“This is my husband, Didius Falco,” Helena said. “I mentioned him last night.” She had not told me I had been discussed. Now I was stuck, not knowing what role she had assigned me. I grinned sheepishly.
“Greetings, Falco.” Thank goodness, Popillius himself had no recollection of his chat at dinner with Helena. He was desperately trying to remember who and what I was, though he did remember Helena. Jealousy works two ways: I hoped he did not remember her too well. Lawyers womanize almost as hard as they drink. I knew; I had met plenty in my work.
We talked a bit about what Popillius hoped for in Britain. I suggested he was a slave-chaser, suing people for the return of runaways or for seducing someone else’s human property. He reckoned British society was insufficiently slave-oriented to bring in much business of that type. “There are slaves condemned to hard labor; they simply slog until they die, in remote locations. Domestically, if a household owns a couple of little kitchen workers, that’s it. They are far too well treated—they end up marrying the master or the mistress. No incentive to run away, and they don’t even seem to get laid by the neighbors much.”
“Ah, what you need are big estates where the labor force is money; if a body goes missing, it’s a commercial loss.”
“Better still, I need to be able to demand compensation for expensive Greek accountants, masseurs, and musicians!” Popillius laughed.
“You have looked into the prospects, then?” I asked.
“Only joking,” he fibbed. “Bringing a high-class legal service to the province is my mission. I want to do commercial and maritime casework.”
I told him that was highly commendable. He seemed unused to irony.
“Sorry, Falco—I don’t recall what your wife said you do?”
Sometimes I cannot be bothered to bluff. “Government work. I’m looking into a suspicious death that seems to be gangster-related.”
Popillius raised his light-colored eyebrows. “That is surely not why you have come to visit me?” If he was offended, he was working out just how wronged, financially, he intended to be.
“I am looking at everyone,” I assured him gently. “I hate to disappoint you, but letting me eliminate you from my inquiry won’t lead to slander fees!”
Popillius gave me a level, warning stare. “I don’t bother with slander claims, Falco.”
The implication was that if I upset him, he would do for me in much more dangerous ways.
I smiled. “How long have you been in the province?”
“Just a couple of days.” Not enough to be my suspect—if it was the truth.
“Ever found your way to a drinking dive called the Shower of Gold?”
“Never. I prefer to entertain myself at home, with a well-aged amphora.”
“Very wise,” I said. “You can buy a good Italian variety, even this far north. Let it settle well. Then dribble it through a wine-strainer two or three times—and pour it down a drain. Table wines from Germany and Gaul seem to survive the route march better.”
“Thank you for your advice,” he replied.
“It’s no trouble,” I said.
There was no point hanging around just to discuss his gustation habits. Lawyers are snobs. He was bound to believe in more expensive vintages than I ever thought worthwhile for home consumption with a pan-fried mullet. The grand wines of the Empire stood no chance of traveling well so far as this, but I deduced it would be hard to shake his prejudice.
I could see no sign that he had companions staying here, and if he had only just arrived, what new friends could he possibly have made? So the big question was, when Popillius poured the precious grape of an evening, who shared it with him?
We left, no better and no worse informed than when we came. Slowly we walked back toward the residence. Both Helena and I were mulling over what kind of man this lawyer seemed to be, and what his real quality was. I was paying little attention to our surroundings and less to passersby.
But I was all there when a familiar voice hissed at me from a doorway: “Marcus darling, come over here! I must have a little word with you—”
Chloris!
XXVIII
She was leaning on a doorframe as if she had been there a long time waiting for me.
“Olympus, you made me jump, you fiend! Are you watching the lawyer’s house?”
“What lawyer? I was looking for you, darling.”
Chloris ignored Helena. Helena’s gaze was fixed on me.
“What’s it about, Chloris?”
“The Briton in the well.”
Anything else could have been brushed aside. This I had to pursue. I turned to Helena, giving her the choice. With an angry shrug, she left me to it. As she strode off alone, a fool might have taken her departure for a sign of trust. Not me.
Chloris looked pleased with herself. “That was easy!”
“Wrong. Make it quick.”
“We can’t talk in the street.”
“Find a bar then.”
“My house is nearby.”
It was not that near. “We’ll go to a bar,” I said tersely.
We walked to a foodshop, fairly neat and tidy, called the Cradle in the Tree. I obtained the usual unappetizing British cold snacks.
We sat on a bench in the street. This was some way from the wharves so I felt we were probably out of the extortionists’ patch. Even so, by instinct I checked to see if the proprietor was leaning on the counter above, listening. He had gone inside.
“You look tired,” commented Chloris, who looked immaculate. Arena performers are fit and they know how to present themselves. “Is your snooty goddess a goer? Rumpled bedclothes all night, was it?”
“Chloris, get on with it.”
“This is no way to approach a witness.”
“Witness to what?”
“The death scene.”
“Oh yes? Look, don’t mess me about on this.”
