Old Bones (Marcus Corvinus Book 5)

by David Wishart

  'Quite.' Ramutha nodded. 'It's just a mercy there are no children.'

  I frowned; something was screwy here. The 'no children' bit didn't square for a start, and Mamilius might've gone slightly over the top but not that much. 'Uh...I'm sorry,' I said, 'but are we talking about Vesia? Titus Clusinus's wife?'

  Tanaquil sucked in her breath and shot me a look that made my scrotum crawl.

  'We most certainly are not!' she snapped.

  'The very idea!' Ramutha sawed viciously at the cake. 'Valerius Corvinus, you surprise me!'

  'Right. Right.' I was nodding so hard I thought my head might fall off. 'So...ah...who –?'

  'Why, that woman down the road, of course.' Ramutha's voice was pure undiluted venom. 'Larth Papatius's wife.'

  I almost dropped my cup. 'You mean Thupeltha?'

  'You know her?' Tanaquil was glaring at me like I'd blown my nose in my napkin.

  'Ah...yeah, well, not personally, of course, but –'

  'By reputation,' Ramutha finished. She dumped the slice of cake on Perilla's plate. 'Indeed. I'm not at all surprised.'

  'Hell, she's practically old enough to be the kid's mother!'

  Tanaquil smiled grimly. 'You're quite right to be shocked,' she said. 'We all were when it started. Shocked and appalled.'

  'It had been going on for a while, then?'

  'A year. Perhaps longer,' Ramutha said. 'Certainly before the boy's father passed away. I wouldn't be surprised, myself, if the shame of it didn't hurry the poor man into his grave before his time. Scandalous, quite scandalous.' She leaned across the table, and her voice dropped to barely a whisper. 'And, of course, it wasn't the first time, either.'

  'Yeah?'

  'A butcher in Caere. Just after they were first married. They say his death was an accident, but you can believe that if you like.'

  'Uh...the guy died?'

  'Found with his neck broken at the bottom of a ravine.' She sat back and beamed at me. 'The investigation was most cursory.'

  'A strong man, Larth Papatius.' Tanaquil chewed on a morsel of cake. 'And not the most evenly-tempered. One must be charitable and feel some sympathy for the boy, naturally, but a husband does have rights, and he acted most properly.'

  Perilla had raised her eyes, startled. I felt pretty knocked-back myself.

  'Ah...hang on, there,' I said. 'You're saying Papatius killed Navius?'

  Tanaquil frowned. 'But of course he did. We saw him ourselves.'

  'You what?'

  'Not the actual killing, of course.' Ramutha gave an acidulous sniff. 'We saw him as he went past.'

  'He was following Navius,' Tanaquil bared her brown teeth at me, 'who was following the woman, no doubt to one of their dirty little assignations. Oh, she was quite blatant about it, wasn't she, Ramutha?'

  'Quite blatant,' Ramutha agreed. She lifted her cup and sipped delicately. 'Personally, I don't blame Larth Papatius in the slightest. All that surprises me is that he didn't kill his bitch of a wife at the same time.'

  Oh, gods! Oh dear, sweet gods!

  Tanaquil picked up the knife and leaned forward, smiling.

  'More cake?' she said.

  6.

  Ten minutes later we were in the carriage heading for Nepos's. I was still feeling like someone had clouted me from behind with a blackjack.

  'It can't be that obvious,' I said.

  'Of course it can.' Perilla was looking relaxed. 'Crimes of passion are the commonest type. Husband murders lover, lover murders husband, wife murders husband...'

  'Since when were you an expert, lady?'

  'Admit it. You feel cheated.'

  'Damn right I do! And that pair of harpies are cracked as a cut-price Corinthian vase!'

  'They seemed quite sensible to me. Not exactly my type, but –'

  My fist hit the cushion. 'Jupiter, Perilla! Papatius couldn't have done it!'

  'Why not?' Yeah. Good question. I didn't answer. 'The thing's solved. Papatius killed the boy out of jealousy. All Priscus has to do is subpoena Tanaquil and Ramutha and have them tell their story to the judge. As far as we're concerned we can forget about it and get on with our holiday.'

  'Looking round tombs?'

  'Not all the time, no. Caere has some wonderful old temples.'

  'Jupiter on a bloody see-saw!'

  Perilla smiled. 'At least Priscus will be pleased when you tell him. He must be very worried.'

