Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  “Blue Moon. How the hell can you read that?”

  “Inn of the Blue Moon. I have now seized conclusive and incriminating proof… oh dear. That’s frustrating, isn’t it, sir? That’s where it ends. We don’t know what he had proof of.”

  Ruso snatched back the tablet and peered at the lettering. “I still can’t see it.”

  “No, sir. You wouldn’t. It’s shorthand.”

  “Shorthand?” repeated Ruso, incredulous. In response to Albanus’s warning glance, he turned and realized a couple of sailors farther along the bar had paused to listen. “Why,” he continued, lowering his voice, “would anyone send a message begging for urgent help in shorthand?”

  Albanus looked confused. “I’ve no idea, sir. And where’s Room Twenty-seven, and what did he have proof of?”

  “It’s not as useful as I’d hoped,” admitted Ruso.

  “Perhaps if your second man turns up, he’ll be able to help us,” suggested Albanus. “I did some thinking last night, and while the children were copying their lesson this morning I sent a message around to all the city gates and I’ve had a notice posted over at the fort.”

  Ruso swallowed.

  “I hope that’s all right, sir? It didn’t cost much.”

  “Absolutely,” said Ruso, who had forgotten how thorough his former clerk could be when given an order. “Well done. If anybody’s seen him, we’ll find out.”

  And even if they had not, the procurator’s office would shortly be besieged by members of the local garrison reporting sightings in the hope of extra pay. He needed to get back and warn young Firmus before he had a clerical mutiny on his hands. He downed the rest of his drink and clapped the cup back on the counter. “You’ve been a great help, Albanus.”

  The clerk’s pinched face creased into a smile. “It’s good to be working with you again, sir. If there’s anything else I can do…”

  Ruso said, “You don’t happen to know how to sweet-talk the clerks over at the procurator’s office, do you?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  “Never mind. I was just hoping you might know one or two of them.”

  “I do know them, sir,” said Albanus. “I’ve just threatened to beat one of their sons.”

  22

  It seemed Albanus had never learned the first lesson of military life and was continuing to volunteer for things. When Ruso explained the problem, he happily offered to stand at the gate of the Residence and spend the afternoon noting down the details of everyone who claimed to have seen a dark-haired man with part of one ear missing and recording any possible sightings of Julius Asper before yesterday.

  Indoors, the tomblike chill of Firmus’s room seemed less noticeable this afternoon. Evidently the plaster was drying out. The welcome was warm too. Firmus invited Ruso to sit and offered him an olive from the bowl on the desk.

  The reason for his relaxed demeanor became clear when the youth said, “That awful magistrate has pushed off, and my unc- sorry, the procurator, says I was right to hire you. He wants to talk to you straightaway. He did want me to check one thing first, though. You aren’t working for Metellus now, are you?”

  “Absolutely not, sir,” Ruso assured him. “That was just an isolated case.” He might have added that the less he had to do with the governor’s security man, the happier he would be.

  “Good. So have you found the missing brother?”

  “Not yet,” said Ruso, “but there are other developments. There’s a complication with the woman. That’s why I need to talk to Caratius.”

  Complications with women were evidently of little interest to Firmus. “Any luck with the letter?”

  Hoping the procurator did not know he was chatting to the assistant instead of obeying the order to report in straightaway, Ruso told him.

  Firmus’s attempt to conceal his disappointment was not entirely successful. “What does he mean, incriminating evidence? And what’s the point of writing in shorthand if any clerk can read it?”

  “We don’t know. But my man’s had a few thoughts about the destination.”

  Ruso repeated what Albanus had just explained to him on the way over: that the only buildings in town big enough to have twenty-seven rooms were the fort, the Forum, the amphitheater, and possibly the Official Residence. Between them they had eliminated the first three before arriving here, so the only remaining possibility was-

  Firmus was out from behind his desk before Ruso had finished the sentence. “The guard room will know where it is.”