“You just assume I know nothing,” she complained. She could have been nagging me for not paying her enough attention. Well, perhaps she was.
“Right.” I would do this properly. “I am investigating the death of a Briton called Verovolcus, a visitor to Londinium from a tribe on the south coast. His body was discovered headfirst down a well at a filthy mead kennel down towards the river, four days ago. It looks as if he was robbed. There could be more to it. So, do you, Chloris, know anything that might help me find his killers?”
“How about, I know who did it?”
“Who?”
“Ask me questions. I’m a witness.”
“You’ll be a suspect at this rate—and the questioning will be done by the governor’s horrible torture squad.”
“I won’t talk to them.”
I opened my mouth to say everyone talked to the quaestiones. Then I stopped. She was not boasting.
“They could even kill me,” sneered Chloris. “But you know all I would say to them would be, Stuff you!”
“So charming. In that case, they certainly would kill you . . . Tell me then. Were you there that night?”
“Close enough.”
“In the bar?”
“No, but right outside looking in.” There were windows, though I remembered they were small and barred.
“What brought you there?”
“Tailing a man who has been bothering us.”
“He’s brave! Name?”
“That was one thing I was hoping to find out.”
“Helena Justina told me you are being pressured by an entrepreneur.”
“He won’t get us.”
I sighed patiently. “I know that, Chloris. But then I know you, while he’s not so well informed. I’m sure you will make him quite aware of his mistake! He’s a Roman?”
“He’s a bastard.”
“I deduced that . . . Either help or shut up. If you just want to tantalize me, I’m off.”
She grinned. “I’ll help. The tantalizing comes later.”
“Oh please! Just get on with it.”
Chloris licked her fingers clean and stared up at the blue sky. “I’ll say this for the wife—she knows how to keep him skewered to the home bed!” I said nothing. My food lay uneaten alongside me on the bench. In this company I was not touching stuffed flatbread—or indeed, anything else; I felt a distinct lack of appetite. Chloris continued, as demurely as she did anything: “The big punter—or he thinks he is—had been at our house nagging us again about letting him take over. We sent him off, then I slipped after. I followed him half across town to that dump, the Shower of Gold. Outside, he had a muffled meet with those other bastards, Pyro and Splice.”
“I’ve seen them.”
“Pigs,” Chloris denounced them, without much feeling. “They held a confab then all went inside the joint. I sneaked up close. Soon the Briton came along. He took an interest—”
“In the place?”
“No, dummy.”
“In you? That’s Verovolcus. He would.”
“You knew him then, Marcus?” She sounded surprised.
“We had met. That’s how I came to be involved in the case afterwards. You shook him off, I take it?”
“He stood no chance.”
“Why not? He had a nice big torque.” That reminded me: I had to find out what happened to it.
“And a nice big opinion of himself. How could I fall for him, after I had been with you, darling?” Chloris laughed. “I may have moaned about you, Falco, but you show up well against a hairy Britunculus any day.”
“Thanks for nothing.”
“Pay me back later . . . He was going into the Shower of Gold, but there was no way I would join him in there. I didn’t want the big fellow to know I had come after him.”
“But it sounds as if the Briton may have had a prearrangement?”
She nodded. “He said somebody was waiting.”
“What happened when Verovolcus went inside?”
“Not much, for some time. I couldn’t see much anyway, the window was too small. I had decided to give up and leave. Then I overheard them all arguing.”
“Listen—would you say that they knew each other prior to that?”
“It seemed so. I could see them all sitting at the same table. Your Briton had gone straight up to them; they were definitely the people he had arranged to meet.”
“Could you tell what they were discussing?”
“No. But Verovolcus was getting the worst of it. There was a lot of talk, then it clearly got nasty. Looked as if Verovolcus was blustering—but he was out of his league. Our mighty would-be manager was running it. He did nothing—just sat at the table—but I saw him give the nod.”
“To Pyro and Splice?”
“Yes.” She paused. Chloris lived at the crude end of society; she had seen much envy and anger in action. Even so, she shuddered when she talked about murder. “Pyro and Splice grabbed the Briton. It looked as if they had planned it. When their leader gave the signal they picked him straight up, turned him over, and dragged him off out the back. He must have known that he couldn’t trust that group, but he stood no chance.”
“Of course you couldn’t see what went on out in the yard?”
“I didn’t need to. They poked him in the well and left him there. Everyone heard about it the next day—anyway, I saw the way they laughed when they came back into the bar.”
“Who took away the neck torque?”
“Pyro, I suppose. He is the swag-carrier.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“No, I didn’t see for certain.”
“Don’t get clever, then,” I warned. “Tell me only what you saw yourself. What happened next?”
“What do you think happened, darling? The bar emptied like magic. Everyone knows what reputation Pyro and Splice have. I lit out of there just ahead of the crowd. I wasn’t going to be found spying on that lot. If I didn’t know you, I’d be making sure I forgot about it. I know what’s good for me!”