  'Priscus has probably forgotten all about it by this time. Where everyday things like murder are concerned the guy's got the attention span of a gnat.'

  'Marcus, you're grousing.'

  'I am not –' I stopped. 'Yeah, okay. But we don't stay to lunch, right? I've had about all I can take for one day without adding food poisoning to the list.'

  She leaned over and kissed me. 'All right,' she said. 'Is that Thupeltha, by the way?'

  I looked out of the carriage window. We were passing the wineshop. Mamilius was sitting on the outside bench and Thupeltha had just put a jug of wine down beside him. Over in the far corner of the terrace a big bald-headed guy was lashing a fugitive vine tendril to the trellis. He looked up momentarily, then went on with what he was doing. Obviously the landlord himself, and what Tanaquil had said about him being a powerful man was right. Even his muscles had muscles.

  'Yeah,' I said. 'That's her.'

  'Then I see what your spinster friends meant. Men would find her very attractive.'

  'You think so?'

  'Oh, Corvinus!'

  I grinned. 'All right, then, she's okay. A bit obvious.'

  'And you were right about something else. If Navius was only in his early twenties then she is old enough to be his mother. She must be thirty-five if she's a day. That's interesting.'

  'It is?'

  'How many women do you know who take lovers younger than themselves? Present company excepted, of course.'

  I gave another grin: Perilla's got eighteen months on me, although it doesn't show. 'Quite a few, as a matter of fact.'

  'In the long term? And much younger?'

  'Sure. Only in that case there's usually some sort of quid pro quo. The woman's generally ugly and loaded and the kid's a stud on his uppers. Nothing wrong with that. Both parties get what they're looking for, they're both happy and it's no concern of anyone else's.'

  'But, Marcus, in this case Thupeltha isn't ugly, she's hardly, I would imagine, loaded, Navius strikes me as rather a mother's boy despite his reputation and as the owner of quite a sizeable property in his own right he can scarcely be described as on his uppers. Besides, I would assume that Papatius would be quite concerned, for one. And lastly this is not Rome or Athens. Liaisons like that belong to a more sophisticated world. They simply don't happen out in the country.'

  Gods! When you translated that into simple Latin it actually made sense. 'You making something out of this?' I said.

  'Not really. But it's worth thinking about, isn't it?'

  'Yeah.' I frowned. 'Yeah, it is.’

  When we arrived at Nepos's his foreman was in the yard supervising the daubing of the empty wine jars with pitch ready for the up-and-coming grape harvest, but he took time off to show us up. Nepos himself, Mother and Priscus were all in the atrium, as well as Mother's doctor hanger-on, the unhilarious Hilarion. I'd only met the guy once, but he'd given me a pain in my back molars the minute I'd set eyes on him.

  'Marcus, dear.' Mother came over and turned her cheek for me to kiss. She was wearing a stunning yellow Coan silk mantle and she smelled of the hyacinth perfume that goes for a gold piece the bottle in the pricey Saeptan shops, if you can get it. 'And Perilla. How lovely.'

  'We just dropped by to see how Meataxe was doing,' I said.

  'Helvius Priscus is bearing up very well.' That was Hilarion. The guy was stroking his beard like it was a cat that had fastened itself to his expensive lambs-wool tunic. 'Although there is still a certain overpreponderance of phlegm in the brain that I am at present combatting with hot mustard poultices.'

&
nbsp; 'Is that right, now?' I said. I turned to Priscus. He was lying on one of the couches with a squishy bag of gunk tied to his forehead. 'How's the boy, Priscus?'

  'Mmmaa...'

  Hilarion coughed. 'The patient has also, temporarily, been forbidden to speak,' he said, 'the shock of yesterday having significantly depleted the air content of the blood vessels which, as you are no doubt aware, Valerius Corvinus, is essential to rational thought. To that end he has been forbidden lettuce and restricted to a diet of boiled pulses.'

  'Yeah?' Jupiter! In my strictly non-medical opinion keeping Priscus off the salads and zipping up his mouth wasn't going to do a hell of a lot of good as far as improving his mental thought processes were concerned. And if air in the brain had anything to do with intelligence then the old bugger must've been starved of it at birth. 'You sure he wouldn't be better off in Caere, bashing tombs?'

