Flavia Albia Mystery 09 - A Comedy of Terrors Read online

  “No depression? Confusion? Excuse me, but I must ask you: has there been any violence?”

  Nephele looked at me scornfully. “None. He is sane. Quite sane—and too wily to be anything but good-mannered towards me. He would say I have nothing to complain about. I brought him a dowry. He would never dare to bully me. He knows exactly what he is doing—but if I want to, I can run rings around him.”

  Fighting back? Always better to be warned when a client is ready to lash out.

  There was more. Nephele confessed: “I had better mention something. I was intending to use another person to make enquiries for me, but he never got back to me.”

  “Would you mind telling me who?”

  “Naevius, if you know who I mean.”

  “I do. A colleague. He would have done a proficient job, but I believe he is overcommitted at present and cannot take on all the cases he would like. You know how it is at this time of year. He will understand if you hire me instead. Naevius and I are on very amicable terms.”

  Well, we were, until he found out I had pinched his prospect.

  Why had he left her dangling? I hoped I would not end up wishing I had left her for him.

  XIX

  I took Nephele to the door, making sure she left. I wouldn’t have wanted her alone with any of my staff in case she asked personal questions.

  She paused on the doorstep. Once again she asked about Sheep, reprising her original suggestion that our family must be terrified. “You do need to be careful about upsetting the wrong people!” Anyone would think the gangsters Tiberius stirred up had sent Nephele to spy on our reactions and issue further warnings on their behalf.

  Could this really be another reason for her visit? If her husband was a mobster, not some ordinary price-juggling negotiator, being two-timed would be the least of her worries. But that seemed unlikely. Crime lords’ wives never come out into the respectable world to complain about their treatment. And if sent as a spy, she had made a poor job of it.

  Whatever Nephele was, I watched her walk off towards Greater Laurel Street, where she had told me she lived. She wrapped her stole over her head gracefully and travelled at an easy pace. I wondered if she knew the other wife I had seen that time, locking her husband out of doors. I would like to know whether that warring couple were reconciled or, if not, had agreed custody of the tug-of-war parrot.

  While I was still in the porch, I was hailed. “Meat delivery, Albia!” Not funny, but I was too late to slam the doors shut in his face.

  Rufinianus. Behind him, one of the slaves who worked for the vigiles was cheerfully carrying over his shoulder a headless sheep. The vigiles must have decided the woolly lump was ours, though one lifeless bloodied animal carcass looks much like another to me.

  “Found it on a rubbish heap, must have been lying there all night. Morellus said bring it here.”

  I drew in my skirts. “I don’t want anything that has been in the street overnight, picked over by who knows how many disease-ridden hands.”

  “No one touched it.” Rufo seemed wary. “I’m afraid that’s your clue to who must have dumped it. Otherwise, Albia, there is no way good mutton would stay put on a midden. This is another warning, though aimed at a wider audience. Look what we’ve done to the interfering aedile, people—so you all watch out too! No one will touch terrorisers’ messages, not even if they’re starving. The Fourth’ve already bought a whole ox for our drinks party, otherwise we would have it.”

  “Bring it in then. May as well.” I looked at Rufinianus, then past him at the slave. The carcass was being carried over the grimy youth’s shoulder on his sludge-grey, fresh-off-an-unclaimed-corpse tunic. His face was pressed fondly against the dead sheep’s shoulders. “Lad, I hope you washed your hands.”

  Rufinianus assured me that the slave had done—or, anyway, he would do now. I sent him with Sheep’s remains to Fornix, with instructions that dishes he made for us must be disguised so our boys would not know.

  While I had Rufo, I said I had taken on his proffered client. “That’s a very odd woman. She had better pay her bill, or I’ll be coming for it from you … I’m puzzled about your involvement, though. Tell me again how you know her husband.”

  “He goes to the baths.”

  “Murrius?”

  “Is that him? I am hopeless with names.”

  “Oh, Rufo! That must have hindered you, working for the vigiles.”

