Catilina's Riddle (68 page)

"I'd prefer that
you
didn't mention my ancestors, true enough. So you told Congrio that if he would go along with your schemes, you could

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set everything right and become his new mistress. He agreed to become your agent in my household."

"Something like that."

"Would you believe that for a long time it was Aratus I suspected of betraying me?"

"Aratus?" said Claudia. "You should have known better. Lucius always said he was the most unwavering and loyal slave he had ever owned. A man couldn't hope for a better foreman to run a farm."

"So I've gradually come to realize. But back to Congrio: when the first headless body appeared in my stable, it was Congrio who placed it there, wasn't it?"

"Why ask me? You must have gotten the story from him already."

"Some of the story. Other bits I've worked out for myself, but there are some things only you could know for certain, Claudia. Well, then, it started on the day that we burned the first batch of blighted hay. There were a lot of fires on my land and a lot of smoke going into the air. One of your slaves showed up, ostensibly to deliver a gift of figs from your farm, in exchange for which I sent you some fresh eggs. I thought the man was there to see what the smoke was about; in reality, he was there to confer with Congrio and make plans for the delivery of the body. I remember he stayed a long time in the kitchen; I thought he was merely tasting Congrio's custard.

"The next day a wagon arrived, full of provisions. Congrio said it came all the way from Rome and that he'd had to go over Aratus's head to order the things he needed. That made me angry at Aratus, and took my mind away from Congrio. Still, I wondered why he insisted on unloading the wagon himself. Now I know: there was a dead body amid the pots and pans. The wagon came from your farm, not from Rome.

Congrio unloaded the body, as your agent had instructed the day before.

He managed to conceal it in the kitchen and then put it in the stable later. No wonder he was sweating and trembling; I merely thought he was out of breath and angry at Aratus." I spread my hands on my lap.

"So I know how the body arrived and who assisted. But who was Nemo?"

"Nemo?"

"That was what I called the headless corpse, having no name for him. From his body, it was hard to tell whether he was freeborn or a slave. If a slave, he wasn't engaged in hard labor and didn't work outdoors.

Nemo was your cook, wasn't he?"

Claudia looked at me sidelong. "How did you know that? I never even told Congrio."

"You told me yourself, but I wasn't listening at the time. Do you remember the note you sent back with Congrio, thanking me for lending him to you?" I pulled the scrap of parchment from within my tunic. "I saved it. I don't know why, except that you were so effusive in your

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gratitude that you called it 'a promissory note' which I could use to call on you for repayment. It was sentimental of me to set much store by it, I suppose, but I was touched by your gratitude. In the note you also said something else. Let me read it to you: 'Greetings neighbor, and my gratitude for the loan of your slaves,' et cetera, et cetera, 'especially your chief of the kitchen, Congrio, who has lost none of his skill since the days when he served my cousin Lucius. I am doubly grateful because my own cook fell ill in the midst of preparations, whereupon Congrio proved to be not merely a great help but utterly essential.' So, your head cook was ill. Later he died."

"How did you know?"

"You told me! It was here on the ridge, over on the eastern side.

We were all watching the Cassian Way, you and Meto and 1, and you fed us honey cakes. 'My new cook baked them fresh this morning,' you said. 'He's no Congrio, I fear, but he does make fine sweets.' Your
new
cook, Claudia, because the old one, the ill one, had died and you replaced him. And because you hate waste so very much—not even a morsel of a honey cake could you stand to waste!—you even found a use for your dead cook's body, thinking it could be a tool to frighten me off my farm, or at least make a beginning. So Nemo wasn't murdered, was he? He died of an illness, and after he was dead you had his head cut off so that no one would know him when he appeared on my farm. One of the kitchen slaves I lent you just might have seen the man, after all, and thus might have recognized the dead man's face."

"You comprehend everything, Gordianus. And did the appearance of the body not frighten you at all?"

"It frightened me very much, but at the time I had reason to think I knew who had left it, and why, and it had nothing to do with my neighbors or whether I should stay on the farm. I hid the incident from the slaves, including Congrio. Was it maddening when Congrio had nothing to report to your man the next time he came?"

"Quite."

"Meanwhile, I had every reason to think that I could trust you, if anybody, because the kitchen slaves I lent you returned with glowing reports of how you stood up for me to your cousins. It was you who planted the idea that I could use those slaves as spies on your family gathering. You joked about my having them poison your cousins; well, I would never do that, but I could tell my slaves to keep their ears open.

And so they simply happened to 'overhear' you defending me to Gnaeus, Manius, and Publius. But you meant for those words to be overheard, didn't you? I was to think you were my only ally, and so when awful things began to happen on my farm, I might suspect anyone and everyone else, but never you. And if the time ever came when I was ready to sell

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the farm in desperation—well, I would turn to the one neighbor who had stood by me, wouldn't I?"

Claudia shifted on her hard seat. "Something like that," she said quietly.

"The first headless body appeared in the middle of Junius. Then, for a while, nothing untoward happened. Misunderstanding the signal and its origin, I thought this was because I had complied with certain demands made on me against my will. In fact, those days were uneventful because of your absence. You left for Rome to oversee some work on the house on the Palatine, which you inherited from Lucius, so you weren't around to make mischief.

"The second body didn't appear until after the middle of Quinctilis, when we returned from Rome after Meto's birthday and the elections.

