A Capitol Death Page 24

  I managed to persuade him to reveal where they had gone first: the tenement was where Lemni’s sister lived. She was out; she had to work. But that had been known in advance; they had been told to fetch the old biddy who acted as a caretaker. She let them in to pick up the face-pot, which the sister had left for them. Their instructions were to take both sets of ashes to another member of the family.

  “And who is that? If we are going there now, you may as well tell me.” I did not want to arrive cold. The boy mumbled something, scuffing his feet with his head down.

  He was trying to keep things to himself, admitting he was sworn to secrecy. My brother, a more independent character, would have invented an alternative story, offering it with a convincing straight look, even if he had peopled his fantasy with lion-headed demons.

  Before I could press, we reached our destination. I was flabbergasted. I recognised this building. It was the tenement next door to where Valeria Dillia lived—Lemni’s lodging house. The porter I had spoken to before was even coming out to greet us in his nosy, mildly inebriated fashion. The boy hung back.

  “Marcellus, buck up!” I snapped. “Are you telling me you were supposed to bring the remains of Lemni to his own room?”

  “No,” said the boy, unhappily.

  “What, then?”

  I was so cross, he gave in. The slaves were supposed to bring both urns to another man who lived here.

  “What man, Marcellus?”

  With the porter on hand, ready to pipe up with the answer, Marcellus could no longer refuse. “Lemni’s brother.”

  Luckily this was not a complete surprise, because I did remember that someone had mentioned another sibling. I challenged the porter who said yes, it was true.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Gemellus.”

  “Oh! Is he a twin?”

  Nobody knew.

  “Porter, when I was here the other day, you never mentioned him.”

  “You never asked,” the porter whined. “I don’t know every tenant in the place. Only the ones the landlord can’t make pay their rent. I hear him cursing them.”

  “Don’t talk rot. You know Lemni’s brother is Gemellus. You should have seen I was interested. Stop prevaricating. Tell me where to find him.”

  This brother lived two floors above Lemni nowadays. They used to share, said the porter. He had in fact mentioned that before, though on the first occasion he omitted to tell me the brother still lived there with a widow. I managed not to grind my teeth. It only wears them down.

  While they bunked together, Lemni had had the bed by day after he came home from augury, while Gemellus took over by night. That was doable while they were young men, but it had become bothersome later. They wanted to avoid paying extra rent. A solution was found when the brother took up with a widow who let him in with her. She was old enough to be his mother, but the porter assured me it wasn’t incest.

  I said I was glad to hear that Gemellus was only a miser and a gigolo. My husband wouldn’t want me going into an apartment where unnatural relations took place. The joke was lost on my audience.

  I had no qualms about men who preyed on women or indeed women who took advantage of men; in my work I had met plenty—ambitious playboys improving their lives and foolish widows who wanted to ignore being past their prime.

  The porter had reeked of alcohol last time, but he seemed a little more sober today. I left the boy downstairs with him, while I went up on my own to visit the lovers.

  XLVIII

  The widow was called Callipina. She was a busy, tidy, tiny woman who must have been over sixty. She kept her minute apartment spotless. Even my grandma would have passed her on hygienic housekeeping. Despite that, Callipina kept apologising for the state of the place. She was not only sharing it with her lover, but she had her grown-up son staying with her at the moment due to problems at his place of work. There was a lot of masculine clutter, though I had seen worse.

  Both the son and the lover were out, working, yet the two-roomed place seemed cramped after I entered. At her urging, Callipina and I climbed out of a window onto a narrow ledge that passed for a balcony—“It’s all right, once you get used to it”—where we perched for our conversation on seats that had to be kept outside because there was nowhere else for them.

  A passing pigeon thought about joining us, but he could see there was no room. As he flew off sulkily, I pondered the fact that this was the second time today I had put my life in danger.

  “Just try not to look down.”

  “Thanks, Callipina.” I hoped no one used the cosy platform when they had had too much to drink.

  Our daredevil niche faced towards the Vicus Pallacinae. We could see the Campus Martius, from the Circus Flaminius at this end, then all the way up to the Saepta. If my father had been taking his oil flask to the Baths of Agrippa behind the Pantheon, I could have waved to him in the distance. Once the Triumph began, the glamorous procession would come straight towards this building before it swung around into the Circus Flaminius.

  Callipina would have a glorious view down the Via Triumphalis though not much scope to hire out her so-called balcony to sightseers. She groaned that since only two people could fit on the balcony, she was facing daily arguments about whether her son or her lover would be allowed to join her to watch.

  “My son thinks it’s his right, because he was brought up here. In any case, he keeps hoping Gemellus will leave.”

  “They don’t get on?” I could see why the son kicked off. Especially if he thought her fancy man had homed in on free lodgings and a sighting of any savings she had collected. If I ever got to meet this son, I might offer to check out the lover for him. But even if I proved she was being preyed on, his mother would probably not listen.

