A Capitol Death Read online

  Mind you, he might change entirely once he hit puberty.

  * * *

  The boy had been taken into the porter’s cubicle, where they were chatting. I had to call out quite loudly to attract their attention. Anyone could easily have crept past the gossipy porter unnoticed … If somebody did, I could guess who he would be—and where he would be going.

  I gave the new friends the food to share. I told Marcellus he should go to find his master after he finished eating. I instructed the porter to take Callipina’s platter back, well washed; he would enjoy nattering to her about my visit.

  I slipped quietly back to Lemni’s room. On my previous visit the porter had revealed how to find the latch-lifter above the lintel; I remembered how he had shouldered the door to force it open. I could do that. As I expected, when I suddenly burst in, a man was lying on the narrow bed, wondering what to do with himself. He looked despondent; he looked rebellious. However, he did not look particularly like Lemni. There must have been quite a few years between them; Gemellus definitely must be twins with Naevia.

  “Hello!” I cried. “I had a feeling I might find you lurking here as if you own the place. Of course you and Lemni shared it once.”

  He swung himself upright but stayed sitting on the bed. The game was up. He had failed to elude me. Now Gemellus, brother of the late Lemni, grumpily accepted that he would have to talk to me.

  There were similarities, when I inspected him closely. Gemellus and Lemni used to go to the same barber; this brother had chosen a different hairstyle but used the same thick oil, also plastering it on like axle grease. His shifty air as he faced up to me reminded me that even Lemni had come across on first meeting as potentially shady. Once he found his voice, Gemellus piped up with the same cheeky confidence: “If you’re going to nag me, get on with it.”

  I seated myself on a stool, smoothing my skirts impassively. “You tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Oh … many things, Gemellus. Start with why you ran away just now, why you were hiding to avoid me.”

  “I’m in bereavement.” He was playing up the drama. He sounded very sad for himself. “I don’t feel up to seeing people.”

  “Poor you. I am sorry for your loss! Well, I’m sorry about your brother—I met him and liked him. I don’t feel the same about your brother-in-law. No one does. From all I hear, he was deplorable. Do you think Lemni killed him?”

  Gemellus started. “Lemni would never do that!”

  “Too easy-going?” I pretended to agree, but I laid out the facts: “Yes, except just before Gabinus died, Lemni found out he had assaulted a young girl. By all accounts Lemni was zinging with fury—and if Gabinus was married to your sister, it makes sense.” Gemellus upgraded his shifty look to utterly untrustworthy. “The girl who was assaulted says Lemni was sympathetic to her, but I think he was really livid about the injury to Naevia. Gabinus had tried to violate a teenager, even one who stank of decaying shellfish so horribly no man with any self-respect would go near her. But the bastard was married and fathering children he refused to support. It must have been the last straw for Lemni.”

  Gemellus agreed eventually. Now he was speaking in a serious voice, sounding more reasonable, less defiant. “We talked about it. We had to discuss whether to tell our sister.”

  “Was she told?”

  “She knows now. When she was mithering about his funeral, I let it slip.” Trust a man, especially when it no longer served any purpose to tell her. Discovering this would add to the poor woman’s grief. Gemellus, of course, made out he’d had no choice. “She needed to know. She keeps carrying on about how Gabinus was her husband, so she must give him proper rites. She was up to her neck in debt already because he never gave her any money, even though he kept hanging around her. Now she has been to loan sharks, just so she can pay for his funeral. Me, I’d let him rot like a traitor on the Gemonian Stairs. We should have just left him there.”

  I said quietly, “I will assume it was not your sister who pushed him off the Tarpeian Rock?”

  Gemellus looked startled. “Hang on! Don’t start calling her a suspect. Naevia has enough to cope with.”

  “She had cause,” I warned him. “But if she didn’t know until Gabinus was dead what he did with the murex girl, I can rule her out. But I can’t ignore her having a devoted brother who was incensed on her behalf.”

  “She had two,” Gemellus pointed out.

