A Comedy of Terrors Read online

  At least hauling Gaius and Lucius home gave me time to think about how to deal with what we had seen.

  Tell your husband, Albia.

  Oh, yes? Let a man take over? You cannot be talking to me!

  * * *

  At our house, my husband of four months was sitting in the courtyard with a familiar figure. They were silent, as if pondering something together. It was making them glum.

  “Io, Morellus! How handy to find you here. I need a man from the vigiles, even a useless one.”

  “We saw a dead body! It was horrible!” chorused the two boys, in brief excitement. They scampered off to stare at our new donkey. She stared back. Dromo, our slave, was astride her tail end, solemnly pretending to be riding along; he was about sixteen, with a behaviour age of seven. The donkey, Mercury, stood beside a pergola, eating a creeper. She was two but acted older; I had been promised she was steady-paced and sensible. Well, she was tolerating Dromo.

  Yes, I know Mercury is a male god, but she came to us ready-named by someone who cannot have been pedantic. The boys called her Merky because they couldn’t say her real name. She had no stable yet, which was one of multiple tasks that someone had to tackle around here. Instead, my husband was letting himself be distracted by Titus Morellus.

  Our visitor was a podgy, shaven-headed brute in a limp red tunic, who passed for the local vigiles cohort’s investigator. He was lazy and coarse, but if your house was broken into, your slave robbed in the street or your daughter raped, he would be the best on offer. Unless you hired me, Morellus was the only resource available.

  Completely ignoring mention of a dead man, he reared off his stool with a joyous cry. “Flavia Albia! Come here for a big Saturnalia hug!”

  “Get lost! I am not going to be groped in my own home.” I could have added, “With my husband watching,” but he could stand up for himself. Tiberius merely smiled. “Titus Morellus, Gaius and Lucius are right. I took them to buy figurines, but we found the man knifed in his room.”

  Morellus winced as he slumped back onto his stool. “Ouch.” He now deigned to acknowledge the information, though without enthusiasm. “Who was it?”

  “Agemathus.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Only you can say, Morellus. Tall. Thin. African. Has touted sigillaria for years.”

  “On the Armilustri? Yes, he’s a regular. His brother must have done for him. Couple of pranksters, always vying to outdo each other with tricks, deadly competitive. It was bound to go too far one day.”

  “Will you investigate?”

  “No fear.”

  “Oh, Morellus!”

  “If somebody comes moaning to the station-house, I’ll have to open a file I suppose, but I don’t have time, Albia. I can’t investigate every idiot whose festive treat is being stabbed by a family member. Families! Who needs them?” Morellus sailed into a practised complaint. “Rome’s a madhouse, and we haven’t even reached the main day. I’ve had three grievous batterings already—two involving women who’d been on the drink all afternoon. Once the men are let off work for the week, the fights will really start. I’ll be run ragged.”

  “I see you are suffering already!” I sat on the bench beside Tiberius, then pointedly indicated piles of nuts they had lined up on a low table in front of them. “Clearly you pair have had your feet up here all morning, making yourselves sick with snacks before the holiday even starts.”

  “Work!” claimed Morellus.

  “Lies.”

  “Retail quality control,” Tiberius specified. To demonstrate, he tossed up an almond, caught it in his mouth and chewed. He was in his last few weeks as an aedile, one of the magistrates responsible for testing market weights.

  “Some short-changing stall-holder?” Although it sounded plausible, I was sceptical.

  “We think it’s a bit more than that.” He was often cagey, wanting to be sure of his facts, yet this sounded like Don’t worry your little head about men’s business, lady. I expected that from Morellus, though not Tiberius.

  I could have slapped them down but I had a more important preoccupation. “Never mind minor pistachio-diddling. Let’s decide what is to be done about this sigillaria-seller who’s had a dagger plunged into him.”

