With Petronius stuck in Rome, grounded by his tribune, I made another trip to the coast.
This time Helena came with me. I took her to see Pa’s maritime villa. I brought Nux as well, since my household was completely ruled by the dog. Luckily tearing through the pinewoods and racing along the beach suited her just fine. Nux was prepared to allow us to keep this wonderful place.
Helena also approved, so we spent several days discussing how to arrange things to suit us, turning the house into a seaside family home rather than a businessman’s retreat. While we were working, some of the slaves reported a man hanging around in the woods. He was a stranger to them, but from their description, I wondered if it was one of Anacrites’ agents.
We knew a woman who lived with the priestesses at a temple in Ardea. Driving off with a deal of commotion, Helena went to visit her. I stayed at the villa; I made myself visible shifting furniture and artwork to outbuildings, then spent time loafing on a daybed on the shore while the dog brought driftwood to me. The mysterious sightings stopped. I hoped the agent had gone back to Rome to report that I was at the coast for domestic reasons.
It would be typical of Anacrites to waste time and resources. He should have been pursuing the Claudii. Instead he was obsessed with Petro and me. He knew us well; he knew we would try to pip him on the case. But that cut both ways. We understood him too.
On Helena’s return we went down to Antium. We were enjoying our break from the children, and we did love to be out and about on enquiries. She was right: I must never stop doing this work—and when it was feasible I must always let her join in.
Helena was charmed by Antium, with its shabby, outdated grandeur. As always happens, there was nothing we wanted to see at the theatre, though old posters told us annoyingly that the week before Davos, our old contact who was Thalia’s lover, had presented a play here. I would really have liked the chance for a chat with Davos!
Exploring more successfully than I had had time to do with Albia, Helena and I managed to find decent local baths then a cluster of fish restaurants. We lingered over a fine meal, eaten out of doors with grand sea views from the lofty precipice where Antium stood. This was always an hour when we liked to come together, to relax, review the day and reassert our partnership. With just the two of us tonight, it was like old times—that elusive condition married people should seek more often.
As we savoured the last of our wine, I took her hand and said, ‘Everything will be all right.’
‘The case, Marcus?’
‘No, not that.’
Helena knew what I meant.
We enjoyed the evening a little longer, then I went to pay the bill and ask the restaurant-keeper where he bought his bread. His baker was not Vexus, Demetria’s father; still, the man gave me suggestions where to start looking next day.
I went on my own, leaving Helena to take Nux around the forum.
It took me some tramping of narrow streets. Vexus worked at the edge of the city, with one small oven and not even his own grindstone. It was a rough, depressed quarter with dusty streets where half-starved dogs lay on doorsteps like corpses. There were better shops, with a better clientele, in the smarter areas. This man, a short, thickset ugly-faced fellow, baked heavy dark ryebread for the poor. He looked as if he had been miserable for the past thirty years. I began to understand how his daughter, growing up here without a future, might have settled for one of the Claudii. Even so, there seemed nothing basically wrong with the home she came from. Unless she had only one eye in the middle of her forehead yet failed to attract men with her novelty value, there was no reason for Claudius Nobilis to assume she was so desperate he could treat her badly.
I bought a bread roll to start the conversation; it never works. As soon as I said what I wanted, Vexus turned unhelpful. He had not overflowed with customer care to start with. I introduced myself and I might have been trying to sell him a silver-boxed ten-scroll set of Greek encyclopaedias. Used ones.
‘Get lost.’
‘I want to help your daughter.’
‘Leave my daughter alone. She’s not here and she’s had enough trouble.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t blame you—but my enquiry won’t harm her. Maybe I can get the Claudii off her back.’
‘I’d like to see that!’ Vexus implied I wasn’t up to it.
‘Will you at least tell me about Nobilis?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘I’d like to—but those wastrels on the marsh have become the Emperor’s business. I’m stuck with investigating. So let me guess: your girl married Nobilis when she was too young to know what she was doing—against your advice, no doubt? It went sour. He beat her.’ I wondered if the father was violent too. He looked strong, but controlled. Still, men from boot-menders up to the consulship have been known to conceal their domestic brutality. ‘Did they have any children?’
‘No, thank Jove!’
‘So Demetria decided to leave, but Nobilis would not let her go. She came home; he hated it. She found someone else, and he put a stop to that . . . Right?’
‘Nothing to say.’
‘Is she still with her new man?’
‘No.’
‘Nobilis put the scares on?’
‘Half killed him.’
‘In front of her?’
‘That was the point, Falco!’
‘So the new man caved in?’
‘He got rid of her,’ agreed her father bitterly.
A ghastly thought struck me. ‘Don’t say she went back to Nobilis?’
Vexus pressed his lips together in a thin line. ‘Thankfully, I put a stop to that.’
‘But she was so frightened, doing what Nobilis said became a possibility?’
‘No,’ said the baker, with heavy emphasis. ‘She was so frightened it was never a possibility.’
That was all he would tell me. I left details for Demetria to contact me, if she would. No chance. I heard the tablet with my name on it thump into a trash bucket before I got back outside to the street.
I asked about Demetria around the neighbourhood. I met nothing but hostility. The atmosphere felt dangerous. I left before a riot could start.