A Capitol Death Read online

“Don’t get all riled up,” Scorpus admonished me, as if I was the one being unreasonable. “You can hardly blame me, if you went gadding off on a spree with your lover while things started happening.”

  “One, he is my husband. Two, it was a mission to find a witness. Three, I got her, she is at my house, you can see her if you want to. And what things happened? You can tell me—in fact, you should tell me, if it affects my inquiry, which, four, I remind you is official.”

  “Five, a piece of evidence was found,” said Scorpus, which at least proved he knew Latin counting.

  I noticed he did not say he found the evidence himself, nor assign its discovery to one of his lads. “A clue? At last! Who found it?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Not Karus?”

  “Bloody Karus.”

  We both sat for a moment, reflecting on life’s unfairness.

  After a suitable pause for mutual depression, I said at least that explained the “operational reasons” farce. Scorpus, who had not in fact used the phrase, felt no loyalty towards the special agent. He came clean.

  After they inspected Lemni’s body at the foot of the Tarpeian Rock, Julius Karus had taken it upon himself to stiffen up the inquiry with his version of leadership. While Scorpus merely suggested discreet temple-to-temple enquiries, Karus plunged in, ordering a disruptive search, covering the entire Capitol and Arx. He brought in mysterious resources, evil-eyed troops Scorpus had never seen before. The men poked in everywhere, making as much racket as they could: temples, Auguraculum, Record Office, goose pens, huts. They even slit open the special grain sacks for feeding the Sacred Geese, incurring the wrath of Feliculus. In reply, the troops duffed him up.

  “Juno, he’ll be having a nervous breakdown!”

  “Don’t worry. I told his geese to look after him.”

  “Oh, nice touch, Scorpus.”

  In the Jupiter caretaker’s special hut, now the transport manager’s site office, Karus found his evidence. I would get no credit, but it was what I had told the vigiles to look for: a tent mallet, still with human material clinging to it. Remains of Lemni. That was what must have been used to bash in his skull and kill him.

  “I hope you didn’t bring the mallet last night to show Larth?”

  “Flavia, the face of it was blood-soaked. Lemni’s oily black hair was sticking out of the clots. That,” said Scorpus, “would have been insensitive.” He paused. “I just toddled along to inform the augur that we’d found the murder weapon that had killed his friend. I wanted to see his reaction.”

  I nodded. “Standard stuff.”

  “Karus might have come to do it, but he’s fresh from the military so he never thought of it.”

  “You came to show him up.”

  “I came because it was right to check. Do you want to hear me, Flavia? I was specially glad I didn’t have the bloody peg hammer stuffed under my tunic when I got to the house and found it was the night they were holding a funeral—to be precise, Lemni’s.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have felt right. So that was why they invited you, and you stayed.” I cursed myself for missing the event. Although I had said nothing out loud, Scorpus grinned. “So, who came to the funeral?” I enquired, trying to sound unconcerned.

  “Not many. If ever you get allowed into the house, you’ll see there was no room. Their garden is only a tiddly sitting-out space, and it’s filled up with a bloody great tree.”

  “A dead one now!” I was not really cruel. “Don’t worry, fig trees are rampant. It will soon sprout back.”

  “It had better! All I saw was lanky Larth, born Gellius Donatus, and his wife, a high-class woman, name of Percennia. They live here with just a couple of skinny old retainers and some young slaves, who were tending the pyre.” Doddery attendants, I supposed, might have been part of the trouble with it blazing up too strongly. “There was a good-looking woman with young children who came. She must have been Lemni’s sister, from the way she was crying her eyes out, then being comforted.”

  “Name and address?”

  Scorpus tutted. “Not the time or place to ask. Anyway, why bother?”

  I whistled through my teeth. “For a wonderful moment there, I had forgotten I was talking to one of the vigiles! Don’t you care why Lemni copped it? Don’t you think his relatives might fill in the picture for us?”

