Solid Citizens (8 page)

Clarus was helping himself to the haricot bean purée. ‘I’d heard about that,’ he said. ‘It was a real scandal at the time. Rumour was that Manlius had shifted a lot of the bales elsewhere beforehand, sold them off privately, and started the fire himself to cover things up.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That much I got at the wine shop. Mind you, that’s par for the course. A warehouse fire’s a conspiracy-theory godsend to your wine-shop punter, particularly when a public figure’s involved. Me, I’d’ve been surprised if there hadn’t been rumours.’

‘Wouldn’t something like that be noticed?’ Perilla said.

‘Oh, no.’ Marilla shelled a quail’s egg and dipped it in the fish sauce. ‘Or at least it probably wouldn’t. Once the shearing was over there’d be no need for anyone to go into the place, would there? Not until the fleeces were sold, anyway. And scams like that go on all the time.’

‘How interesting. Do they really, dear?’ Perilla said quietly. She had her prim look on. ‘And how would you know, now?’

Uh-oh.

‘Corvinus?’ Marilla grinned at me. ‘I am right, aren’t I? They do.’

Uh-oh was right: straight in with both feet. A lovely girl in many ways, our adopted daughter, but sometimes she was as sen-sitive to the nuances as a brick. I glanced sideways at Perilla. Her lips were set in a disapproving line: it was OK for me to play the sleuth, but the lady had her standards where Marilla was concerned. We might be in for a few squalls here. Time for a bit of tact. ‘Yeah, well, Princess,’ I said. ‘Maybe so. But so far it’s just that – no more than a rumour. Oh, sure, Manlius and his pal Canidius might well be as bent as a couple of tin sesterces, in which case it may be relevant, but I’m suspending judgement at present.’

‘I’d take the whole thing with a pinch of salt myself, Corvinus,’ Clarus said. ‘From what I’ve heard, those two may have an eye out for the main chance, but they’re no worse than your average local politician, and even if they were it doesn’t make them potential murderers, does it? Besides—’

There was a loud crash just outside the dining-room door.

‘What the fuck?’ I said.

‘
Marcus!
’ Perilla snapped.

‘Yeah, well …’

Bathyllus came in holding a silver tray; just the tray itself, with nothing on it. He was closely followed by Lupercus, and neither of them, to use a gross understatement, looked a happy bunny. No eye contact between them, for a start.

Bugger. This did
not
look good. The family dinner was turning into a major disaster.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Lupercus said stiffly to Clarus. ‘There’s been an accident with the wine. No real damage done though, and I’ll see that the mess is cleared up immediately.’

‘Yes, OK, Lupercus,’ Clarus said. ‘No problem. These things happen. Go ahead.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He turned.

Accident, nothing: I hadn’t seen our respective major-domos put in a simultaneous appearance since we’d got here. And going by the body language blood was within an ace of being spilled on both sides.

‘Hang on a minute, Lupercus,’ I said. ‘OK, Bathyllus, your turn. Let’s have your version of the story. In detail, and unexpurgated this time, please.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, sir.’ Innocence radiating from every pore, combined with overtones of politely understated outrage: a chief Vestal nailed for shoplifting couldn’t’ve done it better. Still, I wasn’t having any of that, not even from Bathyllus. When someone says
I don’t know what you mean
, the chances are that they know damned well, and the business smells as high as an eight-day-old sprat.

‘Think about it, sunshine,’ I said. ‘Weigh up all the semantic possibilities. Meanwhile, I’ll count to five, and if you still haven’t given me a straight answer you’ll be mucking out the latrines with a very small sponge. Clear? One.’

‘Lupercus has already told you, sir. It was a simple accident.’

‘Two.’

‘He was carrying the tray of wine cups and the jug and he tripped.’

‘Three, four, five.’

‘Sir, that is not fair! You cheated!’

‘Bugger that. Just take a deep breath, think of the latrines and tell me the truth. Now. Last chance.’

Bathyllus fizzed for a bit. Finally, he held up the tray he was carrying.

‘There’s a thumbprint on this, sir,’ he said. ‘A
greasy
thumbprint.’

‘
What?
’

‘It’s perfectly distinct. Look for yourself.’ He thrust the tray under my nose. ‘I’ve told him several times about washing his hands before he touches the silver, but he just won’t listen. It’s appalling! Besides, serving the wine is my job. It has to be done properly.’

I stared at him. He was almost gabbling, which was about as likely from Bathyllus as seeing him do a tap dance round the dining room wearing a tutu and clogs.

