“No one’s said anything to me about it.”
“Yes, well just possibly the prefect doesn’t think it’s any of your business!”
That stung. “Search the house,” Pliny barked at Valens. From top to bottom. Search Verpa’s bedroom. The tablinum is too accessible. If these papers were important, I’ll wager he hid them some place more private.”
A few minutes later, Valens reported that a locked drawer in Verpa’s bedside table had been broken open with some sort of tool, leaving gouges on the wood. The drawer, however, was empty.
“Another puzzle,” Pliny said glumly to Martial. “And one we’ll never solve. I’ll mention it to the prefect. But the main thing is that we’ve got our murderer, and that was all I set out to do. Centurion, place Lucius under house arrest and guard him well.”
Three things remained to be done. The first was to inform the city prefect of his success. The thought of going there himself was too distasteful. He scribbled a note and handed it to one of the troopers.
The second was to inform Scortilla. He found her in her apartment. “Ganymede and Lucius?” Her voice cracked, broke into a high-pitched cackle. Her eyes glittered. With what—relief, triumph, stark madness? He asked her about the missing papers but got nothing but a blank stare. How he loathed this woman! He left quickly.
The third, was to address the slaves. He had avoided visiting them lately; their misery was more than he could bear. But now he had a purpose. As the door swung open, the stench of urine and sweat hit him like a blow to the belly. “Valens,” he gasped, “this is an atrocity! I want this place cleaned up and the slaves let out in batches for a wash and some exercise.”
“Yes, sir.”
Watched by forty pairs of dull and sunken eyes, Pliny sucked air behind his hand and stepped into the big room. “Humble friends, hear me! The murderers have been exposed! Ganymede and Lucius conspired together to murder your master. The rest of you are entirely innocent. The Roman Games close in just eight days. This case will go to trial soon after, and I promise you that your imprisonment will end on that day. Be patient only a little longer!”
Like one writhing mass, they crawled to him on their bellies. Croaking voices cried out, “You are our god!” Filthy hands touched his feet, caught at the hem of his cloak. Overcome, Pliny fled.
At home Pliny announced his triumph to the family, sparing no detail of Lucius’ diabolical ingenuity and his own clear-sighted penetration. He had suspected Lucius from the start! Of course, he couldn’t have solved the matter so quickly without the collaboration of his friend Martial. He threw an arm around him.
The poet, with uncharacteristic modesty, smiled but said nothing. Pliny’s slaves ran to kiss his hands in gratitude for their fellows. Calpurnia sang his praises. To Amatia the news seemed like a tonic. Her pale cheeks took on color, she became positively gay and drank a glass of wine. Before dinner was served, Martial excused himself, pleading fatigue, and left them all in high spirits.
The third hour of the night.
Martial walked along the Via Triumphalis to the arch which carried the Claudian Aquaduct. The popina was a narrow, low-ceilinged establishment where big copper cauldrons of stews and chowders sat in holes cut in the stone counter top. The poet had no appetite, but he took a wooden bowl and spoon and was served a steaming mess of stringy meat and vegetables by a woman whose forearms were the size and color of hams. He threw a coin on the counter. He scanned the room. The place was not crowded. Some young men played a noisy game of dice in one corner. Others, a group of working men in leather aprons, sat together at a table and shoveled food mechanically into their mouths, not talking. It was a moment before he noticed the solitary figure at the back. The man sat hunched over his plate, cutting his meat clumsily with one hand, for the other was pressed to his side in a sling. Martial slid onto the bench beside him.
Who was this fellow and what had he to do with the exalted Parthenius? Martial did as he had been instructed: took from his pouch a waxed tablet on which he had scratched a few hasty lines and tucked it into the man’s sling, trying to touch him as little as possible. The man never looked up. So, Parthenius would learn that Lucius was the murderer of his father; that Verpa had possessed a couple of papers, one of which might be a horoscope, but no one could find them; that Pliny was satisfied he had solved the case; and that Amatia, the lady from Lugdunum, was, as far as he could tell, in good health and good spirits. He had tried pumping her without success. If something about her bothered him it was too insubstantial to be put into words. And that was that. May the grand chamberlain be glad of it.