  “Oh, I’m going to wait until I’m asked,” Morellus assured me again lazily, while Tiberius just took another nut from a bowl. “Or else, since it was you who discovered the corpse, you could write up a witness report, like a concerned neighbour, Flavia? Hand it in nicely, so my clerk can file it somewhere dark?”

  I was surprised. The murder was interesting. Usually they would snatch a puzzle like this away from me. “Not my job. I work on commission, Morellus.”

  “No funds for it.”

  “Someone has to pay me fees. That’s business—plus, in case you haven’t noticed, we have a family to keep now.”

  Morellus cast a rheumy eye at Gaius and Lucius, who had scrambled up our new fountain bowl and climbed onto Merky with Dromo, pulling at the donkey’s long ears. “Stop that, or he’ll bite you.”

  “She,” I classified. Morellus gave me his “It would be!” glare.

  “If you like,” offered the vigilis, suddenly, “I’ll take your nippers home to play with mine.”

  I could never remember whether he and his rather nice wife had three or four children. It surprised me that Morellus himself kept track, though he did, because he said proudly, “Our babby’s walking now!” He made it sound as if he had brought about this feat, though I knew it would have been Pullia who did all the dandling and encouraging.

  We needed distractions for the boys. Morellus must have been told their situation. Tiberius smiled thanks. I was more cautious: the Morelli were confident young characters who were bound to know all the latest terrible toys and jokes. Even the babby had probably got her chubby hands on a brand-new pig rattle, some model never seen in Rome before.

  “That would be very good for them. Spare a man to go and register the Agemathus fatality, Morellus.”

  “No chance, Flavia darling!”

  “Don’t call me ‘darling’—and I’ve told you enough times, don’t call me Flavia!”

  I could have left this alone, but I grabbed my note-tablets. “All right. I’m not taking on unpaid enquiries, but I’ll document the scene like a responsible witness. You munch your nuts. I’ll go back there myself!”

  As I stormed off to show Morellus the responsible way to register a Saturnalia killing, I heard Tiberius say darkly that nuts were not what they used to be.

  III

  I marched back to the scene. I took Paris, our runabout. His main job was carrying messages, though I was also training him to help in my casework. With no idea what had brought about the death of Agemathus, or who might be lurking in the vicinity with another weapon, I wanted back-up. Paris might not be hefty, but he possessed a cold stare.

  We walked down the Vicus Armilustri, the main thoroughfare across our peak of the Aventine. The mighty hill has two high tops. My family lived on the rougher one. The Didii like to suffer. That’s because they want to tell you about their latest disaster while they cadge a free lunch.

  A side road branched off the Vicus, then a crooked lane lined with the sponge shops widdled along from that; it crossed another narrow lane at the small piazza with the water pipe, at which point the one-tenement alley protruded like a knuckle on the map. Like most, it had no name. In fact, reporting this death at the station-house would have achieved little, since the red-tunics would never have found it. The vigiles avoid a lot of work that way.

  Leaving the Armilustri took us very quickly from a fairly safe environment into the dirty, lawless back entries that dominated the hill.

  “Salubrious!” Paris spoke low, as if afraid of being overheard. He came to us from the Quirinal, which believes itself highly civilised.

  “Niche-living on the Aventine,” I told him. “High rents for bad rooms, high crime, no means, no hope.” Ours was the outsiders’ hill, home to
freed slaves, foreigners, despised professions (mine!), temples to mainly downmarket gods, noise, smells and dirt. Its rebellious spirit went all the way back to Remus, the non-founder of Rome. He was Rome’s very first murder victim. At least we all know who did that one.

  Nowadays high-end provincials were tentatively buying space here; they had not yet managed to alter the character. Mansions went up with tall walls, then whoever lived in them stayed indoors. A pedlar like Agemathus never saw these wealthy types; he would be offering his goods to people who were almost as poor as himself.

