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  'Try being a mite less officious!'

  'Just try growing up, Falco!'

  Petronius rose to his feet. The lamp guttered nervously. I refused to make an apology; so did he. It didn't matter. Our friendship was too close to be blown apart by this condescending exchange of personal views.

  At least I hoped it was. Because without his help, my witless implication in the murder of Censorinus could have fatal results for me.

  He was stomping off in a huff, but turned back from the doorway.

  'Sorry about your sister, by the way.'

  With so much else on my mind, I had forgotten about Victorina. I had to think hard to realise what he was saying.

  I opened my mouth to remark that he must be more sorry than I was, then stopped. I did pity her children, left to the mercy of their feeble father the plasterer. Besides, I had never been quite sure about relations between Victorina and Petronius. But one thing was certain: when women were involved, Lucius Petronius Longus had never been as shy as he appeared.

  XI

  After he left I sat where I was. I had a lot to think about. It was the proverbial case with no easy solutions. In fact, as was normal for me, no solutions at all.

  Helena Justina came to see what I was doing (or how much I was drinking). Perhaps she had heard me quarrelling with Petronius. Anyway, she must have guessed there was a problem and that the problem might be serious. At first she tried to pull me gently by the arm, attempting to lure me to bed, but when I resisted she gave way abruptly and sat down alongside.

  I went on thinking, though not for long. Helena knew how to handle me. She said nothing. For several moments she simply stayed with me, holding my right hand between both of hers. Her stillness and silence were comforting. As normal, I was completely disarmed. I had been intending to keep the situation from her, but pretty soon I heard myself saying despondently, 'You had better know. I'm a suspect in a murder case.'

  'Thank you for telling me,' Helena remarked politely.

  Immediately my mother popped out from somewhere near at hand. She has always been shameless about listening in.

  'You'll need something to keep your strength up then!' exclaimed Ma, banging a patera of broth on to the embers of her cooking bench.

  Neither of them seemed the least surprised-or at all indignant-that I had been subjected to such a charge.

  So much for loyalty.

  XII

  Next day the weather continued to be abysmal, and so did my own mood. I was faced with far more than investigating my shady brother's past for family reasons, a hard enough task. But if I was to escape a murder charge, within the next day or so I had to find out why Censorinus had died and name the real murderer. Otherwise the best I could hope for was exile to the ends of the Empire, and if I came up before a judge who hated informers-as most of them did-there might even be the threat of crucifixion beside a highway like any common criminal or being turned into bait for an arena lion.

  Only my own family seemed likely to offer any clues as to what Festus and his army pals had been about. Forcing my relatives to sit still and answer questions like witnesses was a dire prospect. I tried my sister Maia first. Maia was my favourite, but as soon as I spread myself out on a couch she upset me by commenting, 'I'm the last person you should be asking. Festus and I never got on.'

  She was the youngest surviving child in our family, and in my opinion had the best looks and character. We had barely a year between us, while a gap three times as long divided me from our next sister, Junia. Maia and I had stuck together ever since we shared a nursery beaker and took turns learning to stagger about in a little walking-frame on wheels. In most ways she was easygoing. We rarely squabbled, either when we were children or later on.

  Most women on the Aventine look like hags from the moment they have their first baby; Maia, with four behind her, still appeared younger than her thirty years. She had dark, extremely curly hair, wonderful eyes, and a round, cheerful face. She had picked up a good dress sense when she worked for a tailor, and had kept up her standards even after she married Famia, a sozzled horse vet with a bulbous nose and minimal character. Famia was attached to the Green faction, so sporting discernment was not his gift; his brains seemed to have run out once he latched on to my sister. Luckily she had enough apples in the basket for both of them.

  'Give me some help, Maia. The last time Festus came home on leave, did he say anything to you about being in partnership with some people from his unit importing art from the East?'

  'No. Marcus, Festus would never have talked about anything important in front of me. Festus was like you were in those days. He thought women were just for being rammed from behind while they were bent over a cooking bench preparing dinner for him.'