Martial moved the food around in his bowl. He still had no appetite. Finally, he couldn’t resist the urge to speak.
“Who are you, friend?”
“No one you know.” The voice, husky and barely audible.
“I know a lot of people.”
“Not me.”
“How did you hurt your arm? I broke my ankle once—damned long time to mend.”
Silence.
“What’s this all about, then? What do you do for Parthenius?”
The silence continued for several minutes. At last, the poet pushed his bowl away, got up and, in an even darker mood than when he arrived, left.
Stephanus sat and chewed his food without relish. He disliked this business as much as the poet did. But, where Martial was baffled and torn, he, Stephanus, was clear. He had once been chief steward in a great house. Born a slave, then freed by his master, he had risen to command a small army of slaves, seeing that everything was just so, that the finest wines and delicacies were always in plentiful supply, that the kitchen served dishes that were the envy of other houses. And his master and mistress knew his worth and treasured him. Those poor souls. Too late for the noble Clemens, but if he could help his mistress, at least, to regain her liberty, her house, her children—well, for that he was ready to risk his life.
That night, Gaius Plinius Secundus, acting vice prefect of Rome, composed himself for sleep with a feeling of satisfaction not to be described. Tomorrow was Verpa’s funeral. He would go, and bring Martial with him. Why not witness the last chapter of this sad farce? His friend would certainly find matter in it for a wicked verse or two.
Chapter Nineteen
The day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day eight of the Games.
The third hour of the day.
The air in Verpa’s atrium was heavy with incense and mystery. Pliny mopped his face. None of the sycophants and legacy hunters who had attended the reading of the will were present now, and Lucius was nowhere to be seen, but the place was filled with officiants from the temple in their tightly wound, ankle-length linen gowns. A tall, broad-shouldered priest, his head covered with the black and gold jackal mask of Anubis, recited the Names and Powers of Queen Isis, Lady of the House of Life, Daughter of Kronos, Star of the Sea, and chanted her sacred story. How the evil Typhon had slain and dismembered her brother-husband Osiris and scattered his limbs and how the grieving goddess had gathered them and breathed life into them, so guaranteeing blessed immortality to all who believed in her.
Meanwhile priestesses on either side of him stamped their feet and jingled their bronze rattles. In an alcove, a dozen hired female mourners, bare-breasted and disheveled, ululated around the painted coffin. And all this to send Sextus Ingentius Verpa into the blessed hereafter that Isis promised her initiates.
Later, a team of mules would draw the casket, followed by this howling, chanting horde, out to the family crypt on the Via Appia beyond the city .
Pliny found the whole thing appalling. Quite un-Roman. In the days of the old Republic the government had repressed this alien cult, tearing down Iseums as fast as they sprang up. One Roman consul took an ax in his own hands to splinter the temple’s door when the workers hung back. Later, the Deified Augustus banned the cult repeatedly from Rome. It was, after all, the religion of his archenemy, Cleopatra; and Tiberius ha
d thrown Isis’ statue into the Tiber and crucified her scandalous priests. But the mad Caligula added her worship to the state cults, and subsequent emperors, even the sensible Vespasian, all paid her honor.
Domitian was especially devoted to the Queen of Heaven and had built the splendid new temple for her in the Campus Martius. So now these worshippers of the filthy animal-headed gods of subjugated Egypt paraded themselves openly and without fear.
Pliny wondered idly whether the same good fortune might befall even those world-hating Christians some day—ridiculous, of course.
Nectanebo bustled about self-importantly. Scarab bracelets decorated his thin arms, his eyes were outlined with kohl, and a gilded cobra head sat on his brow.
