Last Rites (Marcus Corvinus Book 6)

by David Wishart

  I scowled into my wine. ‘All I’ve got is a door, lady, with three pulled bolts. And a half-gaga slavewoman’s word that it was originally locked.’

  Perilla sat up. ‘Explain.’

  I explained, ‘The thing is,’ I finished, ‘it could all be wishful thinking. Torquata wants the girl to have been murdered so bad that it hurts, because then she needn’t ask herself why she committed suicide. The problem is, who the hell would murder a Vestal? And everything else points to a self-killing, which – granted we don’t know the reason – makes perfect sense otherwise.’

  ‘All right. Take murder as a working theory. Where does it get you?’

  I drained the cup and poured myself some more wine from the jug. I was still trying to ignore the drip … drip … drip from the corner. Hell, maybe I wouldn’t notice it after a few days. If I was still sane enough to notice anything, that was. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s think about the door. It wasn’t locked, it was bolted, so it had to have been opened from the inside. That means either someone let themselves out after killing the girl or someone on the inside let another person in. Which do you want to start with?’

  ‘The first.’

  ‘Fine. In that case it’s an inside job, because the house was sealed for the rite. We’ve got fifty-nine suspects, all women. Five of them are Vestals, thirty are the cream of Roman society and the rest are professional flutegirls and assorted household slaves. You want to pick a category?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘“Ah” is right.’

  She sniffed. ‘You’re not helping, Marcus. Very well. I may not have to choose. If the killer let herself out then ipso facto she wouldn’t be in the house after the murder, would she?’

  ‘Perilla, the rite was over. What we have is a free-for-all party with sixty guests and the food and booze running free. I’d say, barring the Vestals and maybe the flutegirls who came as a group, any given woman could’ve slipped away and no one would be any the wiser. And by the time I arrived they’d all gone home in any case, so there was no way of checking.’

  ‘Oh.’ Perilla turned the cup in her hands. ‘Then again, an additional complication is that the murderess needn’t have slipped away at all, need she? She could simply have pulled the bolts on the back door as a blind and gone back to where she came from. Is that a possibility?’

  Rats; I hadn’t thought of that particular twist. This was a real bugger. ‘Yeah, it’s possible,’ I said. ‘In fact there were three ways of getting to and from the atrium that I could see: one along the bath suite corridor, one through the garden and the third via the upper floors.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Perilla frowned. ‘All right. Let’s leave it and try your second option. That someone inside the house opened the door to the girl’s killer.’

  ‘Okay.’ I settled back against the cushions. ‘That theory’s more promising because it means the suspect field is wide open; the actual killer could’ve been anyone, male or female, from any background. The problem is, who opened the door?’

  ‘Could it have been left unbolted from the beginning?’

  ‘The head slave-woman Pythia said no.’

  ‘She could’ve been mistaken. Or lying.’

  I shook my head. ‘Uh-uh. I know I said the woman was past it, but making sure the doors are locked at night, especially the back door, is the slave in charge’s prime duty. They don’t delegate, and they check and double-check, particularly when the master’s a punctilious bastard like Galba. That door was bolted, at least at the start of the evening. Which meant that someone unbolted it deliberately later and left it unbolted. And if that had nothing to do with the murder then I’m a blue-arsed Briton.’

  ‘Very well, then. We’re back to our list of suspects. On the other hand, of course, it could have been Cornelia herself.’

  I stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘The very fact that the door was left unbolted subsequent to the girl’s death implies that the killer had no means of relocking it behind them. An accomplice – a live accomplice – would surely have done that. The obvious alternative implication is that the person who opened the door was no longer able to bolt it; indeed, that she was dead.’

  I sat back. ‘Lady, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. Why should Cornelia open the door at all?’

  ‘I don’t know. Unless it was by prearrangement and she knew the person on the other side.’

