The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (14 page)

“I will see her,” he said brusquely.

He half-recognized her as she entered, and automatically he turned on all the charm that, as much as his oratory, his patriotism, or his legal wisdom, had won his way to the front when he had entered public life, a “knight”, a “new man” among the old patrician leaders of the Republic.

“Favilla!” He took both her hands in his. “It has been very long since we have met. It is good of you to come this long journey to see me.”

“No, it is good of
you
to be willing to see
me
,” she contradicted him. She was tall and slender, not exactly
beautiful, but with the unmistakable distinction of her aristocratic heritage. She must be about thirty – of an age with Tullia – but she was childless and she had kept her figure.

“I must be frank, Cicero,” she went on. “Tullia
was
my close friend all through our girlhood, as you may remember – though I saw her seldom after we were both married – and I did love her dearly. My heart aches for you; I wish there were something I could say that would comfort you. But I came here today to ask for help, not to offer it. I have a difficult problem before me, and I need your advice.”

Cicero played with the stylus with which he had been writing when Tiro had entered.

“Since you have come so far just to consult me,” he began doubtfully, “if I can help you at all I shall do so gladly. But of course you know that at present – perhaps permanently – I have withdrawn from both politics and the law. If your problem is anything of that nature, you should go to Caesar, not come to me.”

“It isn’t political,” said Favilla. “It’s a family matter, and with my husband away – you know about him, I suppose?”

Cicero nodded.

“I have no idea how soon it will be safe for him to come home, even though he never held a prominent post in Pompey’s army, either in Africa or in Spain. While he’s gone, everything – his home, his estate, even his honour and good standing – all are in my charge; I represent him and must safeguard his interests. And now –”

“Now something endangers them?”

“In a way. A month ago his old aunt, who lived with us, died – died suddenly. Aufidia – you may recall her. She wasn’t really his aunt, but his uncle’s widow; but when her husband died she had no living relative left, so naturally Gnaeus took her in with us. She wasn’t much of a burden; sometimes we hardly realized she was there. In late years she
had grown very heavy, and she seldom left her own rooms, and practically never left the house. We aren’t rich, you know – we have lost most of our fortune during the disturbances of the past ten years, like so many others – but we could always give Aufidia a home, and plenty to eat, and a servant to wait on her. I tried to keep her from feeling neglected; I visited her at least once a day, and I think she was fond of us both.”

“She had no property of her own?”

“That’s what I’m coming to. Unfortunately – perhaps you remember her husband, Titus Manlius Ordo? He loved good living, and he always lived beyond his means. By the time he died, he had nothing left; his wife’s dowry had gone with the rest – there was nothing for her to recover. Even their slaves had to be sold for his debts.”

“Then Aufidia came to you penniless? Poor old thing – I remember her when I was a very young man, and when she was a striking woman and a famous hostess.”

“It’s hard to realize now. She had grown very lame as well as being so fat, her heart was bad, and she was becoming just a bit – well, foolish, mentally. She did save one thing out of the wreckage, and that was some of her jewels. She had some very valuable and very beautiful pieces. They were given to her in the early days of her marriage by her husband, and most of them were heirlooms – from the Manlius ancestors, not from hers. So we were the natural heirs, though of course while she lived they remained her property. It wasn’t just their monetary value, though that was very high, but they were part of my husband’s inheritance – you understand?”

“Perfectly.” Cicero winced a little; even after all those years he could still be hurt by the most innocent implication that, naturally, he wouldn’t comprehend the ideas and customs of high society. “And now, since her death, they are not in your possession?”

“How did you know that?”

“My dear lady, otherwise why would you have mentioned them? What happened?”

“I’ll try to tell you.” Favilla’s voice shook a little.

To spare her, Cicero rose and stood looking out at the soft October landscape. Favilla went on.

“It was just a month ago. I was in the atrium, writing a letter to my husband. Aufidia’s maid – a Cappadocian woman who had been with her ever since my aunt came to our house, and who was devoted to her – came running in, screaming that something was wrong with her mistress. It seems Aufidia had sent her to launder and mend some old tunics – she was very careful of her clothes, and we scarcely ever had to buy her anything new – and it had taken the woman half an hour or so. When she came back to Aufidia’s bedroom, where she had left her mistress napping, she found – well, her breath gave out at that point, and she could only gesture to me to come.

