Scandal Takes a Holiday Page 4

  Helena and I walked around the back of the Forum and its associated public buildings; we passed fullers and temples, markets and inns, as we headed for the cooler breezes and the sound of gulls. I allowed Helena a rapid glance at the ocean vista, then dragged her to see the landlady. We knew that the woman would be sleeping and bad-tempered if we disturbed her, but at least at this time of day no whey-faced slave would inform us that the mistress was off out shopping or being beautified, or that she had gone somewhere miles away to pick a fight with her mother-in-law. A sleepy seaside afternoon, when the noon sun has baked the morning’s fish scales to papery transparency on the harbor wall and the cormorants are sunbathing, is the time to find people.

  I watched Helena sum up the woman, who was broad-shouldered and florid and wore a plum-colored gown that was a little too long around the sandals, and a not-quite-matching stole. Her heavy gold earrings were in a hooped style and she had a snake bracelet with sinister glass eyes. Rouged cheeks and tinctured eyelids, with the color settled crudely in the creases, were clearly routine ornament (for her, not the bracelet snake). She was either a widow or it suited her to appear so. She was certainly not the helpless kind of widow. I would have accepted her as a client—though the prospect would not have excited me.

  I knew from my previous visit that her manner was one of pleasant efficiency but she was out to make money. Play her right—and pay her far too much—and she would be all sweetness. She wanted no trouble, so on production of my docket she scowled heavily but did lead us to Diocles’ belongings. She was keeping them out in an old chicken shed. There were predictable results.

  “I can see you are looking after everything.” No chickens now scratched around the tiny kitchen garden, but they had left mementos of the usual kind. There are worse things than feathers and chicken shit, but it seemed a crude repository.

  “I am not a luggage dump.”

  “No, of course not,” Helena assured her, soothingly. The woman had noted Helena’s clean vowels and consonants. Accustomed to sizing up would-be tenants, she was puzzled. I was an informer; my girlfriend should be a pert piece with a loud voice and a pushed-up bust. After six years together, Helena and I no longer explained. “Diocles had mentioned that he was coming to see relatives,” Helena murmured. “Do you know if he had any visitors, or contacted anyone in particular?”

  “His room was in my building next door.” The landlady was proud that she owned a couple of houses, one where she lived herself and one variously let out to seasonal visitors. “He was free to come and go.”

  “So you saw no one with him?”

  “Not often. The slave from Rome, who alerted me that the man was missing, seemed the only one.” That was the slave who came to pick up Gazette copy. “So long as there is no trouble, I don’t pry.”

  “Ah, you’re as helpful as a goat with three livers to a novice augury-taker,” I commented.

  Helena caught the woman’s eye. “It has endless possibilities—but no obvious story to tell,” Helena explained, then both women sneered at my joke.

  I busied myself with the baggage. There were unwashed tunics, as Helena had prophesied. I have smelled worse; public scribes who work in government offices do know how to use the baths. Diocles’ laundry had been sitting around for a month, then placed in a poultry hut. There was never a chance of sweet scents of balsam.

  “Did you believe Diocles was in Ostia to work?” Helena had a quiet persistence, which people never felt able to challenge. The landlady hated answering so many questions, yet she was drawn in.

  “He said so.”

  “Did he tell you his occupation?”

  “Some sort of record-keeping, I think.”

  “Seems right.” I confirmed the half-lie, having dug out a bundle of note-tablets. They looked almost empty. Just my luck. Diocles was a scribe who kept everything in his head. Witnesses can be so selfish.

  I did find one name. “There is someone down here called ‘Damagoras.’ Looks like an appointment … Do you know this Damagoras?”

  “Never heard of him,” said the landlady. At least she was consistent.

  VII

  Helena and I walked slowly back. This time we went straight up the Decumanus. I was carrying the scribe’s laundry and other possessions, collected together in his cloak. Apart from the whiff, which was a strange mixture of male sweat and old mortar, being in possession of what was clearly a clothes bundle made us a muggers’ target. Dresswear is the most popular item for thieves. Half the vigiles’ casework comprises reports of filched tunics from changing rooms at the baths. I bet you didn’t know that.

