Jail Bait (30 page)

With a violent shove, a terracotta pot filled with white, scented lilies went flying off the balustrade, to smash into a thousand smithereens. By admitting his crimes, actually even stressing his guilt (‘The evidence is overwhelming, is it not?’), Tarraco had manipulated her into believing him innocent, and now, thanks to her, he was free. Free. To keep his head down until the dust had settled. To slither back when the furore died down and step up his filthy campaign.

Croesus, he was going to get away with it, too.

Claudia’s hands raked her hair. With any number of caves and hidey-holes dotted round these wild, Etruscan hills, he could be anywhere. Him and his cronies, biding their time—and how long before the authorities stopped searching?
If, indeed, they began.
Claudia sent another pot crashing to its doom. As long as the gang remained at large, the townspeople would be too terrified to testify against them for fear of retribution, which begged the question, on what evidence did this conspiracy exist? The hunch of a young investigator whose ambitions were widely recognized? Backed up by a woman whose double-bedded accommodation he was paying for? A woman, moreover, connected to a potential treasonable theft?

Goddammit, were Tarraco to spend a week holed up in those hills, he’d be lucky.

Well. Claudia swiped the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. All the fragrant lilies in the world lying shattered on that path won’t solve the problem, but maybe—just maybe—there was another way to fell this mighty oak. It all hung on the courage of one old olive grower, who might or might not be being poisoned…

In the Great Hall, where the air was artificially cool, the hard-eyed, ravaged harpy for whom Claudia’s nickname of Stonyface seemed never more appropriate came bearing down on her. But not in greeting, the way she had the night she’d been conferring with Kamar behind the statue. Lips pinched, eyes narrowed, Stonyface thundered down the stepped marble floor, her snub nose set to the ground and seemingly oblivious to the sparkling watercourse, the guffaws of laughter from the dining hall, and also, it seemed, to pedestrians.

‘Out of my way, you stupid—’ preoccupied features suddenly leaped back into focus ‘—Oh.’ The hand which was about to barge Claudia aside froze in mid-air and the concrete jaw forced itself into some semblance of a smile. ‘I thought you were a slave girl.’

Claudia’s reciprocal smile told Granitepuss how she felt about that.

‘Only I imagined everyone was at dinner,’ the woman snapped in what presumably passed for an apology, before brushing past and slamming the door in her wake. But not before Claudia had caught the full force of the stewed walnut liquor which had freshly dyed out her grey.

Dear me, can’t she see, at her age, that less is more? If she fell into that watercourse right now, all you’d see would be her feet, the sheer weight of cosmetics would keep her under! No, no; subtlety’s the key in middle age. The hand that paints on those eyebrows should be light, and playing down her snub nose would make her infinitely more winsome than the girlishness she insisted on trying to achieve. Yet such was the haughtiness surrounding this old bag, it suggested not so much a blindspot as hardline inflexibility. In fact, so preoccupied was Claudia with wondering what turned perfectly attractive women into dogs that she almost failed to note the significance of what Lavinia was doing as she flung wide the door—

‘NO!’ she cried. ‘For gods’ sake, Lavinia, no!’

The little sparrow of a woman lay propped up on her daybed, her fleece of white hair cascading over the strawberry damask bolster, her wig sitting in her lap like a docile, curly lapdog. One wrinkled hand held a red medicinal phial, the other held the bottle’s clear glass stopper.

Claudia flew across the room. ‘Don’t drink that!’

‘Tch.’ The old woman raised the phial to her lips. ‘You can’t win in this place,’ she said, although there was no punch in her voice and those mischievous eyes twinkled like sapphires in the sun. ‘One minute they tell you to finish off your medicine, the next they try and stop you. Well—’ half a second before Claudia reached the wheeled couch, she tipped the contents down her throat ‘—Lavinia has a mind of her own.’

Now what? Oil of lavender burned in a brazier and beside a board set out for Twelve Lines, a silver bowl sat heaped with candied fruits. Much to the delight of a shiny black beetle. A roll of thunder crashed overhead, rattling the counters.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Claudia said.

Lavinia peered down the end of her nose. ‘You didn’t come just to intervene, then?’ If anything, the eyes were brighter than ever.

With slow deliberation, Claudia moved one of the
onyx soldiers to a different square on the chequerboard. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said, ‘yes.’