  “I’m supposed to be reporting to-”

  “Oh, uncle has plenty of other things to do. And this way you’ll be able to tell him the whole story.” Ruso hoped Firmus was right. At least locating Room Twenty-seven would not involve another visit to the procurator’s clerks.

  Firmus was almost in the corridor when the elderly slave who had been hovering beside him managed to catch up and whisper something in his ear. “I know he does,” replied the youth, irritated. “Ruso will go and see him as soon as we’ve finished.” He rebuffed the slave’s attempt to follow him with, “It’s all right, Pyramus-Ruso can tell me everything.”

  The slave did not look impressed. On the way through to the gatehouse, Firmus said, “Sorry about that. I’m sure Mother made Pyramus promise to write home and tell her everything I get up to.”

  “Ah,” said Ruso, wondering what Firmus’s mother imagined she could do about it.

  Over at the gatehouse they found five men queuing up to speak to Albanus. He had scrounged a stool from somewhere and was listening to a long diatribe from a man whose hair could only have been squashed into that shape by an army helmet. The man was complaining about a native who had sold him a dud hunting dog in a bar. Albanus stopped writing when the man admitted that he had not noticed anything about the native’s ears, but he was definitely a villain.

  “We’ll be in touch if we catch him,” Albanus promised, ever polite.

  “How do I know you won’t just catch him and not tell me?”

  “This is an inquiry on behalf of the procurator’s office,” put in Ruso. “Are you suggesting the procurator wouldn’t honor his promises?”

  The man was not. At least, not while anyone official was listening. Ruso put a hand on the clerk’s shoulder. “Albanus, I need a word.”

  Albanus got to his feet and announced, “Back in a moment,” to the line, clearly relishing his newfound authority.

  Firmus reappeared. The legionary following behind him had a bunch of heavy keys dangling from one hand.

  Firmus announced, “It’s in the west wing of the courtyard, on the ground floor,” then lowered his voice to add, “There’s something funny going on. The watch captain had another man asking about it this morning. He said his name was Ruso, and he told them he had authority from me.”

  This was a new development. “Did they let him in?”

  Firmus shook his head. “When they said they had to check with me, he ran off. Apparently he was a medium-sized man in his twenties, but they didn’t get much of a look at him because he was wearing a hood.”

  Ruso said, “That’s interesting.”

  “Not really,” said Firmus. “It was raining.”

  As they crossed the courtyard, Ruso dismissed the idea that this mysterious impostor might be the missing Bericus. An honest man would not be sneaking about. A thief would be on the run. It could not be Caratius, who was too old, nor his guard, who was too big. So who else might be calling himself “Ruso”?

  Firmus was enjoying himself. “I must say,” he said, “this procurating business is much more fun than I thought. Secret messages and stolen money and mystery men and murders. It must be even better being an investigator.”

  “It’s very dangerous, sir,” put in Albanus, speaking from experience.

  “And there’s a lot of tedious routine,” added Ruso, aware that he should have insisted on reporting to the procurator as ordered, instead of feeding young Firmus’s craving for excitement.

&nb
sp; “I’d be hopeless at it, of course,” Firmus confessed. “I’d never see anything unless it were right under my nose. I mean, look at that.” He paused, gesturing toward the slab of paving beneath his expensive sandals. “I can see there’s something down there, but I can’t tell you if it’s a coin or a cockroach.”

  Ruso glanced down at the lump of charcoal that somebody had dropped on the way to a brazier. It gave a satisfying crunch as he stomped on it.

  “I was right!” exclaimed Firmus, clearly delighted at the possibility that he was not as shortsighted as he feared. They paused outside a rough wooden door under the west portico. “Is this it? Open up!”

  The guard jiggled the iron key in the lock, trying to coax the prongs up into the holes of the mechanism. “Needs greasing,” he muttered, in a tone that suggested somebody else should have seen to it.