  Wrong! I bet you have been a victim at least once.

  There is no such thing as a bathhouse with good security. Look no farther than the owners. Most proprietors are taking your ticket money with one hand while they feel the nap on your garments with the other, prior to a transfer of ownership. Many have a cousin who is a fuller. Your prized tawny tunic will be redyed bull’s blood red, making it impossible to identify, while you are still strigilling off your chosen body oil and moaning that the water isn’t hot enough. I take the dog to guard my togs. Since Nux guards clothes by lying on them, the disadvantage is that I get clean only to end up smelling like my dog. Nux is never clean. However, unlike one unfortunate man we passed in Ostia, I have never had to scuttle home naked, covering my assets with a borrowed hot-room water scoop.

  The Decumanus was the short route back, but it was full of other people. The nervous nude had his own problems dodging jibes and guffaws. We were little better off. All the porters with handcarts had bagged the shady pavement, the roadway was crammed with wagons, and the hot side of the street was baked. Diocles’ property was not heavy, but it included a little folding stool, washing gear, a half-empty wine flagon, and a stylus box; the knotted cloak was an awkward shape to maneuver in the confined spaces of a main road with its afternoon traffic jam. Helena was no help. She was carrying the tablets, and as an insatiable reader that meant she was already searching through them as she walked.

  “His doodles are useless. He must just scribble a memory aid like ‘Tomorrow,’ without saying what for … This Damagoras you found is the only name—”

  There were about five bound sets, each with four or six double-sided wooden tablets, so keeping her grip on all these writing-boards, while struggling to open them one at a time, kept Helena busy. She dropped a couple once, but that was because a water-carrier barged her. Helena stooped to retrieve the fallen tablets, thwarting any “helpful” passersby who might have pretended to help pick them up for her while palming the odd one. As she bent down, a lecherous snackbar waiter clearly planned on goosing her, but Diocles’ bundle made a good guard, under cover of which I kicked the waiter. He reeled back with his empty drinks tray. Oblivious, Helena carried on reading. “Juno, this man was a bore … here he’s added up a bar bill. In the last set he sketched what looks like a grid for solo draughts.”

  The bar bill came to so little it could only have been cold stew and a beaker for one. The scandal scribe dined out alone. At least that saved us feeling frustrated about untraceable meetings with anonymous contacts. The apparent board game could have been a map for a rendezvous, but if so, Diocles had missed out all the street names. That was no help.

  “Maybe he was the kind of sad bastard who spent his leisure time drawing imaginary cities,” I speculated gloomily. Nothing I knew about him suggested he was King of Atlantis in his spare time, however.

  “Marcus, from what I’ve been reading so far in the Daily Gazette, he had enough fun applying his creativity to ‘Flavia Conspicua seems to have grown bored with marriage very soon. Hardly has she been snatched from her mother’s arms by the eligible Gaius Mundanus, than rumour has it Flavia (heiress to the Splendidus estates and an experienced amateur flute-player) is already seeing her old love Gaudius again …’ I invented that,” Helena assured me.

  “Sounds good. Your Flavia is hot stuff?”

  “Always popu
lar on the bachelor circuit.”

  “Blonde?”

  “Auburn, I should say. No figure, but a lovely nature; she’ll do anything for anyone.”

  “You can take that several ways …”

  “Oh quite!”

  “Tell me, is ‘flute-playing’ some ripe shorthand in scandal column terms?” I queried.

  “Very much so,” said Helena, with the gravity I loved so well. “You would think all Rome would sound like a wind instrument orchestra, given the prevailing loose morals. Flavia’s fingering is legendary, her breath control is lovely, and it’s thought she even sometimes has a go at the double-ended tibia.”

