A Comedy of Terrors Read online

  “No, he does not,” replied Murrius, still sounding reasonable. “Greius…” The name seemed to amuse him for some reason. “Greius, I can tell you, has never worked for us.”

  “You are aware of him, though? It sounds as if his name is familiar.”

  “The young man is very well known on the Aventine, a popular figure locally.”

  Morellus fired up. “He’s bloody hard to track down for somebody so popular! Your stuffed cat,” he accused, aiming a kick at it, “was found snoozing in his lock-up.”

  “Where Greius is the key-holder,” Tiberius broke in, sticking to the point that mattered.

  “Milvia is at liberty to employ anyone she wants. Yes, my leopard was there,” said Murrius. “My brother suggested the lock-up as suitable premises. He was helping me, while I had temporary domestic problems.”

  “Oh, that’s right! Your wife kicked you out!” scoffed Morellus.

  Murrius looked pained. “Unless relevant to your inquiry, Officer, I prefer not to discuss my personal affairs.”

  “Stuff your personal affairs. Your home life stinks, of that I have no doubt, but we’re not interested in your possessions being tossed into the street. Are you telling us the nuts, candles and other scams are run by some different, more violent, firm—so this Greius is nothing to do with you, but he terrorises the Aventine for them?”

  “Sad to say, Officer,” Murrius replied, still so courteous his teeth must have hurt, “that would appear to be the case.”

  “So how come you use his lock-up?”

  “The lock-up,” reiterated Murrius, “belongs to Balbina Milvia, a distant relative of mine.”

  “Through her father?” demanded Morellus.

  “Through her mother. A strong woman!”

  “Cornella Flaccida?” I suddenly recalled. “So is your family name Cornellus?”

  Murrius agreed, looking surprised anyone should query it. “My brother and I use our last names for preference.”

  “Gaius Cornellus Murrius and Quintus Cornellus—”

  “Caesius.”

  “Does either of you have a son in his twenties?”

  Murrius came clean. “That would be my brother’s boy.”

  “Another Quintus Cornellus?” I suggested, with a smile. “Bit of a lad, has had a few family arguments lately?”

  “You sound as if you have met him!” agreed Murrius, also smiling. He would not be so happy if he had heard the other Quintus talking. I was starting to suspect a lot about this lad-about-town’s love-life. I said, with irony, that I was sure wiser members of his family would soon persuade the younger Quintus Cornellus to drop his wild habits, pay his bills and settle down.

  Unaware of my thoughts on Pinarius’s friend, Tiberius stepped in. “I shall ask you one last time to identify the new outfit.”

  “Aedile, it would be irresponsible to speculate.”

  “You won’t break the code of silence?”

  “Supposition is so crude. Please do not put me in a position where I must refuse to cooperate.”

  Tiberius would not give up. “If you are not behind these crimes, we will get the men who are. You could assist us, if you were a responsible citizen.”

  Murrius had his slimy side. “I report to the Census and pay my taxes dutifully. I cause no trouble. I live respectably.”

  “Of course. What criminal was ever convicted of tax evasion? Answer me this, then,” Tiberius demanded abruptly. “What do you know about a sheep that was stolen from this yard?”

  “A stolen sheep? Aedile, it is news to me.”

  Tiberius worked himself up to relieve his feelings. “So, are you planning to take my donkey next? Or was stealing the sheep and leaving bloody evidence on my doorstep just another mysterious action by the shadowy business colleagues whom you refuse to name?” Angrier than usual, he made his final throw: “Well, there is one crime that you cannot deny, Gaius Murrius. You broke into my house today!”

  “The gate was open.”

  “You came in with threatening supporters—uninvited.”

  “My men were quietly escorting me, which is their job. All I wanted was to ask a question.”

  “Questions are our business! What question?” Morellus demanded, furious that a suspect should intrude on his own role.

  Murrius looked oddly stricken. “Can anybody help me find my wife?”

