And she was off, without a backward glance. I went after her, but she didn’t slow her pace or turn her head until we reached the entrance lobby, and even then she checked only long enough to open the door.
There was a slave wheeling a barrowload of manure across the yard.
‘Onesimus!’
He stopped and tugged his forelock. ‘Yes, madam?’
‘Take Valerius Corvinus here to the master straight away, please. He’s in the top field. A pleasure to have met you, Valerius Corvinus. I hope Marcus can help you more than I can.’
She stepped back to let me past, her hand on the door to close it behind me. I turned and rested my own hand on the door-jamb.
‘Incidentally,’ I said. ‘You don’t happen to know a guy by the name of Castor, do you? Hostilius’s –’
– but that was as far as I got before I had to whip my hand away and the door was closed quickly and firmly on a pair of very frightened eyes.
I stared at the woodwork, brain racing. Shit!
Fimus - Marcus Maecilius - was a big guy, huge limbed and shaggy as a bear, in heavy countryman’s boots and a rough, homespun tunic that looked like it’d started out in life as a sack for turnips and might be that again some day. He and his slaves - and a kid of about ten who was his spitting image in miniature - were topping beets and throwing them into a wagon. He looked up as I trudged across the remainder of the crop towards him. Right: I’d forgotten about Gabba’s Fimus/Polyphemus gag, but the second name fitted him as well. His single eye glared at me through a mass of tangled black hair.
‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘Valerius Corvinus.’ I waved my thanks to the yard-slave who’d brought me and was turning to go back. ‘Looking into –’
‘Lucius Hostilius’s death. I know. What’s it to do with me?’
Not exactly brimming over with cheerful welcome and bonhomie, this guy. Ah, well. ‘I, uh, was wondering if you could help me out over a couple of things,’ I said.
The stare rested a moment longer. Then he spat to one side, shoved his beet-topping knife into his belt and lumbered over. Close to, he had the same bucolic smell as his courtyard: score another one for the Castrimoenian nicknamers. ‘Carry on, lads,’ he growled over his shoulder to the slaves. ‘This won’t take long.’
I nodded towards the kid. ‘Your grandchild?’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ Then - maybe because he thought he was overdoing the unfriendly bit - ‘He belonged to my only son and daughter-in-law. They died of a fever eight years ago come August.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘These things happen. So what d’you want?’
‘I understand you had a run-in with Hostilius the afternoon of the day before he died,’ I said, keeping my voice as unthreatening as possible: Fimus Maecilius had as much chance of winning the All-Comers’ Friendliness Stakes as he did the Mr Charisma title or the Perfumiers’ Customer of the Year award, and his hand was resting casually on the knife hilt.
‘That’s right.’
I waited. Nothing more. ‘Uh...care to tell me what it was about?’ I said.
‘He accused me of keeping back a second will that Dad was supposed to’ve made in favour of that poncy brother of mine.’
‘And did you?’
That got me a long, hard stare. Finally, he said: ‘No. I didn’t.’ He turned away, cleared his throat and spat to one side. ‘Now if that’s all you wanted to know I’ve got work to do.’
‘So why did Hostilius think you had?’ I said.
He turned back, slowly. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Dad had no more time for that chancer than I have, never did. He wouldn’t’ve left him a penny if he hadn’t been kin. And what Lucius Hostilius might’ve thought was his own business. I don’t bear the man a grudge, mind, least of all now he’s dead, but he’d some queer ideas these last few months, did Hostilius. He wasn’t responsible for half what he said. You had to make allowances.’
‘So where do you think your brother got the idea from?’ I said.
‘Of Dad making the will? Or of me hiding it?’
‘Either. Both.’
He spat again. ‘Out of his own head, probably. Bucca was always full of piss and wind. Or it could’ve been that fancy lawyer of his over in Bovillae put him up to it. That Novius, I wouldn’t trust him to tell me the time of day.’
‘What about your brother’s offer? To split the cash with you and give you a third of what he got for his half of the property?’
