Deadly Election Read online

  It would not be the first time a client had held back vital information. Then when you finally discover the truth and point out how vital it is, they go fluttery, or they even turn on you: they protest that they thought it was not relevant; they did not want to hurt their mother; they wanted to shield you from unpleasant information; the truth was embarrassing; they simply forgot …

  The first thing to know about clients is that they never help themselves.

  Sometimes it pays to wait for things to happen. As I mused, the Callistus door porter popped out from the house, exclaimed at me being there still (though he had clearly come on purpose), picked up my empty cup and offered that if I was really desperate Julia could see me.

  He had an odd expression; I noticed and was forewarned. When he led me indoors, a couple of other slaves were standing about in the atrium, as if watching to see what would happen. They reminded me of the auction staff just before they opened the strongbox for me, with the body still reeking inside it.

  Remembering that Niger’s wife had spoken of a ‘Julia Terentia’, who had given her the Saturnalia glassware set and who lived on the Caelian, I wondered if by coincidence it would be her. Not so. This was Julia Laurentina, a Callistus wife, married to the cousin of Primus and Secundus. According to the porter, she was at home, sleeping off her lunch.

  I swiftly said I would wait until she woke of her own accord. The last thing I wanted was an irritated interviewee. But the porter had already arranged for her to be woken.

  As soon as I saw her, I knew it made no difference. Julia Laurentina was always annoyed, that was the reason her servants had been glancing at one another and, without doubt, were listening behind the door, to see just how rude their explosive mistress would be to me.

  I jumped in quickly: ‘I am so sorry. I was too late to stop your people disturbing you.’ The sneaky bunch deserved to have the blame.

  ‘I don’t suppose you tried too hard!’

  Oh dear.

  I sat down, unasked, and composed myself with folded hands. If she raged, I would let it wash over me.

  She was about thirty years old, sluggish as she rose from a rumpled couch. ‘Sleeping off her lunch’ could have meant she hit the wine flagon, though I detected no sign of that. She wore white, with gold embroidery. When she shook her head to clear her drowsiness, the earrings that tinkled against her long neck were highly fanciable droplets, each sporting a couple of large oyster pearls and what looked like a heavy garnet. I guessed she was given a lot of presents, in the hope of keeping her happy. It failed.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’

  I stuck with being Falco’s daughter, on business from the auction house, and said there seemed to be a mix-up over paying for their bid.

  ‘Oh, my husband sides with his ridiculous cousins. Apparently, we’re now not having the thing back.’ It seemed Julia Laurentina despised her menfolk, even more than she looked down on me. This at least made her all too willing to complain about the men.

  She stretched out a hand, surveying her manicure, which looked professional. She said there had been a row last night. It was a common occurrence in their house, she admitted. ‘Mind you, yesterday set a new standard.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  Julia surveyed me down a long sharp nose and this time decided she would rebuff me. Was it caution or bloody-mindedness? ‘Mind your own business!’ she snapped.

  This was my business. ‘The three men seemed to be of one accord at the auction. I assume they had prearranged for their agent to bid. At that point there must have been consensus; did something happen afterwards so they changed their minds?’

  ‘First they wanted it, now they can’t bear the sight of it. Who knows, with men?’

  ‘Julia Laurentina, I would normally agree with you – but this sudden alteration seems odd, even allowing for male perverseness.’

  The woman gave me a nasty look. ‘I don’t think you should come into our house, calling my husband perverse!’

  No, she was the perverse one, suddenly defending him. I kept my temper, in case I could still squeeze any information out of her. ‘Please believe I have no intention of causing offence. I am only trying to find out what happened and what your family members want us to do with the strongbox.’

  ‘That bloody strongbox!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Do what you like with it.’

  I could see Julia knew enough about the quarrel to be thoroughly exasperated by whatever had occurred last night. But I acted all innocence and explained, ‘You may not know, the strongbox has a history.’

  ‘I know you auction people say you found a body in it.’

