Lindsey Davis - Falco 15 - The Accusers

by The Accusers(lit)

  We, however, will be able to demonstrate that it was not the ill-fated Negrinus who killed his father - but his mother Calpurnia Cara. She may have been a blameless wife - certainly she will tell you so. You will be shocked by what drove her to the dreadful crime she committed. She had had to endure a husband who exhibited, in the most public way, a shameful partiality for his own daughter-in-law. That young woman has unfortunately died in childbed this very week and cannot be questioned. But her influence on Rubirius Metellus is demonstrated by the way he treated her financially and it is the root cause of this family’s misery. The rapacious and blackmailing demands of the daughter-in-law led to an unenviable need for money, which resulted in the corruption for which Metellus was found guilty. And the unnatural favour shown to his daughter-in-law in his will led to his death at the hands of his embittered wife. You may feel sympathy for her predicament, but her unflinching dispatch of her husband and her desperate measures to conceal the crime deserve only condemnation.

  Fuelled by sorrow, shame, and anger at her omission from the will of a husband of near forty years, Calpurnia Cara turned on Rubirius Metellus and removed him from the world. We shall show you that she sold her jewellery, then consulted a woman familiar with the black arts, to learn what fatal poison she should choose and how it might be administered. She arranged to obtain the noxious drug, through the medium of Paccius Africanus - a man who must be no stranger to the disreputable side of life. They used one of his creatures, a man of such appalling habits that he has employed violence on the very streets of Rome in a foolish attempt to dissuade us from bringing this case. You can see sitting there, my colleague Didius Falco, still bearing the scars of that vicious attack.

  Calpurnia arranged to have the chosen drug, insidious hemlock, secretly given to her husband in his lunchtime meal. Metellus succumbed, and far from committing suicide among his loving family as the world was informed, he may have died a lonely death. Certainly his corpse was accorded no respect. Calpurnia attempted to hide the results of her actions by concealing the body; Metellus may not even have been dead when she secreted him in a crude garden shack - but it was in that sorry place that he met his end. For three whole days the body of Rubirius Metellus lay concealed in that mean location, without the honours due to a man of his rank or the sorrowing ministrations of his children and his friends. Neither his children nor his friends were aware of what had happened.

  Then the body was at last removed from its hiding place. Realising that concealment would not work, Calpurnia had invented an elaborate lie about the time and the manner of her husband’s death. Under her instructions Rubirius Metellus was laid on his own bed as if he had perished there that day. A false story of his suicide was concocted. Calpurnia Cara lied to her household. She lied to her children. She lied to the seven senators who were suborned into witnessing their noble friend’s supposed suicide, allegedly at his request. When we call her to give evidence, let us all be aware that this terrible woman may yet lie in court…’

  That was a rather exciting statement. Marponius had reached the limit of his concentration. He adjourned the session.

  XXXIX

  THE ADJOURNMENT provided a respite and an opportunity. Honorius went off by himself, looking exhausted. Flushed with his success at tracking down the hemlock-salesman, Aelianus volunteered to seek out Olympia, supposedly consulted by Calpurnia as a fortune-teller. Honorius had previously been looking for this crone, or so he said, but with no results.

  `Where will you start, Aulus?

  I have my methods!’

  I knew he had only one method, to which he stuck with a rigidity I would need to shatter. But it served here. Any highborn ladies would know how to reach this star-gazer. Once again, Aelianus was going home for lunch. There, he would ask his mother.

  The principled Julia Justa would never have handed over any of her tight household budget to a fashionable seer, but she might possess acquaintances who did. I could imagine my dear mother-in-law reproving them for their daftness in her silky, sarcastic way. Even if she had been extremely rude in the past, that would not stop her now. I don’t suppose her cronies would admit to being scared of the noble Julia, but she would get an address for her boy.

  I was glad to have back-up from Aelianus. With Justinus away and Honorius resting (or whatever he was up to), we needed to deploy our resources well. I myself had to tackle someone else: I grabbed sustenance, then headed off to stick my mark on Licinius Lutea.