  I took a swallow of the wine. It added up; even the timing added up. The rite’s over, technically the ban’s lifted, so although the house is still sealed for practical purposes the religious prohibition, strictly speaking, no longer holds; and the religious aspect would weigh with Cornelia, sure it would. She agrees to an arrangement with whoever the visitor is, then when the time comes she makes an excuse to her maid, goes to the back door and slips the bolts…

  Only I couldn’t see Cornelia doing that, no way, nohow, never; not after what Torquata had told me about her. She hadn’t been the kind of girl who would take advantage of a technicality just because it suited her. Besides, who could the ‘visitor’ who turned out to be her murderer have been? A man? The man who belonged to the ring? That made the theory even more unlikely, because it meant the girl’s actions had been really underhand. And what would the purpose have been? Not an assignation, that was sure, not in a strange house full of people on one of the holiest nights in the year. Cornelia the Vestal would never have connived at that…

  ‘Lunch is served, sir.’

  I blinked. Bathyllus had crept in and was doing his perfect butler act. When he saw he’d got my attention he cast a disapproving eye on the clock dripping away against the wall and sniffed. Bathyllus is no machine nut, either. He can’t even operate a corn mill without grinding his fingers.

  Hell, theorising could wait: I’d missed out on breakfast, I’d had a hard morning and I was starving. Food first. Then this afternoon I’d go across to the fluteplayers’ guildhouse and check out the girls who’d been playing last night.

  There was the question of the knife, too. That I hadn’t mentioned to Perilla; and the knife was interesting.

  5.

  The fluteplayers’ guildhouse was near the Temple of Juno Lucina, at the Esquiline end of the Subura. I cut up Head of Africa (keeping my own head carefully covered as I passed Mother’s house) and made for the Carinae, skirting the Oppian Mount to the right. The weather had improved, but it was still blowing through rain: the worst kind of day to be walking. Heat and dry cold I don’t mind, but I really hate the wet.

  That knife had got me puzzled. If Cornelia’s death had been suicide – which was still on the strong side of possible – then it needed explaining. Sure, you could pick up a weapon like that anywhere in Rome no questions asked, but it was the cheapest of the cheap: all you got was the basics. And that meant, in its original condition, the blade wouldn’t’ve cut porridge; the metal was poor and the manufacturer wouldn’t’ve spent good time and money giving it a proper edge. So the first thing any normal purchaser would do was take it somewhere to be sharpened, or do it themselves. That was the first point: stress the word normal. Like Niobe had said, Vestals don’t buy knives as a rule, and I’d’ve bet if I gave one of the cheapos to Torquata the idea of sharpening it wouldn’t’ve entered her head. To most women – let alone Vestals – a knife is a knife is a knife.

  Point two: the knife Arruntius had shown me wasn’t just sharp, it was sharp. That edge had been a labour of love, with not a nick or a missing flake marring its line. Putting it on a cheap bit of metal must’ve taken hours and a great deal of care and skill. No blacksmith or cutler in Rome worth his salt would’ve taken the bother to get the thing into that condition; at best he’d’ve told the person who brought it in to chuck it over the side of Sublician Bridge and buy something he could really work on, or more likely sold them a replacement himself. No; whoever had sharpened it had done it personally, very carefully and very skilfully; and that couldn’t have been a Vestal. No way. It was a small glitch, sure, and ther
e might be a dozen valid explanations, but like I say it bugged me.

  I reached the fluteplayers’ guildhouse, a crumbling old two-storey property that looked like it might’ve reverted to rubble if you sneezed too close. Flutegirls aren’t all that well paid, apart from sometimes in kind when they perform services over and above the call of duty at private dinner parties, and the few copper coins creamed off the top of their wages to pay for a professional and social base wouldn’t rent or buy much, even in aggregate. I pushed the door open and went in.

  ‘Yes, sir, can I help you?’ A fat, fussy little guy with baggy jowls busied out of one of the doors in the tiny hallway. The expediter, obviously: musicians, like any fragmented group of professional individuals, need a front man who’s always around to take customer bookings and manage the timetables. ‘A private function, would it be? Dinner party? Wedding?’ I shook my head and his jowls dropped into pious respect position. ‘Funeral?’

