Solid Citizens

by David Wishart

  ‘How so?’

  ‘There are no bedrooms between it and here; Lydia’s is the first, and that’s immediately next door to us. In fact, I suspect that was why the girl was his favourite, and it was a matter of convenience and safety as much as personal preference.’

  ‘The door isn’t used otherwise? By the customers, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, yes. On occasion, and for the same reason. Don’t be naïve, Corvinus; Quintus Caesius wasn’t – isn’t – the only important man in Bovillae who makes use of our services, and as you can imagine the town’s great and good are not very keen to bump into an ordinary client, or use the front entrance on the main street and run the risk of being seen. So we have a special arrangement for our special guests. I can easily hear a knock on the back door from here, and I open it myself; not even Carillus is involved, so it’s all done very discreetly. Discretion is something that I pride myself on, and our more special clients know it, which is why they continue to be our clients.’

  ‘Could you show me it?’

  ‘Now? Certainly, if you like. I’ll take you.’ She got up – she was big, tall for a woman – and led the way into the corridor. Nice figure, and walking immediately behind her I caught the scent of her perfume: seriously expensive stuff, if I was any judge.

  Like she’d said, the door was no more than a few yards further on, at the corridor’s end. She slid back the central bolt, opened it and stepped back.

  ‘There you are.’

  Winter sunlight flooded in: at least the rain had stopped for the time being. We were under an external flight of steps that led up to the building’s first floor, at the dead end of a short alleyway with a couple of open-fronted shops in it, a general merchant’s and a bootmaker’s. At the open end of the alley I could see people passing the gap. A main street, obviously, or at least one busy enough to have regular pedestrians.

  ‘He was lying on the ground over there.’ Andromeda pointed to a spot a few yards from the door, then waved at the bootmaker, who was sitting outside his shop a few yards away, stitching the upper of a shoe to the sole. ‘Good morning to you, Gratianus!’ He waved back. ‘Gratianus was the one who found the body, Corvinus. He’d be able to give you fuller details, so you may want to talk to him later.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Presumably no one went through this way – coming in or going out – after Caesius left?’

  ‘No. That was the last time it was opened that evening.’ She turned. ‘So. You’ve seen enough for the present?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’ll go back in, then. Lydia will probably be finishing off by now. Unless I can help you further, I’ll send her to you. You’re welcome to use my room. Hers will probably be a bit of a mess, and it’s rather cramped.’

  We went back inside, and she re-bolted the door.

  ‘Did you let Caesius out yourself?’ I said.

  ‘No, I didn’t. I never do, for any of our specials, because there’s no need. I heard him go, naturally, when he passed my door, and the sound of this door being opened and closed, but there was no reason for me to see him out personally. I came out and locked up again, of course, a few minutes later.’

  ‘You didn’t hear anything else? Noises outside, maybe?’

  ‘No, nothing. That would’ve been most unlikely, whatever they were. As you can see, the door is quite thick, and the door of my own room was closed.’

  Fair enough. ‘Ah … one last question, lady. Not about the murder as such. Like you said, the guy was a public figure. All this hole-in-the-corner stuff, doesn’t it get to you at all? I mean …’

  She smiled. ‘You mean, don’t I think it’s a bit hypocritical? On the part of the clients?’

  ‘Yeah. That was it. More or less.’

  ‘Corvinus, I have a business to run. I don’t judge, at least not outside the privacy of my own head, which is my affair and no one else’s. How long do you think I could stay open if I put Bovillae’s most respected citizens’ backs up by advertising the fact that they’re just as human as the rest of the world? Besides, their money’s as good as anyone’s. Better, in fact, because they’re willing to pay well over the odds for that discretion I mentioned. Now, if you’ve finished with me I’ll tell Lydia you want to see her. Use my room to talk to her as if it was your own, and take as long as you please. When you’ve done, let yourself out the back. Did you have a cloak?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s hanging in the lobby.’

  ‘Then I’ll have Carillus bring it to you. Remember, please do take as long as you like; you’re not inconveniencing anyone.’ We’d reached the door of her room. She opened it and stood aside. ‘I’m delighted to have met you.’

