Solid Citizens (11 page)

‘They leave together?’

‘Yeah. When I closed up.’

‘Thanks, pal.’ I went back to my seat. Bugger! There went straight-as-a-die Roscius’s alibi! When the bastard had told me he’d been at home the evening of the murder he’d been lying through his teeth!

Lucius came back in and sat down with a sigh. ‘That’s better,’ he said. He topped up his cup from my jug. ‘Now where were we? Oh, right. Your investigation. You’ve just started, you say.’

‘Yeah.’ No harm in putting out a few feelers and seeing if they produced any result. ‘I was round at Publius Novius’s earlier. The lawyer.’

‘I know who Novius is. Scumbag.’

‘He tells me that you were disinherited in your father’s will, ten or so years back. That so?’

Lucius scowled. ‘My father never made that will, Corvinus. Oh, sure, we’d had nothing to do with each other for twenty-odd years before that, but he wasn’t the bastard that Quintus was. He wouldn’t’ve done that to me, disinherited his own son.’

‘Hang on,’ I said carefully. ‘You’re saying the will was a fake?’

‘Of course it was. It must’ve been. I’m telling you, my father would never have cut me off without a penny. Quintus and that slimy lawyer pal of his cooked the will up between them. Did Novius tell you I challenged it?’

‘What?’

‘No, he wouldn’t, the canny bastard. Certainly I did. In open court. For all the good it did me.’ He emptied his cup again; at this rate I’d have to get the other half jug after all, but at least it didn’t seem to be having much effect. If anything, the old guy seemed to be sobering. Mind you, it was only halfway through the morning, and he was used to it. ‘Novius and Quintus and their like lead the senate by the nose. They
are
the senate. And the senate provide the aediles, and the aediles do the judging. Two solid citizens and a jury stacked with their pals against a drunk with a grudge? What do you think the verdict’d be?’

Yeah, well, that was true enough, whatever the ins and outs of the rest of it: you couldn’t buck the Old Boy network, whether it was in Bovillae or Rome, once they’d made their minds up about something. I took a sip of my own wine. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘your brother carried on paying your allowance.’

‘Novius told you about that as well, did he?’ Lucius said sardonically. ‘Talkative little shit, isn’t he? Oh, yes, I got that regularly enough every month, for what it was worth. Then, at least. But did he mention that Quintus had stopped it recently?’

‘No. No, he didn’t.’

‘Fact. A couple of months ago, it was, just after Vatinia died. You know who Vatinia was?’

‘Your brother’s wife. Sure.’

‘My brother’s, as you say,
wife
.’ He gave the half-grin, half-snarl and sank another mouthful of wine. ‘Yes. She was OK, Vatinia. A real lady, patient and tolerant as hell. She had to be, mind, the bugger didn’t deserve her. Well-off, too, in her own right. She’d money of her own, quite a bit of it, a lot more than he had, originally. When he married her, Quintus got by far the best of the deal, and not just financially. Anyway, the allowance came from her, or from the income from her own holdings. She was the one who insisted that he pay it. When she died, Quintus decided that wasn’t necessary any more, so when I went to see Novius as usual on the next kalends to pick up my month’s cash I got the straight finger. Still’ – after pouring me a token splash, he topped up his cup with the rest of the wine in the jug – ‘all’s well that ends well, isn’t it? Novius’ll just have to grit his teeth and cough up the whole boiling. I’m all right now.’

‘Yeah. You are.’ He was, at that – by his own estimate, about a million sesterces all right. I picked up the cup, drained it, and got to my feet. ‘Thanks for the chat. I’ll see you around.’

‘You leaving?’ he said. Surprised, evidently, but that was his business.

‘Yeah. No more questions. Interrogation done and dusted.’ There was the business of his hobnobbing with Roscius the night of the murder to go into, sure, but I wanted to think that one over before I faced him with it. Roscius, too, for that matter. Besides, I’d had about enough of Brother Lucius as I could stomach for one day. Personally, my sympathies were with the dead Caesius; brother or not, the guy was a useless git, and a prime sponger. The fact that he was obviously intelligent only made things worse. ‘Things to do, places to go.’

‘Yeah? Where would that be, then?’

I hadn’t really thought about it, but if I had I wouldn’t have told him. Out of there and away from Lucius bloody Caesius was enough for me, for the time being.

