Man Eater

In the wine shops in Rome you could choose between red wine or white, vintage or thin, mustard or mulled, rose wine or hyssop, the list was virtually endless. Here she opted for a potent Lagean white and discovered that not only was it watered, they probably pickled eggs in the residue. However, the unweaned kid roasting on the spit and the smoked sausage and celery casserole more than compensated.

‘So, have you interviewed the widow?’ Claudia pictured her, painted and flabby and dressed like a newlywed.

‘I treat my cases the way a doctor treats his,’ Orbilio replied between mouthfuls. ‘They require a thorough examination and a bedrock of background information before I make my diagnosis. I’ll see Balbilla later.’

So that was her name. Claudia rolled it around on her tongue. Balbilla. Balbilla. The sort of name that would belch, slap you on the back and have a laugh like a horse. She almost felt sorry for Fronto.

‘Did you notice the amphitheatre as we came in?’ he asked.

You could hardly miss it. Behind the law courts, a splendid edifice soared to the skyline, its brickwork interspaced every cubit with a wafer-thin layer of baked clay whose purpose was purely to advertise the wealth and prosperity of the Tarsulani. Happy days.

‘It made me wonder why Pictor didn’t exhibit at least some of his animals there,’ Orbilio added. ‘Can you imagine the impact of even the tamest of shows upon the audience? The dancing bears, for instance, or the monkeys riding in saddles upon goats?’

‘Sergius is going for broke with these spectacles, it’s Rome or nothing, and he has no intention of getting pipped to the post by someone sniffing out what he’s up to.’ Sworn to secrecy, apparently the estate workers felt the bite of the lash if they so much as opened their mouths in public, because although the locals knew he kept a menagerie, they didn’t know the purpose behind it.

Orbilio ordered a bowl of stuffed dates and received a plate of pastries instead. ‘Fair enough, but you’d think he’d at least take the elephant to the Megalesian Games, wouldn’t you?’

Claudia bit into the crumbly, cheesy pastry. ‘The trouble is, Corbulo would need to go with the wrinkly beast,’ she explained. ‘Sergius’ schedule would be set back still further, he’d then miss the games in June. Why do you ask?’

‘Just curious,’ he said, licking his fingers. ‘It’s like a mosaic, this case. I’m sure all the pieces are there, only I can’t seem to make sense of them.’

Who can? ‘Who cares?’

You do, his eyes said, but she refused to listen to them.

‘A man who, until recently, worked for the newly appointed Prefect of Police is lured to the Villa Pictor and stabbed in order to make you appear a murderess,’ Orbilio said, ‘and the girl bribed as a witness has her neck broken in order to silence her.’

‘But in apparent and utterly confusing contradiction, I am almost a victim myself, by an unknown assassin at that-’

‘-and it is distinctly possible the head of the household is being poisoned.’

Claudia had seen Sergius, eyes rolling, legs dragging, supported by slaves on his way to the bath house as she was making her getaway this morning. The colour of his skin was neither yellow nor grey, but, like catkins on a pussy willow, it was a combination of the two.

‘I have a fair knowledge of herbs,’ she said-in fact it was better than average but that was none of his business-‘and I’ve never encountered symptoms like Pictor’s, and besides, who’d want to kill him?’ She helped herself to the last little pastry on the plate and wished the wine had been as good as the food. ‘Not Alis, that’s for sure.’

That little mouse wouldn’t have the guts to kill her own husband, especially while there was a Prefect, a senior representative of the Security Police, a junior tribune plus a whole host of uniformed officers prancing round the house. That wouldn’t be gall, that would be outright stupidity.

‘Unless she’s desperate for money,’ she added as an afterthought.

Orbilio leaned back and put his feet on the table. ‘How do you mean? What would she gain by killing Sergius?’

Claudia wetted her finger and collected several cheesy crumbs on the tip. ‘The estate must be worth a tidy sum, especially with the performing beasts.’

‘But-’ Orbilio frowned. ‘You obviously don’t know.’

‘Know what?’ She licked the crumbs off her finger. ‘The estate is hers already. She inherited it from Isodorus when he died.’

Claudia felt her eyeballs bulge. ‘You mean it’s Alis who’s rich and not Sergius?’ Now that put the wolf among the nannygoats. She ran back over events in her mind, but while it might change the perspective, the basic picture remained unaltered.

Shame.

The fire crackled amid sounds of laughter, clanking goblets, the clatter of plates. Watching him at ease in his chair, boots on the table, running his finger round the rim of his glass, there was an inexplicable tightness around her solar plexus. Damned indigestion. Wouldn’t you just know it?