  The one-time near-bankrupt lived in an apartment not far from that in which he had established Saffia. He managed to rent half a house, divided up tastefully in what had once been a rich man’s mansion. Lutea had the part above the sausage shop, the least desirable to discerning tenants - though it must be handy for a divorcee who owned no slaves. I guessed he lived on hot pies from the bakery and cold pork sausage - when he was not cadging dinners from old friends who could not shake him off.

  I found him in a reading room, stretched on a couch. There was not much else in the elegant space, just a couple of lamps. I call it a reading room because there was one silver scroll box; I wondered if it had been a gift from the grateful Saffia - and instinctively, I reckoned it was empty. The whole apartment was extremely bare, its decor standardised by a landlord - though one who had used expensive designers for the black and vermilion paintwork.

  `Isn’t this place a bit above your price?’ I asked Lutea frankly. `I heard you had no credit.’

  Lutea gave me a sharp look. Rallying from his listlessness, he admitted in a douche way, `Yes, it is. I survive, though.’

  `They call you an entrepreneur. It usually means a confidence trickster, in the world I come from.’

  `Then you inhabit a tragic world, Falco.’

  `It’s improving. How about yours?’

  `One lives in hope.’ He pretended to be too subdued to argue, though I wasn’t fooled.

  Lutea kept acting out low in spirits. Underneath, he remained the brazen, well-manicured type with a flash tunic and no conscience. I was glad I had not brought Helena. Her open disapproval would not win his confidence. I myself would feel dirty afterwards if I played the sympathetic playboy with him, but that was nothing to me. You can scrub off the taint of lousy immorality like his.

  I had noticed there was no sign nor sound of a child in the house. I asked after his son.

  `Lucius is being looked after. Poor little terror. It’s very hard on him - well, it’s hard on both of us. Oh we shall both miss darling Saffia!’ That might be so, but they would miss her in different ways.

  `You seemed remarkably attentive to your ex-wife. Was the split from her a subject for regret?’

  `I was heartbroken. Her damned father…’ Lutea tailed off sadly. `I had hoped when she left old Birdy, I might bring Donatus round again. No chance of that now…’ Every time he wafted off into misery I felt it was staged. `Saffia and I were a wonderful team, Falco. Nobody to touch us. It can be like that, you know.’

  `I know.’

  He shook his finger at me. `I see it! You have a wife and you love the girl.’

  `She’s very sharp,’ I said quietly. That was true; Lutea was a lifelong fraud, but Helena had seen through him. Clearly he had no recollection that he had met her with me last night. He had blotted out the cold assessment with which her eyes had raked him. `She runs the home - and she runs me.’

  `Excellent!’ Lutea beamed at me. `That’s how it should be. I am pleased for you.’

  I was leaning on a wall, since Lutea was still lying on his couch and there were no other seats. I enjoyed myself, smiling slightly, as I thought of how Helena viewed him. Here he was, a man in his early thirties. He lived in a luxury he did not need, on promises he would never fulfil. What had he been doing before I arrived? Dreaming up schemes. Dreaming so hard that the fragile lies from which he built his life became his reality.

  `Helena was anxious about your boy,’ I said. `Maybe I can see him, to reassure her?’

  `No, no,’ L
utea murmured. `Lucius is not here. He went to his old nurse.

  `Someone he knows,’ I said, without judgement.

  `Someone familiar,’ Lutea agreed, as if this excuse had just struck him.

  Different men react in different ways. If my children lost their mother, I would be inconsolable. And I would never let the children from my sight.

  `This is good of you,’ Lutea said, fooling himself as he tried to fool others. `Taking the trouble to bring your condolences. I appreciate that.’

  I straightened up. `I’m afraid there is more to it.’

  Lutea smiled at me, allowing himself to sink into a grief-stricken half-trance. `Nothing too terrible, I’m sure.’