  “I do understand what he worries about,” she admitted, as if she realised I was sceptical. “Gemellus is a little bit younger than me. I suppose anxiety is natural. Still, having white hair doesn’t make you lose interest. I am entitled to find company for myself, aren’t I?” I nodded. Into her stride, she continued with surprising honesty: “Besides, I have known Gemellus and his brother for years, so it’s not as if I brought a stranger into my home. It is just bad timing at the moment. Normally my son never needs to get in our way, because he is supposed to have his own accommodation, for his work.”

  “What does he do?” I demanded.

  Callipina was still too absorbed in self-justification to answer. “I was lonely, I admit that. Anyone likes a bit of male comfort. Not that we … you know … very often. Though it has been known to happen, and I don’t think I have to be bashful about that. I say it’s nobody’s business but mine.”

  “Quite,” I managed to interpolate. Though her personal grooming was as immaculate as her housekeeping, nothing could change her thin white hair or that she looked as if close manoeuvres from a lover would crush her ageing bones.

  “It’s not as if he is going to end up with any little brothers or sisters to put his nose out of joint.”

  “No. That would be one for the marvels page of the Daily Gazette!”

  “Not at my time of life, thank you, Juno Matronalia!” I felt it polite to join in with her cackle. “It’s just very awkward that my son needed to come to stay, after I thought I had seen the back of him. Not that I mind having him, never. He will always have a home with me if he needs it. It’s just temporary, so we are all trying to rub along together until he gets his own place back.”

  “What happened about that?”

  “Oh, someone wanted to borrow it. It’s not for ever—it goes with my lad’s job, everybody knows that. But he doesn’t carry the clout to say no. Not to the nasty piece who pinched his hut.”

  “His hut, Callipina?” I had been hearing a lot about huts.

  “Oh, didn’t I say, dearie? My son has a very important role up on the Capitol. It’s a position his father and his grandfather both held. He is a caretaker. The Emperor built a beautiful little temple where the old hut
used to be, called the Temple of Jupiter Custos because Jupiter had saved his life. So my son lives in his own official hut attached to Jupiter Custos.”

  “I see,” I breathed, when the proud mother finally fell silent. This was a turn-up. “Let’s be clear: we are talking about the hut that was grabbed by the transport manager? I must have met your son; we had a talk about Gabinus.” I was quickly consulting my waxed tablets. “Is his name Callipus?”

  “That’s right,” said his mother. “He said he met you. He still tells me everything even though he left home years ago, or I thought he had. My son is the caretaker of Jupiter Best and Greatest.”

  Unexpected aspects of this enquiry suddenly began to come together.

  Recovering, I asked did his mother know where her son had been on the morning that Gabinus fell off the Tarpeian Rock. She immediately gave him an alibi. Callipus had told me she would: he said he was here with her, having an argument about her lover, whom he could not stand. To me, his mother called it “having a late breakfast.” Still, that would do to place him.

  Since this lover had unexpectedly turned out to be the brother of Lemni, who also perished on the Rock, I asked where Callipus was that night too. Here at home, his mother assured me. He had slept here every night since his hut was commandeered, unfortunately for her love life.

  XLIX

  No alibi given by a mother really counts. But much had been made of Callipus having to stay with his mother after he was turfed out from his hut, so it made sense. He was here. He was having his argument when Gabinus died, and since Gemellus had his old room (when he was not cuddling the widow), Callipus was sleeping on the floor the night Lemni was killed.

  I nodded at the fond mother’s statements. My old Aventine granny would reappear from the grave to give me a right earful if I dared to doubt a woman who kept such a spotless home. Dear old Junilla Tacita would even have championed the right of a widow to take a younger lover.

  “Can I check something else? Your son told me Gemellus was here too, on the morning when Gabinus died?” I congratulated myself mentally on how smoothly I turned my questions to the lover. “So when you and Callipus argued about Gemellus, Gemellus listened in?”

  Perhaps Callipina looked embarrassed. “My son is a bit short on tact. Yes, Gemellus had had a late night. He had been going out with his brother but Lemni kept him waiting, so he came in very late from the bar and didn’t go to work in the morning. My son calls him lazy. Well, he tries to call him a lot of things, but I refuse to hear it.”

  “I see. I’m sorry Gemellus isn’t here. I would have liked to meet him,” I said, intending it to sound less like politeness and more like a threat. “By the way, I have a lad downstairs who had the sad task of bringing Gemellus the ashes of his brother.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Callipina, who knew all about it. “Gemellus is going to the necropolis, but it’s outside the Porta Triumphalis. We’ll have to look after the ashes here until the Triumph is over. I keep telling him he’ll never get through at the moment. He and his sister will have a plaque made later, once they can afford it.”

  “Money is tight?”

  “Money is always tight. But there has been some argy-bargy about the inscription on the plaque. Gemellus and his sister having a set-to,” Callipina clarified.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “No, it’s not for me to say. They both know their minds. Gemellus and Lemni always called their sister soft, but she is so upset that Gemellus has caved in and will do whatever she wants. The poor girl is all on her own now, with three small children and another on the way. She has work at the moment so she’s busy. Gemellus thinks she will go to see the grave later, once they have a plaque to install.”

  “What is the sister’s name, by the way?”

  “Naevia.” Why did that sound familiar? Someone must have said it. I queried the news that Naevia was now “all on her own”: “So her husband has died, as well as her brother?”