  'With the wind in the south and a superfluity of cerebral phlegm?' Hilarion gave what passed with him for a wry chuckle. The first time I'd heard it I'd thought the guy was pegging out. 'Hardly, hardly. My dear sir, I have no wish to offend, but you're obviously not a doctor.'

  'Don't be silly, Marcus,' Mother said. She'd been listening to the old quack with dewy eyes and hands reverently clasped, and in a woman of Mother's intelligence it was sickening to watch. 'Hilarion knows what he's talking about. He is a genius.'

  'Is that so?' Yeah, sure; and I was Asclepius's grandmother. I turned to the guy and gave him my best smile. 'Let me just say one thing, pal. If we're talking about wind then the only relevant bit around here is –'

  'Marcus!'

  Fortunately for family amity Nepos put his oar in at this point.

  'Corvinus, my dear fellow,' he said, 'why don't you and I go along to my study for a while, eh?'

  I let myself be led off; all the more willingly because Nepos picked up a jug of Falernian and a couple of cups on the way. That medical bastard would probably claim that, me being of a choleric, that is hot and dry, disposition Falernian was the worst thing I could inflict on my system. As far as I was concerned Hilarion could take the whole Hippocratic corpus and use it as an enema.

  'Well, now,' Nepos said when we were ensconced on a pair of reading couches with the Falernian between us. 'And how's the investigation going?'

  I took a swig. Caeretan's fine in its way, like I said, but its big brother from down south definitely has the edge. Nectar. 'Not bad. In fact it may be all over.' I told him what the Gruesomes had just told us about Navius, Thupeltha and Papatius. 'That make sense to you?'

  'It doesn't surprise me, certainly, although I knew nothing about the affair myself. Remember, I'm no Vetuliscan, I'm not one for gossip and I don't see much of the locals. Barring that old bastard Arruns, naturally, but that's another story.'

  'Arruns?'

  'Larcius Arruns. My immediate neighbour. You won't have met the fellow yet, but he's quite a character.' Nepos chuckled into his wine. 'Too much of a character for my delicate taste, to be truthful.'

  My ears had pricked up. Immediate neighbour, right? So he'd be a neighbour, too, of Navius, on the other side from Papatius, and Nepos's tone hadn't exactly been all sweetness and light. If the Papatius angle fell through this Arruns might be interesting. 'So why doesn't the affair surprise you?' I said.

  'Oh, anyone could see it coming. Thupeltha's got red blood in her veins, Navius was a good-looking lad and Papatius isn't a man I'd like to cross. There's a story about a Caeretan butcher –'

  'Yeah. The girls told me that one. Is it true?'

  'As far as the basic facts are concerned, yes.' Nepos frowned. 'Beyond that I don't know. Certainly the fellow was found dead of a broken neck half way to Caere, but he'd left the wineshop drunk and it was a filthy night in the middle of winter. He could easily have strayed off the road. Whether there was ever anything between him and the woman your guess is as good as mine, and as for actual foul play –' He shrugged.

  I took a swallow of the Falernian. 'What sort of a guy is this Papatius? In himself, I mean. You think he's capable of murder?'

  'Possibly. Under the proper circumstances.'

  'Care to tell me what these are?'

  'I doubt if I can. Papatius isn't an easy chap to pigeonhole. Thirty days out of the month he's as easy-going a man as you could wish to meet. The thirty-first' – Nepos turned his cup in his hands – 'well, you know these flash rainstorms we get this time of year: one minute blue sky, the next all hell let loose and Deucalion's flood over again. Papatius is a bit like that.'

  So. That fitted with the Gruesomes' story, anyway. And if the guy's wife was carrying on with Navius an impulse killing was a definite possibility.

  'We'd an incident a year or so back, for example. I was in the wineshop myself, as it happens. Stranger up from Pyrgi took on more wine than he could handle and began to get a bit abusive. Papatius let the man rant for a while, then he gets up and without a word of warning smacks the fellow in the mouth.' He chuckled. 'Breaks his jaw for him, one punch, then sits down like nothing's happened and leaves us to pick up the pieces.'

  'Jealousy?'

  'Oh, it had nothing to do with Thupeltha. The woman wasn't even there at the time. In bed with a bad cold, had been for days.'

  'They get on well together? Papatius and his wife?'

  'As far as I know, publicly at least. In business terms the marriage is an ideal arrangement. Thupeltha owns the wineshop and the land, Papatius is the best damn vine-grower in the district, partly hard graft but that's never enough with vines. Whatever the fellow's got – and remember the wine business is chancy at best – it's very close to magic. Between them he and Thupeltha are coining money hand over fist.'