  To avoid encouraging my loved one’s filthy mind, I concentrated on squeezing the bundle of clothes between a temple portico and a mason’s cart that had been left parked rather tight against the streetside building line.

  Hot and weary, we stopped by at the house where Petronius and Maia were living, where we allowed Maia to fan us and furbish us with mint tea.

  We were forced to be introduced to the owner, who was visiting to oversee the installation of a fountain. It was a statue of a naked Young Dionysius; in the throes of his early wine-drinking lessons, the handsome god (who I thought looked rather like me when young) made the waterspout by peeing. Since the house-owner was a building contractor, I assume this tasteful artwork had been pinched from some unfortunate client. Perhaps it had been chipped slightly on the bunch of grapes as it was delivered, and became a “return,” with no visible refund on the final account.

  Petro’s benefactor was called Privatus and had a shiny bald head, over which he had drawn long strands of thin graying hair. They crossed on top, creating a loose darn of fake locks that would blow apart in the slightest gust of wind. Not tall, the builder was bony and knock-kneed. I had met men who were more flash, but he reeked of social ambition and consciousness of his own success. You guessed: I did not take to him.

  Petronius was out. In an uppity mood, Maia took great delight in explaining to Privatus that I was an informer, in Ostia to find a missing scribe. I prefer to keep quiet about a mission, until I have the measure of a new acquaintance. Maia knew that.

  “So, what would you say are your chances of finding this Diocles?” asked Privatus. It was a fair question. I tried not to bridle.

  “At the moment it looks unlikely I can go much further.” I sounded more pleasant than I felt.

  “Marcus Didius is being modest,” Helena declared loyally. “He has a long history of solving difficult cases.”

  Privatus looked nervous. It takes people that way. “So what do you reckon happened, Falco?”

  “At this juncture, it’s impossible to say.”

  “How does an informer—excuse me asking so much, by the way—how do you go about finding a lost person, Falco?”

  People are always curious about my work. I sighed, then went through the rigmarole: “Before I left Rome, I checked at the Temple of Aesculapius in case he had been hospitalized—or dumped there for burial. Here, I asked Petronius Longus to see if my man has been arrested by the vigiles for some reason—negative—and now the patrols are looking out for him. They should spot him if he’s wandering in a daze. If he just changed lodgings because he couldn’t stand his landlady, my task will be much harder.”

  “Sounds like hard work!” exclaimed the builder, clearly unconvinced.

  I smiled bravely. “Have you ever heard of anyone in Ostia called Damagoras?”

  Privatus posed, pretending to think. “Afraid not, Falco.”

  I should have asked Privatus about his work. Still, he had probably heard that informers are famous for their bad manners. His life presumably was one long happy round of rebuilding the docks when holes he left the last time started letting in water.

  Helena and I quickly drank up our mint tea, then I took her home. She remembered the note-tablets. With skill, I managed to leave behind Diocles’ dirty laundry, which I had left standing on the well-swept marble floor, in the atrium of Privatus’ tasteful home.

  VIII

  Next day I went back to the scribe’s lodging—this time in the morning. With luck, the landlady would be out then, and I could ask her new tenant to show me the scribe’s room.

  I left Helena continuing her task of reading old copies of the Gazette. She was doing this in the presence of our daughters. Julia Junilla, aged three last month, could start a riot that required quelling by the urban cohorts when she felt obstinate; at the moment she was playing cute. She did it with style and my heart melted. Sosia Favonia, a somber thug of only fourteen months, was standing up naked in her crib, having learned how she could pull herself upright even as it rocked. Next trick: falling out and cutting her head open. Still, Albia had laid a rag rug beside the crib to limit the damage. In order to read, Helena resorted to the old wheeze; she produced a new toy (all the doll, ball, hoop, whistle, and wooden animal makers in Rome knew and adored us), then she moved away quietly as the children grew absorbed. She was safe with her scrolls until the next screaming quarrel started.

  I kissed the girls. They ignored me; they were used to me leaving home. Sometimes they seemed to think I was just the greengrocer’s delivery boy. No; he would have been more exciting.