“I ran as fast as I could. There was the old lady, lying half on the bed, half off it. Her face was a queer, sickly purple, her mouth was open, and I could see at a glance that she wasn’t breathing.

“Her right arm lay stretched out towards the cabinet where she kept her jewels. The doors of the cabinet were open, the drawers pulled out, and most of them were empty. There was nothing left except a few worthless trinkets. We found the key later, under the bed.

“I thought at first Aufidia had had a stroke, and might still have a spark of life left. The servant and I managed to get her great weight back on the bed – I couldn’t be sure, under all that fat, whether her heart was still beating or not – and I sent another slave running for the Greek physician, Callidoros, who had tended her before when she was ill. He came quickly, but as I had feared, it was too late. She had been dead for nearly an hour by then, he told me.”

“What did he say was the cause of her death?” Cicero asked.

“He couldn’t tell – they never do know, really, do they? He said her heart had stopped, which I knew without his announcement. By the time he arrived I had closed the cabinet; I didn’t want any gossip started, and I gave the maid strict orders to say nothing to anyone without my permission. She was so frightened for herself that I’m sure she obeyed me.”

“You thought, of course,” Cicero suggested, “that there had been foul play. Someone had killed her and stolen the jewels – or frightened her to death – a fat old woman with a weak, over-labouring heart – and then stolen them. Isn’t the next step, in great households like yours, to put all the slaves to the torture to find out who is guilty?”

He was sorry for the malice of his remark as soon as he saw Favilla’s painful flush, but he had been unable to resist that minute revenge.

“It was probably the custom in our parents’ time,” she said with asperity, “but I hope we’re a little more civilized today. Besides, we don’t have a great household in that sense; we have only twenty house slaves in all, and I know every one of them. We have been barely able to keep up appearances in recent years. Naturally, the first thing I thought of was that someone who knew about the jewels had bribed one of my servants to do the deed – for no one could enter the house past our doorkeeper without my knowing it. But as it happened, I knew where every one of the servants had been during that half-hour. The details don’t matter, but some were out on errands, others were in my sight from the atrium, the doorkeeper was chained to his door as usual, and so on.”

“The Cappadocian woman?”

“Most unlikely; she was too terrified, it would have taken a
skilled actor to imitate her astonishment and horror. Besides –”

Favilla broke off, and herself looked a little frightened, as if she had said too much.

They had been sitting in the peristyle of the house, with the fountain playing in its middle and the soft breeze ruffling the plants set against the painted columns. Now Cicero clapped his hands for a servant, and ordered him to bring wine.

“Talking dries the tongue,” he said with a smile. “And you will, of course, stay the night before you begin the long journey back. I must give orders for dinner, and see that your escort is properly cared for. I am afraid I am an awkward host; it has been so long since I entertained a guest.”

He sighed deeply, and Favilla, with exquisite tact, only looked the quick sympathy she felt. Here at Tusculanum the great lawyer and orator had once given banquets to the most important men in Rome; here, in some cubicle beyond the
cavum caedum
, his Tullia had died in his arms, only eight months before.

The slave had gone again, leaving them alone, and they had drunk a cup of wine together, before Cicero spoke again.

“You are not telling me all, Favilla,” he said gently. “I can’t help you if you hide things from me.”

“I know.” She toyed with her wine cup. “It’s my brother – Sextus.”

“Sextus Favillus?” Cicero sounded surprised. “Why, he’s a child.”

“He is nineteen. He would be furious to hear you call him a child.” She smiled briefly. “He is very handsome, and very brilliant – he wants to be a poet, he has set Catullus and your old opponent Calvus as his models – and he is quite unmanageable. You know, I’m sure, that we were left orphans when I was a very young girl and he was little more than a
baby. We had a good guardian, who looked after our estate and saw that we were well cared for. But we were very lonely, both of us, and we had no one to love but each other. I loved him very deeply, Cicero – I have no children, and in a sense he has been almost like my son.”

“You are not so close now?”