I thought I’d gone too far. His head went down like a bull’s and his shoulders hunched. ‘Look, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘This is my land, all of it, every inch, and it stays that way. I’ve farmed it all my life, my father farmed it all his, so did his father and his grandfather, right the way back to when you fucking Romans were still sitting on your fucking seven hills minding their own fucking business. And when I go young Aulus over there’ - he nodded towards his grandson - ‘will farm it after me. Bucca can take his offer and stuff it. That answer you?’
‘Yeah,’ I said quietly. ‘Yeah, it’ll do.’ I’d been afraid he’d say that because it made things really, really nasty, but, well, that was life. You had to take it as it was. ‘Thanks for your help, pal. Sorry to’ve troubled you. Much obliged.’
He didn’t answer. I could feel his single eye boring into my back all the way across the field to the road.
The news was waiting for me when I got back home. A messenger had arrived from Libanius to say that a hunter and his dog had found a woman’s body in the woods near Caba, and if I was in before lunch would I ride up there asap.
Hell!
19
It wasn’t an easy place to find, even with Libanius’s detailed instructions: two or three hundred yards up a heavily-wooded cart track off the main drag about a mile before the village, with no other houses or farms anywhere in sight. The back of beyond, in other words.
Libanius and Hyperion were waiting for me, together with a couple of the town’s public slaves and a mule-cart plus - presumably - the guy who’d found her, minus his dog.
‘We’ve only just got here ourselves, Corvinus, no more than ten minutes ago.’ Libanius was looking green. Shit: however the kid had died, it must’ve been nasty. ‘She’s over there, by the rock wall. Whoever killed her covered the body with brushwood, but the dog...well.’ He stopped. ‘Of course, it might have nothing to do with the Hostilius business at all, but contrary to current showing we don’t actually have all that many murders around here, so I thought you’d like to know.’
I was feeling sick, and depressed as hell; had been since I’d got the news. ‘Sure it’s connected,’ I said. ‘It has to be. Paulina was his ward.’
‘Paulina?’ Libanius was looking puzzled. ‘Why on earth should it be Paulina?’
I stared at him like he’d grown an extra head. ‘You mean it isn’t?’
‘Certainly not! I’ve known the girl for years! Besides, I distinctly told the messenger to say it was a woman’s body. She must’ve been forty-five if she was a day, and I’ve never seen her before in my life.’
Shit. I turned to Hyperion. ‘Uh...how did she die?’
‘Strangled with her own necklace. Do you want to see, Corvinus?’
‘Yeah.’ My brain still felt numb. ‘Yeah, sure.’
‘I’ll just wait here, if you don’t mind,’ Libanius said faintly.
We went over to view the corpse. Uh-huh. I could see Libanius’s point: not pretty, not pretty at all. ‘How long has she been dead?’ I said, looking down at her. Forty-five was probably about right; maybe a little older, but it was difficult to tell under the circumstances. Tall for a woman, chunkily built. ‘Any idea?’
‘More than a day. Probably not longer than three.’
‘What was she doing out here?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He smiled. ‘That’s your department, Corvinus, not mine.’
Fair enough. ‘Anything else you can tell me, pal?’
‘Not a lot. She wa
sn’t a gentlewoman, as you can tell from her clothes’ - she was wearing a rough ankle-length tunic, belted at the waist with a knotted rope, and cheap sandals of undressed hide - ‘but more importantly from the state of her hands.’ He held one up, back, then palm. ‘You see? Short chipped nails, trimmed with a knife, not scissors. Rough skin. She’s been used to manual work. Her teeth aren’t bad, though, and there’s no obvious slave mark, so probably free born. No jewellery, apart from the necklace, and that’s just a cord with an evil-eye stone.’
‘You’ve no idea who she was?’
‘No. Nor had the man who found her - you can ask him for yourself - and he’s local, so she probably isn’t from Caba or anywhere around here.’
Uh-huh. Like the guy who’d attacked Hostilius, in other words. And the guy who’d knifed Acceius. Interesting. Still, there were differences. I hadn’t seen the other corpse, of course, but from what the undertaker Trophius had said that guy had been a good step down from this lady, socially. She may not have been a gentlewoman, sure, but she was no tramp: she hadn’t been starving, and she’d kept herself in reasonable trim. Also, although her clothes were cheap they were no worse than you’d see on, say, a vegetable-seller in the market.
