Not too silly for me to wonder, ‘Did the killer of Aviola and Mucia then kill Nicostratus? The story goes he was attacked first, by the robbers as they burst in. That depends on robbers being here, and on them committing the murders. Suppose this: suppose everything was, as the vigilis Titianus always said, an inside job. The stranglings came first. Then came the plank attack on the porter. Perhaps the killer tried to leave and Nicostratus got in the way – on purpose even, since no one has ever suggested he was incompetent. The rope had been left behind around Mucia Lucilia’s neck, so another weapon was needed.’ I thought of a quibble. ‘Mind you, in any apartment that had been used for a wedding yesterday and was decorated up for a dinner party tonight, why would a plank of wood be lying around?’
‘Oh, some homes are very untidy!’ sniffed Galla Simplicia, eagerly disparaging this one that had ceased to be hers.
‘Not with my husband in charge!’ Graecina corrected her. She spoke with the tight, demure manner of a woman who had been resolutely drinking even more than the rest of us. I blamed the pain from her scalds for that.
We all sat silent for a time, in deference to the late Polycarpus. We were drunk, but nonetheless capable of good manners.
49
We passed through a period of silence. No one was drinking now. We had speculated ourselves to a standstill, at least temporarily.
We were women completely at ease with each other. We could have been going to the same baths at the same hour for the past twenty years. We could all have been mothers, or more likely grandmothers, watching small children perform in a rustic masque – criticising the costumes other women had made and making lewd cracks about the musicians. That hand drum player is fit. Hair too long, but a wicked look. He can patter me up and down any day he likes …
We might even be members of that awful cult that the devotee matrons ran at the Temple of Ceres, where they fussed around with ritual vessels and showed off to the public in fake ‘Greek rites’ at festivals … Laia bloody Gratiana. She would not fit in with us.
It was significant that we were women not girls; we had all lived. Graecina and I were the youngest, yet married and widowed, both familiar with work. Galla and Fauna might like to pretend, but they were both around ten years older. Fauna, for one, had had a hard life.
From what I had heard, I thought Mucia Lucilia would have made an easy fifth in our gathering.
I thought about the dead woman, as we sat in this bare courtyard that she can hardly have started to call ‘hers’. Her fresco improvements to the summer dining room implied she would have made this space better too. Out with the deadbeat gardener first (goodbye, Diomedes; anyone can see why you are doomed to sale!). Tie up and water the bedraggled climber. Better still, since it was only ivy, slash it down, dig up the roots and dump it. In with some big lily pots and oleanders, or at least lavender. Surround the yard with box hedges. Have roses. Position a fountain and water channels. Haul in proper, permanent benches so this garden area could be like all those other wonderful sitting places in Rome houses, where people met, rested, talked, ate and enjoyed a real social life.
The pockmarked pillars could have been mended, then if necessary rendered, maybe painted as mock-wood or mock-marble. If she could have winkled enough cash out of Aviola, or even used money of her own, the wall space between rooms could have had horticultural painting too: plants, birds and butterflies, with theatrical masks and musical windchimes dangling among them.
This was a woman embarking on a new life: new husband, new home – and if it made life easier, new staff. Old friends, though. She still valued those, and dined with a group of them before leaving town. That last dinner together had been important.
Mucia Lucilia was not rushing into change for change’s sake. Not ripping out everything all at once, but nurturing a project. A woman in her prime, still full of energy and lively ideas, she had brought something of value to her new husband. Aviola, who had been divorced for nearly twenty years, would have gained not only willing sex but conversation and companionship. Perhaps before they married, he had been lonely. I guessed she had.
Mucia chose marriage, as far as I could tell. Nobody shunted her into it for their own social or political gain. It may even have been her idea. It was too easy to assume Valerius Aviola proposed it. Friends could have made sly suggestions in order to ease the process, yet Mucia may not have needed even that. She knew her mind. I could imagine her broaching the subject with Aviola. Delicately no doubt but yet, even though they had never previously been lovers, making him feel a marriage would be useful and comfortable for them both.