  XLIII

  Officialdom had got nowhere, as it so often does. Holding up a hand to quash the excited Morellus, Tiberius Manlius took the decision that there was nothing to gain by hammering Murrius further. “We still have not finished with you and your brother. In due course you will be interviewed again. Please reconsider the answers you are going to give. Anything concerning your wife, Gaius Murrius, lies in the province of mine. If she is prepared to speak to you, I shall turn you over to Flavia Albia.”

  Giving our donkey a final pat, I managed to pull my stole, which she was eating, out of her teeth. I indicated coolly that I was prepared to discuss Nephele. Tiberius and Morellus allowed Murrius to step over his leopard in order to follow me through the courtyard door.

  He had to pass my uncle. Petronius Longus had remained silent throughout, while men he regarded as incompetent amateurs asked idiotic questions. Now, with clenched fists and a classic air of tired derision, the grizzled old-timer blocked the suspect’s path. “I know you, don’t I?”

  It was an old line, to which Murrius once more reacted as if this was normal business. Threats in his face did not faze him, let alone when they came from a fading fossil. He stopped, smiled politely, but gave no reply.

  “I did know your father,” Petronius sneered.

  “My father,” replied Murrius, in the sad tone of a pious son, “died many years ago.”

  “In Phrygia. He should have gone outside the Empire, but Phrygia is a dismal hole to be exiled in.”

  “Mistaken identity.”

  “Do pigeons crap?” scoffed Petronius. He began an angry movement.

  “I am a free citizen,” Murrius broke in. Using this line was in his blood. “Please do not lay hands on me.”

  Petronius stepped back, making an exaggerated hands-off gesture.

  * * *

  I managed to lead Murrius through the door to the courtyard before we hit the next challenge. My door porter came rushing up. “I am not letting you in!” cried Rodan, showing off. “I don’t like the look of you.”

  “I am trying to find my wife.” Murrius spoke wearily.

  “This man is with me. Shove off, Rodan.” He retreated feebly.

  To Murrius I said, “Let’s get this straight. Your wife is not a client of mine. I believe that when she came here to see me, you sent her. You wanted to discover what we knew about you and your brother’s criminal activities.”

  “I never sent her.”

  “Really? My husband and the vigiles think you were covering your backs. Well, she came. It was a curious experience. She never hired me, I don’t know where she is, and nor is she here now.”

  “Show me!” he bounced back, becoming more agitated than at any time previously. “I want to see for myself.”

  “All right.” Reaching a decision, I gave a signal to Gratus, who was hovering. “I want you to feel satisfied. Then you can leave us alone. This is my steward. He will take you around and will let you look anywhere you want.”

  On my instruction, Gratus showed him every room, opening cupboards or lifting valances on beds so the anxious husband could kneel in the dust peering underneath. I waited in the courtyard, fighting off bad memories. To me it felt like an occasion with Vespasian’s Chief Spy: Helena had had to permit him to search my parents’ house. Do not ask me what Falco did to that man after he found out.

  Really, don’t ask. But assume it was fatal and that there was no comeback.

  Gangsters, however, could run free. Even I had been coerced. I let Murrius prowl through my home, peering into all the rooms, opening chests, lifting the ends of couches until the cushions slid off
. Gaius and Lucius solemnly marched everywhere after him, mimicking it all. I did not stop them.

  “I take it you failed to find her?” I said coldly, when Gratus returned him to me. “To be frank, I met your wife. I cannot see her hiding under furniture, even to evade you, Murrius.”

  I was acting the offended householder. He drooped. All the bombast went out of him, like air escaping from a holed football gourd. He covered his face with his hands.

  “Get a grip!” I ordered cruelly.

  “I don’t know what to do!” he wailed. Either he was a really good actor, or this was true and he was hysterical. Had nobody told him what methods gangland honchos employ against rebellious wives?

  I made him sit down, then tackled him firmly. “I have been told by you and others that you really love your wife. I didn’t believe it. Now is your chance to change my mind. But I do not have her. I already told your sister-in-law that Nephele is not here.” Murrius looked puzzled. Again, it seemed genuine. Was this another piece of drama, or should I start worrying? “I supposed you sent her earlier in the same way you had previously sent Nephele. Your wife’s young sister? Berenike?”

