earlier.

  ‘I’ll find something to cover him.’ The scene shocked even Fusculus. I had seen him before in the presence of grisly corpses, accepting them as matter-of-factly as any of the vigiles, yet here he had become uncomfortable.

  I held up a hand to stop him. Before he went searching for material to drape on the remains, I tried to work out the course of events. ‘Wait a moment. What do you think, Fusculus? I assume he was on the marble when found? But all this must have taken some time to achieve. He didn’t give up easily.’

  ‘I doubt if he was taken by surprise - a room this size, he must have seen whoever was corning.’

  ‘No one heard him call for help?’

  ‘No, Falco. Maybe he and the killer talked first. Maybe a quarrel developed. At some point they grappled. Looks as if one party at least used a chair to fence with; probably both. That was just one phase of the fight. I reckon the opponent had him on the ground by the end, and he was face down, scrabbling to escape what was being done to him. That was how it finished.’

  ‘But before that he and the assailant - or assailants? - had been eyeballing. He knew who it was.’

  ‘The clincher!’ agreed Fusculus. ‘The assailant knew there would be consequences unless this one was finished off.’

  ‘Chrysippus. That’s his name.’

  ‘Right. Chrysippus.’

  We afforded him politeness. But it was hard to think of what remained as having been a man who lived like us not long before.

  I moved nearer. To do so I had to wade through a carpet of blood-spotted papyrus - scrolls that were still rolled, and others that had shot open as they fell, unravelling and then tearing as the fight progressed. These scrolls must have been out that morning, in position to be worked on in some way. There was no sign that they had been wrenched from the pigeonholes, which all looked well ordered, and anyway the wreckage lay too far from the walls of this immensely spacious room for that to have happened. They must have come from the tables that stood at intervals, one still containing a stacked pile of unboxed documents.

  ‘You can see it was a face-to-face issue at some point,’ Fusculus said. ‘Some of the punches were landed from in front.’ Quietly he added, And the other business.’

  The ‘other business’ was both inventive and horrible.

  Avoiding various viscous pools, I stepped carefully right up to the corpse. Kneeling beside it, I agreed with Fusculus. One cheek had been jellied. Fusculus waited for me to comment on the rest. ‘Ouch! Very creative…’

  Jammed up one of the dead man’s nostrils was a wooden rod, the kind that scrolls are wound on. When it was shoved up his nose, the pain must have been appalling, though I did not think it would have killed him. Not unless it broke the skull bones and punctured the brain cavity. Somebody who loathed him would have felt better for doing this - but afterwards he would have been left with an opponent who was in agony and furious, yet still alive and able to identify whoever had struck him in this vicious way.

  I took hold of the blood-drenched rod, with distaste, and tugged it free. Blood came with it, but no brain. No; this had not been fatal.

  ‘This peculiar pile driving would have been most easily accomplished from the rear, Fusculus. Grab him with one arm, then ram him. Your free fist has the rod and jerks. The blow is towards you, and upwards.’

  ‘Hard.’

  ‘Hard!’

  The end of the scroll rod now had no finial; I knew there had been one at some stage, because beneath the bright gore at the rod’s tip was a short white area, its wood cleaner than the rest. The dowel had snapped, and the shorter part was tangled in the dead man’s tunic folds, held by splinters on the ripped fibres of the tunic neck from which a long tear ran almost to the waist. When I laid the two broken parts side by side on the tesserae, the short end had a gilded knob inthe shape of a dolphin on a tiny plinth. There was no sign anywhere of the missing finial from the longer end.

  ‘A man,’ I decided, to the unspoken but inevitable question.

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said Fusculus. Working on the Aventine, he must have met some tough women. He never discounted any possibility.

  ‘Oh, a man,’ I assured him gently, looking at the bruising from the fistfight that had battered Chrysippus into oblivion. Fist, and probably boot. And elbow. And knee. Headbutts. Hands clawing at clothing, which was ripped to shreds.

  I stood up, groaning. I flexed my spine. I looked around at the mess. Kicking up some of the papyrus, I saw blood under it. It seemed that at least some of the wreckage had been hurled on the floor after the man was dead. Scrolls flung everywhere. The ink thrown from its dark scriptorium-quantity flagon. The other substance furiously splashed around. Gingerly I took some up on one forefinger and sniffed.

  Fusculus pulled a face. ‘What in Hades is the stinky muck, Falco?’

  ‘Cedar oil. Used to deter bookworms. They paint it over the scrolls. That’s what gives them that faint yellow colouring. And the wonderful scent that rises from well-kept books. Librarians never have moths in their clothes, you know.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Fusculus was not a reader for pleasure and he rightly suspected I had made up the statement about moths. ‘He may look ugly, but he’s going to smell really nice on his pyre when he goes to the gods!’

  Killing Chrysippus had not been enough. With the corpse at his feet, the killer had risked staying here while he threw scrolls, ink and oil all over the room. His frustration and anger had continued. Whatever he wanted had remained unaccomplished. The death solved nothing.

  ‘One person?’ asked Fusculus, watching me.

  ‘Jove, I don’t know. What do you think?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Motive then?’ I asked him.

  ‘Primary motive: sheer bloody anger.’

  ‘Underlying motive?’

  ‘Business or pleasure, Falco.’

  ‘The usual pretty excuses. Still, at this juncture, we cannot tell which.’

  We walked around, bemused and slightly aimless.

  I could see why Petronius Longus had told Helena that this was the Greek library; a room divider, formed from two huge folding doors that stood open, perhaps permanently, separated the part where Chrysippus had died from an extension in the same style which seemed to contain Latin works. Well, I recognised old Virgil amongst the dusty busts anyway.

  ‘Can they take away the body?’ Fusculus was fidgeting. The vigiles like to see scenes of crime returning to normal. That way, people imagine that something has been achieved by the law’s presence.

  ‘Once I hear what the household people say. Then they can clear the mess. Mind you, the grout in the lovely mosaic is going to hold those
stains.’

  ‘Regrouting with a wash is the answer,’ said Fusculus, matching my reflective tone. ‘Clean the marble pieces thoroughly, then new cement sluiced all over the lot in a thin mixture, and sponged down.’

  ‘Expensive.’

  ‘Oh, but worth it. They’ll be looking at the fellow’s gore for ever otherwise.’

  ‘True. But, Tiberius Fusculus, whoever they are, they will probably not thank us for these careful household tips… So!’ I was ready now for the next unpleasantness. ‘Who are we talking about, I wonder? Ask your men if they have discovered anything from the household staff, will you? I’ll try to find out who’s who in the next of kin.’

  ‘I gave orders that nobody here was to be allowed a change of clothing before interview. The killer would have been carrying evidence of that enforced nosebleed, Falco, if nothing else.’

  ‘Great gods, yes; the murderer would have been covered in blood. You arranged a premises search?’

  ‘Of course. What kind of amateurs do you take us for, Falco?’

  Fusculus was well aware that murders most often happen for domestic reasons. He was right. Whoever lived here would be the first suspect or suspects, and they may not have had time or opportunity to conceal any evidence of their involvement. So I was high on the alert as I set out to discover who the dead man’s domestic associates might have been.

  XII

  THE TWINNED library had had grandiose proportions but an austere atmosphere. Outside was a small lobby which contained a fancy wooden shelf system, displaying a half-hearted Athenian pottery collection, and an empty side table with marble supports. The far exit door was guarded by two Egyptian pink granite miniature obelisks. Right across this lobby led a wide trail of sticky footprints, in various sizes, all well smudged.

  ‘Too many sightseers trampled the scene, Fusculus.’

  ‘Happened before I got here,’ he assured me righteously.