I knew a little of what she looked like, from that plaque Sextus Simplicius had shown me when I first visited him. Of course the artwork was heavily stylised, but thinking about it again, I had some sense of Mucia as a warm and living creature. How she must have been before her thread was snapped off, not at its due date by the Fates but by some corrupted human in a few moments of rage.
As I mused, I had to remember that I was investigating the unlawful deaths of real people. They had rights and deserts. My commission had given me a duty to them.
The terrible acts that happened here that night deserved solving. The legal aspects might intrigue my uncles and the practical outcome at the temple bothered Faustus, but at its heart was genuine tragedy. It mattered that I should name whoever burst into Mucia Lucilia’s bedroom, killed her man and put that rope around her throat. It mattered, too, that if people should have helped her, I should identify them too.
50
Galla was also thinking about the apartment. ‘This is where Aviola came when we were divorced. I never lived here. But when the children used to visit their father, it was a happy home.’
‘Will you sell up?’ asked Graecina.
‘Not for me to say. My cousin reckons that will be easiest for the probate. In any case, my son could never live here, not now. None of us can bear the place.’
We all understood that.
Fauna went indoors for a comfort visit. She took the jug but came back saying there was no fresh water left in the kitchen. ‘Have to drink that wine neat!’
‘Shocking!’ said Galla, apparently not shocked at all.
Sighing, Graecina apologised that no water had been brought in, which was a constant source of aggravation. Myla had never bothered, even though all she had had to do was mention to Polycarpus that the water carrier was needed again.
I asked what was wrong with the well. Polycarpus had told me when I first arrived that it was unusable.
‘It has bad water,’ said Fauna, letting Galla pour her a refill of wine (Galla’s excuse for having more herself). ‘The family who were here before all died of dysentery. About five of them. The landlord keeps saying it was good before that, so he refuses to fill it in, but he never bothers to clean it out either. So there it sits.’
We all stared over at it. Yes, there it sat. Boarded over at ground level, with an urn stood on the boards.
I myself popped indoors for the usual reasons. When I came out I went over to the well, walking with more sway than customary. I had a look, and came back to sit down. Sitting was a relief, frankly.
I could still talk. Any slurring of the tongue would be allowed to pass politely unnoticed among these wise, tolerant women.
I asked Fauna to go over again with me what she claimed to have heard on the night of the violence. ‘Fauna, around the time when Aviola and Mucia were killed, there was shouting by one person, probably male, then a silence. I am wondering how this fits in with you hearing more voices and seeing people running to and fro with lamps.’
‘I’m glad you asked me that, Albia darling!’
‘Why so?’
‘Since you came up to ours to talk to me, I have picked it over quite a few times with my handsome husband.’
‘Don’t forget, some of us have seen your husband!’ Graecina chuckled. ‘He wheels a veg cart at the Market of Livia,’ she informed Galla. ‘He looks more like a car
rot than the carrots on his cart.’
‘Long, yellow and twisted!’ Fauna was the first to agree. ‘Don’t ask why I did it. Too many years ago to remember. There must have seemed to be a good reason at the time. Anyway … we worked it all out, Albia. The first voice, which sounded very disturbing, was what lured Lusius out of bed. By the time he got himself on the stool and looked out, the shouts had stopped and nothing else was happening. So the lummock comes grumbling back to bed, and since we are awake he wants to start some marital push-and-shove around the blankets. That must have taken some time, though not as long as old Lusius tells himself he can keep going …’
Galla, Graecina and I all looked at one another in a way that said we knew exactly what Fauna was saying but were too refined to let on. Mouths pulled down and raised brows.
‘So there were more noises later?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes. Toing and froing, whacking and thumping, cries, footsteps running, abuse, lights moving about, panic, who knows.’
‘This stopped eventually?’
‘Must’ve. We got bored edging each other off that stool to peer out. Lusius said if this was going to be their permanent way of life downstairs, he would demand Aviola buys us a second stool. Or better still a ladder.’