  Say? ‘We did, madam. I saw the poor man myself. That was a ghastly experience.’

  She stared. She sat up straighter and blurted out, ‘What did he look like?’

  The interview swung. It was as if she was keenly interrogating me. ‘In his fifties, well built, wearing a blue tunic.’

  ‘His fifties?’

  ‘I could hardly look at the body. I thought him a little younger; the funeral director said he had lived well and taken care of himself, so he put the man between fifty and sixty. I have used that firm before, so I trust the verdict.’

  ‘No clues as to who the victim was?’ Julia Laurentina sounded merely curious, yet I suspected there was more to it.

  ‘Any clues had been carefully removed – he had on an ordinary wedding ring that is impossible to trace, but there were clear signs that he once wore a signet ring that someone had taken off, no doubt his killers to prevent it being identified.’ I did not bother to ask why Julia was interested; she would never tell me. I was watching her instead. She was posing, acting casual, though I glimpsed some dark mood. Without undue emphasis, I asked, ‘Do you recognise the description? I don’t suppose anyone like that is missing from among the people you know?’

  Julia stared again. ‘No,’ she said. Then she repeated, ‘No. No one.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I had detected unease. She nodded so quickly, it seemed unwise to press her.

  While she looked introspective for a moment, I zapped in a few extra questions quietly: ‘Do you know Niger, the agent?’

  ‘I have never seen or spoken to him, but he came on the recommendation of one of my sisters.’

  ‘She knows him?’

  ‘He acted for her husband and now her.’

  ‘Why did your menfolk want him to back down over the bid?’

  ‘My husband says we have no need of a beaten-up, burned-out old chest; that was the whole point of trying to get rid of it at auction. Against him, Primus lost his temper and said he wants no more to do with it but he isn’t going to let strangers get their hands on it. His brother Secundus thought Niger paid too much.’

  ‘Bidding was brisk.’ I thought it best not to say I had been the auctioneer. She would have recoiled, just like the wife of Niger. I didn’t suppose the wives of Primus and Secundus concerned themselves with the river-transport business that brought in the cash for their finery. Julia Laurentina’s husband owned a boat-building yard, but she had probably never been there. I was sure none of those women could recognise their boat captains, let alone understand a lading docket. That would not have done in my family. ‘Niger had been instructed to buy the chest. If he had stopped bidding too soon, he would have lost it,’ I said. ‘He paid enough, though not over the odds, in my opinion.’

  Julia said nothing.

  ‘Since there was other interest,’ I mentioned coolly, ‘we intend to approach the underbidder and see if he still wants it.’

  ‘Well.’

  Well what? I raised my eyebrows. Mine were rather nicely shaped. The talented brow-girl at Prisca’s Baths could even do it painlessly. Well, not quite, but she was better than the usual damage-wreakers.

  Julia had had her brows plucked into thin arches; I always find that artificial. It must have hurt, but she seemed a woman who would not acknowledge pain.

  ‘My husband is
right for once. That strongbox has been used for something terrible, and we can do without it.’ She shrugged it off, her gesture too exaggerated. She was unused to acting. I suppose she normally flared up and said whatever she wanted, then people backed away. I was a different commodity: she could not handle me.

  ‘I just don’t understand the change of heart here,’ I persisted. ‘I was told the strongbox would be privately bought back, then burned to prevent ghoulish interest. An act of respect, Niger the agent called it. Piety towards the dead man … whoever he was.’

  ‘You seem to do far too much talking to other people’s agents!’

  ‘I belong to the auction house,’ I told Julia gently. ‘Talking to agents happens all the time. It is also good business practice for us to make enquiries when items seem odd, or people’s behaviour feels wrong.’

  Julia got a grip. ‘Well, you must do your job,’ she answered me, equally quietly.

  The uncharacteristic restraint was fascinating. I would have expected sarcasm. This woman can rarely in her life have chosen to show so much control. Julia Laurentina was secretly fascinated by the corpse. I was sure she had heard her menfolk discussing it. Might they know who the dead man was?