  “Cool it, Flavia.” Scorpus shook his head. He seemed relaxed, in his embittered way. “Doesn’t matter what I think. Karus has already arrested a suspect. Done deal. His killer is at our station-house, and even though he seems a bit slow about cooperating, we’re all waiting for him to confess.”

  “He will?”

  “He will.”

  If Julius Karus had solved my case for me, I would curse. But Karus was an impetuous type. He knew it all. His word was law. For that kind of agent, a rapid solution is better than the truth.

  I said it sounded as if Karus had been brilliant. Scorpus said Karus was a god of investigation—though not as brilliant as he thought. Being only part divine, Karus had decided that since he found the mallet concealed in the custodian’s hut, it must have been put there by the man who currently lived there, the man who slept in the bed under which the murderous tool was hidden. Karus had arrested Egnatius.

  To Karus this was obvious. To us, lunacy.

  According to Scorpus, Julius Karus could not see that if Egnatius did have a motive for heaving someone off the Tarpeian Rock, it would have been envy directed against Gabinus, his predecessor, whose post Egnatius coveted. We knew of no connection with Lemni. We saw no reason for Egnatius to take a mallet to his head.

  Besides, Scorpus and I agreed what Egnatius himself was now shouting from his cell: anyone who knew the hut was there, or who just happened to run past that way, could have broken in with the blood-covered mallet and pushed it under the bed before escaping. For his part, Egnatius claimed he had been out when the mallet must have been dumped; he was looking at stables in the Campus Martius.

  “Have you checked for witnesses who saw him?”

  “That would suggest I doubt the miraculous Karus.”

  “Yes, Scorpus, but have you?”

  “Of course I bloody have. And found plenty. Egnatius was at some stables. He was haggling with the owner, so it took a long time.”

  Being fair, if he had killed Lemni, Egnatius would be ridiculous to draw attention to himself by hiding the weapon under his own bed. He had personality defects, but stupidity was not one of them.

  “So what will Karus do now? Subject Egnatius to unbearable torture until he admits something? Even though he didn’t do it?”

  “That’s a good traditional method,” Scorpus replied drily. “Karus will know how to leave no marks … He is averse to risk-taking, however, at least when it might rebound on him. Egnatius is an imperial freedman, needed for Domitian’s Triumph. Even Karus sees the implications. How would it look if the big procession went wrong because of some horse problem, then Julius Karus was revealed to have the transport man in custody? With my bright boys mentioning all along that he could be innocent? Dangerous scenario,” said Scorpus. “The special agent’s orders to us are to keep asking Egnatius nicely, just in case he decides to own up.”

  “Which he will never do.”

  “Probably not. On the night before the Triumph we are to release him, without requiring bail.”

  “No charge?”

  “Charges deferred.”

  “Indefinitely?” I was laughing.

  “No need,” came the solemn reply from Scorpus. “We won’t have to prosecute Egnatius because by the time the Triumph starts you will have given us the real killer, won’t you?”

  I swallowed. “How long have I got? Has it been announced yet? What day is the Triumph?”

  “Tomorrow, I believe, Flavia Albia!”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “So I shall leave you to get on with it,” he answered, not even bothering to smirk.

  XLIV

  The barber w
anted his seats back because he was losing business. Scorpus pulled me up by the arm and surrendered mine. His, he handed to his man Taurus, whom he whistled up. Taurus was told to sit there, as if he was waiting for a shave. If anyone came out from the Gellius house carrying what looked like an urn full of funeral ashes, Taurus had to jump up and follow where they went.

  “See? I have my methods, Flavia.”

  I saw. “You think Lemni’s remains will be sent to his family? What if they are planted straight into a niche in a columbarium?”

  “Every columbarium has a custodian. He keeps a list of who has visitation rights.”

  “You made that up!”

  Scorpus shot me his world-weary look, the one that said informers gave him heartburn. If so, that would be because we are right.

  We parted company.

  * * *

  I took myself into the house. With no porter to annoy me, the first part was easy. I did knock, of course. Quietly.