I sat quiet.
Chloris had absorbed my mood. “This is bad stuff.”
“The whole of Londinium seems to be full of bad stuff. Chloris, I need to know about this man, your would-be manager—”
“I knew you would ask.”
“Sorry to be predictable.”
“Ah, you don’t change . . .” I had no idea what that meant. “He’s a mystery,” she said. “He turns up out of nowhere when he wants to have a go at us. We don’t know where he’s staying, though we know he came from Rome. He has Rome written all over him, and I don’t mean the pretty parts. He never even says his name. He demands to take us over—and makes it very clear that he’ll be very unpleasant if we keep saying no.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He’s a nonentity.”
“That doesn’t help, Chloris.”
“No—could be any man! She giggled. “Don’t ask me. I only look at men I might go to bed with, darling.”
“Try, please.”
“He’s nothing, Falco. If you passed him in the Via Flaminia you wouldn’t look twice at him.”
“So how and why does this unobtrusive bastard get to worry you so much?”
“Silent threat. But I’ll get him.”
“Be careful. Leave this to the professionals. I’m here to go after these gangsters—and as a matter of fact, so is my old friend Petronius.”
“Well, I’m chuffed to hear that,” Chloris muttered derisively.
“You remember Petro?”
“I remember the two of you, mucking about like idiots.”
I smiled, but I was thinking hard. “Chloris, would you be prepared to make a statement about the killing?”
“Why not? For you, I can be a witness.”
“I warn you, if you give us a formal deposition, it will be dangerous.”
“Oh, you’ll take care of me!”
I would try.
“Is that it, darling?” she murmured. She sounded like a girl who had been let down by a man in bed.
“Unless you can think of anything else helpful?”
“No. So are you coming home with me now?”
“We’ve had our chat.”
“When was chatting any fun?”
“Sorry. I have other things to do.”
She stood up, not pushing it. “I won’t intrude, then! Another time . . .”
Chloris could take a rebuff now, apparently. I remembered when my saying no would have been a challenge. But in those days she had known that I really wanted to be won over.
She marched off, swinging along the pavement with the easy stride of a trained athlete. I sat on for a moment.
Suddenly I had a witness. This was not all good news. I could arrest Pyro and Splice when I wanted, and interrogate the pair of them . . .That was all I could do. If they failed to crack, I was nowhere.
I had a witness, sure enough. At least she had described what happened that night. But I could never use her statement. Chloris was a gladiator—legally infamous. Information from her was even worse than information from a slave. If she made us a hundred statements, she could not appear in court. Any good lawyer, especially a crooked one, would have a fine time in his speech for the defense, if someone of her low calling—and female too—was our only source of evidence.
I stood up to leave. The proprietor must have sensed it; he had appeared behind his counter. I wondered how long he had been there, but he did not look like a man who had overheard the story Chloris told. “Anything else, sir?” he asked me deferentially.
“No thanks.” I still had not touched my food. “The Cradle in the Tree,” I said, looking up at his sign, where a yellow crib among a few spindly twigs made its faded point. “That’s an unusual shop name!”
He just smiled and murmured, “It was called that when I took over.”
Names given to foodshops were starting to be of some interest to me.
XXIX
Wanting to think, I sneaked back into the residence unobtrusively. Avoiding areas of the house where I might enco
unter people, I found my way to an upper reception room that had doors onto a long balcony over the formal garden. There I ensconced myself on a long, low sunbed in the shade. I could hear fountains below, and the occasional midday cheeps of hot little sparrows as they splashed in the half-evaporated fountain bowls. With a cool drink, this could have been a perfect way to pass the afternoon. Unfortunately, on my way up here I had not acquired a drink.
The day was so warm, I could have been in Rome. (If only!) You could feel the difference. Too much flower and tree pollen was thickening the air, the scent of August roses was rising from the garden below me, amid hints of the countryside close by—yet no scent of pines. Too much sense of a big river estuary, with seagulls sometimes calling as they scavenged around the moored ships. Anyone could tell that Londinium was a port. And it felt a foreign one.
The sunbed on which I was lying had dampness in its thin pallet. It had been left in storage until this heat wave was well established, as if people feared the good weather would be fleeting. Garden furniture needed to be mobile in Britain; when people moved out among the flowerbeds below, I could hear the legs of chairs scraping the gravel as they brought equipment and arranged themselves.
It was Maia and Aelia Camilla. I would have slipped indoors, but I could hear that they had been talking about how Maia found Petronius to tell him about his daughters’ deaths. Perhaps that was what had improved their relationship; my sister and the procurator’s wife were today gossiping more freely than before. Their voices rose clearly to where I was sitting. I refused to have a conscience about eavesdropping; they should have been more discreet.
“It was a bad moment, Maia—have a cushion, dear—don’t blame him for being offhand.”
“Oh, I don’t. It just seems he deals more easily with my children than with me.”
The Jupiter Myth Page 16