  “That’s right.” Callipina spoke without much sympathy. “Two lots of ashes.”

  “That’s sad for her. Was it recent?”

  “Yes, she is still coming to terms.”

  “What happened? Do you know?”

  “Bit of a tragedy. He got himself drunk—which happened all the time with him—then he must have picked a quarrel with somebody. One time too many.”

  “A bar fight? It must be her husband’s ashes that were picked up from her house today. They are in an expensive face-pot.”

  “That will be him. Too good for the swine,” declared Callipina.

  “Lemni and Gemellus, her brothers, thought he was a wastrel?”

  “It was much worse than that, dear,” Callipina whispered, even though out on our balcony nobody else could hear her. “He was not a nice man. Let’s leave it at that, since he’s gone now. Whatever he did, she never left him—which must count for something, mustn’t it? And she still did the decent thing when he died. We all had to go to his funeral; she wanted a good crowd there. A few from his work turned up, though they didn’t stay. She says she doesn’t want her children to think poorly of their father. That’s why they must have a good memorial for him.”

  “So it won’t say, ‘This plaque was put up by his heartbroken wife, well deserving of her’?” I guessed. All the time I was thinking that many of these details were oddly familiar.

  Callipina winced with me. “Sounds right. Gemellus is going to let her have both deaths on the same plaque, just as she wants, never mind what Lemni would have thought.”

  At last I asked the question: “I hope it isn’t out of place to ask. Do you mind telling me, was Naevia’s husband called Gabinus?”

  “I thought you knew that, dear,” said Callipina. “Naevia was married to the man who borrowed my son’s hut. He fell off the Tarpeian Rock. Bit of a coincidence, really—since her own brother died horribly later, in just the same place.”

  L

  I took a moment for thought, as my investigation jolted onto a new path. Callipina merely carried on talking. “Gemellus will carry the other ashes to the necropolis for Naevia as well, when he trots along with Lemni.”

  Recovering, I mentioned that the burden would be lighter, since both dead men were accidentally sharing the same face-pot. Callipina winced again. She said she would let me tell Gemellus. I did not look forward to explaining it was impossible to separate the remains of his admired brother from those of the loathed brother-in-law. Still, I asked innocently when I was likely to see Gemellus.

  “Any moment now,” replied the man-in-question’s lover. She had spotted him below in the street, coming home, as he did every day, to have his lunch. He enjoyed his meals, and liked to have them served up promptly.

  We climbed back indoors, so she could have a bite ready for him, on the table. All dainty. His own bowl, knife and napkin. It could have been Valeria Dillia spoiling Nestor, or my own grandmother looking after anybody who called.

  Half an hour later we and the lunch were still sitting there. Gemellus had not arrived.

  I went down to the street to look for him. I was told that when Callipina’s lover learned from Marcellus and the porter that I was upstairs, he’d done a runner.

  I sighed.

  * * *

  I returned to ask Callipina where her sweetheart was likely to hide up if he was in trouble. She claimed she had no idea. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He was a good man, who never mixed with bad company. He only ever went out for a drink with his brother, and now he wouldn’t even be able to do that … She started to grizzle, thinking the ungallant Gemellus might have left her. No chance. The man was set up in a much too cosy roost.

  Since he refused to come home, I ate his lunch.

  Apart from saucers of olives and walnuts, the food comprised bread rolls and cheese; the cheese tasted as though it had been sliced with a knife that had recently cut onions. It reminded me of Lemni.

  I remembered how Lemni had let me share his snack in
the observation tent. He was so friendly and easy-going, and from my enquiries so well loved by everyone; it was painful to think he might have killed Gabinus. But it was where all my clues were leading me. Lemni hated what Gabinus had done to his sister. Gemellus knew what Lemni must have done, so now he was avoiding me.

  “Callipina, tell me more about these brothers and their sister. Is it right that Lemni was constantly nagging her to have no more to do with Gabinus? That Gabinus failed to support her, especially financially? I was told a tale of a woman, who must have been Naevia, going up to his workplace on the Palatine and appealing to him. She had taken her baby. But he cruelly pretended to colleagues she was not even his wife. He rejected all her pleading. I was even told he threatened to push her about.”

  “He never did hit her. She hardly ever saw him, anyway.” Callipina was rapidly cooling on me. Gemellus’ failure to appear disturbed her. Now she blamed and distrusted me.

  “She saw him enough to be pregnant again!” I pointed out. “Did that annoy her brothers? It sounds to me as if Lemni was incensed when Naevia let it happen.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Don’t you discuss such things?”

  “I tried to keep out of it. Gemellus never says much.”

  “Lemni took the lead in family arguments?”

  “He was the older one.”

  “Older by how long? Gemellus is a name for twins—were these brothers twins then? With Lemni just born first?”

  “I never heard they were—Gemellus is quite a youngster.” Callipina boasted of her catch. “Flavia Albia, I need to get on. If you have asked all your questions…”

  I had plenty more, but sometimes there is no point in trying to ask them.

  Callipina had been too unhappy to eat, so I took her lunch down for the slave-boy Marcellus. Now he really was a good boy.