XXVII

BE CAREFUL,” warned Helena as I left next day. Determined to impose my authority on my younger partners, I was heading out early. I creaked and had a blind side, but there was no choice.

“Don’t worry. This business is all talk,” I replied drily, alluding to her own misplaced belief up until yesterday. A twinge caught me. “As you see!”

I was going to talk about funerals later. It seemed the wrong moment to tell Helena that.

“Don’t get into any fights, Falco.”

I winced at the pains I already felt. “No, darling.”

First, I went to Rubiria Carina’s house to reinterview her and her brother. On the subject of their father’s will, I extracted no more than Honorius had done. They both meekly accepted their disinheritance and told me that so did the elder sister, Juliana.

“Birdy, Birdy, you’re not helping yourself. Indignation will look much better to a court. It’s more natural. We are trying to advise you; contest the will!”

“I can’t,” he whimpered. As usual, he gave no reason. When I glared, he stiffened up. “I choose not to. And I will not discuss it.” Whatever pressure he was under to make him take this attitude, it must be serious.

“If your father dumped you in favor of your wife, that might just about have been acceptable—but now Saffia has left you. Maybe your strange, devious papa might have altered his will if he had lived—but he ignored the chance. His witnesses were to be called in to swear to his suicide; he could easily have prepared an updated will and had it signed. As far as I know, he made no move to rewrite the conditions or to add a codicil. So, Negrinus, what do you have to say about this?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you know about this will?”

“Yes.”

“From the start? When it was prepared more than two years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Did you argue?”

“No. Father could do as he wished. I had no choice.”

“Did you even talk to him about his arrangements?”

A vague look came over that oddly bookish face. “I think he meant to change the will.” Negrinus was unconvincing. We could not defend him in court with anything that sounded so insincere.

“Our father was not devious,” Carina stated frigidly. She must have been harboring resentment over my remark.

“Your father had been proved corrupt,” I reminded her. “Now it looks as if his personal relationships were as rocky as his business conscience.”

“Children have no options in their family heritage,” she commented. I saw Birdy heave a huge sigh to himself. His sister only assumed a look of determination.

“Why did your father favor Saffia Donata?”

“Nobody likes her,” Carina suggested. “Papa felt sorry for her, perhaps.”

I could not bring myself to suggest to Birdy that his father had had an affair with his wife.

I did ask these legacy-spurning siblings about their parents’ relationship. Why, after a marriage of forty years or more, had their father been so ungenerous to Calpurnia Cara?

“We have no idea,” Carina told me firmly. I always felt she was the tough one, but even Birdy clenched his jaw.

“Well, how do you react to this?—I believe your mother killed your father.”

“No.” They both said it. They spoke up instantly. Then, as if she could not restrain herself, Carina murmured to Birdy, leaving me out of it: “Well, in a way she did. She made the situation unbearable, you know.”

I looked at him quizzically. He explained it as their mother trying to force the issue of their father committing suicide. I did not believe that was what Carina had meant. She clammed up, of course.

Now I did tackle Birdy on the obvious solution: “I’m afraid your father made your wife, Saffia, his fancy piece—and your mother could no longer stand it.” Negrinus showed no reaction. Carina flushed, but said nothing. “Were your parents always close to Paccius Africanus?”

“They had a business relationship with him,” Negrinus answered.

“Your mother too?”

“Why?” It came out very quickly.

“I think her attachment to him may have been rather too close. Still is. Perhaps that was how Calpurnia compensated for her husband’s appalling behavior with Saffia.”

“No.”

“Look, I know it’s unpleasant to think about your mother fooling around with other men—” I wondered if it might be relevant that Birdy, with his thin-faced look, and Carina, with her wider-cheeked features, were so unlike each other.

“Our mother was always chaste, and faithful to father,” Carina corrected me coldly.

Changing the subject, I told them about the informer Bratta buying the hemlock. “I think he acquired it, on instructions from Paccius, for your mother to use.”

“No,” Birdy said again.

