The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “Excellent!” said the Emperor.

  He considered a moment, frowning and stroking his beard, before saying anything further, and Sabinus looked at him expectantly. He thought that the master of the Roman world appeared less philosophical than usual, as if, indeed, he were seriously worried. He was pale, and his heavily lidded eyes lacked their usual lustre. Sabinus was about to venture a remark as to his slave’s complete dependability when abruptly the Emperor took up the subject himself.

  “These thefts,” he said, “from the Treasury – for there have been more than one – are so delicate a matter that I would try your Sollius first, my good Sabinus, in something a little less serious before finally giving him so important and confidential a mission.”

  “Yes, Augustus, I fully understand,” replied Sabinus, nodding.

  “It happens that the occasion is unfortunately only too immediate – both in time and for my own peace of mind,” went on Marcus Aurelius with a touch of awkwardness. “The Empress has lost some valuable jewels, and again everybody who has been employed to find them, or the stealer of them, has failed. Say nothing to your slave about the more serious matter; tell him merely that he is to help in seeking to discover the whereabouts of the Empress’s lost jewels, and send him to me with a serious caution, Sabinus, as to his silence and discretion. I shall give him his instructions myself. Let him come about an hour after noon tomorrow, and ask for Alexias, my Greek freedman.”

  “You shall be obeyed, O Augustus,” answered Titius Sabinus, and fussily took his leave.

  Immediately on his return to his own house he sent for the slave named Sollius, and explained to him the great honour that was to be his in serving the Emperor himself, and then at great length, and without the slightest necessity, warned him to be thoroughly prudent and entirely secret.

  “You are not to tell even me anything,” he concluded, as if that was the final height and test of all perfect discretion.

  Sollius the slave was a small man, but inclining to corpulency. His scanty hair was thin and greying, and he was more than beginning to go bald. He had a long, slightly fleshy nose with wide nostrils, and very dark, round eyes. He was cleanshaven, and walked with somewhat of a limp, for his left foot had been caught in a wolf-trap when he was a boy. He had a soft voice and a gentle manner. Always intensely neat as to his person, he went about his concerns and household duties with the candid gaze of an overgrown child. His fellow slaves regarded him without special friendliness, but not with enmity or suspicion; that is to say, he was one among them, but not exactly of them, except in the one undeniable fact of their common slavery. That they did not resent his aloofness, or call it the vanity of a favourite with their master, was a tribute to his natural goodness of heart, for he was as kindly a nurse in any case of their sickness as he was skilful as a prober into any matter of mystery.

  He had, however, one friend in the son of a slave-girl who had died some years before, a youth now eighteen years old, and named Lucius. It was as though he had taken this youth under his special protection, and some of his fellow slaves would nudge each other when watching the elder man’s kindness to the younger, and whisper together that they thought they knew why! Sollius had taught Lucius many scraps of his own knowledge. More than that, he had found him useful, since he had quick wits and a keen pair of eyes, in his various investigations of theft. He was a strong, healthy and athletic young man, and a general favourite in the Senator’s household. Sollius had already determined in mind to use him as his assistant should he need help in what the Emperor might be going to ask him to do.

  At the time appointed, Sollius had entered the great palace of the Roman Cæsars on the Esquiline Hill, and, evidently expected, was immediately escorted by a centurion of the Prætorians, the imperial bodyguard, into the presence of Alexias, the Emperor’s principal and confidential freedman. He was a lean, dark Greek, with a cold, haughty manner, and he subjected the slave to a close, not to say jealous, scrutiny.

  “How do you usually begin your enquiries?” he asked at once, as soon as the centurion had left them, and without wasting any words on greeting.

  “By understanding the circumstances of the theft,” quietly answered Sollius, and the modesty in his tone and manner was already mollifying the freedman’s disapprobation of the slave’s privileged employment. Alexias had been resolved to give him no unnecessary assistance, but found that his personality was disarming. He coughed, and a slight, involuntary smile touched his lips.