  Delivered with all the formal politeness of an elderly dowager. I went inside and closed the door behind me. The book was still lying on the table. I picked it up and partly unrolled it. Plato’s Gorgias in Greek it was, and annotated in the margins in a neat, small hand that I’d guess was Andromeda’s own. An interesting lady, right enough.

  A couple of minutes later there was a soft knock on the door and a girl came in. Heavy-featured, suicide blonde, with a good half inch of black hair showing at the roots. She was wearing a thin dressing gown, and not much else, as far as I could see.

  ‘Lydia?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’ She closed the door behind her. ‘Madam said you wanted to talk to me.’

  Lydia, my foot: with that accent she couldn’t’ve come from anywhere further east than Fidenae. And if she was Caesius’s favourite for any other reason than the convenient placement of her room then he must’ve liked them large, heavy and sullen. I was sitting on the stool. I stood up and moved aside. ‘You want to take the couch?’ I said.

  ‘Nah, I wouldn’t dare. It’s madam’s. She’d have a fit.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I sat down again. She leaned back against the door. ‘So. You were with Caesius the evening he died.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘For how long?’

  She shrugged. The dressing-gown slipped off one shoulder, and she pulled it back with a casual twitch of her fingers. ‘An hour. More or less. The usual time, anyway.’

  ‘He was a regular of yours, so I’m told. How regular would that be?’

  Another shrug. ‘I don’t keep score. Often enough.’

  ‘He talk to you at all about anything? That time or ever?’

  She snorted; it could’ve been a laugh, but it was mostly mucus. ‘What do you think? He was a paying customer, and talking’s not what they’re here for, is it? Nah, we didn’t talk.’

  ‘And the last time you saw him. Was that any different from any of the others?’ She just looked at me with complete, bovine incomprehension. Jupiter, this was heavy going! ‘I mean, there was nothing unusual about it in any way?’

  ‘Nah. He was just the same.’

  ‘So there’s nothing you can tell me?’

  ‘Nah. Not really.’ There was a knock on the door. She glanced over her shoulder and moved away. The door opened.

  ‘Your cloak, sir.’ It was Carillus.

  ‘That’s fine, pal.’ I stood up. ‘I’m just about finished here.’ I looked at the girl. Not a flicker of reaction, or interest. ‘Thanks for your help, Lydia.’

  ‘You’re welcome. See you.’ She slid out. A moment or two later, I heard the door of the neighbouring room open and close.

  Ah, well.

  I draped the still-sodden cloak over my arm, made my thanks to Carillus, unbolted the back door and went out into the alley to talk to the bootmaker.

  He was still working on the shoe, but he put it down when he saw me coming. I’d thought that the right-hand side of the alley, between the brothel and the guy’s shop, was formed by a continuous, solid wall, but more or less halfway there was an opening that looked like it had originally contained a small shrine or a statue. If so, whichever it had been wasn’t there any longer, and all that was left was an embrasure big enough to take a man standing.

&
nbsp; ‘Gratianus, right?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s me. And you are?’

  ‘Marcus Corvinus. I’m looking into the murder two or three nights back on behalf of the senate.’

  ‘That so, now?’

  ‘You found the body?’

  ‘Yeah. Just after first light, it was, when I came to take down the shutters.’

  ‘You recognize the corpse?’

  He grinned. He only had a couple of teeth in the front, and they looked like they were fighting a losing battle. ‘You kidding? There isn’t anyone in Bovillae wouldn’t know Quintus Caesius when they saw him, even with the back of his head stove in.’

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Not much to tell. He was lying there –’ the spot was just shy of the embrasure – ‘covered with his cloak. I think he’s just a drunk sleeping it off, so I go over to wake him up. Only when I pull back the hood and see his face, plus the damage, that’s that, isn’t it? Goodnight sunshine, and the town’s down one appointee censor. So I leave him where he’s lying, go down to the town hall and call it in, then come back here with the undertaker’s men who cart the poor bugger away. End of story.’

  ‘Was there much blood? On the ground, I mean.’

