I turned to Glaber who, having, with assistance, moved the corpse – was now engaged in smoothing down the wine-bespattered clothes. The undertakers had not yet arrived. (Not surprising, since both stretcher-bearer slaves and the women who would wash and purify the corpse, had very likely needed to be roused from sleep. Only a celebrity like Hortius – or Marcus Septimus – could guarantee attendance at so late an hour.) Glaber looked at me.
‘And did you?’ I enquired. ‘Throw it all away?’
‘I did as I was told.’ Glaber straightened up and met my gaze, and sighed. ‘Councillors, I will not disguise the truth. The duumvir already knows it, anyway. If that poison had come into my hands while my ex-owner here was still alive, I would cheerfully have put it in his wine and – if suspicion fell on me – have drunk the rest myself. He was not a …’ He stopped. He had already said too much. Criticizing a previous master – however horrible – can earn a slave a flogging, if not something worse. Especially if the former master was a man of influence.
‘He was not … what?’ my patron challenged him.
‘A kindly man to his inferiors, when roused – as I think the duumvir Libertus will agree,’ Glaber said, with a defiant glance at me. ‘Little slave-boys in particular.’
Everyone turned their gaze on me again, but I refused to be deflected onto Rastus now. ‘So what did you do with it? The poison phial?’ I said. ‘If you threw it out unused we should find it on the midden pile, outside. Which, of course, would prove your innocence – and that of Druscilla, incidentally, too. One the slaves perhaps, could light a torch and look?’
Minimus and Kurso, who had been standing at the rear, seemed ready to comply but Marcus signalled that they should remain. ‘One of the vintner’s men should go,’ he said. ‘They will know exactly where to look, and if it’s there they’ll find it in no time at all.’
Glaber looked uneasy, for the first time since his former owner’s death. ‘The phial will be there and I’m sure it could be found,’ he blurted. ‘But it will not be proof of anything. At the lady’s bidding, I tipped the contents out.’
‘Druscilla?’ I said sharply.
She flounced and turned her braided head from me. ‘I suppose I panicked,’ she said sullenly. ‘I did not want it said that I had poisoned him – if it was shown that I had brought a draught of aconite, I would have been accused. Just when I might finally have been truly free of him!’ She gave me another of her ferocious scowls. ‘And if you had not startled me, by asking me outright, no one would have guessed that I’d brought the phial with me. Or that I had such a thing at all. Nobody but you, that is, of course!’
‘So why give it to Glaber? It was safe with you – and you could have produced it, full. No suspicion could have fallen on you then – even if I had confronted you!’
‘Because he asked for it,’ she murmured, with a murderous look at him.
‘So, he knew you had it? And had brought it here?’
‘I told him earlier.’ She leaned back with a sigh. ‘It was supposed to be a sort of second shield for me. I spoke to him this morning in Tertillius’s house. My maidservant reported that the gossip in the servants’ hall was that Glaber had belonged to Hortius once, and that he hated him. I was very worried that your plan would fail – which, if Hortius had not mercifully died, it surely would have done!’ She dared to flounce at me.
‘Go on.’ I sounded dangerous.
Druscilla felt it, too. ‘So I called for him and asked him, since he was promised to help out here tonight, whether he would volunteer to serve the wine, and so contrive to poison Hortius for me if anything went wrong. If he refused, I told him, I would bring it anyway and drink the stuff myself.’
‘You signalled to Glaber that you had the phial?’ I prompted, remembering the gesture I had seen.
‘I don’t know how you realized that!’ she said.
‘The evidence of my eyes,’ I muttered, although I closed them now, trying to recall a moment after Hortius’s death when Glaber had approached her – which he briefly had. There might have been a chance for the phial to be exchanged – though there were many, easier opportunities to do so earlier.
Marcus was frowning doubtfully at me. ‘So Libertus, what would you propose we do? We have two people who might have poisoned him, but they both deny it and we have no proof. But I would like this solved. This is not the first unnatural death of a visitor from the capital. I would not care to have it reach the Governor – or even worse, the Emperor himself – that Glevum is dangerous for guests who come from Rome.’
‘I suppose, unless the guilty person is produced and charged, there will be endless investigations from the authorities?’ Cyrus sounded panicked at the thought.
‘Precisely. There will be rumours otherwise. Even claims that there was poison in the wine that I supplied. Or that Tertillius was responsible, since he first ordered it.’
Everyone was now accusing everybody else, in their anxiety to move suspicion from themselves.
‘Well, I did not kill him,’ Druscilla said again. ‘It could have been either of those other councillors. They were reclining next to him when we arrived. And giggling with the poison-taster too – I noticed it when Hortius first had me brought up here. And there’s another thing. How could I have possibly foreseen that he was going to have me next to him throughout? I was expecting to sit with Fulvia and the duumvir, until I was called upon to make my vows.’
This was self-evidently true, and Marcus looked at me. But Glaber was speaking – uninvited, too.
