In at the Death (Marcus Corvinus Book 11)

by David Wishart

  All I had was questions where what I needed was facts. The case just didn’t make sense.

  Leave it for now, Corvinus. Give your head a rest. At least I wasn’t being dragged through the streets of Rome at the end of a boarhound.

  I stood up, hefted the jug and wine-cup, and went over to the bar to shoot the breeze with Renatius and the punters.

  The sun was well past the half-way point and almost into its third quarter when I left the wine-shop and walked up Iugarius towards Market Square. The Senate meeting might not’ve broken up yet, but I could sit on the steps of the Julian Hall across the road from the Curia and watch for the doors to open. It beat a hike to the Pincian, anyway, and I didn’t know Allenius’s address. I just hoped that he wasn’t still in mourning - if he ever had been - and had skipped the session.

  In the event, I’d cut it fine. I was just passing the Temple of Saturn when I saw the first broad-striper heading towards me through the crowd. Shit. I pushed through and stopped him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said. ‘Was Papinius Allenius at the meeting?’

  He gave me a pop-eyed stare. ‘Yes. Yes, I believe he was.’

  ‘You happen to know if he’s gone yet?’

  The guy turned, scanned the crowd for a moment and then pointed. ‘There he is,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to be quick if you want to talk to him, though. He’s on the grain surplus commission and they’ve got a meeting this afternoon.’

  ‘Fine. Fine, thanks.’ I slipped between a couple of narrow-stripers haggling over a shipment of roofing-tiles, trod on the toes of a plain-mantle who’d decided he needed some valuable time out and was standing staring at the sky and finally ran the guy down just short of Vesta’s temple.

  He wasn’t all that pleased about it, mind.

  ‘Papinius Allenius?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he snapped. ‘What do you want?’ He was a tall, thin-faced guy in his mid to late forties who looked like he lived on a diet of bread, lemon juice and rectitude. He reminded me a lot of my own father: Dad had had that same look of pokered-rectum respectability. In fact - although I’d never met the man before to my knowledge - twenty years back they’d probably been bosom chums. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a mourning-mantle, and he was freshly shaven.

  ‘My name’s Valerius Corvinus, sir,’ I said. ‘I was hoping to have a word with you about your son.’

  He stared at me for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘Your name has been mentioned to me, Corvinus. I have a meeting shortly, but I can spare a very few minutes if that will suffice. We’ll ajourn to the Temple of the Twin Gods, if you don’t mind. It’ll be quieter.’

  ‘Sure. No problem.’

  We left the main drag and headed down Vestals’ Alley. Twin Gods wasn’t exactly private - nowhere in Market Square is private, that time of day - but at least we’d be out of the crowd. He went up the steps and stopped beside a pillar.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘before we go any further let me say that I viewed Sextus as no son of mine. I had very little contact with him after the divorce, nor with his mother, except what duty compelled, and I can tell you absolutely nothing about the reasons for his suicide. Is that clear?’

  I blinked. ‘Uh...right. Right.’

  ‘It’s as well for you to understand my position right from the start.’

  ‘Sure.’ Jupiter! ‘But you did get him his job? With the Aventine fire commission?’

  He looked at me down his nose and took his time answering. Finally, he said: ‘I know my duty, Corvinus, and I have never in my life shirked it. Sextus’s post was part of that duty. It was a completely separate issue and has nothing to do with anything else. Now if you’ll excuse me –’

  ‘Did you give him - lend him, whatever - sixty thousand sesterces?’

  He’d been turning away. Now he turned back, mouth hanging. ‘Did I do what?’ he said.

  ‘The kid borrowed fifty thousand from a money-lender about a month ago. Just before he died, he paid it back, plus the interest. You’ve no idea where that came from?’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ he snapped. ‘Certainly not from me. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

  He wasn’t lying. I suspected that, like Dad, Allenius didn’t believe in telling lies, except as a last resort, when he’d do it with style. Twisting the truth and slithering out from under, that’s something else again; any career politician manages that easy as breathing, and Dad - and, I’d suspect, Allenius - did it all the time. But the denial came out too flat to be ambiguous, and the shock on Allenius’s face was too real to be fake.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just asking.’

