The Ides of April fam-1 Page 3

  The new arrival was in his late thirties, lean build, unremarkable face, clothes decent but not expensive. I could tell he was not, and never had been, a slave. Neither muscle-bound nor dusty, he looked more like a stationer than one of the construction workers. If I really thought Salvidia had had a lover, I might have suspected this was he, but although he had an air of ownership, I doubted that. Instinct again.

  The way the man crept up, he could have been a walk-in thief, trying his luck. If so, he would presumably have gone through the atrium to search indoors for items he could quickly pilfer, not come out here and slumped on the little wall between the peristyle columns, looking as low-spirited as me. Perhaps he felt grim for similar reasons. Had he too come from viewing the corpse? Once he noticed me, he made no move to absent himself. Nor, oddly, did he turn me out. He just nodded once, like a stranger sitting down nearby in a public park, then he lost himself in brooding thoughts. So, I stayed and waited to see what would happen. My father would say that kind of curiosity had got him into plenty of trouble. But you have to trust your intuition. (That idea too, as my mother would dryly remark, had often landed dear Papa ankle-deep in donkey-shit.)

  Eventually the stranger roused and introduced himself. He was called Metellus Nepos and he was the sole heir and executor. I asked about his name, because I knew "Nepos" was Latin for "nephew."

  "It's just a name," he answered brusquely, like a man who had been asked the same question far too many times. "My name!" Fine.

  Romans pride themselves on their wonderful organisation, but when it comes to assigning names to babies, they tend to lack logic. Never try to tell anyone this at a dinner party, especially if they have a stupid name.

  He relaxed enough to explain that the original Metellus who founded the company was his father, while Salvidia had been a second wife, his stepmother. Nepos told me he now had no intention of carrying on the business, but would sell up. He said that with enough bitterness to convince me I was right about the stepmother edging him out. At least he had gone off and done what he had always wanted; he became a cheesemaker. I said that was different. He said not really, if you like cheese.

  I do. We had a meeting of minds, though not extravagantly.

  He decided to become official. "May I ask what you are doing here?"

  I had been waiting for this and saw no reason to prevaricate. "My name is Flavia Albia. I work as an informer. Salvidia hired me to apply legal pressure against some compensation-seekers."

  "After a botched job?" Clearly he knew the family firm. I related the sad story of little Lucius Bassus being run over. Nepos asked what settlement the parents wanted; when I told him he immediately offered, "Fair enough. Tell them once I've sold up here, I'll pay them."

  I was amazed. "To be honest, my commission was to fend them off!"

  "Despite the drunken driver and overloading?"

  "Metellus Nepos, I don't like all the jobs I have to do."

  "The family deserve something. I am overruling Salvidia. I never saw eye to eye with her. And you would have been due something?"

  Still bemused by his attitude, I said what I had hoped to charge Salvidia, plus expenses; Nepos agreed to honour that as well. I saw no reason to mention it had been no win, no fee.

  I did not suppose this man had turned benevolent in the throes of grief. More likely, he was just lying to get rid of creditors. While they were lulled by his promises, he would grab his inheritance and make off. He had not told me where his dairy farm was. Out of Rome, I could bank on it.

  Still, he might be unusually honest. If he wanted to be good-natured as some kind of moral cleansing, it was his own business. I don't meet a lot of that, but I was open-minded.

  Then Metellus Nepos leaned back against a pillar, turned up his face to the tiny patch of sky that was visible above us, and let out the kind of ponderous sigh that was all too familiar to me.

  "That sigh sounds like one of my clients, at an initial consultation," I said. He certainly looked troubled. "When they half wonder if their intended commission will sound like madness-which it often does, apart from 'I think my wife is sleeping with the butcher.' That's usually true. A sudden effusion of escalopes at the dinner table tends to be the giveaway."

  "Tell me what work you do," urged Nepos. It was not a social question.