  Albanus’s cheeks were pink. It could not have escaped him that this was the chance for a harassed schoolmaster to impress the procurator’s office. Ruso wondered if he had noticed the delicate mesh of cobweb joining the edges of the door to the frame.

  Finally winning the battle with the lock, the guard was obliged to shoulder the door open. As it gave way he dipped his head, hastily brushing something out of his hair. Stepping inside, Ruso glimpsed a couple of earwigs squirming on the threshold.

  Room Twenty-seven smelled musty. Ruso’s eyes began to adjust to the gloom. Those vertical shapes were the legs of one table stacked upside down on top of another. A couple of old doors were propped lengthways against the wall. A half-bald broom lay along the top of them. He stepped over a bucket that appeared to be lined with concrete, and maneuvered an arm in between the table legs to release the catch on the window. As the hinge on the nearest shutter squealed in complaint, the movement ripped open a beautifully constructed white tunnel in the corner of the frame. A large spider emerged, scuttled back and forth along the sill in panic, then ran down the wall and vanished somewhere into the gloom.

  The new light revealed a worm-eaten wheel with several spokes missing and a two-foot-high statue of Diana with one arm lying at her feet. Farther back was an old window frame complete with glass. Rusty nails were sticking out of the wood. A length of bent lead pipe snaked out from behind it. Everything in here was waiting for the day when it would be needed again.

  Ruso pulled the old doors away from the wall to check but found only a mummified mouse. There was nothing else in the room.

  Albanus looked like a boy who had just found out he had been up half the night doing the wrong homework. It was plain from Firmus’s expression that even he could see they had reached a dead end.

  For reasons he did not understand, Ruso felt it was his job to soften the blow. As if there were some point in asking, he tried, “Who’s in charge of this room?”

  Predictably, the guard did not know. He suggested another name, but Ruso knew it was hopeless. The next man would be unlikely to know either. Room Twenty-seven had obviously lain undisturbed for years while the workmen who had stored their junk in here had moved on and forgotten all about it.

  Asper’s unknown correspondent remained as elusive as ever.

  23

  By the time Ruso, Firmus, and Albanus returned from their unsuccessful visit to Room Twenty-seven, the procurator had gone into another meeting and would not be free for at least half an hour. Albanus settled down outside the gates to deal with more sightings of missing men. Firmus was accosted by a waiting Pyramus with messages about wheat tallies and milestone surveys, and by a clerk bearing a pile of ingot ledgers for checking.

  Ruso, seeing Firmus about to turn Pyramus and the ledgers away, declared that he needed some time to think, and he was going to take a lone stroll along the wharf. Firmus looked disappointed. Ruso decided not to tell him it was for his own good.

  Unable to serve as an army officer like most young men of his class, Firmus would have to work his way up through the less glamorous back door of the tax office. He would need to make a good impression. Good impressions were made by obeying orders, not by hanging around with investigators. Especially investigators whose every discovery seemed to leave them more baffled than before.

  Ruso emerged onto the wharf and turned left, passing a glassblower’s workshop and the secure warehouses that were another part of the procurator’s jurisdiction. If he was going to meet one of the most powerful men in the province, he needed a plan of action. It might be the wrong plan, but Ruso suspected that this was one of those rare occasions when a subordinate was expected to come up with ideas of his own.

  Perhaps it was the business of the hooded man that was making him more cautious than usual, but as he was mulling over how Caratius could be connected with the mystery of Room Twenty-seven and the man who had stolen his name, Ruso realized he was being followed along the wharf.

  From a distance the suspect seemed an ordinary-looking man. Medium height. Nondescript hair. Sheep brown tunic. Even features that broke into a smile just as Ruso recognized him and realized it was too late to get away.

  “Good morning, Doctor.”

  He paused by a stack of crates. “Metellus.”

  “I haven’t seen you in-how long is it?”

  Not long enough. “Two years.”

  “I heard you went home to Gaul. I must say I was amazed when you came back here.”

  There was no point in asking how Metellus knew he was back. Metellus knew all sorts of things, largely because people who understood what he was capable of were too frightened to lie to him.