  “I am to take you to the Augustus,” he said without further preliminary, and at once led the way towards the Emperor’s private apartments and into a small chamber filled with innumerable books and scrolls, but otherwise sparsely and most plainly furnished. It looked out on to a small marble portico from which gleaming steps led down into the vast palace gardens.

  The Emperor was dictating to Alexander, his Greek secretary, as they entered, and indicating by a gesture that Alexias and Sollius were to stand quietly on the threshold, he continued pacing up and down and wording aloud a despatch to the commander of the Roman army on the Rhine. It was, Sollius soon decided, of no very great importance, and was more an injunction to be watchful rather than active; but the Emperor seemed to be taking unusual pains over the language in which he was clothing his commands. At moments, as he turned in his pacing, he would glance towards the slave of Titius Sabinus, so that by the time that his dictating was concluded he had already made a shrewd assessment of the man’s character from the evidences of his features and manner. He was pleased to notice that instead of keeping his eyes respectfully, or timidly, on the ground, the slave had been regarding him with as much open interest as he himself had been regarding the slave.

  “Come nearer,” he said quietly and suddenly. “You are Sollius?”

  “I am Sollius, Augustus.”

  “You are clever, I am told, in discovering thieves and lost property.”

  “I have been lucky, sir, and yet – yes! – I have an aptitude for such things.”

  Marcus Aurelius smiled. He was never one to appreciate the falsely modest when the simple truth could be spoken without vanity.

  “The Empress,” he said, “has lost a number of her jewels.”

  “When?” asked Sollius quickly.

  The secretary and the freedman both stared. It was not usual for the Emperor to be challenged so abruptly – not even by a senator or a victorious general on leave.

  Marcus Aurelius hesitated, and frowned thoughtfully. Sollius looked at him with eyes suddenly bright.

  “Three days ago,” said the Emperor, closing the slight pause with imperial decisiveness.

  Sollius lowered his eyelids for a moment, and then, with an upward glance, he asked:

  “Were they taken from her sleeping-chamber?”

  “They were last seen in her sleeping-chamber,” carefully replied the Emperor.

  “Who saw them – last?”

  “The Empress herself. She was choosing a ring from the casket containing them. They were there then.”

  “Was this at morning or at night?”

  “It was about sunset. When the Empress retired to rest some hours later, and gave the ring to her attendant to put away, the casket was found empty.”

  “I should like to see the chamber, the empty casket and the waitingwoman. ”

  “See to that, Alexias – and Sollius is to be admitted to me, without any delay, at all such times as he may wish,” ordered the Emperor.

  Alexias and Sollius bowed.

  “Come,” whispered the freedman, and when the Emperor’s voice began dictating again they were already in the long, gilded and painted corridor.

  “This way,” whispered Alexias again. “Follow me.”

  A guard, another Prætorian, was on duty by a lofty, decorated door. Recognizing Alexias, he let them both pass.

  The chamber of the Empress Faustina was spacious, beautifully proportioned and, in the eyes of Sollius at least, unbelievably luxurious. He stood i
n the doorway, marvelling. But, even while marvelling, he was darting his looks in all directions, and completing in his mind a picture which he knew would remain in his memory with great exactitude.

  “This is Marcia,” murmured Alexias, and a young, handsome woman came forward from the dressing-table, which she had been engaged in tidying at the moment of their entrance. “You are to answer all the questions which Sollius – this is Sollius, Marcia – will put to you,” the freedman went on. “It is the Augustus’s own command.”

  Marcia fixed Sollius with a clear and resentful gaze.

  “I suppose you have already decided that I stole them,” she burst out. “Not even the Empress thinks that, and I will not take it from a slave!”

  “You yourself are a freedwoman?” asked Sollius with a smile.

  “You mistake,” she answered proudly. “I am the daughter of a freedman and a freedwoman, free on both sides, and I am a dutiful servant to the Roman Augusta.”

  “I do not doubt it,” replied Sollius. “But tell me this: were you here when the Empress took the ring out of the casket? Oh, is that the same casket over there?”