  “Not me,” he claimed. “We never use women for errands. If my brother and I have questions, we ask them ourselves.” I gained a dark impression of the way they ran their loans business.

  “Stop pretending. Berenike admitted it.” Perhaps I exaggerated.

  “The stupid girl is a lying bitch, then.” I wondered if the parrot had yet learned to say that.

  “What is happening about your wife’s parrot?” I asked him suddenly, seeing this as a test. Nephele had claimed Murrius would kill the bird if she left it with him. “She mentioned how fond of Beauty she was—in fact, don’t you think if Nephele really has left you, she would have taken her?”

  “It is not her parrot!” Murrius exclaimed, with a flash of anger. Then he came out with a facer: “Anyway, the bird is male.” He seemed puzzled. So was I. While I wondered what was going on here, he added a whole row of parrot surprises: “It was never hers. She hates it. It used to belong to my father, given to him by a sailor who could not pay a debt. My brother inherited it when our father died, but its feathers made his wife sneeze. His son wasn’t interested, so he gave it to my own children. Their name for their pet is Squawker. It always has been.”

  I felt the ground shift. What had Nephele been playing at? If she lied about irrelevant facts of this kind, what else might be in doubt? “Why would your wife invent such details?”

  “I have no idea. But mixing up minor information, when she is under stress and confused, is not important, surely?”

  Great gods, Murrius was defending her. I gazed at him, sizing him up with new eyes. I still deplored his abysmal footwear and jewellery. He was a type. He had the chunky shoulders and big backside of a small man who wishes he were taller and eats too much to compensate. I did not like his unattractive mouth, but he must have been born with that and I am—well, I can be—a fair woman.

  He was a loan shark, from a family of predators. That made him a bully with no conscience, who abused the destitute for profit; despite his denials earlier, he probably hurt defaulters and possibly did worse to them. Even so, I now faced a peculiar truth: Gaius Murrius was starting to seem like a loan shark who genuinely loved his wife.

  At this point Tiberius came in from the yard. I signalled that he could join us. I sat back in my seat and prepared for a reassessment. “Murrius, I need to understand this. I myself have heard you shouting raw insults at Nephele. I have heard such exchanges more than once, made publicly in the street.”

  He looked shifty, yet confessed readily enough: “I don’t want the neighbours to think she walks all over me. Anyway, whatever I said about her, she deserves it. I know she treats me badly.”

  I was beginning to sympathise. Nephele now seemed less an abused woman, more a hard-faced, lying, conniving trollop. Nevertheless, I supposed there were two sides to everything.

  “Isn’t this the fellow,” Tiberius asked me, “whose wife complains he is always out to lunch with his fancy woman?”

  “Your wife calls her ‘that bawd from the Temple of Diana,’” I reminded Murrius.

  “My wife uses colourful language sometimes,” Murrius scoffed. “She is twisting the truth. It’s ridiculous. I don’t see anything wrong in a man visiting his sister!”

  “Laetilla?” I asked him, puzzled.

  “Laetilla is my sister.”

  Oh, joy! It was a three-way family business.

  He stared, then insisted, “We are all very close. My brother goes there most days, now he is a widower. I often dine at her house because my wife is never at home.”

  My disillusion reached its lowest point. “Nephele has not been wilting in your house, wanting you to have lunch with her?”

  “I cannot remember the last time we did that,” Murrius complained bitterly. “She goes out to see people, I never know who.” He sounded as if he suspected. He seemed drained by misery, in which increasingly I believed. His next detail clinched it: “It’s why I never set up my dining room, the one I bought the leopard for. There was no point. We were never going to use it, even if I did.”

  Right: the cheating, dangerous husband was a lonely, lovelorn worm. The supposedly mistreated wife went out on the town, enjoying a freedom she denied possessing. Doing what? “Do you suspect Nephele may have a lover?” I asked carefully. I had tried this on her sister without much conviction; I threw it at Murrius with much more certainty.