  I gave him my professional biography. I stressed the mundane side: chasing runaway adolescents for anxious parents, routine hunts for missing birth certificates or army discharge diplomas, or for missing heirs, or missing chickens that naughty neighbours had already cooked up in tarragon … I mentioned other aspects of my strangely mixed portfolio. The time I investigated the quack doctor who raped female patients after giving them sleeping draughts. How I sometimes eliminated innocent suspects from vigiles enquiries, when our fair-minded lawmen went for an easy option, regardless of proof. Then there was work I did occasionally for the Camillus brothers, two rising prosecution lawyers who might need a woman's assistance when they were gathering evidence.

  "Impressed?"

  "You work mainly for women?"

  "I do." Female clients trusted me. They shied off male informers, who had a reputation for groping and worse indecency. Besides, many male informers were simply no good. "Why do you ask, Nepos?" I had a glum premonition.

  "Do something for this woman!" Nepos was short. "I shall hire you. I want someone to check my stepmother's sudden death."

  This was a shock. My guess would have been that he sought an informer because he believed a devious rival had stolen his best cheese recipe. "Nepos, if I had not needed the money I wouldn't have given her a cold, in life."

  "Help her in death, Albia."

  Startled, I ran through all the reasons I had previously produced for myself as to why Salvidia's demise was of no interest at all. "Just because somebody dies unexpectedly does not mean their death was unnatural. It happens. Happens all the time. Many people die for reasons that are never explained. Ask any funeral director."

  "No," he disagreed. "This death is not right."

  "Why? What's bothering you?"

  Nepos moved restlessly. "The old lady was completely tough, she was not even fifty, she was thriving. Her people say she was herself this morning-yet apparently she comes in, dumps her shopping in the hall, and just passes out for no reason. I don't believe it. That's impossible. I didn't get on with her, but I'm not having that."

  "Nepos, there is no evidence of foul play. Keep the commission." I decided he was not the only person in Rome who could make gestures. Besides, I had that terrible sense of gloom that you experience when you think a tiresome case is safely over, then it bobs right back at you. "You would be wasting your money, hiring me."

  "That's for me to decide," replied Metellus Nepos in a grim tone. "Either you look into it for me, or I'll hire someone else."

  So I took the job. If the stepson was set on wasting his newly inherited cash, why should some other informer benefit? I was here in position, so I stepped up obligingly, took on the task and said a polite thank you.

  He had to be wrong.

  But then, there is always that little niggle that won't go away. It always gets you. What if his daft suspicions were not daft at all? What if he was right?

  V

  I did not believe I had a case to investigate, but I still looked into the facts. There was a routine; I followed it. Nepos dogged me like a hungry hound so I could not be desultory. Anyway, I really did want my final report to reassure him. Sometimes that is the point- telling your client that they do not need to worry.

  Occasionally, when it's best to protect them from the awkward truth, you have to say that everything is fine even though you have proved their suspicions are well-founded-but I did not expect that to be the result here.

  I rechecked the corpse, this time with the stepson standing beside me so I could point out its sad normality to him. He sniffed, unconvinced.

  I then spent several hours retracing Salvidia's movements earlier that day
. I interviewed the maid and a few other household staff whom Nepos winkled out of back rooms for me. I ascertained that their mistress had shown no signs of being suicidal. I talked to the workmen at the yard. They said she was definitely full of plans, enjoyable plans to do customers out of money. The maid then escorted me round all the market stalls where Salvidia habitually bought provisions; we identified those where she had been that morning, matching the produce that still lay in her shopping baskets. Nobody in the markets told me anything unusual.

  I pondered motive. Suppose Nepos was right. Unnatural death has a cause, which we could not identify here, and it has a perpetrator. If the woman really had been sent on her way deliberately, who would want to do it? The picture that emerged matched my own previous experience of Salvidia; she was an ill-natured character you wouldn't share a fish supper with yet, after all, she had been a businesswoman so it was never in her interests to fall out with people completely. She ordered her house slaves about, but not unbearably; she rampaged around the yard, but the workers were used to it; she let down customers almost on principle, but they rarely bothered to complain. That was the limit of her aggression. When she dealt with me she had had a testy attitude, but not so bad that I refused her case. I had decided I could work with her. So when I now asked the usual question-did she have any enemies? — the answer was, not particularly. Rome was stuffed with women who were just as unlikeable.