‘I’ll be taking her home with me, if Libanius doesn’t mind, for Clarus to have a closer look at.’ Hyperion dropped the woman’s hand and stood up. ‘He has sharper eyes than I have, and to be frank a sharper mind for extrapolating detail. External details, at any rate.’
I swallowed. Jupiter! Yeah, well, like I say, doctors are a different species, but the matter-of-fact way Hyperion talked about the dead woman, like she was some sort of parcel to be carted back and unwrapped, gave me a cold feeling in my stomach. And I’d bet that Clarus would be the same as his dad. ‘You’re not going to...ah...open her up, then? Like Cosmus?’
‘Good gracious, no!’ Hyperion smiled again. ‘Much though I’d like to on general principles I doubt if Libanius would allow the law to be stretched that far. Besides, it’s obvious how she died.’ He indicated the bulging eyes, protruding tongue and purple face, plus the necklace-cord twisted tightly round the throat, as if they were botanical specimens. I swallowed again. ‘He must’ve been strong, whoever did it, though. She was quite a powerful woman.’
‘Yeah.’ I turned away and walked over to the guy without the dog. ‘Hi, friend.’
He nodded cautiously. ‘Afternoon, sir.’
‘Anything you can tell me at all?’
‘Not a lot, that you don’t know already.’ He had the slow, Latin burr in spades. ‘I was hunting, just after sunrise. Blackie - that’s the dog - she started rooting around over there and barking. I went to look and there she was.’
‘Covered up?’
‘Yes, sir. Dead branches, some green stuff. Just where she is now. I went back home - I’ve a farm just this side of Caba, sir - and the wife says get the hell down to the authorities in Castrimoenium, tell them. So I did.’
‘You’re sure she’s not local?’
‘She’s not from Caba or anywhere five miles around, that I’ll swear, and I’m not mistaken, even though it’s difficult to –’ He stopped. ‘No, sir, she isn’t local. Certainly not.’
‘So what could she’ve been doing here?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea, sir. Nothing around here, you can see for yourself. Mine’s the closest farm, and that’s on its own and half a mile off. It’s rough country, this bit, only good for hunting.’
‘There’s a cart track, though. Where does that lead?’
‘Nowhere. Leastways, it stops a few hundred yards further on. Charcoal burners use it, but not all that often.’
‘So nobody would be up this way? In the normal course of events?’
‘Oh, you’d get passing traffic on the main road, sure, plenty of that, what with the quarry and all.’ Yeah; I remembered the Caba quarry. So that was still a going concern? ‘Not up here, though.’
‘Right. Thanks, pal.’
‘You’re welcome.’
I turned back to Libanius, who was taking the air well away from where the corpse was lying.
‘Finished, Corvinus?’ he said.
‘Yeah. Nothing more I can do,’ I said.
‘Good.’ Obvious relief; I grinned to myself. He signalled to the slaves. ‘You can load her onto the cart now, boys.’
As the lads went over - I noticed that one of them had a stretcher and a blanket - I moved back across to Hyperion and took his arm. ‘Quick word, pal?’ I said. ‘Before I go?’
‘Certainly.’
‘It’s...ah...nothing to do with the body. Or the case. I was just thinking we’d best, uh, think about fixing things up between Clarus and Marilla. If you’re agreeable, that is.’
Hyperion smiled. ‘Oh, I’m agreeable, Valerius Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Very much so. And I can certainly answer for Clarus.’
He held out his hand, and we shook. Well, that was that arranged, anyway. I collected my mare from where I’d parked her tied to a tree and rode back to Castrimoenium. Maybe under the circumstances a half jug in Pontius’s wouldn’t go amiss.
I’d left the mare fraternising with a couple of her cronies at the town square watering trough and was heading towards the wineshop’s veranda when I saw Meton. He was standing on the corner of one of the side streets, dressed to the nines in a snazzy blue tunic, and he was talking to a woman. Not just any woman either: mid twenties max, and with a face and figure that would’ve made Praxiteles bite his chisel.
The woman laughed. So did Meton...