  “Oh, I’m pretty certain.” He was matter-of-fact.

  “Any idea who?” Tiberius put in for me. He might have thought Murrius was unlikely to be frank with us, though I was finding this gangster a tell-all witness. It all poured out easily enough. If this had been a different interview, if he had been a suspect in a crime, I would now be expecting a full confession, plus a thank-you for letting him unload his troubled conscience.

  Murrius shook his head. “For all I know there could be several…” His voice faded unhappily. Somehow I felt he did have a particular suspect. “I don’t know how long it has been going on, or where she goes to meet the swine.” As Murrius said this, I remembered when Paris was tailing her, back in the beginning, he’d said she had called in somewhere to visit a friend. Even her husband had attempted surveillance, apparently: “I tried having her followed once, but she recognised my men and simply went to buy new lamps.”

  I was now furious about the trouble I had taken for Nephele. Critically, this was a story I dreaded admitting to my mother. I now believed my disreputable client would never arrive in Ardea; she had never intended to take refuge. I was her smokescreen. I could only hope she had destroyed the begging letter I scratched out for the priestess.

  “Gaius Murrius, do you believe your wife has left home in order to join her lover?”

  He nodded miserably.

  “At least that means she only has one and you will find out eventually who it is!” Tiberius cried jovially. I shot him a look to say he was not helping, though these were good points. Undeterred, he then asked, “If she went off only this morning, how did you decide so fast that it might be a permanent flit?”

  Murrius had yet another surprise for us: “She told me. She left me a note saying so.”

  “What?” I screamed.

  “A waxed tablet propped on the lararium shrine.” Left it with his household gods? Nice touch, Terentia Nephele! “She wrote: ‘I have left you. Don’t bother to look for me.’ But of course,” Murrius moaned, “I am such a devoted idiot, here I am, looking anyway. My brother says I’m cracked, he maintains I’ll regret it, but I badly want to find her. I don’t care who says I am stupid, I will forgive her anything. I only want her back.”

  He was sad, but I was livid. Murrius was well rid of this woman. As I recalled the touching scene when I gave the “desperate” Nephele advice on a safe escape, bile burned my throat. She had seemed to be reaching difficult decisions, yet her plans were laid. While sh
e was letting me advise her to walk away unexpectedly, her written farewell was already propped up among their dancing lares and penates. Leave everything … No chance: I bet a chest of gold and silver had been stowed with her lover.

  Never mind what she suggested Murrius would do in revenge. If I ever caught her, I would make sure no one ever found the body.

  “Calm down,” Tiberius murmured, though I had not spoken. “Gaius Murrius, this is a touching tale and, if true, my wife and I are extremely sorry for you. But we have to consider that you could be bluffing, and Nephele is an innocent party.”

  “So do you know where she is?” Murrius pleaded, still hopeful.

  “No, I have no idea,” said Tiberius.

  I was reflecting bitterly how I myself no longer knew where Nephele might be. Certainly not in Ardea. I had no doubt she had jumped off the boat, before it even left for Ostia.

  Skanky bitch! I screeched at her mentally, in the voice of the parrot. A parrot that, I now knew, had never even been hers.

  XLIV

  We had had enough of Murrius. Tiberius and I took him to the door. Gaius and Lucius pinned themselves to us, winding themselves around our legs with fierce little hands gripping our tunics as they perfected their staring-at-a-visitor act. Tiberius reminded him that a formal interview had been promised. Since tomorrow was Saturnalia, he could not say when it would be.

  “After the festival would suit. Tonight is the Fourth Cohort’s annual splash.” Murrius must possess inside sources. He betrayed a gangster’s keen awareness of vigiles’ practices. Tonight, the Twelfth and Thirteenth regions would be free of surveillance. If arsonists set fires to homes, any blaze would rage unchecked. Or there could be another reason Murrius had heard about the party. I wondered if the Fourth’s tribune, Scaurus, a man of woozy ethics, had even invited regular villains, as “community relations.” But that would mean Scaurus knew who Murrius and his brother were, and what they did.