  “Never needed to know. Morellus did all the documentation. Whoever they were, I just jumped up and down on them until they came clean. Though not if it was a young lady reporting she had stabbed a rapist dead, of course.” He kept harping on that.

  “Murrius. His wife says he also answers to Gaius—or Infuriating Bastard. Such a rare species! She wants me to investigate any cheating so she can leave. But it’s him who is your hot-room crony so I don’t understand, Rufo, how you came to send the wife to me. Murrius would hardly say to you while he’s plying his sponge on a stick in the toilet, Oh, my wife wants a divorce. Can you suggest a good informer to help her? She reckons he is not mad, just chronically annoying.”

  “I don’t actually know him,” Rufo now confessed. “I only met the wifey. She once came to the baths trying to find him. A goldsmith had called at the house for payment for jewellery. She was furious because she knew nothing about it.”

  “Nephele decided the piece must have been bought for some other woman?”

  “Nephele?”

  “The wife!”

  “Oh, right! She thought the bath-house keeper was fibbing when he said her man had left the place. She was causing a commotion. I was fetched to the entrance so I could talk her down. I have a knack with hysterics—they must like my easy manner.” A hysterical woman here was about to bop him, easy manner or not. “She was so angry about the jewellery she confided in me. I told her I would talk to you because you were extremely discreet and well regarded.”

  “I see. She mentioned the goldsmith, but only in passing. Still, it seems I’m stuck with her. So, Rufo, this husband—what about him? Are you telling me you don’t even know what he looks like wearing no clothes?”

  “Oh, no, Flavia Albia!” piped up Rufo immediately, “You can tell quite a lot from a bath-house companion. Looking at a nude, you can detect his health and his type of behaviour—it’s all there. Does he eat or is he a habitual drunk? Are his hands manicured, is his hair cut well, is he fastidious with the strigil? Does he thrash in the pool for real, or toss a beanbag pretending he knows how? Has he brought a slave to the baths and, if so, is it to guard his clothes or to have it off together? Does everyone know him—is he really popular? Can he take all the time he likes, or must he rush off to dodge a creditor, find a contact, attend at his wife’s giving birth, finish the argument with his brother that they started twenty years ago—”

  “Spare me!” I managed to break in. “You may have all day to ramble on, Rufinianus, but I need to start finding this quarry. You called him a businessman. What kind? Don’t tell me import-export. That’s meaningless.”

  “Supply and demand,” answered Rufo. “That’s what the baths keeper told me.”

  “Juno! Of what? I suppose your useless bath-house fellow calls it ‘this and that?’”

  “I believe he did.”

  “Why does no businessman in Rome ever simply say, ‘I send boots to the army,’ or ‘I make bronze cauldrons?’”

  “Well,” said Rufo, “if they did, you’d know all about them. Where’s the fun in that?”

  XX

  It was hard to envisage the crowded Aventine as it must once have been. Groves and meadows. Plane trees and the laurels that gave our street its name. The main peak, overlooking the river, offered the best panorama; an outcrop like an arx, since the remote past it had been the hill’s primary religious area. Temples overlooked the valley of the Circus Maximus, dominated by Diana Aventina and Minerva, which were side by side. The shrine to Diana was among the most ancient in Rome, first established for nearby L
atin towns that Rome had bashed into submission (“agreed alliance with”). Giving the Latin League the Aventine might have been because the hill lay outside the main city perimeter in those days. Up here, the excluded Latin bumpkins could offend no one with their antique language, rural habits or the smells from their alien cooking pots.

  Later, all land on the Aventine was decreed public, allowing Rome’s plebs to build homes on this hill. That kept them, with their own manners and smells, away from finer spots within the sacred city where the snobbish nobility lived. Finally, there came a further decline due to the Temple of Liberty, where slaves gained their freedom. Their revels were always lively, and at Saturnalia the area became hideous. Troublemakers pulled down their felted freedom caps then roamed about, looking for fights, though since they tended to be too drunk to balance, injuries were mostly slight.

