Ode To A Banker Read online

  ‘So what’s the verdict, fruit?’ I asked, directly of Helena. I had no doubt she had spoken to the man with authority in my absence; he may not have believed how much I respected her judgement. He looked to me like one of those untidy single men who pretend to flirt, but who would never let a real woman come within a stadium’s length.

  Helena would have asked the right questions, though she would have done it slyly, as if making polite conversation. She gave her report in a quiet voice, a little too crisp to be neutral: ‘Pacuvius was called in yesterday to discuss progress on his latest series of verses; he produced a new set; Chrysippus was delighted; they did not quarrel; Pacuvius left the house shortly afterwards.’

  ‘Did he see any of the other authors?’ I could have asked him that. He was now dying to answer for himself.

  ‘He says not,’ said Helena. Nice phrasing. Just the merest hint that she withheld judgement on whether the flamboyant braggart told the truth.

  I smiled at her. She smiled rather wearily at me.

  I bent down and picked up the baby for a fatherly greeting; Julia chose not to be used as a prop in this comedy, and she started bawling ‘Well, that sounds fine,’ I said firmly to Pacuvius over the row.

  The man flustered his way to the door. ‘Yes, yes. I am delighted it is satisfactory. I will leave you to your domestic harmonies -‘ He could not resist upsetting my domesticity by returning to plonk elaborate kisses on the ladies’ hands (both made very sure they had their arms stretched out ready, lest he try kissing them at closer quarters). I watched in silence. If he had dared anything else, I would have thrown him physically downstairs. I suspected Maia and Helena were secretly hoping to see it.

  ‘If I find any holes in your story I’ll want to see you again. If you can think of anyone with a reason to kill Chrysippus, you come and tell me. If you had a reason yourself, I suggest that you own up now, because I will find out. My working base is Chrysippus’ Latin library.’

  He bowed, as if making amends for an intrusion, and rushed off. If I was supposed to feel uncouth for my hostility, it did not work.

  Julia settled down again.

  ‘What a creep!’ shrieked Maia He may still have been within earshot. I stepped out to look. He was striding away down Fountain Court, a large man who walked too fast and caused awnings to flap as he passed. Perhaps he felt some witty verses coming on so was rushing to write them down before he forgot. He was big enough to overpower and kill Chrysippus. I classified him as too useless, though.

  ‘We’ll be in a satire, I warn you’ I said, retreating indoors again. ‘I’ve come across his stuff. Scrutator is a snob. Some like to write skits on the rich. He enjoys twitting the upwardly-moving lower classes who think they have social significance. Informers have always been good material, and here’s a senator’s daughter who ran off to live in the gutter, together with a very pretty widow whose husband ��� she claims - was eaten by a lion. Gods, if I wasn’t so scared of the pair of you, I would write it up myself. ‘

  Helena flopped down on a bench. ‘I thought he would never shut up.’

  ‘So did Maia. I could see that as soon as I walked in.’

  ‘He had no idea,’ Maia chimed in - adding in her usual measured way, ‘selfish, self-centred masculine monster.’

  ‘Keep it clean in front of the baby,’ I reproved her. I took out the note-tablet where Passus had prepared details of Chrysippus’ visitors. ‘Curious how these writers are all coining to see me in exactly the same order as their names on my list. Neat choreography. Maybe they need an editor to suggest more natural realism.’ To Helena, whose determination I knew well by now, I said, ‘Any pickings from that bore that I should know about?’

  ‘It’s your business,’ she pretended.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t expect you to have wasted an opportunity.’

  Since the others were exhausted, I dumped the baby on Maia and started hunting out food-bowls. ‘The chopping board is under Julia’s blanket,’ Helena told me helpfully. I found it, and the lettuce to chop behind a pot of growing parsley. While I set about making lunch, with a competence that failed to impress anyone, my partner in life roused herself enough to tell me what she had managed to extract from the satirist. Maia threw in snippets too, while she tried to clean fig seeds off Julia.

  ‘I think I’ll spare you his life history, Marcus,’ Helena decided.

  ‘Courteous woman.’