  I nodded. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget you! But Callipina assures me you were upstairs with her and her son that morning.”

  Gemellus muttered, yes, Callipina was right. So Gemellus had his alibi. The same could not be said for Lemni.

  “If Lemni killed Gabinus, either on purpose or accidentally during an argument, how do you feel about that, Gemellus?”

  “If he did, it has caused us a lot more trouble. But that filthy turd deserved it,” Gemellus swore. “Someone should have done for him a long time ago. Lemni was ready to, I know that much.”

  “Pointing the finger at your brother—that’s nice! So who do you think murdered Lemni?”

  Gemellus, back in surly mode, said it was a complete mystery.

  I tried to explore why it happened. Did his brother have enemies? Not as far as Gemellus knew. I asked whether any of his brother’s business of carrying bets might have gone wrong. Gemellus was sure that was impossible. Lemni had been known for his straight dealings and everyone liked him for it.

  “His was a violent death, Gemellus. Has anybody told you? Someone cracked Lemni very hard on the head, then wrapped up and disposed of his body, chucked him over the cliff-edge like a piece of meat. This was not accidental, like a street mugging or a bar fight. It was not a stranger-killing. It was all very deliberate.”

  I had wanted to see if the younger brother was upset by the details. Something else was on his mind, though. “Did it mean something,” Gemellus asked me intently, “that he was thrown off the cliff—just like Gabinus?”

  I had to say I thought it did mean something. Gemellus seemed upset by that. Lemni’s manner of death was a message. It had to be a message to someone, so it looked as if that could be him.

  We sat in silence for a short time.

  Gemellus then began to talk about Lemni and their sister, in the cathartic rambling of the bereaved. According to him, there had never been any antagonism between the brothers. They had been close. From childhood they were always wonderful friends. Even before their parents died, they shared responsibility for their sister too. She was close to them, until she made the wrong choice of husband; in view of that, they continued their moral support.

  Why did Naevia fall for him? I asked, since from all I had heard, Gabinus was a stinker. I imagined he always had been. Yes, said Gemellus, but when the bastard wanted something, he could sweet-talk convincingly. (I remembered Suza spoke of him charming Ostorius and Cincia.) Naevia was easily fooled. Then once she had their first child she seemed to feel permanently bound to him. He immediately lost interest—which, needless to say, came as a surprise to Naevia. Classic.

  Afterwards, Gabinus would never entirely leave her alone, but each time the brothers hoped he had finally left for good, he kept reappearing. Naevia always gave in to him—which by then was no surprise to anyone. Gabinus openly gloated. Now she had two further children, plus a new one on the way.

  “Does she work, Gemellus?”

  “She does a bit of sewing. It never brings in much, and what she gets soon goes. She tries to manage without paying for minders. The people she works with often help with the elder ones, but she has to look after the baby.” Gemellus seemed to be a fond uncle, for he hung his head and mumbled that they were lovely children. I had heard this from other people.

  “Lemni thought the same?”

  “Yes, he adored them.”

  It was a common situation. The only person who was never endeared to his beautiful offspring was their absentee father. His idea of family life was simply having sex, f
oisting new ones on their feeble mother. I had cousins who grew up in the same circumstances. They struggled with life; two died too young; the rest had learned nothing from their parents but would perpetuate the same miserable cycle.

  I talked more about the brothers. Gemellus confirmed that even now he lived with Callipina it had been regular for him to visit a bar with Lemni. They went for a drink and a chat, often about Naevia and her troubles. They always patronised the same place, the Centaur; it was a dump but had the advantage that it stayed open all hours. If Lemni was watching for planets with Larth or one of the other augurs, his brother would wait up; on his return, they would pop out for a quick one even in the dark. Callipina had never raised any objection. Now I had met him, I wondered if in truth she was glad to get Gemellus out from under her feet.