  I sat back. Yeah. That little nugget was interesting. Also it fitted in with a couple of other things that'd been bugging me about Navius's murder. Maybe when I got Perilla alone I'd try them out on her.

  'Okay,' I said. 'Tell me about this Larcius Arruns.'

  Nepos chuckled. 'Now he really is a Vetuliscan. The family's been here at least since Deucalion's flood, probably a lot longer. If you're looking for someone to add to your list of suspects, Corvinus, then I recommend Larcius Arruns to your attention. And guilty or not speaking personally I wouldn't be sorry to lose him.'

  'How so?'

  Nepos reached for the wine jug and topped up our cups. 'Because he's a crusty, litigious old bugger, that's how so,' he said. 'We share a perennial boundary stream, and you know how precious these things are. I've fought tooth and nail ever since I bought this place over my fair share of the irrigation rights, but the wretched man won't give an inch.'

  I could understand the exasperation in his voice: all-year-round water is as precious to a farmer as gold. 'I thought irrigation rights were written into the deeds,' I said.

  'Of course they are. But the word of the law's one thing, implementing it's another matter, especially if you want to stay on neighbourly terms. And it's not just me. He has court cases pending with half Vetuliscum for one reason or another.'

  'What about Navius?'

  'Oh, my dear fellow, that's a very old chestnut! Practically a family feud. There's a stretch of vineyard on the edge of Navius's property that Navius's grandfather bought from Arruns's father fifty years back. Arruns has always claimed the sale was bogus and the vineyard still belongs to him.'

  'The sale's on record?'

  'Certainly.'

  'So?'

  'Arruns claims the deed is forged, that his father never sold the land and Navius's grandfather swindled him.'

  'That's no reason to murder the grandson.'

  'Agreed. But then stranger things have happened.'

  I grunted. Yeah, well, it was possible: these old country feuds had nothing to do with logic. Maybe Arruns had the right of it and the land was his after all. Or maybe, like Nepos said, the guy was just a litigious old bugger who got a kick out of mixing it with the neighbours. Still, it was another strand. Not that I needed one at present. I swallowed the last of m
y wine and put down the cup.

  'Okay,' I said. 'You've done what you set out to do.'

  Nepos laughed. 'And what might that be?'

  'Cooled me down. I might even let that phoney bastard Hilarion live after all. Let's go and rejoin the party.'

  'Fine. Oh. Before we do that I've one small bit of news myself.'

  'What's that?'

  'Quintus Cominius is sending an investigator of his own. His nephew, as a matter of fact. Chap called Gaius Aternius.'

  I stared at him. Hell. Hell's bloody teeth.

  7.

  We got back about two hours later, in time for a late lunch. Nepos had pressed us to stay, and his side of the table would've been safe enough, but Mother would've found ways and means of getting me to eat the whacky stuff, and with Phormio and Hilarion both slugging for the home team I wasn't risking food poisoning for no one. We had fennel omelette, rissoles and braised chickpeas. Marilla bolted hers and dashed off to do whatever the hell fourteen-year-old kids find so fascinating, leaving us to our wine (me) and fresh-squeezed cellar-cooled grape juice (Perilla).

  'So, Marcus,' Perilla said. 'What was Licinius Nepos saying?'

  I told her. 'I owe you an apology, lady. Papatius is the murderer after all.'

  'Unless Tanaquil and Ramutha are lying about seeing him pass their house that morning.'

  'Why should they lie? Sure, they might invent a juicy bit of scandal just for the fun of repeating it, but they've got no down on Papatius. Quite the reverse.'

  'We've only got their word for it that Navius and Thupeltha were lovers. Nepos didn't confirm that, did he?'

  'No. But it hangs together, especially looking back to what Mamilius told me. Or didn't tell me, rather. Navius was involved with someone. If it wasn't Vesia then Thupeltha's a fair bet, especially if the lady's that way inclined.'

  Perilla sighed. 'Corvinus, don't exaggerate. We know of one lover and even he is questionable. Also, don't forget what I said about older women.'

  'Yeah. But the butcher still died.'

  'Possibly by accident. Keep to the facts. When it comes down to it your only reasons for choosing Papatius derive from gossip passed on by two biased, spiteful and thoroughly unpleasant old women.'