‘How long would you say the silence lasted, in between the noises, Fauna?’
‘Couldn’t tell you. In the quiet part we fell back to sleep.’
‘And the second burst of noise, how long did that last?’
‘Seemed ages, but may not have been. Not long enough for my twisted carrot to pull up his roots and go downstairs to complain.’
Fauna had no more to say. Perhaps because she had been talking about her husband, who gave them to her, she began to rearrange the armoury of tacky bangles that were lined up along her forearm. It was a ritual, twisting them and spacing them until the effect was to her liking.
Galla Simplicia was watching me. ‘What’s on your mind, Albia?’
I was thinking that I now understood a lot more about what must have happened. The first shouts, the loud agitated ones, ended in the murder. A silence followed, as the horrified slaves saw what had happened to their master and mistress and tried to decide what to do. I reckoned they all went into the oecus to talk, possibly because lamps were already lit there. They had told me the truth about having their supper. I accepted that most of them were there while Aviola and Mucia met their fates.
According to what Secundus and Myrinus said, by the time the slaves were discussing what to do, Polycarpus was in the apartment with them. As their supervisor, he may have taken the lead. I did not want to say this in front of Graecina, but her late husband must have been party to a hasty cover-up. Though the slaves were particularly vulnerable, what had happened could also reflect badly on him.
Graecina was now sitting with her eyes closed, frowning slightly so her dark eyebrows came even closer together than usual. It looked as if she was in pain. Was that physical pain from the scalding, or mental anguish? Had she herself known before now about what happened? Had Polycarpus shared the full story when he returned to his own apartment? Did he tell her or did Graecina guess parts of it?
Why didn’t Polycarpus and the slaves simply bring in the vigiles and wait for justice to be done? Because slaves know the rules. These slaves were bound to be accused. By the time Titianus told his tribune next day that he thought the crimes here had been an inside job, the ten slaves were ready to run for it to the Temple of Ceres the moment he pronounced them guilty – or better still, before he came to arrest them.
I now thought Polycarpus must have been right in there, helping them to get away. With his position under threat, bonds to his master were loosening, yet he still felt close to the slaves he supervised. His plight, if Aviola decided to have a new steward, was little different from theirs in being sold.
It was too soon for me to confront Graecina with what Polycarpus might have done. Luckily, or for me not so luckily, at this point we were interrupted. Just as we reached the most dishevelled point of our morning, we heard banging. Fauna was the first to gather her wits, so she went to see who it was while the rest of us made feeble motions of tidying our drinks tables and straightening ourselves up.
Fauna returned looking apologetic, followed by two visitors. With coy glances at me, Galla and Graecina immediately rose to their feet, Graecina exercising a lurch that nearly toppled her, until Galla caught her and they tottered in each other’s arms. Winks occurred. I took no part in that, for I was the object of my companions’ sniggers.
‘Albia’s boyfriend!’
‘Client!’ I corrected.
Standing this side of the atrium, with one fatherly hand on the shoulder of his pale slave Dromo, was the aedile Manlius Faustus. Both he and Dromo looked amazed at the scene they had interrupted.
51
In general, I prefer not to let my clients learn of any unusual measures I am forced to adopt in order to pursue facts.
Fortunately Tiberius Manlius Faustus already considered me wild and irresponsible, a barbarian beyond saving. There was no chance of me sinking any lower in his estimation.
Nevertheless, I wished old grey eyes had not walked in.
The aedile announced pointedly that a carrying chair was waiting outside.
Galla jumped to. Graecina suddenly became extremely tearful, so Galla insisted she go home with her so they could have a weep together. Fauna whispered a hurried goodbye and scurried off out there as if she had remembered a pot that might boil over. That left me on my own with the situation.
We could have been a bunch of carousing teenagers who had just heard someone’s mother come back into the house unexpectedly.
Cobnuts. I was a grown woman. I could do what I liked. It wasn’t as if we had set fire to a scroll box of Virgil’s Aeneid in order to fry a Lucanian sausage.