‘Is that all?’ I said. ‘This is all about a fucking
thumbprint
?’

‘But, sir!’

Jupiter in bloody spangles! ‘Right, little guy,’ I said. ‘A word, please. Outside. Now.’

He gave me a look, then tucked the tray under his arm and marched out into the corridor. I got up and followed.

‘Now,’ I said quietly when I’d got him alone. ‘You remember what I said when we arrived? About give and take while we’re here?’

‘Yes, sir, I remember very well.’

‘So quote me. Verbatim.’

‘You said, “We are not at home to Mr Refuse to Compromise”, sir.’ A sniff. ‘Whatever that meant.’

‘Correct. And never mind the qualification; you get the general gist, don’t you?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Listen, pal, we’ve all got to learn to share, OK? It’ll be the Winter Festival in a few days, and that’s no time for throwing tantrums, is it?’ Still silence. ‘Now you go back in there and apologise to Lupercus, or you go straight home on the next available cart. Got it?’

‘But …’

‘Ah-ah. I mean it. No buts. Just do as you’re told. Repeat after me: “Lupercus, I am very sorry …”’

‘Sir!’

‘Come on, Bathyllus. You can do it if you try. “Lupercus, I am very sorry …”’

He clenched his teeth. ‘Lupercus’m’ver’sorry …’

‘“For the way I behaved …”’

‘F’r’way I b’haved.’

‘“And it won’t happen again.”’

‘’N’ it won’t h’ppn ’gain.’

I patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good. Well done. That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Now in you come.’

I went back in, with Bathyllus trailing behind.

‘Bathyllus has something to say to you, Lupercus,’ I said, lying down again. ‘Go ahead, sunshine. In your own time.’

Bathyllus drew himself up to his full five feet four. ‘Lupercus,’ he said, ‘I apologise for having tried to take the wine tray from you before you brought it in, even if its filthy condition was totally obvious to anyone not completely devoid of—’

‘Bathyllus!’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘I am doing what you asked. Apologising.’ He turned back to Lupercus. ‘Please accept my assurances that the incident will not be repeated. Always, that is, given that in future you—’

Gods! ‘
Bathyllus!
Just cut it out, OK?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course. That is all I have to say at present, Lupercus. Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, madam.’ He left, with huge dignity.

Bugger.

‘You can go too, Lupercus,’ Clarus said. ‘Tidy up the mess, please, and bring us some more wine.’

‘Certainly, sir.’ Lupercus left. There was a long silence.

‘Oh dear,’ Perilla said faintly. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

Marilla giggled.

The lady put down the stuffed olive she’d been holding. ‘It’s not funny, Marilla,’ she said. ‘Not really. Bathyllus takes himself and his position very seriously. And he has very high standards.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Like I told him outside, he’s got to learn to share. This isn’t his house; he’s a guest, even if he is one below stairs. Lupercus is the major-domo here, and there’s an end of it. He’ll just have to accept that.’

‘Do you think he will?’ Perilla said.

‘Maybe not. But that’s his problem, unless he wants to be shipped back to Rome and spend the festival there. I told him that, too.’

‘You ever happen to notice the interesting thing about thumbprints, Corvinus?’ Clarus said. ‘Any fingerprints, really.’

‘What?’ I looked at him blankly. Shit, you expected non sequiturs like that from airheads like Priscus, but Clarus was the solid, no-nonsense, sensible type.

‘They’ve got sort of whorls, and every one’s just that little bit different.’

‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘So?’

‘So if someone picked something up, like a silver tray, like Lupercus did, and left a fingerprint on it, you’d be able to tell who’d done it. Picked up the tray, I mean.’ He was looking at the expression on my face. ‘Because if you got him to leave another fingerprint on something else and compared the two it’d prove that … I mean, you’d know …’ We were all staring at him now. He tailed off and cleared his throat in embarrassment. ‘Or there again maybe you wouldn’t. Forget it. It was just an idea.’

Gods! And I’d thought Priscus was bad! ‘You been talking to Alexis, pal?’ I said. Our clever-clever gardener had this theory that you could breed better peas by using a small brush to smear the pollen from one plant inside the flower of another one. The philosophy of it seemed fairly run-of-the-mill conventional, no problems there – something about each grain of pollen containing the element of bigness or hardiness or whatever embodied in the whole plant – but it wasn’t a comfortable thing to watch, especially when he explained it in terms of male and female.