  She nodded, and he went across to the ornate, marble dressing-table. Its appointments were of gold, and the casket itself also was of gold. He stood staring down at it without touching it. Then, without turning, he repeated his previous question.

  “I was, slave.”

  “Did you yourself see whether the casket was then filled with its jewels as usual?”

  “I did, and it was, slave,” said Marcia.

  “Was the casket not kept locked?”

  “It was always kept locked. It is only unlocked now because it is empty. Look!”

  She moved to his side, and opened the casket by the mere insertion of a painted nail under its lid. It was certainly empty.

  “Who entered this room between the time that the Empress took the ring out of this casket and the finding that the rest of the jewels had been stolen?” asked Sollius.

  “Myself, twice,” she answered. “None else, at least, had any right or proper occasion to enter.”

  Sollius rubbed his chin.

  “Not even the Empress herself – and, perhaps, a friend with her?”

  Marcia shook her head.

  “The Empress was at a dinner party,” she said. “Also,” she went on, a trifle maliciously, as if she enjoyed making the problem still more difficult for the slave, “a guard, one of the Prætorians, stood in the corridor all the while.”

  “Was the guard changed during any part of the time?”

  “He had but newly taken his post when the Empress left her chamber, and he had not been relieved,” replied Marcia, “by the time of her return.”

  “Do you know this Prætorian personally?” asked Sollius sharply.

  “No more,” she answered with a faint, scornful smile, “than I know others of the Prætorians who take their turn of guard. He is not, though you seem to suspect so, my lover. I look higher, slave, than a soldier!”

  “Is the same guard on duty now?”

  “No, it is another man.”

  Sollius turned to Alexias.

  “I should like to see that guard,” he said.

  “He shall be summoned,” the freedman promised.

  Sollius fixed his gaze once more upon Marcia, and eyed her for a moment or so in silence, but she did not fidget under his scrutiny, and returned it with the same proud scorn as before.

  “Have you no guess, yourself, as to the thief?” he asked, and his voice was neither accusatory nor suspicious, but strangely compelling.

  “None, O slave, I know nothing, and equally suspect nothing.”

  “Thank you,” he answered, bowed courteously, and turned to go.

  “I must see that guard as soon as possible,” he said when he and Alexias were walking away down the corridor. “I should like also a list of the jewels. Judging from the size of the gold box from which they were taken, they were smallish in size and number.”

  “You shall have the list, Sollius,” replied Alexias. “But I can tell you myself that they consisted of rings, ear-rings, bracelets and hair-adornments – but, though small and containable within a single casket, of great value. The Empress would not wear them if they were not,” he added with a swift, sharp glance.

  “That is true,” answered Sollius gravely.

  “What else do you wish to see, or do?” asked the freedman.

  “I should like,” replied Sollius, “to examine that part of the gardens which is outside the chamber that we have just left.”

  Alexias looked instantly dubious.

  “That is a very private part of the gardens,” he said. “I should have to obtain the permission of the Empress to take you there. She may be there herself at this hour – and no one may intrude upon her privacy.”

  “She is not there,” answered Sollius confidently. “I saw no sign of her when I looked out over the gardens just now. Besides,” he continued, drawing himself up into an attitude very unbecoming, thought Alexias, in a slave, “I have the Emperor’s own commands to do as I wish – or have I not? You heard them from his own lips.”

  “He did not give you permission to intrude upon the privacy of the Augusta,” said Alexias stubbornly. “I heard nothing about that. Be reasonable, Sollius.”

  “I must see that part of the gardens,” insisted the slave of Sabinus. “Above all things it is important. Shall I go to the Augustus for his permission? He would, I am confident, give it to me.”

  “Come,” answered the freedman brusquely. “I will take the risk!”