  In conclusion, Gemellus formally declared that in Lemni he had had the best brother in the world. It seemed to make no difference to him that there were two awkward anomalies. One: although everybody liked him, Lemni was an increasingly prime suspect for having had a furious row with Gabinus on the Tarpeian Rock during which he sent Gabinus spinning off. Two: for unfathomable reasons, Lemni had upset someone enough to be himself deliberately murdered.

  I left Gemellus in the room they had once shared, still sitting on his brother’s bed. He had his head in his hands and seemed as troubled as I was.

  LI

  As I was leaving that tenement, I saw Valeria Dillia about to go into hers. Against my better judgement, when she waved I paused to ask how she was. She remained an important witness to Gabinus’ death. I had to keep her sweet.

  When she tottered over to me, she seemed to have the same bits of fluff clinging to her dark gown, the same faint whiff, the same strands of hair flying loose. Luckily she was so nosy about what I had been doing next door, I was spared a diatribe on aching bones. I mentioned that her friend the Tullianum jailer might discover someone had left him a present. Dillia, who had just come from cleaning there, said he already knew. The two thieves in his cell were caterwauling; the jailer had threatened to shut them up by strangling them then and there.

  “As soon as he likes to do it,” I encouraged, feeling heartless.

  “He has to have an instruction!” the old dame corrected me, shocked that I could countenance such a breach in procedure. So, in Rome it was quite acceptable to rape virgins and massacre captives—but only with the necessary paperwork. I said if my crony Scorpus knew the right form of words, I would remind him to send a cover note.

  “Two!” chirped Dillia, since the jailer would need one for each thief he eliminated. Two fees for him, two cuts from him for her. She would, after all, be required to mop up twice as much mess after the terrified prisoners shitted or threw up.

  I changed the subject hastily. I asked how she was, and did she still see Nestor? Yes, that lovely, generous Praetorian was still looking after her. Dillia worried about him; he was feeling low. Thinking of the goose-boy, Feliculus, with his permanent depression, I reckoned working up on the Capitol might affect people badly. Too much dazzle off the golden temple roofs? Or at least a sense of isolation.

  That could be, Dillia gloomily decided. On the other hand, Nestor, poor thing, was suffering because of a recent death in his family.

  I had been facetious. I pulled myself together. Even Praetorian guards, I said gravely, would feel a bereavement. Tough men were sometimes ultra-sensitive. They were trained to hide their feelings, but grief had to come out so it must be very special for Nestor that he had a sympathetic friend to share it with …

  I was almost ashamed of my hypocrisy. “He lost nobody close, I hope?”

  “Yes…”

  I sensed that Valeria Dillia was about to launch into a long family tragedy. Curses on her guard! I could not face a sob-story of fatal childbirth, chicken pox or food poisoning, so I cut her short. At this time of year, every time you stopped for a gossip with someone at the baths or on a street corner, they would bore you with another malaria victim who had collapsed on holiday.

  Shifting the subject, I said admiringly that widows around here seemed fortunate in finding younger men for company. Apropos of Callipina’s fling, I wondered if Dillia knew Gemellus or Lemni.

  As I suspected, she knew both; in fact, she had lived there so long her memories went back right into their childhood, including their sister. Their parents, now dead, had been nice people who had lived close by. Dillia remembered how the children used to go out to play, the three of them heading down the road with some toy, Lemni always in the lead, the other two closely following.

  “Did you know the girl had married?”

  Dillia had heard so, but Naevia moved away, to the Suburra, where folk from here would never venture. It was only a few streets away, yet its bad reputation meant she spoke with horror. She presumed there had been no money in the marriage; even so, for Naevia, who was brought up in a decent home, the Suburra was a terrible comedown. Dillia had not seen or spoken to her since, though she believed the girl sometimes brought her children to see their uncles.

  “I have something sad to tell you.” I tried to break it gently. “Her husband held a good job at the palace, but he treated her very casually. She was virtually abandoned with the children to look after, and now is expecting another. She has had a hard life, but he was a brute who never cared. I just discovered who he was. That man you saw falling off Tarpeia’s Rock, Gabinus, I am afraid he was Naevia’s husband.”