  `Oh no.’ I walked over to him. I slung his feet off the couch and sat down with him. I shook my head like a concerned old uncle. If he stiffened up, he hid it. `Just this. It is being said that your sweet little Saffia blackmailed the Metelli. And I think that you were in the project with her. Any comment?’

  Now sitting upright, the ex-husband let a bemused expression fill his features. Maybe he had been accused of bad practice before; the display was good. `That is a terrible thing for anyone to say about poor Saffia! Now she is dead and cannot defend herself against such accusations. I don’t believe it - and I know nothing about any of it.’

  `She knew their secret. Did she tell you?’

  `What secret?’ Lutea gasped as if the whole idea astonished him. `Oh come on! The secret that made you two decide to move in close to them. So close, Saffia actually left you and married herself to Birdy. Divorcing you was a sham. Poor Birdy knows it now. I wonder how long it took him to realise.’

  `I have no notion what you are talking about, Falco.’

  `Well that’s a shame. Call yourself a friend of Birdy’s? Don’t you know that your very best friend is being made somebody’s pat-ball? And don’t you see why the evidence is pointing straight at you?’

  Lutea shook his head in wonderment. A faint whiff of fine oil came my way. As with all the best confidence tricksters, his personal grooming was immaculate. If this scam failed, he would be able to build an extensive career preying on the rich widows of exotic commodity traders. He would like that. He could plunder their attics of stored commodities, not just empty their bankboxes. The widows would get plenty out of it - while his attentions lasted. I saw them playing dice with him, their beringed fingers flashing in the light of many lamp stands, while they congratulated themselves on their cultured catch. Better to paw a spiny sea urchin, in fact, yet there would never be unpleasantness. Lutea would leave them flat broke; even so, they would remember him with few hard feelings. He was good-looking and would play the innocent. Not wanting to believe he had deceived them, his victims would never be quite sure it really was darling Lutea who had robbed them.

  I knew how it worked. I had dreamed of doing it, in the hard, lost days before I was rescued by improvements in my fate. But I recognised bad dreams for what they were. As an entrepreneur that was my tragedy. But it was my salvation as a man.

  I stayed another hour. Lutea feigned shock, disgust, outrage, reproof, anger and near-hysteria. When he threatened litigation if I libelled him, I laughed at him and left.

  He had confessed nothing. Still, I became certain that he and Saffia really had conspired together in a complex scheme - and one which might still be operational. Lutea denied it - but Lutea was undoubtedly lying through his teeth.

  XL

  HONORIUS LOOKED more confident when he appeared in court next day. Marponius greeted him benignly. That would have scared me, but Honorius had less experience. This trusting boy would have smiled back at a Nile crocodile as it climbed out to grab him by his short legs.

  He was setting out the background to Metellus’ death, explaining - perhaps in too much detail - the issues behind the original corruption trial. His current argument was that Rubirius Metellus may have been a bad citizen, but he had been convicted, so the jury should dispel any feeling that in some way he deserved to die. Killing him in his home was a serious crime. Parricide - by which Honorius meant, according to Roman custom, the murder of any close relative - had been the most reviled crime since the founding of our city. It was the jury’s duty to avenge the crime, lest social order disintegrate…

  When I hear the words `social order’, I start looking around for somebody to pick a fight with.

  The jury and I were thoroughly bored. I felt no conscience pangs when a message from Aelianus allowed me to make a run for it. I passed Honorius a note, did my best to make it look mysterious for the benefit of Paccius and Silius, then slid out of the Basilica like a man on the trail of hot new evidence.

  The chance of that was slim. We were off to interview a fortune-teller. Presumably foresight would warn her about us before we even left the Forum.