So where was I going? There was still a fair slice of the day left, but I’d no one else to see, not at present, anyway, barring the rival collector (Baebius, wasn’t it?) that the old guy in the antiques shop had said had gone home furious with Caesius for stealing a march on him over the purchase of a Greek figurine. I could easily go back to the shop and get his address, sure, but I reckoned that could wait; Baebius hadn’t exactly sounded the type likely to hang around the back of a brothel after sunset waiting to zero his co-auction-goer in a fit of pique. Mind you, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility: some of these antiquities nuts were, well, nuts. Look at Priscus. No, Baebius would keep; I’d got enough to think about at present. Maybe I should just go back home, talk with Perilla and start putting things together.

Only there was one other place I could go to follow up an angle I knew about already. It probably wouldn’t take long, and since I was in Bovillae in any case with time on my hands I might as well do it now. When we’d been talking about the wool store fire in the wine shop the argumentative punter (what was his name? Battus, right?) had mentioned a night watchman who lived over by the meat market. Garganius. Sextus Garganius. I might as well look him up, see what I could get.

One good thing about a small town like Bovillae, as opposed to Rome, is that everywhere’s practically within spitting distance of the centre. The meat market was only a few hundred yards further along the Hinge from market square, in the direction of the Roman Gate. I cut back through the square and turned right.

This time of day, the market was crowded with the local wives and bought help shopping for the evening’s dinner. The guy running the third stall I asked at pointed me towards a side street closer to the gate, and an old biddy trudging along the pavement lugging a string-net bag full of assorted root vegetables and chitterlings narrowed the search to the last house along, next to an oil shop on the corner. I knocked on the door and it was opened by a youngish woman holding a baby on her hip.

‘Sextus Garganius live here?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She hefted the baby. ‘Who wants him?’

‘He doesn’t know me,’ I said. ‘I just wanted a quick word, if that’s OK.’

She frowned, but opened the door wider and stepped aside. ‘You’d best come in, then,’ she said, then shouted, ‘Dad! Someone to see you!’ She turned back to me. ‘Go ahead. He’s in the kitchen, round to the right. Excuse me, I was just going to change Quintus here.’

Yeah, I could smell that that was pretty urgent. She took the kid off to some inner fastness to repair the spreading damage while I followed her directions.

Garganius was standing next to the kitchen brazier, stirring a pot of bean stew: a little old guy with grizzled hair and a wall eye. He looked round.

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Who’re you?’

I gave him my name. ‘It’s about the fire a few months back. In the town’s wool store. I understand you were the night watchman.’

His single good eye looked me over suspiciously. ‘I was,’ he said. ‘So what?’

‘I was hoping you’d tell me what happened.’

‘What’s to tell? The place caught fire and burned down. That’s all there was to it, and you could’ve got that much from anyone.’

‘I was talking to a guy named Battus.’ No point in complicating the issue. ‘He said it wasn’t an accident.’

The suspicious look toned down a tad. ‘I know Battus, sure. He send you here?’

‘More or less. He told me where to find you, anyway. I’m looking into the death of Quintus Caesius. The censor-elect. Seemingly he was planning to open an investigation.’

That got me a grunt. ‘Maybe he was,’ Garganius said. ‘But that isn’t going to happen now, is it?’

I shrugged. ‘It might. It all depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘Maybe on what you tell me.’

He went back to stirring the pot. A minute passed in silence. Then without looking at me, he said, ‘You down here from Rome?’

‘Sure.’

‘Official?’

‘More or less, again. Where Caesius is concerned, certainly.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded, like he’d made a decision. ‘OK. They’re saying I knocked over a lamp when I was drunk. That’s a lie. I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Truth is, I’d nothing to do with starting the fire.’

‘Who did, then?’

‘Search me, pal. All I know is that I was in my cubby just inside the door as usual. Oh, I may’ve been dozing, sure – what do you expect at that time of night – but I was stone-cold sober. I woke up and found the place full of smoke, so I got the hell out and raised the alarm. For all the good it did. By that time the rafters’d caught and the roof was coming down.’

‘This wouldn’t be the burned-out warehouse just off the main drag the other side of the market square, would it? In the same street as the brothel?’

‘That’s right. It was lucky the place was free-standing, or the whole middle of town could’ve gone up. Specially at that time of year. Everything was dry as a bone.’

‘Could someone have got in? To start the fire, I mean?’