‘And with your permission, Excellence,’ he said, although he did not wait for it before he spoke again, ‘the same applies to me. I could not get the poison if she was not up here on the dais – which I did not expect. I did not expect, in fact, to be up here myself – I almost fainted when they assigned me here, so close to Hortius. The plan was only that she would call on me, if the other plan had failed, and she had been forced to marry Hortius – when she would be naturally seated next to him. I was to bring the jug for libation afterwards, and then – while Hortius was busy with invocations to the gods – she would slip the phial to me and I would add the poison to his final – and fatal – cup of wine. But I did none of this, of course. Someone else had killed him, before the need aro—’
He was interrupted by the reappearance of the vintner’s slave, who came to stand in front of Marcus with a bow.
‘Well,’ my patron said, ‘did you locate the phial?’
The boy was almost trembling with fear. ‘Not one phial, Excellence, but two.’ There was a general gasp as he handed them across.
My patron held them up for everyone to see. ‘Both of them empty – though different in style.’
Almost by instinct, I touched the purse that dangled from my belt, where I had put my own phial earlier. But, of course, it was no longer there.
Marcus had now put both containers down. He turned to look at me. ‘Perhaps Druscilla has been telling us the truth?’
‘Of course, I have,’ that lady said, with heat. ‘The smaller one is mine. The other must belong to someone else. Not that I blame anyone for killing Hortius. He was the most unpleasant person I have ever met – it is a wonder someone did not do it long ago.’
Fulvia placed a warning hand upon her arm. Well-bred women don’t express opinions of this kind, especially in a public place and in the company of men – and most of all if she might be accused of killing the person criticized! Druscilla shrugged off the gesture, though it was kindly meant, and for a moment, it gave me cause to think. If Druscilla were a man, I realized, she might command respect. She had many Roman virtues, including being articulate, fearless, and prepared to die to save herself from a dishonourable fate.
Her next words, though, dispelled my sympathy. ‘It could be anyone who killed him. Even feeble old Tertillius. His whole family had a public grievance, after all – and Fulvia admits she thought of poisoning the wine.’
Tertillius was so shocked by this ingratitude that he seemed ready to explode, like a fireship set alight – perhaps because Druscilla had a point. Clearly his household had the knowledge – and the wherewithal – to have poisoned Hortius. And he had been sitting closest to him until we came in.
But Tertillius had an accusation of his own. ‘You could say the same of Decimus and Cyrus!’ he declared. ‘I hear that Hortius insulted them as well – Decimus was telling me about it earlier. Got tired of giving them an audience and sent them both away – refused to take their petition to the Governor, too, when he’d accepted brib— gifts.’
‘Or Libertus,’ Decimus was anxious that I did not escape. ‘He had more cause than any of the rest of us. And he has poison, he just told us so. To “follow Gwellia” I believe he said. He might well have brought some here tonight.’
It was my turn to be shocked, especially as Marcus did not leap to my defence. But before I could find anything to say we were interrupted by a tapping at the outer door, which proved to be the arrival of the undertaker’s team. There were at least a dozen, accompanied by the priest of Mercury (bleary-eyed and clearly unimpressed at not having been invited to the feast himself). He’d come, he said, at the vintners’ particular request to purify the room, after the removal of the corpse, in order that it could be used again as soon as possible.
There was a lot to do, of course, if the corpse was to be moved and readied for a formal lying-out in state, so that visitors might come and pay respects. And there were elements of ritual that had not been performed, like the threefold calling of Hortius by name, lest his spirit should still be lingering nearby and wish to be invited back. Marcus was prevailed on to perform this hastily.
‘The rest we can leave to the undertakers, now, I think,’ he said, with evident relief that the incantation had not invoked the ghost. ‘They can arrange for mourners to keep up the lament, and take the body to the garrison. You have warned the commandant that it’s expected, I suppose?’ The supervisor assured him that this had been done, and Marcus turned back to the company. ‘Then, perhaps, we should disperse, for now at any rate. There is not a great deal more that we can do, tonight – and our presence will only be a hindrance here. Druscilla will, after all, have to sleep at Tertillius’s house again – I will send for her tomorrow. From my villa she can go back to Rome as soon as she desires – unless she wishes to attend the funeral?’ He gave me a curious glance. ‘Provided, of course, that the duumvir agrees. No doubt he will want to question everyone again?’
I sketched a little bow. ‘As your Excellence commands.’
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I will see you all tomorrow, at my apartment. Shortly before noon would be convenient. Failure to present yourself will be interpreted as an admission of your guilt. Libertus can interrogate you, one by one, and consider all the evidence. It is essential that the murderer is identified, but the duumvir is clever. I’ve never known him fail. In the meantime, we will take our leave – although Libertus, there’s one detail I must discuss with you. I presume that you will return, now, to your flat? Perhaps we could arrange to have some torches lit, and you could walk part-way with me?’