  I pointed out to Nepos that the one person who benefited from Salvidia's death was him: he inherited. We agreed that if he had finished her off in some undetectable way, it would be very stupid of him to draw attention to it. If he had, hiring me could be a smokescreen. But unless someone else had become suspicious of the death, there was no need at all for him to set the wood smouldering.

  I made sure we considered the family of the toddler, Lucius Bassus. Salvidia's drunken driver and overloaded cart had killed the child. Nevertheless, she had brazenly tried to avoid paying compensation. That meant the bereaved parents might harbour real loathing of her. But they stood to gain a large amount of cash soon-because, being realistic, they had an unbeatable claim for negligence which my best efforts would not have thwarted. It was in their interest to keep her alive, so she could pay. Anyway, I went and saw them. They all had alibis.

  Reluctantly, Nepos accepted that no misadventure was indicated. He still wanted to bring in a doctor to look at the body; I persuaded him to keep the money and ask an opinion of a funeral director, who had to be hired anyway. They see enough to give the best assessment of what has happened to a dead person.

  The undertaker who came seemed competent. He surveyed the body and refused to excite himself. He did take notice of the mark that I myself had noticed on Salvidia's arm, though like me he thought it was some accidental scrape. He claimed that women were quietly passing away all over Rome for no obvious reason that spring. It might mean some kind of invisible disease was claiming them, but more likely it was just a statistical coincidence. His verdict was that old saying, "There's a lot of it about."

  He took the corpse. I promised Nepos I would go to the funeral. It's a good time to claim fees, before the heirs disperse.

  I finished up much later in the day than I had expected when I set out earlier to visit the aediles. But that is common in the work I do. Dusk was falling and I needed food, so I went to see my family; they would ply me with supper, in a real home full of warmth, light, comfort and lively conversation. It would improve my mood. I could consult about Salvidia too-not that anyone was able to add any useful thoughts, it turned out. We all agreed I had made the only possible enquiries. If that produced nothing, there must be nothing to find.

  VI

  When I rolled up back at my own building, it was seriously late. Much of Rome was sleeping. Those awake were sick, making love, committing suicide or burglarising. I would leave them to it.

  We had a routine. After dark, moneyed families send home their visiting daughters by carrying chair, with burly slaves and blazing torches. I went along with that. The lurching made me queasy but accepting an escort kept the peace at home. Once the chair reached Fountain Court, we were in my territory and I made the rules. The bearers knew to drop me by the kitchenware potter's. His lock-up shop was diagonally opposite the entrance to my building and he left a flickery taper to show his display. One night the taper would burn down the premises, cindering his lopsided stacks of grape-drainers and grit-bottomed mortars, but in the meantime it gave one faint point of light. I hopped out and stood in silence, listening and making sure that no prowler was likely to jump me.

  At the corner, before they left the alley, the bearers always looked back; if I signalled all clear, they would go on their way. If anything in the street felt wrong, I recalled them. I never took chances. This was Rome. Half the people who are mugged at midnight are attacked on their own doorstep.

  You may think the bearers could have seen me all the way indoors. Oh yes-and tell every Aventine villain which doorway was mine? A lone female, finely dressed on this occasion, coming back exhausted and a little tipsy … I was ready for bed. I didn't want to have to stick a carving knife in some thief or rapist.

  Own up, Albia-. all right, I could have coped with that. I just couldn't face having to sit until dawn in some cold interview room at the vigiles station house, being driven mad by a barely literate bone-head trying to spell "self-defence." Rufinianus, no doubt. The man was straight, but indisputably a halfwit.