  ‘Very well.’ He glanced up the alley, towards the Sacred Way. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I really must –’

  ‘One last thing,’ I said. I hadn’t intended to ask the question, but Papinius Allenius was as good a source for the answer as any. ‘You know a senator by the name of Carsidius?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I do.’

  ‘He, uh, “reputable”, if you know what I mean?’

  I knew it was a mistake before the words were out of my mouth. Allenius drew himself up straight and gave me the full, arrogant broad-striper glare, point-blank range: the look that for centuries has had foreigners from Britain to Parthia wondering if their underwear is showing. ‘Reputable?’ he snapped. ‘Reputable? How dare you, Corvinus! Lucius Carsidius is a close and deeply respected friend not only of mine but of the most honourable lights of the Senate. And if you imagine for one moment that men of unimpeachable honour and integrity such as Vibius Marsus or Lucius Arruntius would associate with someone whose morals were less than the very strictest, then –’

  ‘Uh, right. Right,’ I said quickly, backing off: the guy was working himself up into full Ciceronian denunciatory mode, and heads were beginning to turn fifteen yards off. ‘I understand.’

  ‘And so you should!’ He was glaring at me. ‘“Reputable”, indeed! Now if you’ve finished with your questions I have a meeting to go to. Good day to you!’

  Before I could answer, he set off down the portico steps, and this time he didn’t look back.

  Shit. I grinned and shook my head: yeah, Dad to a fault. And Arruntius and Marsus, eh? Now, there were another two names from the past!

  Funnily enough, from the same bit of the past as Acutia...

  Hell. Coincidence, it had to be. When he’d chosen them as examples Allenius had been right: the pair of them were the Roman senate, or at least between them they led the most reputable bit of it. If Carsidius was part of their gang then he was Respectable with a capital ‘R’, and you couldn’t say that about every broad-striper by any means. Some of these bums on the Curia Julia’s benches belonged to crooks and swindlers who’d leave the worst the Subura or Ostia could produce looking like eight-year-old apple-scrumpers. Just because your family name’s Cornelius or Junius doesn’t mean you’re not as bent as a Corinthian whore’s hairpin; quite the reverse, because most of the time that’s how your ancestors made their pile in the first place and feathering your own nest at other people’s expense is practically a family duty.

  At least Carsidius had his vote of confidence. Whether the bugger deserved it or not was another matter.

  Well, so much for that little interview. I’d never met young Papinius, but I could see why the two hadn’t got on: the parallels with me and my own father were too close for comfort. All the same, Dad and I had made it up before he died, and although we were always chalk and cheese we’d at least reached a modus vivendi. Papinius and his father evidently hadn’t been so lucky. Sad, sure, desperately sad, but that’s how things go. It wasn’t too uncommon, either.

  Still, there were a few things that didn’t quite gel there. As I followed Allenius down the steps and rejoined the crowd I was thinking hard.

  15

  So. What now? I’d got plenty of time in hand before there’d be any point in heading down to the Aventine, but I’d better go over to the vegetable market south of Cattlemarket Square to fulfil my
part of the deal with Meton. If he was so picky about the size and quality of his sodding cardoons then leaving things too late, when all the best ones might’ve gone, was not a good idea. Mind you, I reckoned I deserved better from his side of the deal when I did finally get back home than meatballs. That was pure sadism.

  Speaking of which, lunch. I’d left that pretty late as well, but there’re some good cook-shops around the Square that do all-day specials of tripe, liver and kidneys. Now that breakfast had worn off, I could combine the cardoon hunt with a mid-afternoon meal.

  Duty first. Vegetable market, south-west corner, stallkeeper by the name of Flavilla Nepia. Check. I took the series of alleys that link the south side of Market Square with Tuscan Street and headed for the River.