  ‘Not that either, pal,’ I said. ‘Just some information.’

  ‘Ah.’ The jowls retracted, and he lost a lot of his eagerness. I pulled out a silver piece and the eagerness came back. ‘Yes, sir. Certainly. What can I do to help?’

  ‘I’m looking into the death at the senior consul’s house last night. You heard about that?’ A rhetorical question: sure he would. Probably half of Rome had by now, one way or the other.

  ‘Yes, sir. A tragic business. Tragic. For a Vestal to kill herself –’

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to give me a list of the girls who were playing.’

  ‘Nothing easier, sir.’ He palmed the silver piece. ‘But I tell you now, none of my girls was involved. I can vouch for them all personally.’

  Yeah; I’d thought that might be the case. The musicians had been an outside bet anyway. ‘That’s understood, friend,’ I said. ‘No hassle. I’m just checking the angles.’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked relieved. ‘Then if you’ll come into my office I’ll show you the relevant tablet.’ I followed him into the room he’d come out of. There was a piled desk and two chairs in as good a shape as the building itself, with a set of filing shelves on each of the three facing walls. ‘Have a seat. I won’t keep you a moment.’

  I sat down. He raked through the wax tablets lying on the desk, picked up one, checked the heading and handed it over.

  ‘There we are, sir. A dozen ordered, a dozen sent.’

  I looked at the names. There were twelve, like he’d said, but one was scored through and another written beside it.

  ‘There’s a change here,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, sir. The girl called in a few days ago with a persistent cough. It happens, especially this time of year, and of course it makes playing impossible.’

  ‘The replacement, Thalia. She a regular?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. All our girls are, been with us for years. And she’s an excellent fluteplayer, one of our best, or she wouldn’t have been eligible.’

  ‘So how come she wasn’t on the original list?’ The rite of the Good Goddess is a top-notch gig. Torquata – or Aemilia or the city judges or whoever made the arrangements – would insist on quality; get it, too. And from the flutegirls’ side inclusion in one of the biggest society events of the year would go a long way professionally to netting them future bookings.

  The jowls wobbled. ‘We try to be fair, sir. The ceremony being an annual one and so prestigious, arrangements are made well in advance. The girls – the most suitable, anyway – draw lots for inclusion among the twelve. Thalia was unlucky this year, initially. When the vacancy occurred, however, we held a second ballot and Thalia drew the lucky straw.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Well, nothing there, then, especially with the element of chance involved. Still, I had to start somewhere, and this Thalia was as good a place as any. ‘You have her address?’

  ‘No, sir, unfortunately not.’ The guy coughed delicately. ‘Most of our girls are, shall we say, migrant. They move around on a temporary basis, and although many do have rooms the odds are that they won’t be found there. Certainly any records we tried to keep would be very unreliable. Hence this guildhouse. The girls call in here on a regular basis to check their upcoming engagements and compare notes on customers.’

  Shit. I needed to talk to someone now. ‘Okay. Is there anyone on this list you can put me in touch with immediately?’

  He took it from me and frowned at it for a bit. Then he pointed to a name halfway down. ‘Aegle’s your best bet for that,’ he said. ‘She’s… not so much in demand as some of the other girls. I’m not speaking professionally, you understand. And she does have her own place, not far from here as a matter of fact. In the tenement on Suburan Street opposite the Shrine of Picus, although the floor I can’t help you with.’

  I stood up. ‘Thanks a lot, pal. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, sir. I hope to have your custom in the future.’

  The rain was coming down in buckets as I left the guildhouse, and I was glad of my hooded cloak. Like the guy had said, the tenement wasn’t far, only a few hundred yards. The entrance was sandwiched between a second-hand clothes shop and a very suspect-looking pork-butcher’s. Not a good area.

  There was a round-shouldered guy leaning against the wall outside chewing on a sausage. I went up to him.

  ‘You happen to know which floor Aegle the flutegirl lives on, pal?’ I said.