‘Sure. No problem, it would’ve been easy enough. I told you, I was inside, wasn’t I? You think I locked the door behind me? And after all, who’s going to steal a warehouse worth of fucking wool bales?’

‘Unless they’d been stolen already.’

He gave me a long, considering look, tasted the bean stew and put the spoon back in, all without a word.

‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘that would’ve been pretty difficult to cover for, during daylight hours, considering the number of bales that must’ve been involved.’ No response. ‘I mean, something on that scale would tend to get noticed, wouldn’t it, during the day? A night operation, now, small loads, a bit at a time spread over a month or two, single-cart stuff, early hours of the morning, well, that’d be different.’ Still silence. ‘Come on, pal! If that was how it was done then you must’ve known all about it from start to finish. And if so you’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Now, I don’t want to make trouble, especially for the little guy who probably had his arm twisted and only got a handful of silver pieces out of it. I’m not even a fucking Bovillan citizen, for the gods’ sake. Arson’s not my business; I couldn’t care less about a little thing like that. What is my business, however, is murder. All I want is to get the facts straight so I can get on with my job. Clear?’

He took a deep breath. ‘OK, fair enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s say – just for argument’s sake – that most of the wool was already gone and what was in nine tenths of the bales was rags; that I may’ve suspected it, but I didn’t know for certain because I made damn sure that I didn’t; that I had nothing to do with the switch; and that you forget you were here talking to me. No names, no pointing fingers, and no comeback, right? I’m just a dumb watchman who doesn’t know zilch. That do you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll settle for that.’

‘Good. We have a deal.’ He went back to stirring the pot. ‘Mind you, putting me in the frame wasn’t nice. I don’t like that. The guy who had the wool contract. Name begins with “M”. You know who I’m talking about?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I know.’

‘Well, he might be able to help with a few facts, too. I’m not saying he will, you understand, just that he might. Only a suggestion. Fair enough?’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal.’ I turned to go.

‘Not a word, right? And it stops here?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Cross my heart. Thanks again.’

Well, I reckoned I’d got enough to be going on with. Back to the water trough by the Tiburtine Gate where I’d moored my horse, and then home for a think.

On my way along the main drag, I thought I spotted my pal the lounging freedman walking parallel to me on the opposite pavement. But he was only one face in a crowd, and I could’ve been wrong.

There again, there weren’t any flying pigs.

B
athyllus was waiting for me with a cup of wine when I got back. No sign of Lupercus. Oh, yeah; the demarcation arrangements. Silly, like I said, but there you went, that was the bought help for you; these guys aren’t on the same wavelength. Anything for a quiet life.

‘Truce still holding, pal?’ I said, taking the cup and handing him my wet cloak in exchange.

‘Yes, sir, thank you.’

‘See that it does, OK?’

‘Yes, sir. The family are having lunch in the dining room.’

I took the cup through.

‘You’re home early, dear,’ Perilla said when I’d kissed her.

‘Yeah.’ I settled down on the couch beside her. ‘No problems, I just thought I’d done enough for the day. And, like you said, we’re on holiday, so there’s no point in overdoing things, is there?’

Smarm, smarm.

‘So how are things going?’ Clarus asked.

I helped myself to cold pork, bread, olives and cheese (Euclidus didn’t take his cheffing duties as seriously as Meton did, at least where lunch was concerned, so as usual we were getting yesterday’s dinner leftovers padded out with sundries from the store cupboard) and gave them the usual run-down of the morning’s events.

‘There you are, Clarus,’ Marilla said with huge satisfaction. ‘I told you the fire was a scam.’

Clarus shrugged.

‘It looks like it, sure,’ I said, reaching for my wine cup. ‘But that’s not to say it’s connected with the murder. Whether or not Manlius – or his pal Canidius, or both of them together – would go to the lengths of killing Caesius just to stop an investigation and avoid a theft and arson charge is a moot point.’

‘I don’t agree at all, Marcus,’ Perilla said. ‘Not if they thought the investigation was a certainty and that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The punishment for arson and theft on that scale would be relegation, or at least a crippling fine.’ She spooned a reheated chicken dumpling on to her plate. ‘In any case, you’re forgetting the social side of things. You know how people’s minds work in these small towns. If they were convicted, the disgrace would destroy them in Bovillae, socially and politically, and for men of their standing that would be far worse. No, dear, I’d say the motive was quite sufficient.’