  ‘He has been writing for years, a regular hack with a small continuous readership, people who probably return to his work just because they have heard of him. He does have a certain blowsy style and wit. He is observant of social nuances, adept with parody, quick with cutting remarks.’

  ‘He knows how to circulate scandal,’ Maia grunted. ‘All his stories were crammed with things people would rather keep quiet.’ That could be a source of antipathy.

  ‘Could you tell how he got on with Chrysippus?’

  ‘Well.’ Helena was dry. ‘His view was that the famous Scrutator is a founder member of the writing circle, without whose dogged loyalty and brilliance Chrysippus would never have survived on the literary circuit.’

  ‘Or to put it more succinctly, Scrutator is a useless old fart,’ said Maia

  Helena took the thoughtful approach: ‘He claims that Chrysippus was thrilled by the new poems he produced yesterday, but I wonder. Could it be that Chrysippus really saw him as a dire washed-up has-been whom he wanted to drop? Now the patron is dead, who can tell? Will Pacuvius manage to have work published that might have been rejected?’

  ‘Would he have killed to achieve publication?’ I murmured, scraping salt from a block.

  ‘Would he ever stop talking long enough?’ asked Maia.

  ‘If he really has an established market, he must want the scriptorium to continue trading as normal, without any commercial upheavals caused by the death of its proprietor.’

  ‘Is there a sensation effect?’ asked Helena. ‘Might a murder increase sales?’

  ‘Don’t know - but it’s presumably only temporary.’ I had other priorities. ‘Where’s that nice matured goat’s cheese?’

  ‘Gaius Baebius ate it yesterday.’

  Jupiter, I hate that glutton! So did the talking man give you any inside patter on the others involved?’

  ‘All cooing turtledoves, according to him,’ sneered Helena.

  ‘She does not believe it. She has met writers,’ giggled Maia ‘Well, she knows you, Marcus.’

  ‘What, no vinegar? No mean-spirited nastiness about his companions?’

  ‘He was far too nice about them all. Not enough envy, not enough bile.’ Helena’s bright eyes had been dangling bait. ‘But then…’

  ‘Out with it!’

  ‘What did you find out?’

  I could play the game. I fed her one titbit. ‘The historian had a large debt to the Aurelian Bank.’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ crowed my sister, interrupting.

  ‘I suspect he was to be dropped too - Vespasian wants his own version of history reported. Anyone who has been around during previous emperors’ reigns is tainted. Chrysippus may well have been thinking he would look for someone more politically acceptable to the new regime. Waste of time trying to push the wares, otherwise.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Helena grilled me.

  ‘The dreamer who’s creating the new republic has the sniffles. An ideal society will be slow arriving, due to his funny turns.’

  ‘What a disappointment. Which one is that?’

  ‘Turius.’

  ‘Ah!’ Helena came alight excitedly. ‘Turius has a black mark against him; Scrutator loved telling us this: Turius refused to include a flattering reference to Chrysippus in his work. Chrysippus put to him that if he was prepared to take the money, he ought to respond appropriately.’

  ‘Toady up to the patron?’ I grinned.

  ‘Mention how wildly generous the patron was,’ said Helena in her austere way. ‘Name Chrysippus so frequently that the public lear
ned to respect him just for being so popular - make out that Chrysippus was a man of exquisite taste and noble intention, and the next Roman world-mover.’

  ‘Also, claim that he gives nice dinner parties,’ Maia added.

  ‘Turius foolishly prefers not to say these things?’

  Helena answered with relish: ‘According to Pacuvius - who may be lying for theatrical effect, of course - Turius was much more forceful than that. He proclaimed in public that Chrysippus was a devious philandering foreigner, who would have rejected Homer’s manuscripts because a blind man would be a menace at public readings, and would need a costly amanuensis to take dictation.’

  ‘A feud! I love it!’ I guffawed.

  Helena’s eyes sought mine, brown and bright, enjoying my delight in her story. ‘Then - still according to Pacuvius, who seemed rather carried away by all this - Turius raged that Chrysippus was so lacking in critical discernment he would have insisted Helen of Troy be seen constantly naked in the Iliad; he would have censored the love between Achilles and Patroclus in case the aediles sent him into exile for inflaming immorality; and in the Odyssey he would have demanded that the heart-rending death scene of Odysseus’ poor old dog be cut as mere padding.’

