Chapter x.x.xVIII.

I woke earlier than I might have done, due to my dreams. Dreams which disturbed me so badly I won't bother you by revealing what they were.

To avoid further nightmares I sat up and dressed--a drawn-out procedure, given that it only consisted of pulling on a clean tunic over the crumpled one I had slept in, then finding my favourite boots where Ma had hidden them. During this struggle, I could hear some sort of racket going on. The old woman upstairs was bawling away at some poor soul as if he had thieved her only daughter's virginity.

'You can only regret it!' a man's voice raged. Pleased that for once I was an innocent party in her delusions, I stuck my head out just as Cossus the letting agent tumbled downstairs past my door. He looked fl.u.s.tered.

'Trouble?' I asked.

'She's a mad old bag--' he mumbled, glancing back over one shoulder as if he feared the woman would call down a witch's curse on him. 'Some people never know what's good for them --'

He seemed disinclined to dispel my curiosity so I contented myself with chivvying, 'What's happening about that water-carrier you promised me?'

'Give us a chance ...'

This time I let him depart without a tip.

I left home without any breakfast. Nursing a sore head, I set off to see the women on the Pincian. It took me some time to get there. My feet had apparently taken a vow against walking anywhere today. I fooled them by hiring a mule.

Novus was being honoured in a brave style on his departure across the Styx. Throughout the house there was a dark smell of embalming oils and incense. Instead of a few indicative cyprus boughs, each doorway was guarded by a pair of whole trees. They must have uprooted a small forest. Trust this lot to create a spectacle even out of a funeral.

The slaves were in strict black. The cloth looked brand-new. The freedwomen must have had sempstresses working all night.

When I managed to get in to see them (for they were putting on a show of being too overwrought for visitors), Pollia and Atilia were veiled in elaborate swathes of exquisite white: the upper-cla.s.s colour for mourning wear (more flattering).

I muttered condolences then squared up to the situation: 'You may ask me how I dare to show my face ...'

Sabina Pollia cackled briefly. Grief can affect some people with irritability. As usual her face was beautifully presented, yet today it was apparent that her voice was ten years older than the face.

I braced myself. 'Look; I did my best--which is all I ever promised you.' Hortensia Atilia's huge dark eyes, which looked more frightened than sorrowful, fastened on me anxiously. Sabina Pollia glared. 'You were right about Severina--though her timing seems inexplicable ... There was no way to prevent what happened. But she won't escape justice this time --'

'How can you be so confident?' Pollia asked me cuttingly.

'Experience.'

'You were confident before!'

'No; I was cautious before. Now I'm angry --'

'The matter has been reported to the Praetor,' Pollia broke in.

'Yes; I suggested that myself--' I already guessed what was coming.

'Then I suggest we leave the Praetor to deal with it!'

After the whiplash of scorn from Pollia subsided, I started again cautiously: 'You commissioned me because I worked for the Palace, which happens to be where I was detained last evening--'

'Our husbands have instructed us to discontinue your services.' This was Atilia, who had always appeared the more timid of the pair. Neither of these women would care a bent hairpin for what their husbands said; Felix and Crepito were mere ciphers. But one excuse was as another when clients were set on dismissing me.

'Of course,' I said, 'you must respect your husband's wishes!'

'You failed, Falco!' Pollia insisted.

'Apparently!'

Even with a raging hangover I knew how to be professional. They were both tense, expecting an angry outburst; I could relieve my feelings later so I disappointed them. 'Ladies, I never stick around if I have lost my clients' confidence.'

I saluted them politely (since I wanted them to pay me), Then I left.

The end of the case. Ah well; if I failed to recruit any other business I could always go back to working for the Palace.

Signed off.

Signed off again! It was always happening to me. Somehow the only clients who ever commissioned me were vacillating types. Hardly had I drummed up interest in their tawdry lives, than they changed their fretful little minds about needing me.

I could have solved this one. I would have enjoyed doing so. Never mind; for a few weeks' surveillance I could now charge the two women extortionate expenses, then nip off out of it before the messy part. It was the best way to do business, for a philosophical man. Let the local law and order people give themselves headaches puzzling how Severina managed it this time. Let the Pincian magistrate try to bring her to court where the Praetor Corvinus on the Esquiline had failed. I was laughing. I could send a bill for my expenses, spend some time at the baths, enjoy myself, then read about official bungling in the Daily Gazette...

But that was not the end of the case.

I was about to stride haughtily past the ornate lodge where the Hortensius porter lurked, when I spotted somebody waiting nearby in the shade: thin arms and a black wire moustache bisecting his face. 'Hyacinthus!'

He was waiting for me. 'Falco--can we talk?'

'Certainly --'

'I have to be quick. We have all been ordered not to speak to you.'

'Why's that?' He glanced nervously up towards the house. I drew him off the main path and we squatted on our haunches beneath an elderly pine tree. 'Never mind why then--what's up?'

'You were talking to Viridovix --'

'Yes; I intended to have another word today --'

Hyacinthus laughed briefly, then picked up a pine cone and hurled it among the trees. 'Did they pay you off?' he demanded.

