Family Commitments (Marcus Corvinus Book 20)

by David Wishart

  He looked at me as if I was being stupid. Which, maybe, I was.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘And get nailed straight off for being the perp. “Nailed” being the operative word, Oplonius being a citizen and my master into the bargain; nailed by my hands and feet to a couple of sodding planks and left for the crows to pick at. So no Watch, not bloody likely. I scarpered, and lucky to have the option.’

  ‘He came to me, sir,’ Bathyllus said. ‘He knew I’d been bought by your grandfather – another Marcus Valerius Corvinus, of course – so he asked around in the hopes that I was still with the family.’

  ‘Din’t take me long,’ Damon said smugly. ‘Had it done and dusted the next day. I just kept asking until I found someone who knew the address of a nob family by the name of Valerius Corvinus. After I’d got the right place and made sure Bathyllus was still part of the household I hung about outside until I’d the chance of a word.’

  ‘Very enterprising,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘Yeah, well, I try.’

  ‘I got him set up here, sir,’ Bathyllus said. ‘He had a little money – all his master had on him at the time – but it wasn’t much, because when Oplonius arrived in Rome he’d left most of it with a banker.’ Uh-huh: standard practice for a visitor to the city if you weren’t staying with reliable friends. Unless you were a complete idiot you didn’t carry around more than you needed for everyday expenses, and if you were dossing down anywhere else you sure as hell didn’t stash it away under the mattress. And the banker wasn’t going to cough up to a mere slave without written authorisation, just for the asking. ‘I paid most of the quarter-month’s rent myself, out of my savings. The landlord didn’t ask any questions.’

  No, he wouldn’t, not in the Subura. Suburan landlords aren’t exactly conscientious citizens, and cash in hand is cash in hand. They’re cautious, too: short-let Suburan tenants have a habit of sloping off unannounced, but they aren’t, as a class, sufficiently flush enough with money to cough up a whole month’s rent in advance. Hence the usual practice of gearing payment to the old country-district nine-day system.

  Still, it did raise certain questions of its own. Or rather, it added to the same one.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So now give me the why.’

  Damon frowned. ‘Why what, squire?’

  ‘Come on, pal! Why the hell your master was murdered in the first place. I mean, this is Rome, yes, we’ve got guys with knives who’ll slit a punter’s throat for the price of a bowl of bean stew, granted, but they do it out in the open, in a dark alleyway somewhere after sundown. A scenario like that I could’ve believed. But what the bastards don’t do, no way, nohow, never, is walk into a tenement on the off-chance of hitting on a likely target, commit murder, and then leave without even bothering to take the victim’s purse with them. That makes no sense at all. So come clean, right?’

  He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘Simple truth is, sir, that I don’t know. Okay?’

  ‘Right. Right. Got you. And my maternal grandmother was Cleopatra.’

  His fist slammed down on the mattress. ‘Gods almighty, I swear so help me I don’t ...bloody...know! That’s how it happened, I swear it, first to last, chapter and verse. You think I’d make something like that up?’

  Yeah, well, the jury was out on that one. Or at least if not in regard to the broader circumstances – I reckoned those had the ring of truth, however improbable – where the background details were concerned. Still, he was Bathyllus’s brother, and I owed Bathyllus a bit of slack. Enough, certainly, to give his brother the benefit of the doubt. For the present, at least.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘We’ll leave it there for now. Tell us about this Oplonius.’

  He shrugged. ‘Not much to tell. Like I say, the master was a wool merchant from Padua, down here on business,’

  ‘He know anyone in Rome?’

  ‘Not a soul. He’d never been here before.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Look, I knew the master from when he was in leading strings. He’d never been south of Pisa.’

  ‘So no enemies?’

  ‘Why should he have had enemies?’

  I sighed. ‘Yeah, well, whoever stuck a knife into him couldn’t exactly have been a bosom buddy, could he? He must’ve had some good reason for doing it.’

  ‘Granted. But whatever it was, it’s a mystery to me.’

  Uh-huh. Still, we weren’t going to get any further in that direction. Not without the help of thumbscrews. I changed tack.

  ‘Where did you say this tenement was?’