I gaped. Meton never laughed, never-fucking-ever. Sneered, yeah; Meton could do sneer with the best of them, it was his natural default expression. The bugger could even chuckle, if something happened to tickle his warped, sadistic sense of humour. But laugh? And with a woman? A woman that would’ve knocked the eyes out of a septuagenarian priest at fifty yards?
Forget the wine; we’d got serious problems here. And I’d caught the bastard slap bang in flagrante. I changed direction, fast.
I’d got to within ten yards, just close enough to hear her say: ‘Make it tomorrow, then,’ and Meton to answer: ‘Yeah, right.’ Then she turned and walked off up the street.
‘Oh, hi, Corvinus.’ Meton did a double take when he saw me coming and gave me his best scowl. ‘Didn’t see you there.’
‘Yeah, I’d sort of assumed that, pal,’ I said. ‘Who the hell was that?’
‘Her name’s Renia.’
‘That so, now?’ I took another glance at the retreating figure. Gods! Make that an octogenarian priest at sixty yards. ‘What were you talking about?’
‘This an’ that.’
‘Meton...’
‘’s my own business, innit?’ He inserted a finger in his ear, screwed out a bit of wax and flicked it away. Then he leered. ‘Good looker, though, isn’t she?’
‘Meton, you bastard...’
‘’s okay. She’s married.’
‘She is what?’
‘Yeah. Husband’s a locksmith.’ He sniggered. ‘Not a very good locksmith, from what I hear.’
Oh, gods! This was the stuff of nightmare. And Meton? To my certain knowledge the closest that single-minded bugger ever got to having designs on a woman was lusting after her recipe books. ‘Ah...listen, pal,’ I said. ‘I’m being serious here. Do you have any - any - idea what the penalty is for a slave who...devalues a freeborn wife?’
‘Uh-uh.’ Another leer. ‘Might be worth it, though, in Renia’s case.’
I gaped afresh.
‘Joke, Corvinus. ’s all under control, nothing to worry about. Just forget it, okay?’ He removed another flake of wax. ‘Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better things to do at present than stand an’ chat.’
He ambled off.
I shook my head to clear it. Forget about problems; what we’d got here was a full-blown domestic crisis in spades. Home, and Perilla. Fast.
I made it as far as the lobby. There was a woman there, talking to Marcia’s
door-slave. She turned as I came in.
‘Valerius Corvinus, sir?’ she said. Small, middle-aged and mousy, and obviously nervous as hell.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’
‘I’m Tyche, sir. The mistress Paulina’s maid. She wants to speak to you, sir.’
I stared at her. ‘What?’
She ducked her head. ‘The mistress Paulina sent me to say she wants to speak to you, sir. Straight away, if you can manage it.’
Holy gods! ‘You know where she is?’
‘’Course, sir. She’s at my cousin’s, that’s Mika, sir, she’s a freedwoman, lives above the baker’s near the shrine of Latinus. I...well, I arranged it, sir, when the mistress said she wanted somewhere to go.’ She hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t of come, sir, only the mistress insisted. Don’t you believe her, Valerius Corvinus, when you do see her. She don’t know what she’s saying.’
‘Yeah? And what’s that?’
Tyche swallowed. ‘That she did it, sir. Killed the master.’
Shit!
20
Paulina was a wisp of a girl, mid teens, with a long face, big teeth and mousy hair like her maid’s; no looker, certainly, and from the self-effacing way she was sitting on the chair opposite me in what was obviously Mika’s and her husband’s bedroom she was probably more conscious of it than I was. She’d a nice voice, though: low-pitched, quiet and serious.
‘I didn’t actually kill him myself, Valerius Corvinus,’ she said. ‘That was Cosmus, I know, because I saw him come out of Uncle Lucius’s rooms that morning. Not that I knew at the time what he was doing there, although -’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘You saw him? You’re sure?’
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. At about an hour after dawn. I’ve been...getting up very early these last few months.’ She lowered her head, and unaccountably blushed. I noticed that Tyche, who’d come in uninvited and was sitting on a stool by the door, shot her a quick glance.
Illegally Dead (Marcus Corvinus Book 12) Page 14