  Aelianus led me to his father’s litter. He might hit the punch bag hard at the gym, but he had the natural laziness of any young man in his twenties. We crammed in and yelled at the bearers to get going as they protested at our weight. We were jogged along the Sacred Way the full length of the Forum, then waited interminably in the traffic jams around the building site for the new amphitheatre. Eventually we settled into a more regular pace along the Via Tusculanum. Olympia lived on that highway, though outside the city boundary. Cynics might think the remoteness was deliberate. For a woman who was courted by fine women who led busy lives, it seemed an awkwardly long-distance trek, though maybe the far location gave them a sense of security. A senator’s wife having her stars read would have to be very discreet. If the stars under scrutiny belonged to her husband, she was breaking the law - whilst if they belonged to the Emperor, she was committing treason. To know another person’s fortune smacks of wanting to control their fate for the wrong reasons.

  As we jerked along, I warned my companion not to expect dead bats being thrown on to green fires. If Aelianus wanted to buy a love philtre made from the desiccated testicles of disgusting mammals, he. would not find the bottles on display, well, not openly. The last fortune-teller I interviewed turned out to be a cultured piece who had three accountants and a crisp way of disposing of informers. I would not have eaten an almond cake at her house, but if she ever used witchcraft she knew how to bribe the aediles first, so they kept away. Tyche had given me a creepy feeling that if she did cast spells, they would work. Tyche… dear gods, that took me back.

  Aelianus and I decided against pretending we wanted horoscopes. Olympia would know far too much about people’s follies, hopes and terrors for us to fool her. Aelianus looked interested, but I warned him off.

  `No seances. I promised your mother I would look after you.’

  `My mother thinks you’ll let her down, Falco.’

  Olympia lived in a house that was primly feminine, with a manicurist in a clean little booth on the right of the front door, and a depilatory salon on the left. Rich women came out here to be pampered, to share gossip, to denigrate their husbands and deplore their in-laws, to arrange marriages for their children, and to lust after low-class lovers. The house remained very much that of Olympia herself, its rooms were completely domestic in character and she kept up a respectable front. Wooing senators’ wives to visit her lair could be dangerous; she would not want to be closed down. Unsavoury couplings would occur here only rarely (though some liaisons with drivers and second rate love-poets must have been arranged from these premises, if I was any judge).

  Olympia kept us waiting, for form’s sake. She had slim young girls to fetch and carry, and to lend an air of chaperoned propriety. They were too thin and too subdued to be attractive. Aelianus never glanced at them. I looked. I always do. I was checking to see if Olympia mistreated them, in case one of her woeful wenches might be met later behind the garden hedge and enticed to become a songbird for a few kind words. I was more badly bruised than they were, so I ruled that out.

  When she appeared, a plump dark-skinned woman of mature age, she acted very genteel; to me she had all the appeal of mildew. O
lympia had intense, pouchy eyes. She acted as if full of shrewdness, though I reckoned she was less intelligent than she supposed. Her well-spoken accent had one or two jarring vowels; she had taught herself polite Latin, but her past had followed her. She had probably worked her way into this position through several careers, careers she was keeping very quiet. Everything about her suggested a rich but sour experience of life, making her a businesswoman other women could trust. Once they did, no doubt Olympia simply preyed on them.

  Aelianus smiled at the fortune-teller.

  `Anything I can do for you, sweetheart?’ she encouraged him, ignoring me. Suggestiveness from a woman scared him and he looked to me for help. I let him run with it.

  `We have to ask about one of your clients,’ he began. `Calpurnia Cara.’

  `I cannot speak about my clients.’

  `There’s no need to snap - she is in serious trouble -‘

  `Nothing will pass my lips.’

  ‘You may be able to help her.’

  `No.’

  `Now less of that.’ Aelianus was a bad interviewer, getting desperate. Olympia knew he was at her mercy. `This is a legal matter. If we have to, we can subpoena you!’

  I leaned forwards. Time for the man of experience to intervene. `Aulus, don’t even try that one. Olympia has to think about her other clients - am I right?’

  She raised an eyebrow. I did not like the way she sneered.

  `The ladies who patronise Olympia’s establishment,’ I explained to my brash colleague, `must never suspect she would reveal a confidence.’ I pretended to offer the fortune-teller a courteous get out: `Maybe we can arrange this so the ladies need never find out you helped us.’