  'That's disgusting.' I felt upset.

  'That's men!' she retorted.

  One reason Maia disapproved of Festus was the effect he had had on me. He had undeniably brought out my own worst side, and she had hated having to watch it. 'Maia, don't do him down. Festus had a sunny nature and a golden heart-'

  'You mean he always wanted his own way.' Maia remained implacable. She was normally a treasure to deal with. On the rare occasions when she took against someone she enjoyed letting rip. Excess was our family's strong point. 'There's one obvious person you ought to talk to, Marcus.'

  'You mean Geminus?' Geminus, our father. Maia and I shared views on the subject of Father. They were not complimentary.

  'Actually,' she scoffed, 'I was thinking of ways you could avoid trouble, not walk right into it! Marina, I meant.' Marina had been my brother's girlfriend. For various highly emotional reasons I did not want to go and see Marina either.

  'I suppose there's no escaping it,' I agreed gloomily. 'I'll need to have things out with her.' Talking to Marina about the last time we both saw Festus was something I dreaded.

  Maia misinterpreted. 'What's the problem? She's dim, but if Festus ever said anything that her soppy brain actually remembers, she'll tell you. And Juno, Marcus, she certainly owes you some favours!' After Festus died I had made an effort to keep Marina and her young daughter from starving while Marina was out enjoying herself with the fellows who eventually replaced Festus in her disordered life. 'Do you want me to come with you?' Maia demanded, still trying to push me into it. 'I can make sense of Marina-'

  'Marina's no problem.'

  My sister seemed to have no idea why I wanted to steer clear. That was unusual, because the scandal was no secret. My brother's girlfriend had made sure the entire family knew that she and I had a sordid connection. The last time Festus was home on leave in Rome, in fact the night before he departed back to Judaea, he had left her and me together, with results I preferred to forget.

  The last thing I wanted nowadays, especially while I was living with Helena at my mother's, was to have that old story raked up again. Helena Justina had high moral standards. A link between me and my brother's girlfriend was something Helena would not even want to understand.

  Knowing my family, Helena was probably being told all about it even as I sat glumly in my sister's house trying to put the saga out of my mind.

  XIII

  Maia lived on the Aventine, not two streets from Mother. Not far away was another group of my relatives whom I needed to visit; my dead sister Victorina's household. It was unlikely to help my enquiries, but as nominal head of our family it was my duty to pay my respects. With a murder sentence hanging over me, I went along as soon as possible, feeling like a man who might soon be arrested and deprived of the chance.

  Victorina and her depressing husband Mico had made their nest on one side of the Temple of Diana. Victorina, with her long career of dirty assignations at the back of the Temple of Isis, had never appeared to realise that living next to the chaste huntress might be inappropriate.

  As addresses go, it occupied a glamorous site, but had few other selling-points. They existed in two rooms among a warren of dingy apartments at the back of a large copper shop. The constan
t clanging of mallets on metalware had left the whole family slightly deaf. The tenement they rented had slanting floors, frail walls, a rotten ceiling and a strong odour from the giant vat of urine in the stairwell which the landlord never emptied. This polluting dollium leaked slowly, which at least made room for refills. Hardly any light could penetrate to the apartments-an advantage, since seeing their homes too clearly might have led to a long queue of suicides on the Probus Bridge.

  It was some time since I had needed to pay a visit to my sister's place. I could not remember exactly where she lived. Treading gingerly because of the leaky dollium, I made a couple of false attempts before I identified the right apartment. Hastily avoiding the neighbours' curses and lewd propositions, I dived through what remained of a coarsely woven curtain and found my destination. There could have been no greater contrast than that between the neat apartment where Maia was successfully bringing up her children and the humid hole, with its fragrance of cabbage and children's damp tunics, in which this other feckless family lived.

  Mico was at home. Inevitably, he was out of work. As a plasterer my brother-in-law had no skill. The only reason he was allowed to remain in the Plasterers' Guild was pity. Even when contractors were desperate for labour, Mico was the last man they called in.