Martial stopped in midstride and stared hard at the embalmer. “Wait a minute,” he whispered to Pliny, “I know that man from somewhere.” He stepped up and laid a hairy paw on the undertaker’s bare shoulder, yanking him around. “Diaulus, you bastard, is that you under all that fancy dress? By the balls of Priapus, it is you!” Scortilla, standing nearby, gaped in astonishment. “Woman,” growled the poet, “if this man’s an Egyptian then I’m a tattooed Agathyrsian!”
“What’s this?” inquired Pliny, coming up.
“This is one Diaulus, a quack and a charlatan who deserves a public flogging, if nothing worse!” Martial scowled savagely at the little man. “Diaulus, this is the vice prefect of the city, who happens to be a particular friend of mine.”
The undertaker knew he was trapped. With as much dignity as he could manage, he croaked, “Diaulus is my name, sir—but a quack? Never!”
The priest of Anubis stopped in mid-chant; suddenly all eyes were on them.
“Some years ago, your poetical friend came to me for medical attention,” said the undertaker, glancing warily at Martial. “Some trouble with our libido, wasn’t it?” To Pliny he explained in a confidential tone: “You see, sir, I am an undertaker by trade, but I aspire to the sacred calling of physician, and I’ve made rather a specialty of male complaints. Well, as I say, your friend came to me and I applied stinging nettles to the, ah, part in question, a remedy of my own devising, which I’ve had great success with, I may say. All back to normal now, I hope, sir?” There was a malicious glint in his eye.
“No thanks to you, you assassin!”
“Extraordinary,” breathed Pliny.
“I fear he was dissatisfied with my treatment, and published some rather cutting verses about me.”
“Diaulus buries corpses now (Martial recited).
A doctor once was he.
The patients that he used to kill,
He counts among his clients still,
And earns a double fee.”
“Very witty, I am sure,” Diaulus sneered. “The fact is, embalming allows me to pursue my study of anatomy. Bodies are hard to come by otherwise. I venture to say I do more dissections in a year than most physicians do in a lifetime. Your friend calls me a quack—me! But I’m a good enough doctor to have noticed something very peculiar about this particular body. Oh, I could show you something that would surprise you.” Pride had gotten the better of Diaulus’ discretion.
A voice screamed in Pliny’s brain to ignore this little man and allow the funeral to proceed. Instead, he said, “Oh?”
Oh, yes. There was no stopping him now. When he had removed the body to his embalming shop and uncovered it, Diaulus said, the face was awful to behold: the tongue protruding, the eyes bulging, the mouth hideously twisted. “Rigor had already set in. Cadaveric spasm, we physicians call it.” Here Martial made a derisive snort.
“You see, sir, it comes on quick like that sometimes; almost instantaneously when the victim is exerting himself or in a state of high emotion at the moment of death—in the act of love, for example. The gentleman’s left hand was clutching his throat, the fingers really digging in. But it was his right hand, sir. His right hand was gripping his, ah, membrum virile—I eschew the language of the streets, sir—still in a state of tumescence. I had hard work getting him to let go of it, I can tell you. After some hours the rigor passed and things, ah, settled down, so to speak.”
Pliny and Martial exchanged glances; the same thought occurred to both of them. Had Ganymede made love to his intended victim and slaughtered him at the moment of climax? Did that pathetic boy have so much nerve?
“Now, as to the stab wounds, sir,” the undertaker continued, warming to his subject. “Understanding him to be a murdered gentleman, I was glad of the chance to observe the effects of the blade on the internal organs. But, to my great disappointment, there were none to be seen! Whoever wielded that knife was a weakling indeed. I would almost have said a woman. He inflicted a great many superficial cuts, but he didn’t succeed in piercing a single vital organ, neither lungs, nor liver, nor kidneys, and there was no internal hemorrhaging at all, sir, I’ll take my oath on that. The organs, by the way, are in those jackal-headed jars right there by the coffin, if you’d care to have a look.”
“I would,” replied Pliny grimly, “and more. Valens, and you men, carry the casket into that side room. We’ll have it open right now. Oh, and fetch Lucius out here.”