  We all winced.

  I divided a small sausage between us with a sharp knife. ‘Did Chrysippus know Turius had been so rude?’

  ‘They all think so.’

  ‘Thrills! Was there a fight? Any suggestion of violence?’

  ‘No. Nobody thinks Turius can even find the energy to blow his nose, despite the sniffles.’

  ‘Oh, but Chrysippus must have been furious - he might have picked a fight.’ And Turius might have feebly run away. ‘So what does Pacuvius think of Turius and his lively opinions?’

  ‘Watery approval - but he keeps his mouth shut. As a satirist, he is a hypocrite.’

  ‘Aren’t they always? Anything else you found out?’

  ‘Hardly anything,’ Helena said offhandedly. That meant there was. ‘The epic poet hits the amphora too often, and it’s said that the successful playwright does not write his plays himself.’

  I shook my head, then grinned at her ‘Nothing to go on at all, in fact!’

  XXIV

  A GOOD PICTURE of jealousies and quarrels was building. I always like a case with a crowd of seething suspects; I allowed myself to enjoy lunch.

  When the conversation turned to family matters, Maia told me she had been to see Pa. Although she had investigated his situation at the warehouse, she had not come out and directly offered help. ‘You tackle him. You and Helena know him better than I do. Anyway, it’s you two who want me to do this…’

  She was prevaricating. Helena and I took her back to the Saepta Julia straight after we had eaten.

  We found my father frowning over a pile of what looked like bills. He was perfectly able to deal with his financial affairs; he was shrewd and snappily numerate. Once he had found a basket of odd pots and finials to keep Julia happy, I put it to him bluntly that he seemed to have lost the will to keep his daily records, and that he would be doing my sister a favour if he allowed her - and paid her - to become his secretary.

  ‘There’s nothing to it,’ Pa avowed, trying to minimise the salary. ‘It does not need keeping up every day -‘

  ‘I thought all business deals were supposed to be recorded in a daybook,’ I said.

  ‘That doesn’t mean you have to write them up the same day they happen.’ Pa looked at me as if I were simple. ‘Do you write your expenses on a tablet the minute you pay out a witness bribe?’

  ‘Of course. I am a methodical consultant.’

  ‘Pigs’ pizzle. Besides, son, just because I can, when challenged, produce a daybook looking all neat and innocent, doesn’t mean it has to be correct.’

  Maia shot him a look; that was about to change smartly around this office.

  Despite this difference in ethics between them, we settled the matter easily. Like most arrangements that appear fraught with problems, once tackled, its difficulties evaporated. Straight away Maia began to explore and soon extracted a pile of accounting notes from under Pa’s stool. I had seen how she kept her own household budget; I knew she would cope. She herself obviously felt nervous. While she sat down to get the hang of our father’s systems, which he had devised especially to bamboozle others, Helena and I stayed to distract the suspicious proprietor from overseeing Maia so closely he would put her off.

  ‘Who do you bank with, Pa?’

  ‘Mind your own business!’ he retorted instinctively.

  ‘Typical!’

  ‘Juno,’ Helena muttered. ‘Grow up, you two. Didius Favonius, your son has no designs on your moneychests. This is just an enquiry related to his work.’

  Pa perked up, always eager to put his nose into anything technical of mine. ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘A banker has been killed. Chrysippus. Ever come across his agent, Lucrio, at the Aurelian Bank?’

  Pa nodded. ‘I know a few people who use him.’

  ‘Given the prices you extract at auction, I’m not surprised buyers have to get financial help.’ Pa looked proud to be called an extortioner. ‘I hear he specialises in loans.’

  ‘This Aurelian outfit going down, then?’ Pa demanded, ever anxious to be first with gossip.

  ‘Not that I know.’

  ‘I’ll put the word around.’