  With Nux darting through my ankles in an attempt to trip me up, I returned to the Marine Gate. It was a long way to walk, only to find the new tenant was out. Depressed, I went to knock on the landlady’s door, and at this point the Fates took pity. She was out too, so I finally met her all-duties slave, Titus. A snub-nosed, scar-faced rascal in a loose-fit one-shouldered tunic, this Titus had been kept away from me on previous calls. He was sharp as a nail; like all his tribe he knew exactly his value to a man in need. The pittance the Gazette scribes were paying me would not go far around many like Titus, but according to him he was unique. So that was all right.

  It was Titus who had actually cleared the room after Diocles went missing.

  “Excellent news. Now earn those tinkling coppers you just squeezed out of me, Titus. I know what Diocles is supposed to have left behind—a few used tunics and some empty note-tablets. Now you tell me what else was there, and don’t hold back.”

  “Are you saying I nicked something?” Titus demanded indignantly. Always eager to join in a rumpus, Nux walked over and sniffed him. The slave eyed her uneasily.

  “You are entitled to perks, young fellow.”

  “Well, that’s how I see it.” He settled down. Nux lost interest. “He had a couple of other tunics—clean ones. As he wasn’t coming back, I had them off him.”

  “Sold in the secondhand market?”

  “Too right.”

  “Diocles came to Ostia for the summer,” I mused. “He wouldn’t have walked in with just one knapsack and a packet of squid dumplings, but even if he did—”

  “What you saying, Falco?”

  “Where did his knapsack walk off to?”

  “He had two. I got a good price for them.”

  “Were they empty?”

  “Oh yes.” It sounded true. I looked at him steadily. “I shook them out, Falco.”

  “Where did his cash go, then?”

  Titus shrugged. “No idea, honest.” There was no point pressing it. I noticed the slave had not asked me, What cash?

  “How much luggage did he have when he first arrived? Would you say Diocles could have moved gear to some other lodging?”

  “What he brought with him was left when he bunked off. A stool, and stuff—”

  “Forget the stool!” I had retrieved it. The folding stool was wobbly and I had pinched my finger when trying it out. “Was there a weapon?” I growled.

  “No, sir!”

  Now, that was wrong. In Rome it is illegal to go armed (not that that stops people) but when traveling we all tool up. I knew from Holconius and Mutatus that Diocles always carried a dagger, and sometimes he took a sword too. The other scribes had told me these were standard precautions, in case he ran into an offended husband or a furious wife’
s huge whip-wielding driver. “I don’t want them back, and I won’t report you, Titus. I just need to know.”

  “There was none.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t believe me!”

  “I believe you.”

  I believed no slave would ever confess to stealing anything with which he could arm himself, even if he had sold on the weapon. Slaves and swords don’t mix.

  “So is that it?” asked Titus, looking hopeful.

  “Almost. But since the new tenant has gone out, I’ll have you show me the room, please.”

  Knowing he was on shaky ground over the stolen goods, Titus agreed to this. But we found that while I had been talking to Titus, the tenant had returned. He was a run-down furtive corn factor, now sitting on his narrow bed eating a cold pie. Nux ran in as if she owned the place and he jumped up looking guilty; maybe the landlady forbade food indoors. While he recovered—being mainly ashamed that he had gravy all down him—I showed I was tough. I searched the room, without bothering to ask permission. The corn factor must have known that the previous tenant had vanished; patiently he let me do what I wanted.

  He and Titus watched, as I went into all the special places where travelers hide things in hired rooms, from obviously, under the mattress, to more subtly, on the top of the window frame. The floorboards were all well nailed down. The wall cupboard was empty apart from dirt and a dead wasp. I found nothing. I ordered Nux to search, which as usual she declined to do, preferring to sit staring at the factor’s pastry. I thanked him for making his facilities available. He offered me a bite of pie, but my mother brought me up to decline food from strangers.