  “And now you’re heading up an investigation for the procurator.”

  “Just until I can get work as a medic,” said Ruso, wondering where this was leading.

  “Very interesting,” said Metellus. “Shall we go farther down and talk on the bridge? It’s a little more private.”

  Ruso did not want to talk to Metellus anywhere, especially about anything private, but neither did he want to annoy him.

  They were leaning over the rail and watching the gray Tamesis slither toward the sea as the security man said, “I take it the procurator doesn’t know why you hurried out of the province last summer?”

  “I was on sick leave,” said Ruso, trying to look and sound like a man having a casual chat with an old acquaintance. “And then my contract with the Legion ran out.”

  “Ah,” said Metellus. “I must have been mistaken, then. I’d assumed it was because of your young lady having money that could only have come from the missing army pay chest.”

  Ruso felt something cold clamp itself around his ribs. “Money from the pay chest?” he repeated, while his mind scrambled to separate what he was supposed to know from what he really did know. “Tilla?”

  “Obviously, had you known at the time, you would have reported it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I’m glad we understand each other.” Metellus’s voice was smooth as glass. I’ve had Tilla’s name on my list of people to talk to for some months. So when it popped up on a travel warrant…”

  Ruso gripped the rail to stop his hand trembling. Metellus was still talking, but he was not listening. He had thought they were safe. How had anyone found out? Last summer, Tilla had unwittingly accepted stolen coins a couple of days after native bandits had ambushed the pay wagon. She had refused to tell him the name of the family who had passed them on to her. If he had done his duty and reported her to the army, she would have been arrested and tortured until she revealed it. Instead, he had told her to get rid of the money and they had left for Gaul the next day.

  “So,” Metellus was saying, “I thought I’d come and renew our acquaintance. How’s your inquiry going?”

  Ruso straightened up. “Ask the man you had following me yesterday.”

  “Has somebody been following you?” Metellus seemed genuinely surprised. “It’s nothing to do with me. If I’d wanted to talk to you urgently, I would have asked. As I now am.”

  “And the break-in at Valens’s house? And the man using my
name this morning? That wasn’t your man, either, I suppose?”

  “Ruso, I know nothing about any of this. I’m merely interested to know who’s been murdering tax collectors.”

  “The procurator’s interested in the money, not the murderer.”

  A faintly patronizing expression flitted across Metellus’s normally inscrutable face. “I’d imagine they’re together, wouldn’t you?”

  “Personally I’d imagine the money’s already melted down and will never be seen again,” said Ruso. “But if I’m ordered to look for it, then I’ll look.”

  “Very good,” said Metellus. “If you find anything out, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know straightaway.”

  “I’m not working for you,” said Ruso, wondering why Metellus was interested. “I’m working for the procurator.”

  “I’m not asking for myself, Ruso. The governor needs to be kept informed.”

  “I’m sure the procurator will tell him whatever he needs to know.”

  Metellus sighed. “That’s very disappointing. I was hoping we could help each other. I haven’t said a word to anyone about Tilla and the stolen coins, you know.”

  In the silence that followed, Ruso tried to find ways of extricating himself from Metellus’s grip. He said, “I heard you’d already caught the pay thieves and had them executed.”

  “Some natives were rounded up and executed, certainly,” Metellus agreed. “It was necessary to reassure our men.”

  “You mean you just rounded up a few random locals and-”

  “No, no. Of course not. What do you think we are? They were all on the list already for something or other.”

  As, it seemed, was Tilla. Ruso doubted that Metellus was interested in catching whoever had ambushed the wagon. It was quite possible that he was lying about the nature of the executions. There was no way of knowing.

  Ruso suppressed an urge to tell the man to get lost and take his filthy devious threats with him. Antagonizing him would only put Tilla’s name higher up on the list. Something, however, had begun to make sense at last. “Will you be wanting me to send reports to you in Room Twenty-seven, then?”