Lindsey Davis - Falco 13 - A Body In The Bath House

by A Body In The Bath House(lit)

  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. 4Oh 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 Dalmatian 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.

  Gains had flushed slightly. “The financial procurator?”

  “A tine 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 favourites. 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 painiree 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 humour,” 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 backboard. 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 bath houses, 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 recor
d. 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 recognise,“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-seller. 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.

  “Hades, Quintus. This is tricky. Suppose Verovolcus and Mandumerus murdered Pomponius.”

  “Why would they?”

  “Well, because Verovolcus is loyal to his royal master. He knows all about the King’s design rages with Pomponius. He probably thought the King preferred working with Marcellinus. It’s even possible there was some exchange of benefits between Verovolcus and Marcellinus. Unaware that someone else was planning to kill Marcellinus, let’s say Verovolcus decided to eliminate Pomponius remove the new incumbent so the old one can be brought back. His crony Mandumerus would be happy to help; he had just lost a lucrative post on site, and Pomponius had wanted to crucify him. No doubt about it, Mandumerus would be after revenge.”

  “Do you believe the King connived at this, Falco?” Justinus was shocked. For one thing, he could see it was a stupid thing for anyone to have done. For another, the whimsical boy liked to believe in the nobility of barbarians.

  “Of course not!” I snarled. “My thoughts are strictly diplomatic.”

  Well, that could be true.

  “So killing Pomponius was an unsophisticated manoeuvre by two misguided henchmen that was doomed to exposure?” Justinus demanded.

  “Not quite,” I told him sadly. “If the surmise is correct only idiots would go ahead and expose it.”

  A short time later I made a formal request for a private interview with the Great King.

  ILLI

  time for a professional statement. A problem arises when working with clients who demand confidentiality clauses: the investigator is required to keep silent for ever about his cases. Many a private informer could write titillating memoirs, full of slime and scandal, were this not the case. Many an imperial agent could produce a riveting autobiography, in which celebrated names would jiggle in shocking juxtaposition with those of vicious mobsters and persons with filthy morals of both sexes. We do not do it. Why? They do not let us.

  I cannot say I ever heard of a sensitive client calling up a court injunction to protect his reputation. That’s no surprise. Faced with public exposure by me, many of my own clients would take action privately. A father of young children cannot risk being found lying in an alley with his brains spread around his head. And working for the Emperor involved even more constraints. This subtlety was not spelled out in my contract because it did not need to be. Vespasian used me because I was known to be discreet. Anyway, I never managed to obtain a contract.

  Want to hear about the Vestal, the hermaphrodite, and the Superintendent of Riverbanks? You won’t get a sniff of it from me. Is a nasty rumour running around that horses’ wet-weather shoes, all left-footed, were once ludicrously over-provisioned by the army at enormous cost? Sorry; I cannot comment. As for whether one of the imperial princes had a forbidden liaison with… No, no. Not even to be condemned as tasteless speculation! (But I do know which of the Caesars…) I myself will never reveal who really fathered the baker’s twins, the current location of that girl with the massive bust, which cousin is due to inherit from your feeble uncle in Formiae, or the true size of your brother-in-law’s gambling debts. Well, not unless you hire me and pay me: fee, plus costs, plus full indemnity against nuisance claims and libel suits.

  I mention these points because if there were any scandals involving the building scheme, I was there specifically to suppress those scandals. One day the great palace at Noviomagus Regnensis would stand proud, every gracious wing of it fulfilling the vision of which Pomponius had dreamed. My role was not simply to get the monstrosity built, within a realistic margin of its completion date and budget, but to ensure it never became notorious. Magnus, Cyprianus, the craftsmen and labourers could all move on to other projects, where they might well curse the palace as an old bugbear, but their moans would soon be lost amid new troubles. Otherwise, its sorry design history would die, leaving only sheer scale and magnificence to excite admirers.