  His eyes took in the quality of the cloak: it was covering my purple-striper mantle, but that and the upper-class vowels were enough. ‘You don’t want Aegle, sir,’ he said. ‘I can recommend a much better-’

  ‘Just tell me the floor, friend.’

  He shrugged and bit into his sausage. ‘Top,’ he said. ‘Under the tiles.’

  I brushed off the sprayed bits of gristle and went inside. The entrance passage and the stairs beyond smelled of piss, and the local artists had done their melancholy best with the walls. Under the tiles, right? The cheapest flat, six floors from anything and cold as hell. Damp, too, probably, if the landlord didn’t lose sleep over the condition of the roof. Fluteplaying certainly didn’t pay.

  It was a long way up. There were four doors at the top, so I chose one at random and hammered on it. No reply. I tried the next one.

  Footsteps, finally. Well, at least I could ask again. The door opened.

  The girl looked tousled, like she’d just got up; but then maybe she had. She was young enough – twenty-five at most – and she’d a dancer’s figure, but half her face was covered with a strawberry birthmark. Right. That explained the comment about her not being as popular with the punters as her colleagues.

  ‘Uh… you Aegle?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Well, I’d heard friendlier voices. ‘My name’s Marcus Valerius Corvinus. I got your address from the guy at the guildhouse.’

  ‘Celer?’

  ‘Probably. Can I come in? It’s about the business last night.’

  She gave me a measuring stare. Then she shrugged and turned. ‘Suit yourself. I’m sorry about the mess but I don’t usually entertain purple-stripers. Not at home, anyway.’

  I followed her in and closed the door behind me. There was a small entrance hall, just big enough for a few pegs. I hung my wet cloak on an unoccupied one and went through. Beyond was a single room with an unmade mattress on the floor, a few sticks of furniture and a flute-case propped against the wall. Aegle pulled up a stool for me and sat down opposite on a rickety clothes chest. She yawned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You were asleep?’

  Another shrug; despite her name the girl was evidently no sparkler. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘So what can I do for you, Marcus Valerius Corvinus?’

  I ignored the tone. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe nothing, I’m just doing the rounds. I wanted to talk to one of the musicians at the rite. Ask them if they noticed anything unusual in the course of the evening.’

  ‘How do you mean, “unusual”?’

  ‘Out of the ord
inary.’

  ‘Look, I know what unusual means.’ For a moment her face lit in a smile that changed it completely: she’d’ve been pretty if it hadn’t been for the birthmark. ‘Just what kind of unusual?’

  It was my turn to shrug. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Nothing to tell. We played. The rite finished. Then we ate. The food’s one of the pluses at the Good Goddess ceremony: we’re given our share of the real stuff, because we’re celebrants too. Then the lady’s body was found and we were sent home early. That’s all I know. There was no difference from other years, if that’s what you’re asking. Apart from the suicide itself, of course, which sort of marked the evening out a little.’ No smile this time; clearly one was all I got.

  ‘You’ve played at the rite before?’

  ‘Sure. A couple of times, anyway. Most of the girls there had.’

  ‘Only most?’

  ‘For some it was the first time. Especially the younger ones.’

  ‘Celer said all twelve of you were experienced fluteplayers. That you’d been working together for years.’

  ‘Uh-huh. But he’ll also have told you that we draw straws for the rite. Some of the girls just hadn’t been lucky before.’

  ‘So you knew them all? You’d worked with them all before?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There was something there. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had the feeling that she had hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before she’d answered.

  ‘You sure?’ I said.

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘What about Thalia?’

  ‘Thalia wasn’t –’ She stopped and looked away. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ve worked with Thalia. Lots of times.’

  ‘You said Thalia wasn’t.’ The back of my neck was prickling. ‘Wasn’t what?’

  She stood up suddenly and moved in the direction of the door. ‘Look, do you mind if we leave it, Corvinus?’ she said. ‘I’m tired and it was a long night. Also I’ve got a dinner party this evening so I’ve got to practise. I’ve told you all I know, which isn’t much but then that’s life, isn’t it?’