  I got the cardoons no bother. In fact, it was a positive pleasure, because Meton’s Flavilla Nepia turned out to be a big-boned stunner from Sicily, and a very switched-on lady indeed. So much for names, although what parents would call their kid Dumb Blonde to begin with I just couldn’t imagine. The stall was pretty quiet - most of Rome’s bag-ladies and kitchen slaves do their shopping early morning - and after she’d helped me load a string bag bought from one of the nearby stalls with half her remaining stock we got chatting about the empire’s biggest island. She didn’t like Etna, either, so we had a lot in common.

  By the time I’d found a cook-shop and eaten a leisurely couple of skewerfuls of kidneys with a plate of bean stew and a hunk of barley bread the sun was only a hand-span above the Janiculan rise. Perfect. Rome’s tenement population would be getting ready to call it a day and head back for the evening soup-pot. I finished the last of my quarter jug of Florentian - you don’t see that one often in the City, but the cook-shop owner was from the region, and it wasn’t a bad choice - and headed in the direction of Old Ostia Road. The narrow streets were full of home-going Aventine tunics, but if a purple stripe don’t get you much extra consideration in a crowd then a large string bag of very prickly cardoons does, especially if you’re prepared to use it.

  Not a patch on a Gallic boarhound, mind. I wondered how Alexis was getting on with her. Or not, as it may be. Still, he could look after himself.

  I reached the tenement while there was still some light in the sky. It was a beautiful evening: cool, clear, with not a hint of rain. Cooking’s frowned on in these places, for obvious reasons - a spilled brazier can send the whole place up like a torch in minutes, and the bad ventilation can kill you before you even notice - so in good weather the locals tend to use the street as a dining-cum-sitting room until it’s time to pack in and go to bed. It’s more sociable, too, and tenement punters tend to be a sociable lot, as a rule. There were a good few families outside round folding tables, sitting chatting while Ma or Grandma stirred the bean-pot on the portable stove and laid out the bread and greens.

  I stepped onto the pavement to avoid a trio of charging, shrieking kids playing catch-as-

  catch-can on the road and went up to the nearest brazier.

  ‘Uh...excuse me, sister,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’ The woman beside it was cutting sausages from a string and laying them on the grill. She looked up, saw the purple stripe and her eyes widened: you don’t get many purple-stripers round the tenements, especially at dinner-time. ‘You lost, sir?’

  ‘No. I was hoping someone could help me with the answers to a few questions.’

  She frowned: the combination of a purple stripe and questions isn’t too popular in places like the Aventine. Then she turned and yelled: ‘Quintus!’

  A big guy who looked like he unloaded barges for a living detached himself from a gaggle of male punters shooting the breeze a few yards away and sauntered over flexing his muscles.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said, looking at me. Friendly as a bear with boils. ‘Problems, my love?’

  ‘Gentleman says he’s got some questions.’

  ‘That so, now?’ The friendliness wound down another notch. A bear with boils plus a bad case of haemorrhoids.

  I put down the bag of cardoons and held my hands out, palms first. ‘No hassle, pal. I’m looking into that suicide a few days back. The young guy who threw himself from the top-floor flat.’

  ‘You with the Watch?’

  ‘No, I’m a...friend of the family.’

  ‘Then you can tell them it was no suicide.’ The woman sniffed. ‘The Watch need their fucking heads examined.’

  My stomach went cold. ‘You got a particular reason for thinking that, sister?’ I said.

  ‘Now, now, Aristoboulê, dear,’ her husband grunted uneasily. ‘Don’t you go spreading rumours.’

  She ignored him. ‘The boy had a mother and she’s got the right to know,’ she snapped. ‘What sort of thing is that to tell a woman, that her son’s killed himself when he didn’t? It’s a shame and a slander.’ She folded her arms across her very considerable bosom and glared at me. ‘You talk to Lautia, sir. She’ll put you right. She heard the buggers moving about in there before the lad even arrived.’

  Oh, shit. Everything went very still, the cold feeling in my stomach dropped a few degrees, and something with lots of legs began a march up my spine. ‘There was someone in the flat already?’ I said.

  ‘Aristoboulê...’