  I reached and inspected the peristyle. It was certainly snug. A neat pyre, now cool, stood in the centre of the garden area. The surrounding colonnades and house walls were blackened and heavily soot-streaked. Windows and a balcony had been lost. Repairs would be feasible, Tiberius would say, but for now this home was unliveable.

  Apart from large trampled leaves carpeting the ground, all that was left of the fig tree was cut ends of branches where its multiple arms had come up from the ground. Any remaining soft wood was shredded. The vigiles were hackers and hasty smashers.

  I still thought growth might resprout. The roots were undamaged. Figs are monsters, very hard to kill. But this one would take several seasons to become useful again.

  Larth emerged to check the pyre.

  “I can suggest a reliable firm of renovation builders,” I offered, after greeting him.

  “I cannot bear to start thinking about that.” He had never commissioned much work to his house in the past, or he would have leaped on that word “reliable.”

  “It is only property,” said a new voice. An elderly woman who must be his wife, Percennia, appeared. She too was tall and, like her husband, so thin that they must simply nibble small bites of food after their slaves had reminded them enough times that they ought to eat. “No one was hurt and we still have the building.”

  Larth, or Gellius Donatus as he was at home, introduced me to his lady. He then slumped into unhappiness. The loss of Lemni, followed by a night of fright and damage to his home, had crushed him. Even the first time I met him, he had been in his own world, letting Lemni do most of the talking. Now it would have been even harder to squeeze anything out of him, but Percennia took over. She led us indoors to a salon that had partly survived the blaze. We sat gingerly on damp couches, trying to ignore the smoke haze.

  It was the kind of house where nothing had been bought new for fifty years. All the furniture must have been inherited. Some of the vases and dusty statuettes on side tables were rare antiques, but they had always been there so the owners barely noticed them. The battered couch bolsters were wrong; that, too, was a discomfort they were used to. Renovation was overdue, but they would hate it.

  “Gellius, tell the girl what she wants to know,” Percennia instructed Larth. “Then we can get on. We are going to stay with friends as soon as my husband completes the funeral formalities,” she explained to me.

  Percennia had a round, open, clear-skinned face on which she wore absolutely no cosmetics. Her dress was quiet, her jewellery discreet. Her way of speaking was polite, sensible, yet firm. She never stressed her noble position, but acted as if people of all ranks were civilised. If she ever met someone who was not, she would continue with her own high style, thinking it rude to treat them differently. She reminded me of Mother. Women like that never lower their standards.

  “What do you want to know?” Larth asked me obediently.

  I outlined events when Gabinus assaulted Suza. “You sent Lemni to take her to safety and find her folk, the murex workers. You instructed him not to tackle Gabinus, because you would do so. Please tell me why, and if you found him, what transpired.”

  The augur spoke in his sombre timbre: “Lemni could be hot-headed, which caused me concern. I overruled his desire to confront Gabinus, gave him a useful task with the girl, and to satisfy him I promised to deal with Gabinus myself.”

  “Deal with him how, sir?”

  “In a rational fashion.”

  “Not pushing him off the Tarpeian Rock, you mean? The man subsequently died. Why you and Lemni were so angry with him is critical. The girl was in distress, yet she was a stranger to both of you. You treated her kindly, yet your response to Gabinus over her seems exaggerated. Out of character, too, if I may say so.”

  “The Arx was being defiled by Gabinus and his lewd behaviour,” offered Larth. As an explanation I thought it feeble.

  “Did you find Gabinus?”

  “No.”

  “Suppose you had,” I asked, trying again, “what would you have done, Augur?”

  “Taken him to task.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “A concerned citizen. A member of the Curia, a man of authority. A representative of the College of Augurs, whose sanctity Gabinus had affronted.”

  “No other concern?”

  “Nothing else,” he responded.

  He was lying. His wife knew. She remained tight-lipped.

  I recognised their kind of marriage. They must have been together for thirty years; there was no indication they had ever had children but I sensed the strength of their partnership. They lived side by side, accepting, content, even though Larth had probably seen more of Lemni than he did of Percennia. I guessed when they were both at home, when Larth was not officiating on the Arx, each moved around the house independently. Actual conversation might be limited; they communicated in unspoken ways simply by knowing each other so well. I could see they rarely argued. When he dug in his heels, as he was doing over Lemni, she stood by in silence.