  I found him attempting to wipe honey from the chin of his youngest but one. His eldest daughter, Augustinilla, the one we had been looking after in Germany, glared at me as if the loss of her mama was all my fault, and stalked from the house. The six-year-old boy was systematically hitting the four-year-old with a small clay goat. I prised the baby off a distinctly grubby rug. He was an antisocial tyke who clung to his perch like a kitten putting out its claws. He burped, with the evil relief of a child who was choosing his moment to throw up now that a visitor had provided a respectable cloak for him to throw up on.

  In another corner of the room a slack bundle of flab clothed in unappealing rags cackled at me amiably: Mico's mother. She must have slid in like fish oil the minute Victorina died. She was eating half a loaf but not bothering to help Mico. The women in my own family despised this placid old dame, but I saluted her without rancour. My own relations were born interferers, but some folks have the tact to sit by and merely act as parasites. I liked her style. We all knew where we were with Mico's mother, and it wasn't being harried out of doors by a broom or having our guilty consciences probed.

  'Marcus!' Mico greeted me, with his usual effusive gratitude. I felt my teeth set.

  Mico was small and swarthy. He had a pasty face and a few black teeth. He would do anyone a favour, provided they were prepared to accept that he would do it very badly and drive them wild with incessant chat.

  'Mico!' I cried, slapping him on the shoulder. I reckoned he needed stiffening. Once his balance was upset for any reason, depression set in. He had been a long river of gloom even before he acquired the excuse of five motherless children, his mother at home, no work, no hope, and no luck. The bad luck was his real tragedy. If Mico tripped over a bag of gold bits on his way to the baker's, the bag would split open, the aurei would scatter-and he would watch every one of them drop down a manhole into a sewer at full flood.

  My heart fell as he drew me aside with a purposeful air. 'Marcus Didius, I hope you don't mind, but we held the funeral without you…'

  Dear gods, he was a worrier. How Victorina ever stood him I don't know. 'Well of course I was sorry to miss the formalities…' I tried to look cheerful since I knew children are sensitive to atmosphere. Luckily Mico's tribe were all too busy pulling at each other's ears.

  'I felt terrible about not allowing you a chance to do the eulogy…' Apart from the fact I was delighted to be spared it, this idiot was her husband. The day they married, Victorina had become his charge in life and death; it was Mico's duty to dredge up something polite to declaim at her funeral. The last thing I would have wanted was for him to step aside in my favour as some misplaced compliment to me as head of the Didius family. Besides, Victorina had had a father living; we all did. I was just the unhappy soul who had had to shoulder the responsibility when our shirking, self-seeking father chose to do a moonlight flit.

  Mico invited me to a stool. I sat, squashing something soft. 'I'm really happy to have this chance for a chat, Marcus Didius…' With his normal unerring judgement he had chosen as a confidant a person who could hardly bear to listen to five words from him.

  'Pleased to help…'

  Things went from bad to worse. Mico assumed I had come to hear a full commentary on the funeral. 'A really good crowd turned out for her-' Must have been a quiet day at the racecourse. 'Victorina had so many friends…' Men, mostly. I can never understand why fellows who have tangled with a good-time girl acquire such peculiar curiosity if she passes on. As Victorina's brother I would have resented it.

  'Your friend Petronius was there!' Mico sounded surprised. I wanted to be surprised myself. 'Such a decent fellow. Good of him to represent you like that…'

  'Lay off, Mico. Petronius Longus is on the verge of locking me up in jail!' Mico looked concerned. I felt a renewed surge of my own anxiety about Censorinus and my deadly predicament. 'How are you managing?' I changed the subject abruptly. Mico's nasty-tempered baby was kicking my left kidney. 'Is there anything you need?' My brother-in-law was too disorganised to know. 'I've some New Year presents from Germany for the children. They're still packed, but I'll bring them round as soon as I can get at them. My apartment's wrecked-'

  Mico showed a genuine interest. 'Yes, I heard about your rooms!' Great. Everyone seemed to know what had happened, yet not one of them had tried to do anything about it. 'Do you want a hand putting things straight?' Not from him, I didn't. I wanted my old place to be liveable, and by next week not next Saturnalia.