I did not try to tell him that. When the others had gone, Tiberius looked me up and down with his chilling stare and said I ought to sleep it off. He would take Dromo out for some lunch then they would come back when I was ‘more myself’, by which he meant sobered up. He made me hand over my door key, in case I was too comatose to let them back into the apartment.
‘You need to drink plenty of water.’
‘The house has run out.’
‘Then Dromo will go to the fountain and fetch more. Dromo, arm yourself with buckets from the kitchen. Better bring an extra one for Flavia Albia, in case we are due for an up-chuck.’
‘Not me.’
‘Shall we take bets?’ growled Faustus, at his most disparaging. ‘Just don’t heave your heart out on me, will you?’
I maintained that I would not dream of vomiting on him since the tunic he was wearing was bound to be his favourite, one woven by his grandmother with her own hands. (He was in his aedile’s white and purple, so I knew the tunic was not old. On the other hand, it was expensive and must require high-price laundering.)
The brute snorted.
Although my head was spinning, I refused offers of help to reach my room. I must have had the kind of exaggerated dignity that tells people you are on the verge of losing all your grace and elegance, but I summoned up enough willpower to stalk indoors. That may have confirmed to the aedile that I had been drunk in the morning on other occasions.
I heard them leave. I felt desperate to collapse upon the bed. However, that would have meant crushing the loaf I bought all that time earlier for the breakfast I had never eaten. Stale crumbs are painful to lie on.
I knew what to do. I tore it into its segments and ate the loaf now. All eight pieces. I chewed carefully to lessen the chance of what Tiberius had called up-chuck.
There was an experiment that I had to try. I could ask the aedile and Dromo to help, but I didn’t want to look foolish if my suspicions were wrong. If I was right, I wanted the heaviest possible impact. When dealing with theories, I follow the good informer’s rule: mull it over; test it for yourself; be certain of the answer; then bedazzle your cli
ent.
Action.
When I walked back out into the courtyard, I groaned. It was now midday, with the sun right overhead. I covered my eyes against the fierce glare of warm light in that bare space. I stood for a while, swaying gently.
Forcing myself to move, I walked over to the well in the corner. It had been boarded over with a set of wide planks, butted up against one another. Someone did a neat job. I pulled up one of the edge planks, which were smaller, trying not to get splinters as I held the end, then turned it as I heaved it over away from me. The top must have been scrubbed. The underside no one had bothered to clean. There the wood was covered with dark, rust-coloured stains, which I knew must be dried human blood.
‘As I thought! Well done, Albia.’
The planks must have been taken up before. I was sure the boarding on this well was lifted when Manlius Faustus sent his men to search. They looked down inside. I knew they found nothing. The extremely neat recovering for safety had been their work. Very soon afterwards, unless I was mistaken, Polycarpus must have had some of the boards up again briefly for his own purposes.
Even if they noticed these stains, Faustus’ men would have thought nothing of them on old wood. They had been ordered to look for stolen silver – not to search, as I was doing, for a murder weapon. I had found it: this was the plank deployed in the attack on Nicostratus.
I had not finished exploring. Next, I hauled aside the featureless stone urn that always stood on the boards to deter access. This took me some time. I could have ruined my back. Since my father runs an auction house, I had been told how to prevent injury when moving very heavy objects. The best way is, get large men to do it. Otherwise, I was too tipsy to remember how to apply myself and too eager to stop now. I dug in my heels, grasped the top lip and eventually pulled the thing right over. I jumped back, quick, to save my toes. Then I rolled it in a big curve along the ground. This was not an approved method, and it damaged the urn, but I was trying to work fast.
Sweating, I rested for a moment. One by one I pulled, pushed or edged out the remaining boards. They were not excessively heavy, though the large ones were awkward for a drunk who did not want dirt on her tunic. Eventually, I had the well opened up completely. I won’t say it was no work for a woman, because we do what we have to do, but inebriation did not help. Even so, stubbornly I shifted the whole lot.
Enemies at Home: Falco: The New Generation - Flavia Albia 2 Page 26