“Sacrilege!” screamed the priest of Anubis, who had been listening to this. “I forbid it!”
Martial looked at Pliny as if he’d taken leave of his senses. Their carefully constructed case was about to collapse unless he stopped now. In fact, Pliny was amazed at himself. He had never suspected he was capable of such brutal decisiveness. But there was something of his uncle, the natural historian, in him that would let nothing deter him from ascertaining a fact.
“Do as I say, centurion. And clear all these people out of here. The funeral is postponed.”
The mourners, with their palm fronds, their rattles, their pitchers of Nile water, and all the rest of their paraphernalia made a hasty exit. The last to leave was the priest, who was calling down a host of barbarous demons to feast on the vice prefect’s guts. He had ripped off his mask and suddenly Pliny recognized him as the man with the star-shaped mark on his shaven skull who had been present at the reading of the will. The man who was now in charge of spending an incredible two million sesterces. It wasn’t hard to imagine how much of that would stick to his immaculate fingertips. Unless, of course, the will turned out to be a forgery.
Diaulus was nearly in tears. “Oh, why did I open my mouth?”
“Well, you did,” said Martial, “and it’s too late now.”
The casket was sealed with wax. When they finally got the lid off a sweet, sickening effluvium mingled of resin and decay assailed their nostrils. Pliny felt nausea start in his throat. The wrappings were stiff and discolored with a yellowish stain. The body had leaked. “Too little time, too hot—” Diaulus mumbled.
“Cut the wrappings, undertaker,” Pliny ordered with all the authority he could muster. But the little man shrank back. “I’ll lose my position!” Finally, Valens drew his sword, inserted the tip at the crotch and ripped upward, laying open the cocoon of bandages. Here, at last, was the man himself. Turpia Scortilla, who had followed them in, took one look and fainted dead away. Swallowing hard, Pliny peered at Verpa’s naked torso.
“That gash in his side looks fatal enough.”
“That was my incision for removing the organs,” Diaulus explained. “Turn him over and pull the bandages away from his back.”
The back was covered with a dozen or more puckered, livid wounds. “These were the only wounds on him when I got him,” said Diaulus, “and not one deeper than the tip of my little finger.” Ganymede, in an evident frenzy of hate, had rained useless, ill-aimed blows on his victim. “The veins were still full of blood when I opened him up. When a man’s killed by sword or knife the blood runs copiously from him. But cut into a body which has died some hours before, as my profession requires me to do, and you notice that the blood flows sluggishly. No one knows why, sir, but it’s true.”
Pliny shook his head. “If I had seen the body immediately, I cou
ld have discarded the idea of a professional killer at once.”
“Now, if you’ll roll him back again,” Diaulus continued, “and expose the throat.” It was purple with bruises.
“What would make a man strangle himself?”
“Nothing in my experience, sir. But that’s not what killed him either, the windpipe wasn’t crushed.”
Meanwhile, Martial’s gaze had wandered lower. “Decent sized mentula on him.”
“Trust you to notice that,” observed Pliny with asperity.
“If you’re referring to the gentleman’s member, I found something rather odd there, too. Not much to look at now,” wrapping his fingers in a napkin, he retracted the foreskin carefully, “but there, you see? When the body was fresh it was tumescent, quite erect. I couldn’t help but notice that swollen lump on the glans.” It still looked for all the world like a nasty bee sting. “I’ve no idea what could have made it, sir. All I do know is that this man was dead before he was murdered, so to speak.”
“Dead of what?” Pliny cried in exasperation.
Diaulus pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “We don’t know what most people die from, not really, sir. We blame it on the humors, but that’s just a name we give to our ignorance.”
“The quack’s a philosopher, too!” sneered Martial.
Meanwhile, Lucius had been brought into the room. It had taken him only a moment to digest this new development. His lips curved in a cunning smile. “Then I’m guilty of nothing, vice prefect. I can’t have procured the murder of a dead man.”
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