  The Temple of Diana stood conveniently close to us, across the road and around a corner from our house. It should have retained some privacy because of its enclosure, formed by two straight double colonnades. But drunks did lie down there for further bleary quaffing during festival periods. Also, those covered walks were an open invitation to men looking for adventure and women who helpfully offered it. All temples in Rome had a sleazy reputation; Diana Aventina was no worse, though no better either. Being the shrine of a famously chaste goddess might even have added piquancy.

  For unknown reasons, Diana’s temple housed a cult statue that was hewn from a trunk of wood, imported centuries ago from Gaul. Perhaps Gaul has good forests. To cover all eventualities, Diana Aventina possessed a marble one too. Nobody wants to insult a goddess who is armed with arrows. Diana bears grudges badly. Remember Actaeon! The temple contained high-minded plaques such as Rome’s ancient treaty with those Latin towns and other historic stuff that had had to be housed somewhere. One snotty inscription told people how to run their own temples of Diana in case, living outside Rome, they had no idea.

  The building itself gave a nod to its legendary forerunner, the Temple of Artemis in Greece, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I’ve seen it. Ours was a high-standard, cloud-touching huge lump too. Anything Greeks can do, Rome will attempt. Approached by steep steps, our temple also had a double octastyle porch in front, plus further columns lining the sides. I guessed a loose woman would not station herself on the steps. Too obvious: she was more likely to be strolling in one of the colonnades. While she looked for flirty, dirty company, she could act as if she was there for religious purposes. Mind you, anyone who really comes for a sacrifice hurries up to do their business with the priests, then scuttles off in relief that buying off the divinity is sorted.

  I arrived at the temple in thoughtful mode. I had been held up by watching a fight between a pastry-seller and a cake-tray man. I did ask a fellow pedestrian whether this was about disputed sales territory, but she said they always did it. As a special Saturnalian outburst? No, all the time. They just hated each other.

  Once the men had acquired bloody noses and scattered patisserie around, I moved along. I had brought Suza. She picked up a custard that was hardly bruised. She offered me half, but I had eaten enough road grit in my life.

  Suza brought me little advantage as a chaperone. I can handle dames who enjoy inviting other people’s husbands home to lunch. You have to avoid interrogating them around midday, which by definition is their busy time. But Suza was curious to meet a woman with that reputation so I let her come too.

  I had been right. Several speculative females were wandering through the colonnades, pretending to study architecture. Naturally, none were sketching capitals.

  The one I broached looked sympathetic when I asked if Laetilla was here. “Feeling the pinch? I can fix you up if you like.” That surprised me. I could see Suza wondering if it was exotic sexual patois.

  I was not expecting the offer of a loan. True, Tiberius was struggling to pay for our courtyard fountain, and the fishmonger’s bill was overdue. Fornix had bamboozled the fish man on the promise of a big holiday order, while our waterworks was the kind of installation where the architect expects to wait for his fees for many months—in our case, because the irritating shyster had pressured us into an unintended project.

  This woman thought I had secretly overspent on dress pins. “Little bit on account to keep you afloat, so the man at home never finds out?”

  “Thanks, I’m all right at the moment, though I’ll bear it in mind. I need Laetilla; I’ve brought a message from a friend.”

  Even though “message from a friend” is ever a frank lie, Laetilla was pointed out to me with no rancour.

  To look at, she was as expected: surface refinement, with all the usual hints that she could be extremely unrefined at will. She would never have been so obvious as to cut open her tunic side seams—it was winter, after all. I could have prophesied the rest. Dollops of eyelash soot. Too much visible bosom, with an intriguing mole. Looping stole droop. Many neckchains. “An ankle bracelet!” Suza sniffed. She came from the coast but had quickly taught herself city standards.

  I wondered why the men were fooled. Perhaps Laetilla could speak five languages and discuss poetic imagery. Perhaps when someone joined her for lunch at her house, her chef served up the most fabulous tripe with fennel cream sauce.

  I never even managed to ask her anything.

  “Unless you’ve come to pay a debt, piss off!” she snarled.

  XXI

  Her accent was backstreet Roman, with added-on prissy vowels. Nothing unexpected there.