  ‘Course there was. You talk to Lautia about it, sir. She lives just across the landing. Lautia’ll tell you.’

  Damn right I’d talk to Lautia! I looked round. ‘Ah...which one is she?’

  ‘The thin girl with a nose like a parrot.’ Aristoboulê jerked her head towards the edge of the group. ‘And you can just stop looking at me like that, Quintus Maecilius! How would you feel if the boy had been one of ours? Suicide! It’s a shame and a slander, and that’s the gods’ honest truth!’ She hacked off another sausage. ‘Fucking Watch!’

  I edged round the jutting breasts. So might Ulysses have skirted Charybdis. ‘Right. Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks, sister, much appreciated.’

  She turned back to her sausages, muttering darkly, while Quintus shot me a look and slunk off to rejoin his mates. I squeezed between the tables - I was getting quite a few looks now, but curious rather than hostile - and went up to the young parrot-nosed woman who was busy feeding an equally-parrot-nosed infant spoonfuls of mashed beans from a dish.

  ‘Lautia?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’ She scooped a stray bit of mash from the kid’s chin and popped it into the open mouth, then glanced sideways at me. Like the sausage-woman’s, when she saw the purple stripe her eyes widened. Apart from the nose, she was quite a looker, and no more than eighteen.

  ‘The name’s Corvinus,’ I said. ‘Marcus Corvinus. The lady over there with the sausages said you might be able to help me.’

  ‘What with?’ She set the bowl down, her eyes still on the purple stripe. The kid grabbed the spoon and banged it hard on the table. ‘Decimus! You stop that right now!’

  ‘Just some information. No hassle, I promise.’

  ‘Information about what?’

  ‘You live on the top floor, in the flat opposite, right?’ She nodded. ‘According to, ah, Aristoboulê there you were at home when Sextus Papinius killed himself. Died. Whatever.’

  She’d been listening wide-eyed. ‘That was his name?’ she said. ‘Papinius? I didn’t know.’ She swallowed. ‘Look, if you’re from the Watch I’m sorry I didn’t –’

  ‘Uh-uh, this is strictly unofficial. I’m a friend of the family. His mother asked me to find out how he died.’ Not exactly true, but on the Aventine family’ll outrank Watch any day of the month. ‘Like I said, sister, no hassle. I give you my word.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Yes. I was in. I’m not usually, but Decimus had a touch of fever, it was raining and I didn’t want to take him outside.’ The spoon came down again and she turned away. ‘Decimus! Behave yourself, I’m trying to bloody talk! Gemella, will you take him for a minute?’

  A teenager at the next table smiled at me shyly, got up and lifted the now-squalling kid away to sit on her lap. Better h
er than me: young Decimus had a great future as a blacksmith. Lautia nodded her thanks.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You want to tell me the whole story? From the beginning?’

  ‘Not much to tell.’ She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘It must’ve been about half way through the afternoon. I was changing Decimus’s nappy and I’d opened the door because he’d got the runs and –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, okay.’ Gods! Some details I didn’t want to know! ‘Got you. And you saw..?’

  ‘No. I didn’t actually see anything because I was busy with Decimus. But I heard someone unlock the flat door opposite, go in and close it behind them.’

  ‘Hang on, sister.’ I held up a hand. ‘You sure about this? Especially the unlocking?’

  ‘Course I am. There’s a sort of “clunk” when the key turns. My lock’s the same.’

  ‘One person or more?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. I just heard the sound of the lock and the footsteps.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it. At least, that was all until about ten minutes later when the young gentleman arrived. Your Papinius.’

  ‘You saw Papinius?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’d put Decimus down for his nap and I went to close the door again. He was just putting the key in opposite.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘“Don’t worry. I’m just inspecting the property”. Something like that, anyway.’

  ‘Uh huh. How did he look? Normal? Nervous? Guilty, even?’

  ‘He was a bit flustered. Like I’d caught him doing something wrong. If he’d been an ordinary working man I’d’ve thought he was up to no good, but being a purple-striper and nicely-spoken and all...well, that’s a different thing, isn’t it?’