  Julia, I felt, had not been told his identity, hence her questions about his appearance. But she was harbouring suspicions. With the Callistus brothers and her husband, did she hide her curiosity? Was she trying to find out for herself what had happened, perhaps before confronting them?

  Whatever the truth, Julia Laurentina was visibly anxious. She hardly gave the impression of a woman who was perturbed by family troubles. Yet it seemed to me the identity of that dead man and what had happened to him mattered more to Julia Laurentina than she would admit.

  She dismissed me. I was surprised she had found the patience to let me stay for so long. It only confirmed her private interest in the strongbox corpse.

  As I left the room, a young girl entered. About thirteen, she was not introduced. After the doors closed behind me I heard a low murmur of female voices. The talk sounded subdued, as if the speakers were discussing me. In my business, that is something you expect. It seemed friendly enough in tone.

  I asked the porter if that was Julia Laurentina’s daughter. He said no, she belonged to Callistus Primus, his only child with a first wife, long divorced; her name was Julia Valentina. She lived with her father. He wanted to bring her up himself.

  That was unusual, but fathers had a legal claim to their children after marital separation so it happened. Some men were determined to exert their right of possession, even of a daughter, even if the child was very young. I sometimes had to help divorced mothers argue for custody.

  I also asked the man about the advertising notice outside. He said the family owned the wall space; they had supported Volusius Firmus for aedile, the candidate who was forced to stand down. So removing the notice made sense.

  When I stepped out from the house, I passed two other Callistus wives being delivered home in chairs. Dressed in the same highly embroidered style as Julia, they had clearly been shopping; it was obvious from the train of slaves carrying baskets and parcels. I gave them a formal nod, but did not interrupt their happy dash indoors, calling for cold drinks and their feather-fan girl to revive them.

  ‘A goodly haul!’ I nodded at the packages, smiling.

  ‘It will all have to go back!’ muttered the porter, darkly.

  I dallied, pretending to adjust my sandal. ‘Primus and Secundus are mean with money?’

  ‘Not when they have it, but there’s none to spare at the moment. Everyone has been ordered to cut down.’ The two young wives had obviously failed to hear the message.

  ‘Has it happened before?’ I remembered Gornia saying the men gambled heavily on chariot races.

  ‘Time to time. They always get a windfall eventually, then it’s joy all round again.’

  I said drily, ‘They ought to buy themselves a big strongbox where they can put away a nest egg for times of crisis.’

  The porter missed the joke.

  I wasted no pity on the Callisti. They must have picked the wrong team. They would have their auction proceeds coming in shortly to ease their money worries. If funds were tight, I imagined they would not admit openly that they were poor managers. They would want to keep quiet publicly and might even try to bluff a new agent. Embarrassment about their cashflow might explain why Niger’s bid for the old chest had been overturned.

  It would have been sensible to warn him not to go so high. But when do most people act sensibly?

  22

  I convinced myself I needed to see Faustus. It was a short walk round the Caelian to the Vibius house so I went there, on the excuse that we had not fully discussed what Claudius Laeta told us.

  Excuses were unnecessary. Faustus was writing a speech. He welcomed me, knowing I would listen, help him line up his thoughts and make good suggestions. The candidate, who had to deliver the oratory, ought to have done this but Vibius was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll turn up. Let’s get the speech done. It’s time to make things personal.’

  ‘Insults!’

  ‘Yes, I thought you would like that.’

  I would have liked to insult his friend Sextus for using Tiberius unfairly, but was too wise.

  We had to blacken the rivals’ characters. It would involve information I had gathered, buffed up with dramatic rhetoric that Faustus was now contributing. Written out, most of my gleanings seemed to be about Dillius Surus: he not only drank, he lived off a rich wife who had given Domitian a troupe of obscene dwarfs, had tapeworms, was impotent, sued a man over an orchard − and if that wasn’t enough, he owned the dog that had bitten the priestess of Isis (on her birthday).