“Come on, Negrinus. You do not want to believe that your mother is a murderess, but it’s her or you. See how a case can be built here. The family graft had been exposed; the family fortune was threatened. Paccius counseled your father to kill himself; your mother strongly supported it. She came up with a plan; Paccius used his man to acquire the drug. So your father took one lot of pills under pressure, changed his mind, thought he was safe—then was put down with another deadly potion like some old horse.”

“No,” said Negrinus, almost through gritted teeth. He was a man defending his mother—albeit a mother whose testimony would condemn him for parricide. “I wish I’d never mentioned the hemlock plan, Falco. It was just a wild idea we once discussed, speculating on crazy ways to escape our financial losses. It was never serious. And never put into action.”

“Why Perseus?”

“What?”

I spelled it out patiently: “You told me your mother wanted to kill a slave as a decoy, using his corpse so your father could go into hiding. The door porter was to be sacrificed. That’s very specific: Perseus was the doomed slave. What had he done?”

“Again, that was just a suggestion . . .” Negrinus was shifty, though it could be awkwardness because he genuinely did not know.

Frustrated, I was now ready to pull out of the case. I had had plenty of clients I could not trust, but this beat all. I had never felt so much excluded, when excluding me worked utterly against the man’s own interests.

“If you won’t tell me the truth—”

“Everything I have told you is the truth.”

I laughed, brutally. “But what have you not told me?”

I left, furious. I had not severed links. I should discuss that with my partners first. Besides, if I dropped the case, I would never learn what was going on. I had my curiosity. I wanted to know what these people were hiding.

It was midmorning, so I paused and bought a snack at a bar just opposite. This can be a good idea, after a het-up meeting. Many a time staying on the scene had produced something helpful, once people thought I had left.

Eventually, Negrinus emerged and hopped agitatedly on the doorstep until transport was brought for him. I tailed him and was not surprised by where the smart litter headed. He went straight to his mother, like a devoted boy.

Wrong. He went to her house. But her outcast son did not want to see his cruel mama.

In the street outside the Metellus mansion with its yellow Numidian obelisks, he shed the litter and secured an observation post. He got the bar counter—which left me, when I arrived, hiding behind a stinking row of fish-pickle amphorae. He bought a beaker of hot, spiced wine; I had left my drink behind at the previous place. Typical. He was the suspicious character; I was the upright informer. The fates would adorn him with comforts; I was stuck with a rumbling stomach and a cold arse.

What was he doing? When I realized, a sneaky fellow-feeling arose. The noble Metellus Negrinus was waiting for his mother to go out.

Calpurnia left home in her litter, which was a beaten-up chaise carried by two elderly bearers, one who seemed to have gout, neither in uniform. I could see she was the passenger, because the curtains were missing. A miserable female slave, shivering in a thin gown, wandered behind on foot.

She still had possession of the family home, but it looked as if Calpurnia Cara was already down on her luck. Had Paccius Africanus stepped in already and laid claim to domestic goods and slaves?

Was Paccius then absolutely sure the three children would not, or could not, contest their father’s odd will?

Negrinus must have known his mama had an appointment. Once her straggling party turned the far corner of the street, he quickly paid for his wine (was the supportive Carina giving him dole money?) then he marked straight across the street. He was using his latch-lifter when the door opened anyway. After a brief conversation, someone let him in. I allowed time for him to start whatever he was planning, then approached the fine front door myself.

I knocked nonchalantly. A slave I failed to recognize appeared after a long pause. “About time.” I glared with my good eye.

“Wow! What happened to you?”

“I looked up and a passing eagle shat very hard in my peeper . . . So where’s Perseus?”

“Having his lunch.”

“He has a nice life.”

“You bet!” It was said with feeling.

“I suppose he’ll enjoy several courses and a snug flirtation with the kitchen maid, then stretch out for a relaxed siesta?”