  ‘On the edge of the Aventine, near the Racetrack. About half way along. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I thought I might just take a look at it, that’s all.’

  Damon frowned. ‘What would the point of that be?’ he said. ‘The master was killed five days ago and his body’ll be long gone. The room might even have been re-let.’

  True. Rented accommodation is at a premium in Rome, and no self-respecting landlord is going to let a little thing like a murder stand in the way of profit. Oplonius had been damned lucky to get anywhere at all at such short notice, particularly somewhere so close to the centre. Get rid of the corpse, clean any inconvenient blood stains off the floor as well as you could, and you’re ready for the next punter.

  Even so...

  ‘Valerius Corvinus knows what he’s doing, Damon,’ Bathyllus said. ‘He’s had a lot of experience in this area.’

  ‘Has he, now?’ Damon flashed me a look that was difficult to assess. ‘Fair do’s, then. I’m much obliged, sir, I’m sure.’

  I stood up. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you both to it for the present. Bathyllus.’ I pointed to the remains of the ham. ‘This stops here, right, like I said at the staff meeting. Agreed?’

  He swallowed. ‘Agreed, sir.’

  ‘I don’t want Meton on my back, and nor do you. You need anything, you buy it.’ I reached into my belt-purse and took out what coins there were. Not bad; even after Perilla’s Timaeus there was change for the best part of a gold piece. ‘Pay yourself back for the rent. And when you need more, come to me and we’ll arrange things.’

  ‘You won’t give him away?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Not at present, anyway. But no promises, right, because as far as the authorities are concerned we’re aiding and abetting an escaped slave, and they’re not exactly sympathetic to that sort of thing. I’m going right out on a limb for you here, sunshine.’

  ‘I know that. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. I mean, really don’t mention it. To anyone. And you’ – I turned to Damon – ‘stick close, right? You don’t move from this room, got it?’

  Damon grinned and winked. ‘Don’t you worry on that score, squire,’ he said. ‘Me, I’m not going nowhere.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I gave Bathyllus the coins, and left.

  Shit.

  So where did we start? I’d go and have a look at the tenement, sure, for what it was worth, just to see the scene of the crime, but I could do a whole lot better than that, starting with a visit to my Watch Commander pal Decimus Lippillus. He was in charge of the Palatine district now, but with any luck he’d be able to give me an intro to whoever had the Aventine beat. That was a guy I really had to talk to, because from what I’d seen of Brother Damon I wouldn’t’ve trusted him to give me the right time of day. It was odd how he and Bathyllus could be brothers and yet be so unlike.

  Not that I wasn’t grateful to him, mind, all things considered and if truth be told. Things had been getting pretty boring recently.

  And Perilla would be delighted.

  4.

  ‘So.’ Lucius Pudentius set the note Lippillus had given me for him down on his desk. ‘Valerius Corvinus, right?’

  ‘As ever is.’ I gave him my best sycophantic smile.

  He sucked on a tooth. ‘Care to tell me how you knew about this man Oplonius’s death and what your interest in i
t might be?’

  Ouch; straight for the jugular. Yeah, well, I had thought the question might be asked pretty early on; not that I had an answer ready prepared, mind. And according to Lippillus, although Pudentius had his limits he was far from being stupid, so maybe I should’ve had.

  ‘He’s not the smartest cookie in the jar where thinking’s concerned, Marcus,’ Lippillus had said as he was writing the note of introduction. ‘But he isn’t stupid. He’s honest, he’s efficient, he’s dogged, and he’s conscientious to a fault. A good Watchman, in other words. Give him this and you should be all right.’

  Me, now I’d met him, I had my doubts about that part. The guy didn’t exactly look the accommodating type.

  ‘Ah...’ I said.

  Pudentius grunted. ‘I assume that means no.’ I said nothing. ‘Well, we’ll let it pass. I’ve a lot of time for Decimus Lippillus, and I trust his judgment. If he vouches for you, and he does, then that’ll do me.’ I breathed a mental sigh of relief. ‘One thing, though. If you do happen to know the whereabouts of a certain slave belonging to the deceased who seems to have gone missing I’d strongly advise you to make damn sure you continue to do so. Am I clear?’