  ‘No, that’s wrong,’ said Faustus. ‘Latest information is—’

  ‘It was the priestess who bit the dog?’

  For a moment I had him, then he smacked a cushion as he realised the joke. ‘Oh, and it was the dog’s birthday … No, I traced this malign canine. One of my colleagues had to deal with a public-order complaint from the priestess. The dog-owner is really Trebonius Fulvo. It’s some horrible hunting creature in a spiked collar that he keeps to make himself look menacing.’

  ‘What does he want a hunter for in Rome? Rat-catching?’

  Faustus wrote that into the speech. For added sneers, he changed it to ‘Mouse-catching?’

  Trebonius and Arulenus would be characterised jointly as antisocial citizens. Sextus would say not only did the pair show no respect for age, religion, decency or dog-control, they were physical degenerates. One did too many gymnastics, the other was both fat and effeminate, a double shame. Faustus had (he claimed) once seen Arulenus in a long striped tunic, with fringed sleeves, an outfit that no manly male would wear.

  I smiled. ‘I had not envisaged either of those boors as chasing boys.’

  ‘No, but we can make the fact they are such close partners look suggestive in itself. “This pair practically roam the Forum holding hands – an insult to the stones where our ancestors walked!”’

  ‘You are surprisingly inventive, Faustus … Can’t they then say the same about Vibius and Gratus?’

  ‘Anyone can see Gratus would be scared to do anything outrageous and Sextus looks clean-living.’

  ‘I hope he is!’ I murmured.

  ‘Trust me. Then we point out Trebonius acquires his muscles by over-exercising in some sleazy gym.’

  It was tricky for a Roman to strike a balance between looking after his body and not. A politician needed to be healthy and strong; he would be admired if he took care of himself, which implied he could be trusted to take care of his office. However, too much weight-training put him on a par with gladiators, bloody brutes who were social outcasts. Being muscle-bound could only be for sordid purposes in Roman eyes; there was a suggestion that what went on in gymnasiums (with their sinister Greek origins) might be sexually outrageous.

  I eyed
up Faustus, who shifted on his couch as I assessed his physique. ‘Nice!’

  He concealed any embarrassment. ‘Arulenus wearing exotic clothes implies he’s a beast who lives for bodily pleasure – such an easy target. Everyone knows people in fancy dinner outfits go to all-night supper-parties with singing and dancing, leading to lascivious sex games. They wear perfume and depilate their bodies, all to appeal to the wrong kind of sexual partner. From a long tunic it’s a short step to a man who has wasted his fortune—’

  ‘Loose belts mean loose morals; fringes equal fornication … But the fringes are hearsay,’ I murmured. ‘And has anybody ever seen him with a pretty boy?’

  ‘I saw the fringes! Dangling right on his hairy wrists.’

  ‘Tiberius, I don’t doubt your eyesight. But please only have Sextus report he heard this from “a trusted friend”. Those two will make bad enemies. Trebonius and Arulenus might well send shaved-head heavies to thrash you senseless.’

  ‘Thank you for caring.’

  I acknowledged his thanks. ‘Trebonius Fulvo wears ordinary tunics – though he is bursting out of them. He is also laden with finger jewellery. The rings look stuck on his fat fingers so if Sextus points them out Trebonius can only twist them helplessly, while everyone stares right at him. Arulenus seems much worse, totally immoral – isn’t he the one who cheated on a mistress, promising her marriage, then stealing her jewellery? And apparently he abandoned a wife when she was pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, he’s poison. We can imply the hypothetical pretty boys are the reason he reneges on decent marriage. He breaks the heart of an innocent woman – well, fairly innocent. It is said half the Senate have slept with her. He fails to become a respectable husband who sets about fathering children or if he gets one he leaves the mother in the lurch. Completely decadent. Is it too extreme to suggest his pretty boys are eunuchs?’

  ‘Stage too far,’ I warned him. ‘Given that you invented them!’

  ‘Me? Glyco and Hesperus, handsome young bucks who gild their nipples, everybody knows that degenerate duo …’