Well I'm sent off--it remains to be seen whether I get paid!'

'Just present your bill. They don't want trouble.'

Trouble? What trouble?'

He was silent for a moment, then out it came: 'You won't be able to talk to the cook, again. Viridovix is dead!'

Chapter x.x.xIX.

As soon as he said it I felt a cold sweat. 'What happened?'

'He died last night. In his sleep.'

'The same way as Novus?'

'Don't think so. He looked quite peaceful. It appeared to be natural --'

'Hah!'

'He was healthy,' frowned Hyacinthus.

'Cooks can always scavenge nourishment.' Viridovix was no age either; thirty, I reckoned. Like me; a boy. 'Is anyone looking into it?'

'No chance! Someone suggested foul play to Felix--but he retorted that maybe Viridovix was so ashamed Hortensius Novus died after one of his meals, he committed suicide--I 'Is that likely?'

'You met him!' Hyacinthus scoffed.

'Yes! Are the rest of you going to do anything about it?'

'If the freedmen say no, how can we? He was,' pointed out my companion dourly, 'just a slave!' So were his friends, I chewed a fingernail. 'The Praetor who is investigating what happened to Novus ought to hear of this!'

Hyacinthus scuffled to his feet in the loose earth. 'Forget that, Falco! The Praetor has a large loan underwritten by Crepito; he is bound to co-operate. The family want Novus buried quietly--and no other distractions.'

'I thought they wanted to protect his interests? I thought that was why they hired me!'

Hyacinthus looked shamefaced. 'I could never understand why they chose you,' he let slip. 'You had a reputation for bungling. ..'

'Oh thanks!' I bit back an oath. Then I spat it out after all. It was one of my brother's: particularly colourful: the slave looked impressed. 'If they believed that, why commission me?'

'Perhaps they thought you would be cheap.'

'Then perhaps that was just one of their mistakes!'

I remembered Helena saying that what impressed these ghastly people was expense.

Even without seeing the body I shared the runabout's doubts about the cook's death. 'Viridovix was poisoned too,' I said. 'Though not with the same violent paralytic that dispatched Novus. 'You saw both corpses afterwards: do you agree?' The runabout nodded. I made up my mind. 'I needed to talk to Viridovix in more detail about yesterday afternoon. Now he's gone, can you possibly find me someone observant who would have been in the kitchens while the food for the dinner party was being prepared?'

He looked uncertain. I reminded him that no one else would lift a finger to avenge the cook's death. Fellow feelings made him promise to find someone who would help. I told him my new address. Then, since he was growing anxious about being seen here with me, I let him scamper back to the house.

I sat on under the tree, thinking about the man from Gaul. I had liked him. He accepted his fate but kept his own style. He had integrity. He was dignified.

I thought about him for a long time. I owed him that.

He had definitely been murdered. It must have been a slower poison than the one which struck down Novus, a less vicious kind. Presumably this too was intended for Novus--though I could not rule out the possibility he was not the only victim hoped for.

Nor could I yet be certain that the same person had prepared both poisons. Or why at least two different attempts had been made; insurance, possibly. But I did know how the second drug was administered; that would haunt me for a long time. The poison must have been among the bitter-smelling spices which the cook took in his cup of Falernian.

I still remembered how I mixed the wine for him: I had killed Viridovix myself.

Chapter XL.

As I rode the hired mule south again, part of me was now saying this case would not be over until I had solved it, even if I had to wort without a fee. That was the brave and n.o.ble part. Another part (thinking of Viridovix) merely fell sordid and tired.

I went home. There was no point going anywhere else. In particular, there was no point tangling with Severina Zotica until I had some unbreakable hold over that freckled female snake.

Half an hour later she knocked on my door. I was thinking. To help, I was doing something practical.

'Holiday, Falco?'

'Mending a chair.' I was in a pedantic, bad-tempered mood.

She stared at the battered wicker article, which had a semicircular back curving into boudoir arms. 'That's a woman's chair.'

'Maybe when I've mended the chair I'll get a woman to go with it.'

The redhead smiled nervously.

She was wearing not black exactly, but some dark purple berry-juice shade; in her unconventional way this managed to imply greater respect for the dead than Pollia and Atilia had shown with all their yardage of dramatic white.

I continued my work. The job had turned into one of those treasures where you start off intending to wind bad a few strands of loose material, but end up dismantling half the piece of furniture and rebuilding it from scratch. I had already spent two hours on it.

To fend off Severina's annoying curiosity I snapped, 'The chair comes from my sister Galla. My mother produced some new cane. It's a pig of a job. And all the time I'm doing it I know that once Galla sees the thing serviceable,she will coo "Ooh, Marcus, you are clever!"--and ask to have her chair back again.'

'You have the cane too dry,' Severina informed me. You ought to dampen it with a sponge --'

'I can manage without advice.' The cane I was weaving snapped, halfway along a row. I fetched a wet sponge.

Severina found herself a stool 'You go to a lot of trouble.'

'Thoroughness pays.'

She sat quiet, waiting for me to calm down. I had no intention of obliging. 'An aedile came to see me today, on behalf of the Pincian Hill magistrate.'