“Don’t ask me!” This lad buttoned up. He knew better than to gossip any further, but he had let me see he was unhappy. So, in Perseus we had that stock character: the uppity slave who abuses his position—and who somehow gets away with it.

I tipped the substitute. He let me in. “He’s a character!” I chortled. “Somebody’s favorite is he, your Perseus?” Not from the way I had heard Calpurnia address the lackadaisical beggar before. His neglect of his duties had made her rightly furious. But if something had gone on between Metellus senior and Saffia, and if Perseus knew about it, his arrogance would make sense.

We had a recognizable situation—though rare in a porter. More often, the uppity slave has intimate contact with the master or mistress of the house. In a boudoir maid or a correspondence clerk, abuse of status arises much more easily.

“Perseus has influence,” was all I could extract. Maybe my tip was not large enough. Or maybe the staff had learned that it was best to keep quiet.

My next contact was with the superior steward whom I had met on my first visit here. Instinct warned him of trouble and he arrived in the atrium, napkin under his chin. He glanced at my bandage but was too well trained to comment. Losing the bib suavely, plus the smear of oil on his chin from his abandoned lunch, he accompanied me on the track of Birdy. We found him in what must have been his bedroom once. He said he had come to collect clothing—fair enough, and a few desultory choices of tunics were made as he rummaged. He was looking for something else, though.

“My wife is in labor. I had a message that the baby is taking a long time. She is restless, and her women think she might be more comfortable with her own bedding . . .”

“I was told Saffia’s stuff was ‘stolen’ when she left here,” I said.

“If chattels went astray,” the steward put in indignantly, “I knew nothing of it.”

“You should,” snapped Birdy. “Saffia has been erupting.”

The steward believed the missing items could be found. He went off to investigate. Negrinus continued throwing his own possessions together for removal to his sister’s house. Goading him, I commented, “I was told that your communication with Saffia had broken down.”

“Ah, but now Saffia wants something!” Negrinus spoke with a new bitterness. He stood in the center of his old bedroom. It was a finely decorated room in bluey-green, with curlicued pictures of sea monsters. His feet were planted on a well-modulated geometric mosaic. All this decor went back several decades and was starting to look tired. So was Birdy. He ran his hands through his hair. He had looked neat when I first met him, but he now needed a haircut. “Anything Saffia wants, Saffia will get!” He seemed furious, but reined it in.

“This stinks,” I said quietly. More and more I saw him as the wronged son, whose father had had an adulterous relationship with his wife. It left a very unpleasant question mark over the paternity of Saffia’s unborn child.

“Oh yes! She has bled me dry. Now she is making a dramatic fuss about a few unnecessary bedclothes, although believe me, Saffia has plenty—plenty of everything nowadays.”

The bed in his own room here remained fully equipped with covers. “Did you and Saffia share a bedroom?”

“Not during her pregnancy. She had a boudoir next door—”

I went and looked; the room was a shell. “She’s stripped out everything that would move, I see.”

“She would have us hack off the frescoes,” Birdy said, “but that would lower the value of this house when she comes to sell it!”

“You are clinging to your sense of decency.” I did not understand it, though I admired his stoicism.

“She was my wife, Falco. I made a mistake there, but I live with its consequences. She is the mother of my children.” He never raised doubts over their paternity, I noticed. “Oh, she ensured that I had children,” he exclaimed grimly. “We are permanently tied together. And I tell myself,” he reasoned, with more feeling than I ever heard from him, “that if I always respond courteously to each indignity this woman hurls at me, that is my one chance!”

One chance for what? More than a quiet life, by the sound of it. I dropped my voice. “So you are a man charged with parricide—but you’re hunting for pillows?”

“Pillows,” he raged. “Bolster, under-sheet, mattress—and her damned down-padded, peacock-embroidered coverlet.”

He did not have to hunt for long. The steward returned with news of the lost items. Perseus, the door porter, had appropriated them. Metellus Negrinus let out a furious exclamation, then strode to the slaves’ quarters and robustly set about retrieval.