  Yes, I had once stabbed an intruder and stupidly reported it.

  Yes, after lingering a little, he died.

  No, I do not regret it.

  The Eagle Building, Fountain Court. Everyone still called it the old laundry, though it had not been a wash house for years and nobody knew what had become of the proprietor. Some would have retired on the profits, but it was rumoured ours had drunk them.

  I gazed up at the hulking apartment block, half unoccupied as usual these days, though barely a crack of light showed, even from parts that I knew were lived in. Tenants who had work would be up at first light for their back-breaking labours; skivers and the otherwise destitute could not afford lamp oil. Six storeys of ramshackle misery loomed over me, therefore, like a hideous black fortress where prisoners-of-war were being tortured all night. Maybe it was a trick of the darkness, but the whole lump sometimes seemed to lean over the alley as if on the verge of crumpling. It was the kind of building where solitary people died, then their bodies lay undiscovered for weeks. If someone was not seen for a while, we just assumed they were hiding from an estranged spouse or from the authorities. What was one bad smell among so many?

  A typically rancid slum landlord had owned this place for many years, until he was bought out by people with consciences. Well-intentioned plans to renovate had come to nothing, defeated by structural failings that were discovered to go right down into the foundations, such as the foundations were. The new owner employed a builder; the builder summoned an architect; the architect brought an engineer; the engineer said stuff it, keep the fee, because even with danger-money he wouldn't touch this place.

  So far, the Eagle Building was still there, just about holding itself up. If any tenant had a bad cough, they were asked to go and stay with friends in case reverberation dislodged a crucial structural element.

  I lived in the building rent-free. My nostalgia-prone father saw this ghastly building as the home of his carefree youth. My unusual mother humoured him. So it was my crazy family who had bought the lease.

  Originally, they had benevolent dreams of filling the apartments with deserving tenants who would be grateful; this crackpot idealism foundered when the first layabouts "forgot" to pay their rent and used the stairs as a lavatory. Now the intention was to demolish the teetering wreck, then sell the empty plot to a millionaire senator, duping him with claims it had potential for a private home. It would happen. An ambitious general from the provinces would be bamboozled by smooth talk of how secluded the Aventine was, a little-known refuge
from the city bustle, a historic Roman district where this prime land was ripe for development at a reasonable cost, a rarely available opportunity to build a custom-designed town house…

  Don't think we had smoke in our eyes with this plan. We had someone lined up. His name was Trajanus.

  Yes, you may have heard of him, and yes, nowadays he does possess a discreet private mansion on the Aventine. My father may look like a barking-mad fantasist, but he comes from a brazen line of hucksters who can sell nuts to people who own their own almond orchards. My grandfather, for example, was a rich auctioneer which- allowing the customary discretion when listing his income for taxation purposes-meant he was as well off as anybody ever needs to be. After he died we all benefited, even me.

  Available cash did not help the Eagle Building. Investment would have been wasted on it. A flank wall was shifting and the dirt grew blacker annually. It was no longer safe to use the balcony outside my upstairs office, even though that was the only good feature of the rooms I had there. I ought to move, but lived here because I was used to it. The hideaway at the top had always been an informer's office, so would-be clients had heard of it and could find it. Once they staggered up six flights of stairs, even the ones who thought they were coming to see my father gave in and settled for me.

  Hidden away-much lower down, believe me-I had my own apartment, a refuge most people never knew existed. It was where I had lived for the three happy years of my marriage. I stayed there alone afterwards because although life went on, I never thought that fate would favour me a second time. I stopped there with my memories. This was all I had. Happiness had been and gone.

  My husband was killed in an accident. I was already an informer by then, earning my own living as a gesture of independence, even though Grandfather's legacy had left my family comfortably off. I was only twenty when I was widowed. The family offered me security back at home; I refused the offer gently. I was rooted here. Before I was adopted, my childhood had been harsh. It mattered that during my short marriage I had made a good life for myself. I had lived alone for eight years now, and I coped well enough.