  Uh-huh. Definitely not stupid. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Clear.’

  ‘Fine. Not that you do know where he is, of course. Perish the thought. If I thought that for one minute you’d be in real trouble. Now. What do you want from me?’

  I swallowed; Lippillus’s recommendation or not, I was walking on eggshells here. ‘Anything you can give me, really,’ I said. ‘All I know at present is the guy’s name, that he was a wool merchant from Padua just arrived in the city, and that he was stabbed to death in the tenement room he was renting five days ago.’

  ‘Wool merchant, eh? Then you’re a bit ahead of us after all. All our informants could tell us was that he was a Paduan businessman.’ There was the barest smidgeon of emphasis on the word ‘our’, but otherwise his voice was expressionless. ‘On the other hand...stabbed. Yes. He died from a stab wound to the chest, certainly, but he’d been in a serious fight beforehand as well.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t know that? We’re all square again, then. From the bruises on the body and the general state of the place he must’ve put up a hell of a struggle before he died. We checked with the neighbours, but you know the Aventine.’ He put on an accent thick with nasal Aventine vowels. ‘“No one heard nothing, officer. Besides, we was out at the time.”’

  ‘“The state of the place”?’

  ‘The room looked like a herd of bulls had been through it. Bed overturned, mattress ripped, clothes chest on its side and emptied. Stuff scattered all over the floor.’

  Shit; Damon hadn’t mentioned any of this. And the obvious question was, why hadn’t he?

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ I said.

  ‘Just what you’d expect. Nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes, personal effects, that sort of thing.’ He frowned. ‘In fact, if you hang on a minute...’ He got up, went to the door of his office, and yelled, ‘Publius!’

  The young squaddie who’d been manning the desk when I arrived came in.

  ‘Yeah, boss?’ he said.

  ‘The stuff from the Rullius tenement case. Bring it in here, will you?’ The squaddie disappeared. ‘My lads bagged it the same time as they took the body away, in the hopes that there’d be a next of kin we could hand it over to.’

  Brilliant! Score one for the efficiency of the Aventine Watch. Lippillus had said he was conscientious; not many Watch commanders would go to that amount of trouble.

  ‘Is there, by the way?’ I said. ‘A next of kin?’

  ‘Bound to be. But Padua’s a long way off, and he was a complete stranger here. No one to ask, no one to tell. The chances are it was a waste of time. Some of it’ll vanish eventually, no doubt – my lads are honest enough, but there’s nothing of any great value and if it’s going begging there’s no harm done – and what doesn’t will just get thrown out.’ The squaddie reappeared with a couple of bags. ‘Empty them on the floor, Publius. That’s right.’

  He watched as I sorted through the result. Like Pudentius had said, it was nothing special: in the clothing line, a couple of spare tunics, underclothes and a cloak with a simple iron pin; otherwise a dozen other bibs and bobs you’d expect a single man on his own to carry with him when he travelled, including a sewing kit and a packet of corn plasters, all of which were of the cheap and cheerful variety you could pick up for a few coppers at any cut-price market stall. Small-time was right: Damon had taken any money there had been, sure, he’d told me that, but what was left was more appropriate to a man almost on his uppers than a respectable businessman.

  The really interesting thing, though, was what wasn’t there. I checked and re-checked carefully, but there was no sign.

  ‘That’s everything?’ I said.

  ‘All that there was,’ Pudentius said. ‘The owner’s agent – he lives on the premises, by the way, and his name’s Meleager, if you’re interested – insisted we clear the room in case he got a quick let.’