  'Thanks, but you have enough to think about. Make your ma look after the children while you get out a bit. You need some company-you need some work, Mico!'

  'Oh something will come up.' He was full of misplaced optimism.

  I gazed around the sordid room. There was no sense of absence, no silence left by Victorina's loss. It was hardly surprising. Even in life she had always been off somewhere else having her own idea of a good time.

  'I see you're missing her!' Mico remarked in a low voice.

  I sighed. But at least his attempts to comfort me seemed to cheer him up.

  Since I was there I decided to get a few questions in: 'Look, I'm sorry if this is not the right time, but I'm making some enquiries for Mother and I'm seeing everyone about it. Did Festus ever say anything to you about a scheme he was involved in-Greek statuary, ships from Caesarea, that sort of thing?'

  Mico shook his head. 'No. Festus never talked to me.' I knew why that was. He would have had more luck trying to dispute the philosophy that life is a bunch of whirling atoms with a half-naked, barely sober garland girl. 'He was always a pal, though,' Mico insisted, as though he thought he might have given the wrong impression. I knew it was true. Festus could always be relied on to throw crumbs to a stranded fledgling or pat a three-legged dog.

  'Just thought I'd ask. I'm trying to find out what he was up to on his last trip to Rome.'

  'Afraid I can't help you, Marcus. We had a few drinks, and he arranged a couple of jobs for me, but that's all I saw of him.'

  'Anything special about the jobs?' It was a forlorn hope.

  'Just normal business. Plastering over brickwork…' I lost interest. Then Mico kindly informed me, 'Marina probably knows what deals he had on. You ought to ask her.'

  I thanked him patiently, as if the thought of speaking about Festus to his girlfriend had never occurred to me.

  XIV

  If I was ever to solve the soldier's murder I needed to take a more direct hand. Petronius Longus had warned me to keep away from Flora's. I had no intention of obeying him. It was lunch-time, so I turned my feet straight towards the caupona.

  Wrong move: I was compelled to go past. One of Petro's troopers was sitting outside on a bench beside the b
eggar on the barrel. The trooper had a pitcher and a dish of soggy stuffed vine leaves, but I knew what he was really doing there: Petro had told him to make sure I didn't get in. The man had the nerve to grin at me as I passed by, faking a nonchalant expression, on the far side of the street.

  I went home to Ma's house. My second mistake.

  'Oh Juno, look what's straggled in!'

  'Allia! What have you come for-a bodkin or a pound of plums?'

  Allia was my second-eldest sister; she had always been Victorina's closest ally, so I was as low in Allia's affections as the grit in an empty amphora, and she had never featured at all in mine. She must have been here to borrow something-her normal occupation-but luckily she was leaving just as I arrived.

  'Before you start on about Festus-don't!' she informed me with her regular brand of truculence. 'I know nothing about it, and I really can't be bothered.'

  'Thanks,' I said.

  There was no point in attempting to argue. We parted company on the threshold. Allia lurched off, big-boned and slightly ungainly, as if she had been mishandled during the birth process.

  Helena and Ma were sitting at the table, both fairly straight-backed. I threw myself on to a coffer, ready for the worst.

  'Allia has been telling us some interesting stories,' Helena announced bluntly. That would be the Marina incident. It had been useless to hope she would never find out.

  I said nothing, but saw Helena lock her teeth on the left-hand side with an angry overlap. I was angry myself. Encountering Allia always felt like reliving several hours of childhood-the dreariest part that normal memory sensibly wipes out.

  Looking tired, Mother left me alone with Helena.

  'Stop looking so shifty!' At least she was speaking.

  I drew a long breath, surreptitiously. 'You had better ask me.'