As the storm rumbled round the cupola that was Plasimene, she perched on the edge of Lavinia’s couch and gave the old woman a summary of Tarraco and the racket he was working. The figure on the couch didn’t stir, except to fold her arms across her narrow chest. It won’t take long, Claudia calculated. It won’t take long for the medicine to kick in, and then I’ve lost Lavinia until tomorrow. We must move fast.

But for two long minutes after she’d finished speaking, Lavinia remained in silence, and Claudia wriggled as a rivulet of sweat drizzled down her backbone. Two more trickles followed it before the sparrow finally spoke.

‘That’s all very interesting,’ Lavinia said. ‘But I don’t see where I fit in.’

‘Through
this
.’
Claudia picked up the red glass phial and thought, here goes. We arrive at the moment of truth. ‘With your testimony and the contents of this little bottle as evidence, we can build a case against Kamar and—’ she drew a deep breath ‘—your son.’

‘My son?’

‘All we need is one stepping stone, just one, and from there the investigation will avalanche.’ Tarraco’s associates would squeal like rats in a trap, he’d be back in that cell before the end of the month.

‘I’m sure it would,’ Lavinia said dryly, and a wizened claw lashed out to move an onyx soldier from the sidelines on the chequerboard. Instantly the draw was transformed to an out-and-out rout. ‘But I repeat. I don’t see what this has to do with me.’

‘Don’t you.’ It was not a question—the old woman
knew full well. One glance at the chequerboard showed that. Claudia thought of the medicine Lavinia had just swallowed, and knew time was running out. Especially for playing convoluted mind games. Nevertheless— ‘So there was no ulterior motive behind your repeating all that gossip?’ And in such technicolour detail, too.

‘Motive?’

All right. Let’s play this little charade, if that’s what makes you happy. ‘So much scandal.’ Claudia shifted position on the couch and crossed one leg over the other. ‘Adultery, crooked business deals, character assassinations—Atlantis is dripping from the gutterspouts with social sabotage and political intrigue, yet you choose to tell me stories about people who have died in seemingly natural circumstances.’

Wrinkled eyelids closed, and for one heart-stopping second, Claudia thought the draught had kicked in, but no. Lavinia let out a loud sigh and laced her fingers together. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I did set you off on a paperchase, and I’m jolly glad I did. What else could an old cripple do?’

Of course, Claudia told herself, she hadn’t
really
doubted the paralysis. Or suspected the old bird of fabricating an attempt on her life in order to gain a bit of attention. Had she?

‘Until you showed up,’ Lavinia was saying, ‘there was no one in whom I dared confide my suspicions—especially not that sourpuss physician. Half of them were his patients.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘It was the boy, you see,’ she said quietly, ‘the orphan who died in the hunting accident, and whose cousin so fortuitously inherited. Things like that must not happen again.’
Then
she cleared her throat, and when she spoke, there was a distinct edge to her tone. ‘But I didn’t expect you to drag my son into this. Anyone would think you’re suggesting he was part of the conspiracy, trying to bump off his old mother to get his hands ort her olive grove.’

For Claudia, patience was more a sideline than a strong point, but she was prepared to invest it in this and since Lavinia’s wits hadn’t dimmed with the medicine, Claudia knew that to rush it would not be the answer. She would need to be reeled in carefully, especially when the foundations of her whole life were about to wobble. Were Ruth or Lalo in on it, too? The ugly sisters? Claudia sniffed at the phial and was about to launch into a complicated dissertation on herbal poisons, when she realized the contents were far from medicinal. No wonder Lavinia hadn’t fallen asleep.

Dammit, the harpy was cackling. ‘Don’t tell Fab and Sab,’ she said. ‘It’s the only way I can sneak wine past them these days.’

So much for hard evidence. Shit!

‘You’re wrong, you know,’ Lavinia said, pulling on her wig, ‘about my son. He means his old mother no harm.’

‘You’re biased—’

‘Lavinia can prove it.’ Carefully she tucked her white frizz under the pile of immaculate curls. ‘Open that box, the one with the elephant carved on the top. That’s the one. Now take out the blue phial and sniff it. You can even,’ she let out an evil chuckle, ‘drink it, if you like.’ Medicinal smells exploded into Claudia’s airways, but one stood out clear above the rest. She sniffed again to make sure—but yes. Loud and clear came out balsam, gentian, peppermint and—goddammit…

‘Hemlock?’ In the distant recess of her mind she heard two fat women chanting.