  Being rejected is a hazard of my trade. The first time, a novice informer may be taken aback. Best to resist the innocent urge to argue. Hard-bitten practitioners know that while you are approaching witnesses they will see at once that you are law-and-order, or the next best thing. Clamming up follows.

  “Can we talk about Gaius Murrius?” I countered.

  “I said, push off.”

  I stood my ground. “No, you were one degree less ladylike, though I forgive you. Nobody likes to be accosted by a stranger in the quiet surroundings of a temple, do they? I am always impressed to come upon someone who is reverential to the gods. Just tell me what I need to know, Laetilla, then I can leave you contemplating.”

  This woman hardly gave the impression she spent her life attracting men, even though she came supplied with sparkly chains she might have acquired as presents. Her attitude to me was what it must always be: blunt, nasty and belligerent. This ruins your attraction, as I knew well. Men can be captivated by flattery, by gifts of multi-tools, or by promises of athletic sex, but they cannot stand bad temper.

  She made no answer, walking away fast. Her shoes had high wooden platform soles, but she was so used to them she never faltered. I would have toppled and broken an ankle.

  Suza was keenly watching how Laetilla kept upright, which she did with strong deployment of her muscle core. My maid (in flat, round-toe ankle boots) made a more ungainly rush after her. “There is no need to be rude to my mistress!” One reason I was leery of bringing Suza out with me was that she had a habit of butting in. I (in laced leather with decorative cut-outs) produced a half-hearted run, then slowed and signalled for Suza to give up too.

  Reluctantly, my girl came back to me. She had yet to learn patience—though she was surprisingly observant. When I happened to comment that Laetilla’s get-up told us what kind of woman she must be, Suza replied, “No, it’s only her style.” I let her down stylistically, but she was always yearning to find high fashion elsewhere and itemising strangers’ colours, gestures and accessories.

  “Really?” I sneered. “The open cloak to show her neck, the thumping gold chain set? She’s a type, Suza. I expect in warmer weather she always has one sleeve brooch missing, so her slinky gown keeps slipping off her bare shoulder…”

  Suza shook her head stubbornly. “Yes, but pulling up her sleeve all the time with a graceful hand is her mannerism.”

  “That’s a long word!” Suza was collecting vocabulary. This was to o
rnament her when she found a better mistress than me. “Idiosyncrasy,” I suggested. “Or trait is a good monosyllable.”

  No one would think we had hooked Suza out of a shellfish factory only a few weeks ago. Tiberius and I tossed her new words as if giving titbits to the dog; she was turning herself into a walking dictionary. “She just loves shoes, Albia. Anyway, I meant I don’t think she was trying for men.”

  “I agree.” I backed off the argument happily enough. “Well spotted. And that is not what we were expecting, which is interesting, Suza.”

  I looked around for the woman I had spoken to earlier. Of course she had vanished. We two were alone in the colonnade. I had not noticed everyone leaving. Was it a coincidence, or had they slithered away because of my confrontation with Laetilla? (Coincidence: accident, fortuity, or stamp it out with monosyllables, twist of Fate, Suza.)

  A cold wind rattled up the arcade, pushing dry leaves ahead of it. Although they rustled and scuttled like scorpions, there had been so much rain that some columns had moss growing on their bases. Occasionally puddles hung around where the stone flags underfoot needed maintenance. We started to walk home.

  “What do you think, then?” asked Suza, chummily. “What’s her game, Albia?”

  “Two choices. One: Laetilla was rude to us simply because we are not men. If a togate toad like Murrius arrives, looking for a light lunch and a groin-thrill, she will turn on more charm. Or two: my client is completely wrong about him and Murrius has plain fallen into debt. He will be in worse trouble if he borrows. That’s a temporary fix. I think Laetilla is not his lover, she is his money-lender.”

  “She could be both,” Suza suggested excitedly.

  “If he is good-looking, maybe. Normally loan sharks prefer to stick with business. They don’t want their dealings complicated by personal involvement.”

  “She seemed a bit snap-happy to be attracted by good looks!” Suza reckoned.