  ‘You know if that’s happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. You can check with him yourself, if you want to take the trouble to call at the property. Ask for the Rullius place, one in from Racetrack Road about half way along.’ He started piling Oplonius’s effects back into one of the bags, and I did the same with the other. ‘Oh, one more thing. I said the man didn’t know anyone here, and that’s so, to my knowledge. But my lads called in at the nearest wineshop in the hopes that he’d spent some free time there. Standard practice; you never know what you might pick up in the way of extra information. Seemingly he had, once or twice, and although the barman wasn’t much help otherwise it did transpire that he’d been friendly with one of the girls. If you know what I mean.’ Yeah; some wineshops double as brothels, of a pretty basic kind, and they’d keep two or three girls on the staff for waitressing and other duties. ‘Her name’s Lydia. I doubt if she’ll be able to tell you anything more than I have, or than she told the lads at the time, because it was purely a business arrangement, but it’s best you know.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I filed the name for later consideration. ‘Thanks a lot, pal. You’ve been a great help.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Two last things from my side. There’s, er, a good chance that Oplonius lodged some money with a local banker. You know anything about that?’

  ‘No. Not so far, anyway. But the chances are that if he did the man will report it when it’s not claimed. Bankers are honest enough by their lights, and it’s not in their interests to keep that sort of thing hidden. It’ll go to the next-of-kin, naturally, if and when we find out who that is.’

  ‘Right. Right.’

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh. Yes. A question. You mentioned that the guy had serious bruises. Did any of your lads think of looking at his hands?’

  ‘His hands?’ Pudentius frowned. ‘No. Why would they do that?’

  ‘Just a thought. It doesn’t matter.’ Like hell it didn’t, but I didn’t want to complicate things at this stage. In any case, I might be completely wrong. ‘Thanks again.’

  ‘You’re very welcome. Give my regards to Decimus.’

  ‘Will do.’ I handed him the bag I was holding and turned to go.

  There was still a slice of the afternoon left before I had to head back home for dinner; time enough to check out the tenement. Not, I knew, that there’d be anything to see any more; Damon had been right about that. Still, I might as well tick all the boxes; the agent – what was his name? Meleager, right, so probably a freedman – might remember something useful that he hadn’t passed on to the Watch. At the least, he’d had personal contact with Oplonius when he was alive, and given that my only other informant on that score was Damon – enough said – anything at all that I could get from him would be useful.

  Of course there was the wineshop girl, Lydia. But her I’d probably have to leave
until another day.

  I had a passer-by point out the Rullius tenement and went inside. We’d gone upmarket from the Subura, but not by much – this was the Aventine, after all – and the best you could say of the stairs was that they were reasonably clean and the graffiti were better spelled. I climbed to the first floor and knocked on one of the doors. There was no answer, so I tried another. There was the sound of shuffling feet and eventually the door opened.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Gramps,’ I said to the guy behind it. ‘Are you the agent? Meleager?’

  ‘Rullius Meleager. That’s right.’ Gnome-like, eighty if he was a day, with a freedman’s cap perched on top of only marginally more hair than Bathyllus could manage. ‘How can I help you, sir? If you’re looking for a flat to rent then I’m afraid –’

  ‘No. No, that’s okay.’ Bugger; by the sound of it he’d re-let after all. ‘I’ve come from the local Watch headquarters. Lucius Pudentius.’ The smudging was intentional: the guy might prove naturally helpful, but implying that I had Watch connections without actually saying so would get me there faster. ‘He said you might have some information for me on the murder.’

  ‘Ssshh!’ He pulled me inside the flat and shut the door. ‘Goodness me! Keep your voice down, please!’

  ‘You mean it’s not common knowledge?’

  ‘Yes, Yes, I suppose it is. But that’s no reason to go shouting it out all over the building.’ He shuffled off down the short entrance corridor. ‘Through here.’

  Bathyllus would’ve loved it. The living room was neat to the point of fussiness, with everything polished to within an inch of its life. There was even a bowl of flowers on the table.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘You’ll find that stool perfectly comfortable. If you’ll forgive me’ – he stretched out slowly and painfully on the day-bed next to the wall – ‘I’ll lie here.’ I sat down. ‘Mark you, there’s nothing more I can tell you than I told your colleague. I hardly knew the man. I certainly didn’t see him except for when he moved in. And as for the’ – he paused – ‘the unpleasantness five days ago, I can’t tell you anything about that either. The flat was on the third floor, you know. Two above this one. There must have been a...well, from what the Watch officer said, there was no doubt a great deal of noise, but I never heard it. And all the tenants are out during the day barring Lollia Alexandra on the fourth, and she’s deaf as a post.’