  He led the other forth by secret passages into the air and the sunlight. Outside Faustina’s apartments, below their position and the marble steps leading down from them into the scented luxury of the gardens themselves, Sollius became quickly busy, examining the grass, the shrubs, the nearest flower-beds, the gleaming steps, top to bottom, and, indeed, the whole vicinity. He was almost like a sniffing dog, thought Alexias disgustedly, for he could not see what good was being done by such actions, and he was annoyed, too, over having been forced to bring the slave into the imperial gardens at all. But the Emperor had a use for the fellow . . . he shrugged his shoulders, and stood watching while Sollius continued his investigations below the Empress’s apartments.

  “Do not be too long,” whispered Alexias, staring nervously around. “The Empress could have us whipped for this – even me.”

  “I am ready now,” said Sollius. “There is nothing to be seen – which is often as good, my friend, as to see everything! The two sides of a coin make but one piece of money after all, not two.”

  Alexias wrinkled his brows in the effort to understand such a puzzling remark, but what with his haste to leave the place where they were and his still doubtful opinion of the slave’s qualities, he left the matter without comment, and hurried his companion back into the palace.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “I am going home,” answered Sollius, “to think. I shall come again and ask for you early in the morning – and let that Prætorian be with you.”

  With a pleasant smile he begged the freedman to show him the nearest way out of the palace, for with its hundreds of confusing corridors and passages he felt bewildered, or so he said.

  Alexias stared after him as he saw him forth, and wondered what would come of his enquiry. He had a sudden cold feeling about the heart, and turned away to his other duties with a deep sigh.

  As soon as Sollius had returned to his master’s house he sought out Lucius. He found him carrying in a huge basket of vegetables from the garden towards the kitchen.

  “When you have taken those to the cook,” he said, “I have need of you.”

  “But, Sollius, if the cook wants me to do more errands for him – ”

  “This is more important, far more important,” Sollius answered. “It is on – ahem! – our master’s business, and you can tell Tuphus the cook that for a little while you are as good as my slave.”

&n
bsp; Lucius looked at him enquiringly, and then suddenly a grin spread over his face.

  “Good, Sollius! Oh, good!” he cried, and shouldering his basket once more, he went off into the kitchen. Almost immediately he was back again.

  “Come,” said Sollius, and he led the way along a dark passage which came out near the chariot-house and the stables.

  Behind these lay a walled enclosure containing a round, stone pool filled with carp. It was a place where they could generally count upon being able to talk undisturbed. Standing beside the pool, and looking down among the dark, swimming forms without any expression upon his face, Sollius began to speak. He told his young companion everything. He knew that he could trust him, and that he would have to employ a helper in his new task, and also that there was nobody else, as he had already proved, with the right kind of aptitude for being his assistant.

  “I suppose,” said Lucius after he had listened carefully, “that either the waiting-woman – did you say she was named Marcia? – or the guard took them.”

  “I cannot answer about the guard,” replied Sollius, “for I have not yet questioned him. But I am sure that Marcia had nothing to do with it, for I think that she is as puzzled as I am. I could see it in her eyes.”

  “And are you puzzled, Sollius?” asked Lucius seriously.

  “I am,” answered Sollius, and sighed. “The signs are so contradictory. I have even wondered whether there has been any theft at all!”

  Lucius gaped at him.

  “But would the Emperor himself have employed you to find out about it if – if there had not been anything stolen?” he asked.

  “It could be possible: he might himself be deceived,” said Sollius, musingly, still gazing down into the pool. “There are so many rumours,” he muttered under his breath, “about the debts of the young Commodus – and his mother has always spoilt him.”

  “When you say that the signs are contradictory, what,” asked Lucius, “do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Sollius replied, “that I saw no scratches about the small keyhole of the casket; that I saw no marks beneath the Empress’s apartment; that Marcia was more puzzled than afraid, when I should have expected her to be more afraid than puzzled; and that I felt Alexias was, as it were, playing a part, as if he thought that my intrusion into the mystery was unnecessary, but that he dared not tell the Emperor so. All this,” he added, spreading out his hands so that they made a shadow fall across the water and disturbed the otherwise sleepy carp, “makes me wonder if I am being – deliberately misled. But, Lucius, I must question that Prætorian who was on guard on the evening of the supposed theft before I make up my mind about that word ‘supposed.’”