  The old woman’s jaw dropped. For once she had nothing to say.

  “If you knew Lemni,” I offered thoughtfully, “would you say he was very close to his sister? Would he have been angered on her behalf when she was mistreated?”

  “Oh, both boys adored Naevia, and Gemellus had the special bond you always get with twins.” Before I could follow that up, Dillia rushed on: “Naevia always looked very sweet and was lovely-natured. Hardworking too. If that husband wasn’t helping her, she was bound to have mucked in however she could, to do her best for her little ones. Well, it’s how we were all brought up, decades ago, weren’t we?”

  It was rough for me, when I was an orphaned infant, but that was in the distant past and private. I concentrated on the siblings here: “Lemni would have hated Naevia having to work so hard, with no help from her man?”

  Dillia nodded. “He would have been disgusted.”

  “I have heard Lemni could be hot-headed, Dillia. How far do you think he would have gone?” I asked. “If some new outrage made him flare up enough, might he have attacked Gabinus?”

  “Oh, yes!” she assured me at once. “If Gabinus was being a brute to his sister, Lemni would have ripped his head off.”

  “In that case,” I put to her quietly, “remember, you are the witness and I have to ask this: regarding the second man you saw up on the Arx with Gabinus when he fell—could that man have been Lemni?”

  She did not want me to ask. Everywhere I went, people tried to protect this family. Yes, it could have been him, though she hated saying it. Valeria Dillia had not recognised him at the time. And now she would not give me a firm identification.

  “I only had a glimpse. Who I saw up there, well, it could have been anyone.”

  I remembered that this was the woman who once mithered that she didn’t want anyone to be in trouble because of her evidence. She had never made a convincing witness. That had not changed.

  LII

  I managed to extract myself from Dillia. I could see her fretting over something I had said. She was saddened by Lemni’s death, Naevia’s marital disaster and now my accusation. Any or all of those were causing her worry. I had nonplussed her, so at least she became less clingy. With the Triumph now so close, I needed to move on. Soon it would be physically impossible to visit people to ask questions. Besides, I wanted to close the case.

  As I had been intending before I saw the old dame, I next made my way to the Suburra. While following the slaves with the trolley I had tried to memorise their route, so fairly soon I
found where Naevia lived. Someone told me which door was hers. She was still not at home. I managed to work out where the concierge lived. No answer there, either.

  I was about to leave despondently, when I heard children’s voices. I discovered that the building was set around a large courtyard. It was probably cobbled, but the setts sat in mud, which turned to dust in hot weather. This neglected communal space, like those in many commercial tenements, only really provided extra light to inward-facing rooms. The landlord ignored it. Tenants found it too far to come down and unappealing if they did. No one had planted anything, no one brought out seating. People up above had hung bedclothes to air on their windowsills, but that was the only sign of life—apart from three little people.

  In this bare playground, a baby was lying in the shade in a basket, while his very young brother and sister sat on the ground. They had no toys; they were amusing themselves in the dust. They seemed happy enough, chuntering to one another as they pushed dirt around in patterns that must have made sense to them.

  When I entered through a big gateway that had lost its doors, they looked up. Their faces fell when they saw only a stranger. All over Rome children were left on their own out of doors until called in. They were safe enough if they stayed here. At least they would not be run over by a heavy builder’s cart, and probably not kidnapped. The baby’s presence might indicate that someone who looked after them was close at hand, though I guessed the elder two were supposed to be in charge of him. The boy looked about five, his little sister more like three.

  The baby was awake; he was big enough to be struggling to stand up in his basket. It was clear to me he would soon be climbing out. His brother and sister had not noticed. Just as he succeeded in squashing down a basket side and was making his break for freedom, I reached him.

  “Whoops! Come here, little traveller.” I scooped him up. Though he wriggled in exasperation, he accepted me thwarting him. I carried him over to the others. While he cooed and dribbled at me, I squatted down to talk.