  “I failed to find the man,” declared Larth. “I came home to my wife. She will confirm that. I was in some anxiety about the episode with the girl. Percennia and I discussed it.”

  I glanced at Percennia but did not bother with her confirmation. “You could have reported Gabinus to the authorities. You, or at least Lemni, appear to have had a personal motive. I ask you again. What was it?”

  Larth lifted his chin and looked lofty.

  I persisted. “Will you clarify our previous discussion, please? You and Lemni both assured me you had no prior link to Gabinus. That was untrue. Lemni built up an elaborate lie that he had only ever heard about him from the custodian of Jupiter Custos. You have since assured me Lemni never ran bets for Gabinus, yet other people say differently. They reckon he almost certainly acted as his messenger, just as he did for everyone. Why did Lemni pretend they were strangers?”

  Larth simply shrugged.

  “This is hard to believe, Larth. My witness, the girl, says neither of you showed surprise when Gabinus behaved badly to her. She thought you both loathed him already and Lemni was wound up further by this new offence. What had Gabinus done before? What had he done to Lemni?”

  Still no answer. I glanced at the wife, Percennia. She seemed embarrassed by this situation, but had an austere old-fashioned loyalty of wife to husband. I had been taught to respect that; I did not try to persuade her.

  “So after Lemni took the girl to safety, you say you failed to find Gabinus that night?”

  “Neither Lemni nor I saw him alive again,” stated Larth. “Next morning we were preoccupied with setting up our tent anew, since the girl’s abrupt invasion had polluted the ritual. We were seated inside while I prepared myself for a new observation. We heard Gabinus cry out when he fell from the Rock. I summoned people to go down to recover the body, though we did not descend the Gemonian Stairs ourselves. The body was taken away. I had no other involvement.”

  “And Lemni had never confronted Gabinus?”

  “No,
I told you. He took the murex girl to safety. What are you suggesting?” For the first time, Larth appeared perturbed. He almost glanced at his wife, but managed not to do so.

  I told it as I saw it: “From my impression of Lemni, once he left Suza at the inn, he would have found it impossible to rest. Lemni was thoroughly worked up. He harangued the leader of the murex workers furiously, then must have left the inn while still very upset. Don’t pretend: even though you had tried to stop him, I believe Lemni went back to the Capitol later, looking for Gabinus.”

  “He never found him,” Larth insisted. “You are right, he did try. He failed to find him, just as I had done. Next day he admitted this to me. Someone told Lemni that Gabinus had gone off drinking. Apparently he went down the hill to meet an acquaintance at a bar.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Lemni never told me.”

  “And who was Gabinus meeting?”

  “I do not know. Lemni knew the bar, and he even went there, but there was no sign of Gabinus.”

  “What bar?”

  “Lemni did not say.”

  “People tell me nobody liked drinking with Gabinus. So it matters who he went to meet. This drinking partner might be the person he quarrelled with on the Rock next day. If he exists, I need his identity.”

  “I agree, but I cannot help,” said Larth. Presumably he wanted the unknown boozer found in order to exonerate Lemni, so I felt he would have told me if he could. “Everything seemed quiet again on the Arx. There were clear skies. Lemni and I resumed our duties. We were both inside our tent next morning when Gabinus died.”

  I had no option but to accept that. I had run out of ways to nag at him. Larth must be covering up for his friend, as if he really knew Lemni was guilty.

  Now Lemni was dead too. Larth appeared genuinely shocked by the second murder. So what about him? His alibi for the first murder was Lemni; he had none for the second. However, I could not believe the augur would ever have harmed Lemni.

  “One last thing,” I concluded wearily. “It is clear to me, despite all denial, Gabinus and Lemni had a personal feud. Lemni had some motive to hate Gabinus. Any investigator would think their deaths must be linked. But with Gabinus dead, who do you think had a motive to attack Lemni?”