‘She wouldn’t take her medicine, you know.’
‘Wouldn’t. Not a drop.’
Holy Mother of Mars, had Lavinia drunk it, she’d be dead already.

‘I’m fully aware of what it is,’ Lavinia said slowly. ‘Kamar brings me a gallon of the frightful mixture every single morning, but,’ she pierced Claudia with her scimitar blue eyes, ‘even if I downed the lot, it wouldn’t kill me. Just make me very woozy.’ The wizened claw now wrapped itself round Claudia’s wrist and gave it a motherly shake. ‘You’re young,’ she said, ‘and Lavinia’s not just old, she’s a country woman, who happens to know more than a thing or two about hemlock. Have you, for instance, ever seen me retching? Vomiting? Complaining of stomach cramps?’

‘No-o,’ Claudia said, trying to hide the gloat in her voice. ‘But I’ve witnessed first hand some of the other side effects. Take those occasions when you’ve been rendered unable to speak, for instance. How do you account for those, eh?’

That first night on the sun porch, when Lavinia had gone all stiff, eyes bulging, throat too tight to speak…if that wasn’t classic hemlock poisoning, what was? Looking back, Claudia realized Lavinia hadn’t been concerned with someone moving in the shadows. She’d been in the early throes of an attack. Dammit, the same thing happened on the grandstand during the run-up to the foot race. No more, though! Lavinia was safe from now on. No more hemlock, no more poison, goodbye Fab and Sab. They had to be in on it, Claudia thought. But then again, those two were so bound up with themselves, maybe not. Lavinia’s son probably used them as cover.

‘And,’ she pressed relentlessly, ‘have you ever asked yourself why Kamar should prescribe hemlock in the first place?’

‘Mercy, child, I can see you’re not going to let me go without a fight.’ The old woman laughed. ‘Lavinia’s going to have to own up.’

‘Own up?’ Claudia’s speculations reeled themselves back with a jolt.

‘Claudia, the reason Kamar brings me hemlock every day is because I’m dying.’

A burning pain shot through Claudia’s gut.

‘Tch, stop that.’ The old woman sliced the air with her hand to brook any sympathy and clucked her tongue again. ‘In very small doses, hemlock can relieve pain, you know. Acts as a kind of anaesthetic. But time is precious to me, you can understand that, I know you can. The same as you can appreciate that Lavinia doesn’t want to spend her last days—yes, child, we’re talking days—I don’t want to lose these precious moments in a woozy haze. I want to see and taste and touch everything around me to the very end. That’s why my son mortgaged the grove to the hilt. To send me here for a holiday. That ship sinking off Alexandria fetched him to his senses and for the first time in her life, Lavinia’s confident he’ll settle with our little patch of olives and find contentment there.’

Claudia could not speak. There was a trapdoor across her throat and a mountain in her lungs. No, not a mountain. A volcano. Desperate to erupt.

‘Lavinia—’

‘That,’ the old woman said purposefully, ‘is why I won’t drink that wretched medicine. Since they found that tumour inside me, large as a fist and hard as lead, well…since then, I put myself into a trance whenever I feel the pain coming on. It’s a trick I picked up nearly fifty years ago, and it’s served me well ever since. Now, stop that grizzling, girl, I’m not dead yet. There’ll be time enough for sorrow, then, if that’s what takes your fancy.’

Claudia gulped back her sobs. Lavinia was right. If her estimation of the timescale was correct, better she lapped up every moment.

‘H-how long have you known?’ she asked. A quernstone seemed to have settled in her stomach.

‘Long enough for the pain to have aged me ten years,’ Lavinia replied. ‘But if I don’t make my sixty-fifth birthday, so what? Can you think of a more idyllic way to end my days, and if I have no regrets,’ she reached for another wine-filled phial, ‘neither should you.’ She gulped the contents down in one go. ‘But like I said, Lavinia’s not dead yet. In fact, she’s relishing her role in rooting out these murders. So then.’ She smacked her wrinkled lips. ‘Without any hard evidence from me, where does that leave the investigation?’