  ‘That’s not what Marcus said,’ Helena reproved him. Her senatorial background had taught her never to do or say anything that might excite a barrister. She was related to a few. It had not improved her view of the advice they gave. ‘Don’t slander the banker if there is nothing wrong!’

  Pa wriggled and clammed up. He would be unable to resist pretending to his cronies that he knew something. That there was nothing to relate would not stop him bending ears with a sensational tale. Patter was his business; he would make it up without noticing his own invention.

  I too should have kept quiet. Still, it was too late now. ‘I suppose you’ve seen plenty of credit-brokers hanging around at auctions, ready to help out buyers with on-the-spot finance?’

  ‘All the time. Sometimes we attract more money touts than interested purchasers to take them up. Persistent bastards too. But we don’t see Lucrio.’

  ‘No, I think the Aurelian Bank works more secretly.’

  ‘Dodges?’ asked Pa.

  ‘No, just discreet.’

  ‘Oh really!’

  Even I smiled knowingly ‘It’s the Greek style, I’m told.’

  ‘You do mean dodges then,’ sneered Pa. He and Helena chuckled together.

  I felt myself looking pompous. ‘No need for xenophobia.’

  ‘The Greeks invented xenophobia,’ Helena reminded me.

  ‘The Greeks are Romans now,’ I claimed.

  ‘Not,’ sneered Pa, ‘that you would claim it when face to face with a Greek.’

  ‘Sensitivity to others. Why rub Attic noses in the rich dirt of Latium? Let them believe they are superior, if that’s their religion. We Romans tolerate anyone - except, of course, the Parthians. And once we persuade them of the advantages of joining the Empire and having their long hair cut, we may even pretend to like the Parthians.’

  ‘You are joking,’ scoffed Pa.

  I let a brief silence fall. Any moment now, somebody would mention the Carthaginians. Maia, whose husband had been executed for cursing Hannibal in his home region and then blaspheming the Punic gods, looked up from her work briefly as if she sensed what I was thinking.

  ‘So which company do you bank with?’ Helena asked my father, with rather wicked insistence.

  He indulged her, though not much. ‘This and that. Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘What I want.’

  ‘Pa never keeps much on deposit,’ I told her. ‘He prefers to have his capital in saleable goods - artworks and fine furniture.’

  ‘Why pay somebody to keep my currency secure?’ Pa explained. ‘Or allow a halfwit who
couldn’t spot a good investment in a goldmine to gamble with my cash? When I want a loan to make a big unplanned purchase, I can get it. My credit’s good.’

  ‘That proves how stupid bankers are!’ I joked.

  ‘How do they know they can trust you, Geminus?’ Helena asked, more reasonably.

  Pa told her about the Columnia Maena, where credit merchants posted up details of clients who were looking for loans. It was the same story Nothokleptes had given me. ‘Apart from that, it’s all word of mouth. They consult one another; it’s a big family party. Once you acquire a good reputation, you are in.’

  Helena Justina turned to me. ‘You could do that kind of work, Marcus - checking that people are solvent.’

  ‘I have done, on occasion.’

  ‘Then you ought to advertise it as a regular service. You could even specialise.’

  ‘Make a change from being hired by the vigiles to solve cases they cannot be bothered to investigate.’

  I knew why Helena was interested. I was supposed to be going into partnership with one of her brothers - Justinus, if he ever deigned to come home from Spain. Both brothers, if we could build up a large enough client base. Regular customers, such as bankers checking whether clients were creditworthy, could be useful to our agency. I pretended to be dismissive - but then winked to let her know I had heard the suggestion.

  ‘Looking into the backgrounds of people who have not actually bludgeoned their relatives would be less dangerous too,’ said Helena. I did not share her view of the business world.

  ‘I could start with my own father’s background, I suppose.’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ said Pa predictably.

  This time we all laughed together.

  The conversation reminded me about discovering who had poked Chrysippus with the scroll rod. I said I was going back to his house; Helena decided that first, while we were over at the Saepta Julia, it made sense to hire a litter, cross the Tiber, and visit our own new house on the Janiculan. She would come there with me. She could shout at Gloccus and Cotta, the bathhouse contractors.