“How could we be, after I was married? – though, of course, I love him just the same. He has fallen in with a wild crowd, young men with far more money than he ever had. He’s anticipated most of his inheritance, and squandered the money in their company – wine and gambling and girls. His trustee has just thrown up his hands in despair. I tried hard to save and help Sextus – my husband did his best while he was at home – but to my young brother I suppose we were a pair of croaking old meddlers. He refused to live with us any longer when I wouldn’t welcome his friends. We have never quarrelled, but he has long since ceased to pay any attention to anything I might say.”

“And so?”

“And so a few months ago he fell headlong in love – madly, crazily in love – with just the wrong woman. She is more than twice his age – though she is beautiful still, and rich, and of a very good family. Of course she laughed at him and snubbed him, which made him only more ardent. He has even” – her voice trembled – “he has threatened to kill himself if he cannot have her – or at least have a share of her, which is all any man ever has,” she added bitterly.

“I see.” Cicero’s heart fell; only one woman in Rome exactly fitted that description.

“No, forgive me, but you can’t see it all. Let me tell you in my own way. Because – because I didn’t want a scandal, because I had to make all the decisions alone, and the honour of my family and my husband’s family was in my hands, and because as things are now, a criminal trial would only be a
farce – I should have had to find a man to act as accuser, I should have had to name somebody to accuse, and give the reasons –” Favilla’s pale face grew even paler; who was there to be accused but her brother? “And then of course the witnesses and the jury and even the praetor would be bribed – they always are nowadays –”

“Not always. I’ve won a few cases without bribery myself, Favilla,” Cicero interrupted dryly. Where, he wondered forlornly, was the great incorruptible Republic of his youth? And yet in his heart he felt relieved by Favilla’s last words; ever since she had started telling about Aufidia’s death, until she had got out that revelation about her brother, he had been afraid she was going to ask him to act for her as somebody’s accuser, or to defend somebody, and there was nothing he was surer of than that it would be most indiscreet of him to make any public appearance, or even to go to Rome at all, at this juncture of political affairs. Besides, he thought cynically, if the woman concerned were the one he thought it was, there would indeed be plenty of her money put out in bribery, if only because she loved a row, with herself in the centre of it.

Favilla was speaking again.

“Of course you have,” she answered him crisply. “And nobody knows better than you how different conditions are at present. Anyway, right or wrong, I decided to keep things to myself if possible. Officially, Aufidia had died of a stroke, or of heart disease. After all, she was nearly eighty. I wrote my husband of her sudden death, and in his name I gave her the funeral to which her birth entitled her. And nobody but myself – and now you – knows about the jewels. Except, of course, the person who took them, and the person who has them now.”

“And the Cappadocian woman.”

“Who doesn’t count. I’ve taken her over to help my own
maid, and she’s so grateful not to be involved that she would die before she would talk. You didn’t notice what I said last – ‘the person who has them now.’ ”

“I noticed. You mean they are no longer in the possession of the thief.”

Favilla shivered at the word.

“I swear to you, I never even thought of my brother until I saw –” She took a deep breath. “I don’t, naturally, associate with the group surrounding his – lady-love. But four days ago I was at the baths. She was there, in full panoply, with all her entourage. I imagine Sextus was somewhere on the outskirts, but he must have seen me and vanished. He hasn’t been near me since Aufidia died.”

“He was with you at that time?”

“He had spent an hour with me, just before,” she said reluctantly. “And whenever he came to see me, he dropped in for a chat with Aufidia. He was a great pet of hers – had been since I was married, nine years ago, before her husband died, when Sextus was only a little boy. But this is what I want to tell you. We came face to face in the corridor at the baths. We didn’t speak, of course – after all, we have never actually met socially, though she belongs to a greater family than either my husband’s or mine, and as society is nowadays she isn’t even exiled from it. But I’ve led a quiet life, and I don’t frequent the kind of parties she gives or attends. Still, I’ve got eyes, and I used them. She had on a magnificent gold arm-band, set in the design of a peacock, in rubies, pearls, and emeralds. She wore a necklace to match. She wore two great pearls in her ears. Those, I suppose, could not be identified, but the necklace and the arm-band could. They were Aufidia’s.”