Clarus shrugged. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘Like I said, it was only an idea. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. So. Back to the case. What comes next, Corvinus?’

‘Bread-and-butter procedural stuff,’ I said. ‘Just doing the rounds of the names on the list. I’ve got to see the guy who had the argument with Caesius a couple of days before he was killed. Quintus Roscius. Then there’s the elusive brother, the town drunk or whatever, and Publius Novius, our old pal the dodgy lawyer. Also, I’d like to know more about why exactly the nephew had his knife in. Like I say, there’re plenty of leads, and Caesius seems to have put a lot of people’s backs up.’

‘As long as you remember, dear, that we are on holiday,’ Perilla said. ‘And Priscus and your mother will expect to see something of you when they arrive. You can’t be away in Bovillae all day from breakfast to dinner. It isn’t polite. Particularly since it’s Priscus’s birthday while they’re here.’

‘Gods, Perilla, they only live up the hill from us in Rome! It’s not as if we don’t see them at other times.’

‘Not very often. Only for the occasional meal.’

‘That’s out of self-preservation, lady. It’s not so bad when they come to us. But when you go round to their place to eat you take your life in your hands.’

‘Nonsense, Marcus! Phormio’s an excellent chef.’ She paused. Perilla can be pretty dogmatic, sure, but at root she’s fair and honest. ‘In his way. By his own lights. Within certain parameters. It’s simply that he can be rather too … inventive at times.’

Inventive
. Well, that was one word for the bastard. It wouldn’t be the one that I’d choose, mind. Still, there was no point in starting an argument I knew I couldn’t win. ‘Oh, incidentally,’ I said, ‘I picked up something for the birthday boy when I was in town.’ I reached for my purse, took out the ivory plaque, and handed it over.

‘But that’s lovely!’ Perilla said, examining it. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘A little antiques shop near the market square. Owned by a guy named Baebius. Coincidentally, he was at daggers drawn with Caesius as well.’

‘We’ll give him that, then. I’d got him a copy of Varro’s
Antiquities
, but that’ll do for a Festival present. An antiques shop, you say? That’s quite unusual for a country town like Bovillae, isn’t it? Of course, there are a lot of incomers buying up the old estates, so I suppose there’s more of a market for luxuries these days.’

‘You know the Satellius one’s just been sold?’ Clarus said. ‘Trebbius was telling me.’ Trebbius was one of Clarus’s regular patients, a card-carrying hypochondriac and prime source of up-to-the-minute local gossip. ‘Some bigwig in the Roman civil service. At a pretty good price, too. Trebbius didn’t know the man’s name, but he’s converting the old farmhouse into a top-class villa. Three dining rooms, landscaped garden, the lot. The Satellius family’s been a fixture around here for generations, but the offer was just too tempting.’

‘I think it’s a shame,’ Marilla said. ‘All the little working farms are going. We’ll soon be just a holiday-home suburb of Rome.’

‘Well, that’s progress,’ I said. ‘You can’t …’

Lupercus and Bathyllus came in together, both carrying loaded wine trays.

‘Uh … what’s going on, pal?’ I said to Bathyllus. ‘Serving the wine needs two of you?’

He sniffed. ‘According to your instructions, sir, and in the interests of peace and harmony we have reached an amicable compromise. I will serve you and the mistress, while the … local staff will attend to the rest of the household. I trust that is acceptable?’

Oh, gods,
acceptable
? It just sounded plain bloody childish and silly to me. Nevertheless …

I looked at Clarus. He nodded wearily.

‘Yeah, OK, little guy,’ I said. ‘So long as it works, do it however you like. But just be careful, because you’re skating on very thin ice here. Lupercus, you all right with this?’

‘Yes, sir.’ I noticed that he didn’t look at Bathyllus. Still no love lost there, then. Well, we couldn’t have everything. And I’d settle for peace and harmony, even if it did mean getting childish and silly into the bargain.

‘Fine. Marvellous.’ I sighed. ‘We’ll give it a try, for what it’s worth. Now wheel in the main course, will you, before we starve to death. And no demarcation disputes over who pushes the bloody trolley.’

Bugger. Life between now and the end of the festival, when we could decently go home and get back to normal, was going to be fun, fun, fun. Not only that, but we’d still got the joys of Mother and Priscus to look forward to.

Thank goodness I’d got a case to work on. Say what you liked about a murder investigation: at least it was clean and straightforward. It’d get me out and about, anyway.