  On the way, I had been mentally fixing available facts. I re-envisaged his room, little bigger than a store cupboard: the short wooden bed, the single thin blanket, the stool with his tray, no other furniture. No pillow, no bucket, no personal utensils, no spare clothes. The place had not been particularly squalid, though that might be because he had nothing to make it squalid with. Every copper Agemathus ever earned must have gone on food and drink. Pedlars buy from stalls and eat in the street as they work. I wondered how he ever managed to survive outside Saturnalia; perhaps he hawked sacrificial wheat-cakes, although other festivals offered fewer opportunities. This was the big one. This was when all Rome plunged into unrestrained excess. Vendors of holiday knick-knacks could roam the streets, happily cashing in: statuettes, lights, home decorations, gifts, spiced treats, hot toddies, pointless trinkets. All trash. All eagerly snapped up, as all semblance of taste vanished.

  Why had the sigillaria-seller come off the streets in the middle of the day, a busy time? Was he simply exhausted? Had the frantic festival commerce been too much? Or had he arranged to meet someone? His killer perhaps? So, who was it?

  In my mind I placed Agemathus as I had found him in his room: face down in a neat, straight line, on top of the blanket on his bed. He looked like a tall desert tribesman from one of the southerly provinces, Africa Proconsularis or Mauretania. Polished ebony skin, black hair in crinkled curls all over. His thin arms had been bent up, cradling and hiding his face. On his bony frame he wore a long, narrow, sleeveless tunic, with frayed edges; it was in some loose-weave tawny fabric, so patched all over with other pieces that the original colour was hard to pick out. He had no belt. His large feet, hanging off the end of the bed, were in sloppy old slippers. He had appeared to have stretched out there of his own accord before someone attacked him, perhaps without him ever knowing they were there.

  When Paris and I reached the end of the alley, some of the same slaves were still dawdling. They ought to have slouched off home with their buckets by now, so they must have waited around to see what happened next. When I headed off with Gaius and Lucius, it must have been clear that I was intending to ensure something was done about the murder. The slaves, giggling stupidly, now moved to the end of the alley behind Paris and me, to watch as we entered the tenement. One runabout was not enough support for me to order them to get off home.

  There was still no porter. I led the way. Behind me, Paris sniffed the foul air. I sensed him bracing himself for trouble. Everywhere was silent, as if no one else had been here since I left. I didn’t bother to knock. You don’t ask a corpse, can you come in, are they decent? I pushed on the top of the door, then kicked the bottom until it popped open. The room was just as I had left it—with one crucial difference.

  “Oh, spit!” The body had gone.

  “What?”

  “He was lying on the bed. Now he’s not.”

  “Got up and left?” asked Paris cautiously, squeezing into the room behind me. He had not been with us long; he was being polite, yet brave enough about suggesting I might be crazy.

  “The man was stone dead. No chance of him wandering off. I didn’t dream it, Paris. The boys saw him too. He had a knife with a big handle sticking out of him and was covered with fresh blood.”

  “Hmm!” commented Paris, as if I had just told him a joke he didn’t get. He looked around, wincing at the bare space.

  “Someone has moved the remains,” I insisted.

  “Interesting!” Paris had mastered how to give a really irritating commentary.

  “This is an outrage. Someone stole his body.”

  “Undertaker?”

  “Don’t be daft. Pedlars never belong to a funeral club. They don’t all chip in for garlands and a feast.”

  “Why would someone take him away?”

  “One reason. When a murdered corpse vanishes, Paris, the guilty party is trying to hide their crime.”

  “So now you will need to find out who!” Paris was smiling now. As we walked here, he had been tense. Since there was nothing grim to find, he relaxed into satire. “You want to investigate what’s going on, and poor old Faustus will just have to let you.”

  “It’s not up to him.” In fact, by letting me come back here, I took it that Tiberius had endorsed my involvement.

  “Domina, I am glad you made that clear!” Paris kept up the banter as he began looking around the room. “This isn’t going to keep us long—bloody hell, there’s not much, no chance of clues.”