  Here would be the palace of Togidubnus, Great King of the Britons: an astounding private home, a tremendous public monument. It would dominate its insignificant landscape in this forlorn district of a desolate province, possibly for centuries. Rulers would come and go. Further refurbishments would succeed one another, according to Fate and funding. Inevitably its fortunes would wane. Decay would triumph. It roofs would fall and its walls crumble. The marsh birds would reclaim the nearby inlets, then call and cry _

  over nothing but waterlogged hummocks and tussocks, with all

  grandeur forgotten.

  All the more reason for me to sit one day in some gimcrack villa of my own, to gaze across a low river valley, while rowdy descendants of Nux barked at shrieking infants in some struggling provincial garden where my ancient wife was reading on a sunny bench, intermittently asking her companions to keep quiet because the old fellow was writing his memoirs.

  Pointless. There would be no scroll-seller willing to copy such a story.

  I could take the private route. Any head of household hopes to become someone’s interesting ancestor. I could write it all out and shove the scroll in a casket, to keep under a spare bed. My children were bound to minimise my role. But maybe there would be grandchildren with greater curiosity. I might even feel the need to limit their noble pretensions by reminding the rumbustuous little beggars that their background had some low, livery moments…

  Impossible again, due to that invariable brake: client confidentiality.

  You can see the problem. When I reported home on these events, the Noviomagus file was swiftly closed. Anyone who claims to know what happened must have heard it from someone other than me. Claudius Lacta, that most secretive of bureaucrats, made it clear that I was forbidden ever to reveal what Togi and I discussed…

  Mind you, I never had any time for Lacta. Listen, then (but don’t repeat it, and I mean that).

  I had asked to see the King in private. He honoured this, not even producing Verovolcus: a nice courtesy. More useful than he knew or was supposed to realise.

  I myself had more stringent rules; I took back-up. “Clean, smart, shaved,” I told the Camillus brothers. “No togas. I want this off the record but I want you as witnesses.”

  “Aren’t you being too obvious?” asked Aelianus.

  “That’s the point,“Justinus snapped.

  The King received us in a lightly furnished reception room, which had a dado with sinuous tendrils of foliage, its colouring and form exactly like one at the Marcelli
nus villa. I admired the painting, then pointed out the similarity. I began by discussing diplomatically whether this use of labour and materials could be coincidence then mentioned that we were retrieving the building supplies that were currently stored at the villa. Togidubnus could work out why.

  “I had every confidence in Marcellinus,” commented the King in a neutral tone.

  “You must have been quite unaware of the nature and scale of what went on.” Togidubnus was a friend and colleague of Vespasian. He might be mired in fraud up to his regal neck, but I formally accepted his innocence. I knew how to survive. Informers sometimes have to forget their principles. “You are the figurehead for all the British tribes. A corrupt site regime could have damaged your standing. For Marcellinus to place you unwittingly in that position was inexcusable.”

  The King wryly acknowledged how delicately I had expressed it.

  I acknowledged the acknowledgement. “Nothing should ever take away the fact that Marcellinus designed you a worthy home, in splendid style, where you were comfortable for a long period.”

  “He was a superb designer,” agreed Togidubnus solemnly. “An architect with a major talent and exquisite taste. A warm and gracious host, he will be much missed by his family and friends.”

  This showed that the tribal chief of the Atrebates was fully Romanised: he had mastered the great forum art of providing an obituary for a corrupt bastard.

  And how would he record Pomponius, loathed by everyone except his fleeting boyfriend Plancus? A superb designer… major talent… exquisite taste… A private man, whose loss will greatly affect close associates and colleagues.

  We discussed Poniponius and his affecting loss.

  “There have been some rather feeble attempts to implicate innocent parties. So many people disliked him, it has complicated matters. I have some leads,” I told the King. “I am prepared to spend time and effort on these lines of enquiry. There will be evidence; witnesses may come forward. That would mean a murder trial, unsavoury publicity, and if convicted, the killers would face capital punishment.”

  The King was watching me. He did not ask for names. That could mean he knew already. Or that he saw the truth and stood aloof.