  ‘Nah. It was throwing it down, had been all night. The alley was like a river.’

  Well, that seemed straightforward enough; certainly everything fitted. I was turning to go when I had another thought. ‘You know Opilia Andromeda, the brothel-keeper, right?’

  ‘Sure. Everyone does, round about here. She’s OK, Andromeda, always says hello, like you saw. We pass the time of day sometimes, when trade’s slack. Not that we have any contact professionally, so to speak. I’m a married man, myself, and if I did try anything on my wife’d kill me.’

  ‘She been here long?’

  ‘About a year. She’s from Tibur, originally. Bought the business cheap from old Mama Tyche when she retired.’

  ‘How did she manage that? I mean, cheap or not it must’ve cost a fair slice of cash.’

  ‘Oh, well, now.’ He sucked on a tooth. ‘It’s quite a story, that. No secret, mind, it was all over the neighbourhood five minutes after she arrived. You notice she wears a scarf?’

  ‘Yeah. To cover a burn scar. A big one, from the looks of it.’

  ‘Right. She got that in a house fire. She was in the business herself, just one of the girls. Slave, not free.’

  I remembered the burned-out shell I’d passed on the same street as the brothel entrance. ‘A fire? The one in the building further down the road near the main drag?’

  ‘Nah, nothing to do with that. That only happened a few months ago, and the place was a warehouse. “House fire”, I said. It was back in Tibur, before she came here. There was an accident with a lamp, some drunk or other in one of the rooms playing silly buggers, and the place went up like a torch. She pulled the madam – that was her owner, Opilia – out of the flames and got herself burned doing it. Opilia freed her and gave her her stake. Lucky chance, that was. She’s no spring chicken, Andromeda, and no one wants to go with a girl that’s damaged goods, even over in Tibur.’

  Interesting. I’d’ve liked to know how a slave-prostitute had developed a taste for Plato, mind. I doubted that Lydia – free or slave – could get the length of reading even the graffiti on the brothel walls. Unusual lady was right.

  I thanked the guy, and left. The next place I needed to go was the victim Caesius’s own house, for a word with his major-domo.

  THREE

  I made my way back round to the main street – what they call the Hinge in Bovillae – and headed left towards the Arician Gate. A big, old house, Nerva had told me. There weren’t many of these to start with, and besides the biggest of the lot had cypress branches hung up round the door, which was, no pun intended, a dead giveaway: it was Caesius’s, for sure. I knocked, and the door was opened by a young slave with the front of his fringe shorn off close to the scalp.

  ‘Valerius Corvinus, pal,’ I said. ‘Silius Nerva asked me to look into the death of your master. Could I have a word with the major-domo, do you think? Anthus, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course.’ He stood aside. ‘Just go through to the atrium. I’ll fetch him for you.’

  I did, and stopped short at the entrance. What I hadn’t been expecting was that Caesius himself would still be in residence, laid out on a funeral couch in his magistrate’s mantle and with a pan of incense burning beside him.

  Under these circumstances you have to observe the niceties. I took the pair of shears from the small table at the couch’s foot, snipped off a lock of my own hair, put it in the waiting basket at the corpse’s feet, and added a pinch of incense to the pan.

  Then I took a closer look at him.

  Sixty was about right, maybe a bit over. He’d been a good-looking man, Caesius, with a strong face – it still had crumbs of dry plaster on the sideburns from when they’d taken the death-mask – and a full head of silvered hair. No sign of the wound that had killed him; that’d be on the back of the head, and the undertakers would’ve cleaned it up and made sure it wasn’t immediately visible when they laid him out. The gold coins covering his eyes glinted at me in the sunlight filtering through the gap above the ornamental pool.

  ‘A fine-looking man, wasn’t he, sir?’

  I turned. Anthus, obviously. Small and stooped, about the same age as his master.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, he must’ve been,’ I said. ‘When’s the funeral?’

  ‘This afternoon. The senate is giving it at public expense.’ There was no mistaking the pride in the old guy’s voice. ‘That doesn’t often happen, as you know. The master would’ve been very gratified, and appreciated the honour very deeply. You’ll be attending yourself, sir, of course.’