  “Don’t call me domina. Someone needs to work on this, and they need to do it fast. The culprits must be found before they can cover up the crime. The vital thing is to catch them in possession. They cannot have gone far yet.”

  “You think? Doing a runner, while carrying a murdered corpse? I bet they’ll be pelting away with the squits.”

  Paris did then find a few rusty red spots on the floorboards, which he grudgingly accepted as blood. He conceded I had really seen a body. But if he was right about them fleeing as fast as possible, its snatchers could now be anywhere. This would be hard to investigate. Still, what isn’t? Facing up to problems never daunted me.

  Since there was nobody in the building for us to question, we went back outside.

  On the corner with the water pipe, those slaves were waiting to snigger about the shock Paris and I must have had. My expression made most of them slither off on urgent errands. One was too slow. We cornered him.

  He tried Saturnalia role-play: “Hands off me! I’m King-for-the-Day. I order you—”

  “Don’t even try to give orders to me,” I interrupted, staying calm before whatever obscenity he planned. “Slaves won’t act like kings until Jove’s Day! Even if you’ve pulled the wizened bean in your household lottery already, you have Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars and Mercury to go yet. So, let’s have that cap of liberty off.” Paris reached, then flipped the sagging knitwear from the slave’s head. “Mind his fleas,” I warned. “You’re just a slave today. Here’s your label—‘I’ve done a runner,’ it’s saying.” I was reading from a metal collar that had been welded onto him. To me, this said his master was a brute—which gave an idea of what to expect in a slave from such a household. “Have you run away in the past?”

  Paris pulled aside the slave’s flopping hair, looking for a brand mark that would confirm he had tried to escape.

  I tugged at the collar’s rectangular label. “What’s here? ‘Take me home to Terentius for your reward.’ How much is this Terentius offering?”

  “I bet he’d pay us to lose this runt for him,” scoffed Paris. “What’s your name, boy?” He was using “boy” as the generic for a slave; this one was not tall, but had certainly reached adulthood. He had no fancy meek manners and prissy Greek, but was a general workhorse, probably from some household where the owners were almost as crude.

  “Sagax.”

  “Intelligent?” Paris and I fell about laughing. “Now that is funny!”

  Sagax unwisely made to bolt. Paris stuck out a foot and tripped him. He picked up the would-be escapee, then held him fast, turning his face away from ingrained garlic and sweat. “Phew! Did no one ever tell you anyone can wash at the baths for free?”

  Sagax slumped, so Paris would have to hold him up. When questioning a slave about a crime, physical torture is permitted. I left that to the vigiles. They had better equipment.

  Instead, I squared up with the informer’s tool: annoying rhetoric. “You w
ere here when I visited before, you were here when I left in a hurry, you are here now I’m back. Sagax, you have glued yourself in situ like a snail on a dry wall. Listen—there has been a violent death in that building over there and it looks to me as if you and your horrible cronies know something about it. Now persons unknown have spirited away the corpse, so stop playing silly buggers and tell me, did you see something?”

  Sagax looked vague deliberately.

  “Assume that was a question expecting the answer yes—Latin is such an interesting language, isn’t it? I love its barmy grammar. I reckon, Sagax, that while you were messing about here, you witnessed something going on with Agemathus the sigillaria-seller. Since you’ve been hanging about ever since, gawping, you must have seen if someone took away his corpse afterwards?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Another expected answer, unfortunately. Latin, the language of politicians, provides a fine medium for lies, malpractice, obfuscation and straight bamboozling. It’s perfect for buffoons, inadequates and crooks.

  “Try harder,” I snapped. “Who went in and killed the African? And who then dragged, carried, drove or otherwise transported the dead body from his building?”

  “Don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “Come on—you and your horrible friends saw what happened.”

  “We never.”

  “Sagax, I don’t want to haul you to your master and ask for permission to beat it out of you.”

  “You dare try it!” he jeered, with a burst of new confidence.

  “She will,” warned Paris.

  “Then you don’t know who Terentius is!”