The porter was taking his ease in his cubicle, reclining on a decent mattress that he had put on the ledge in place of a slave’s thin pallet. He had surrounded himself with knicknacks, all stolen property, I suspected. Well, Saffia Donata was to have hers returned, though I myself would not have been keen on bedding that had been used by a leering and obnoxious house slave.

Maybe she deserved that. Anyway, Negrinus threw the porter off and began to haul the mattress up through the slaves’ corridor to the atrium. I brought the pillows and linen for him. The steward, waiting in the atrium, began to rebuke Perseus.

“Leave him to me!” snarled Birdy. This was a revelation. He dropped the mattress on my feet; I jumped back. Negrinus grabbed Perseus by the tunic, glancing at it briefly, and swore, as if he recognized the garment as one of his own. It was closely woven green wool, with ribbed braid at the neck, an expensive item. Clearly this porter lifted anything he fancied. The steward, who mostly seemed so efficient, looked powerless in his company.

Negrinus had backed the porter up against a painted wall. “Where’s the coverlet?”

The porter feigned ignorance. Negrinus pulled him forward, then bashed his head back against the plaster. Trying to escape him, Perseus stumbled and fell to the floor. After that, the surprise hero used his feet. Negrinus was a senator. He had been in the army. When he stamped on Perseus, Perseus learned the meaning of a military training.

“I have had enough of you,” Negrinus told him. He stamped. He put his weight into it. I glanced at the steward and we both winced. “I am sick of people hurting me, so I am going to—” Stamp! “hurt—” Stamp! “you!” A final stamp did the trick.

Perseus confessed that the missing bedspread might be in the garden shack. The keys were required; I had seen the place chained up. Calpurnia had said “unwanted household goods” were stored there. Regaining his authority, the steward slid off and produced Calpurnia’s bunch of domestic keys.

Still fired up, Birdy dragged the porter to his feet and strode out to the garden, pulling Perseus with him. It was a mild day, surprisingly bright for winter. By now, I had stiffened up badly from the attack on me last night, so I limped painfully at a distance as the pair approached the little hillside store. A few wasps still buzzed around the area in the late afternoon sunlight. I caught up as Birdy wrestled with the lock, while the discarded Perseus whimpered nearby beneath a fig tree. He looked ready to run off, so I stood over him. Birdy heaved open the door of the shack. He ducked inside. I heard him exclaim, so I started forward, with a sense of dread as if I thought he had discovered a dead body.

He reappeared in the doorway, holding nothing worse than an armful of brightly colored material. It was badly crumpled, and as he was inspecting it in the light, an expression of disgust appeared on his face. He threw the coverlet down and came toward the porter. Scared of another kicking, Perseus took the initiative and went for Birdy. They fell back into the store, fighting.

I reached the low doorway just as Birdy staggered out again. I thought he might have been wounded, though I could see no blood. He lurched past me, as the porter came toward the door. I could just make him out in near-darkness; I must have been outlined against the sunlight. He started jabbing at me with a long tool, the sort used for pruning trees, with a thick curved hook. Because my back was hurting, I grabbed at the lintel to support myself. That was when I noticed that the crude roof of the hutment had a warm spot. I recognized the symptoms. After years of living in attic apartments, I knew the wasps must be right there overhead. The light was too dim to spot any ceiling stains, but above me there could be a honeycombed nest three feet across.

I dropped down, grabbed a broom, and stood up sharply, holding it by the brush end. As the porter lunged at me, I rammed the stave upward into the rough boarded roof, hard. Then I spun out of the doorway, slamming the door after me.

I heard furious wasps storm down from their shattered nest. Even at this time of year they were active. The porter started screaming. I hobbled away from the door while Birdy stared at me, white-faced.

At my feet lay the coverlet, embroidered with multicolored threads in shimmering blues like peacock feathers. It was beautiful to view but it smelled dreadful. I could understand why it had been taken out of the house—though not why it had been hidden in the store. It reeked, and the foul odor was of rotting human excrement.