  I hadn’t planned on it, but I couldn’t well say no, not to the guy’s face. I wasn’t wearing a mourning mantle, sure, and there wasn’t time to go back to Castrimoenium to change, but under the circumstances I didn’t think that’d matter much if I stuck to the sidelines. No doubt it being a public funeral there’d be quite a crowd there just to watch.

  A public funeral explained why the body was still here, too. These things take time to organize.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I’ll be going.’

  ‘The ceremony begins an hour after noon. Processing from here, sir, naturally, but I should simply wait in the market square if I were you. That’s where they’ll be delivering the eulogy.’ A glance at my mantle-less tunic and still-very-damp and far-from-new cloak; under normal circumstances the guy would probably have added a Bathyllus-type sniff, but as it was I got off easy. ‘Now. Young Titus said that you were investigating the master’s death on behalf of the senate. How can I be of assistance?’

  ‘Just a few questions, pal, and a bit of background information.’

  ‘Anything. Anything at all. Ask away, please, and I’ll do the best I can.’

  ‘Ah … do you think we could go somewhere, uh …?’ I gestured at the corpse, not sure how to finish the question. Quieter or less public didn’t quite seem to fit the bill, somehow.

  ‘More convenient.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. The master’s study, perhaps. If you’d like to follow me.’

  I did. He led me through to the study, behind an ornately panelled wooden door.

  ‘Here we are, sir,’ he said. ‘Do sit down on the couch. I’ll stand, myself, if you don’t mind.’

  I’d expected the usual books, and there were a few of these, right enough, in a book-cubby beside the window, plus the other normal items of study furniture such as the expensive-looking rosewood desk and an iron strongbox, but most of the walls were lined with open cupboards whose shelves were almost full of artwork: pots, figurines, small bronzes. Old Greek, mostly, and pretty good stuff, from what I could tell. On the writing desk itself, there was a lovely marble group of the Abduction of Ganymede that must’ve set the guy back a good slice of his yearly income.

  Anthus saw
me looking.

  ‘It was the master’s hobby, sir,’ he said. ‘Almost his obsession. He was a keen collector, as you can see, for many years. Very knowledgeable, too. Now. What exactly did you want to know?’

  ‘Nothing specific,’ I said. ‘Or at least, nothing more than anything else. Like I told you, I’m just feeling my way, working on the background at present. Silius Nerva said your master was a widower. His wife died quite recently, and there were no children. That right?’

  ‘Yes. The Lady Vatinia passed on just over two months ago. And no, they had no family, unfortunately.’

  ‘There’s a brother, I understand.’

  Was that a flicker? ‘That’s correct. Master Lucius. He was – is – five years younger than the master.’

  ‘Living in Bovillae?’

  ‘Yes. Or so I believe.’

  ‘So you believe?’

  A hesitation. ‘He and the master didn’t get on, sir. Not for a great many years, since their father died, in fact.’

  ‘Why would that be, now?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  Flat statement, delivered with a poker face and with all the indications that that was all I’d be getting on the subject. Bugger; I recognized the signs. I’d hit the Faithful Retainer syndrome head on. Couldn’t say summed it up: I’d bet a combination of the thumbscrew and wild horses wouldn’t have dragged the words out of him. Not to a stranger, certainly.

  Leave it. For the present, at least.

  ‘Pity,’ I said easily. ‘So. Do you have any idea where I’d find him? Brother Lucius?’

  ‘I’d imagine in one of the local wine shops.’ That came out sharper than probably even he’d expected, because he visibly clammed up after he’d said it. Still, his loyalties would lie with the elder brother, not the younger one, so it didn’t come as the shock that it might have.

  ‘He, uh, likes a cup or two of wine, then?’ No answer. ‘Are you saying he’s an actual drunk?’ Again, silence, which was an answer in itself. ‘Come on, pal! You’re not breaking any major confidences here. Bovillae’s a small town. Someone else’ll tell me anyway, if you won’t. Besides, it’s no big deal. Lots of families have them.’