You had planned to stay in Rome all that time, but you came back early, before we did; you told me at Meto's party that you were about to leave for home. You also made sure that I met your charming cousin Manius, with predictably appalling results that once again portrayed you as my friend and ally. You came back early, and so you were here when your cousin Gnaeus killed his poor slave Forfex in a rage. Perhaps you had no intention of leaving a second body on my land, but when the opportunity presented itself like a gift from the gods, once again you couldn't let a good corpse go to waste. You had the body stolen from where Gnaeus's slaves had interred it along the rocky stream bank. Once again, the corpse was delivered by your slave, visiting Congrio, probably carrying it in a handcart. The man had been dealing with Congrio so regularly, exchanging foodstuffs every now and again, that no one ever took any notice of him.

"You knew that I had met Forfex, and so once again it was necessary to remove the head, to obscure the corpse's identity. You should have removed the hands as well, but how could you have known that Meto would recall the triangular birthmark on the back of Forfex's left hand?

That led me to Gnaeus. He admitted killing Forfex, which was his right as the slave's master, but he denied having dropped the body down my well. He seemed to know nothing about it."

"He didn't," acknowledged Claudia.

"So I thought. Once again, I had cause to suspect someone else, but the connection with Gnaeus left me uncertain and confused. I went about the business of running the farm, despite the blighting of the hay, despite the deliberate pollution of my well. I proceeded with building the water mill—"

"That absurd contraption!" Claudia snapped.

"Yes, I realize now how frustrating it must have been for you whenever you'd sneak up here on the ridge to look down on my farm, greedy

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for it, imagining that it could be yours, despising me for having it, doing what you could in your own craven way to drive me off, and all the while watching the construction of the mill go on day by day, the tangible symbol of my firm intention to stay and make this property my own.

How you must have hated it when I invited you to have a look at it after it was completed! How clearly I could sense your loathing, but I thought it was merely for the mill itself. You hid your true feelings well."

"A woman learns to hide her feelings if she's to get what she wants, without a father or a husband to give it to her and without sons to defend her!" said Claudia.

The bitterness in her voice was startling, and all at once I saw a flint-eyed woman so profoundly different from the jolly, good-natured matron I had known that
I
was almost frightened, as when a pretty mask drops to reveal a hideous face beneath. For two sleepless nights I had puzzled over the riddle of how Claudia could have been behind such atrocities. Now I saw another woman behind the one I thought I knew, who proceeded by guile and deceit and kept her anger and appetites hidden. How else could a woman alone have made her way in such a family and in such a world? For the first time I felt the reality of Claudia's guilt.

"I was confused again when Gnaeus offered to buy my property," I said, "though now I see it was you who put him up to that. He even said so in an oblique way, saying you had told him I was having a hard winter, but I thought that was merely gossip among cousins. In fact you were using him to feel me out before you made your next move, seeing if I'd had enough yet of headless corpses and poisoned water and the harshness of the winter. After his surly offer to relieve me of the farm, I grew suspicious of Gnaeus all over again, especially when, the very day after I ordered him out of my house, a third corpse appeared behind my stable.

I was just setting out on a journey; there was no way I could stay to sort it out. That was just as well, perhaps, or
I
might have attacked Gnaeus without cause.

"The third headless corpse was another of your slaves, wasn't it?

You didn't kill Nemo, who died of an illness. Nor did you kill Forfex; Gnaeus did that. But this slave you murdered, didn't you, Claudia?"

"Why do you say that?" she said, casting me a sullen glance.

"Because you needed someone on whom to test your poison. You had already tested it once, on a poor old slave of mine named Clementus.

He was a witness of sorts on the night that Congrio dropped the body of Forfex down my well. His recollection was vague and muddled, but to a slave like Congrio, guilty of conspiring against his master, even old Clementus must have seemed a terrible threat. Congrio had to get rid of him simply, quietly. You supplied him with a poison—strychnos, the deadly nightshade. That accounts for the blue lips, the vomiting, and

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the slurred speech that afflicted Clementus before he died. I always suspected he had been hurried along. Now I know for certain, for Congrio has confessed everything.

"Still, a poison that kills a doddering old slave may not work on a strong man of forty-seven, so you tried it out on one of your hapless slaves, didn't you, Claudia? How did you pick the poor fellow? Had he been showing signs of laziness, or was he weakened by bad joints, or had he offended you somehow? Or was he simply a good match for me, of about the same size and age, so that you could make sure of an adequate dosage to finish me off?"

She stared into the distance but made no answer.

"Wretched slave, to have such a mistress! Once you'd killed him with your poison—well, there was no use wasting the corpse, was there?

Send another signal to Gordianus! A warning of things to come! Again, you removed the head to avoid any possibility of having him recognized, and delivered him via Congrio. Like Nemo, he was discovered by my daughter. Does that make you feel nothing, to know that you gave such a shock to a little girl? I suppose not, knowing what monstrosities you've shown yourself capable of committing."

Claudia abruptly stood. "I didn't come here to be judged, by you or anyone else. Your message said you wanted to come to some resolution and indicated that you had a proposition for me. Make it now and spare me your accusations and hand-wringing."

"Sit down, Claudia. It's a poor murderess who can't bear to hear her crimes recited."

"Poisoning a slave is not murder!"

"Ah, but kidnapping a freeborn child must surely be a crime."

"That's enough!" she said, and turned to go. I seized her shoulders and pushed her down onto the stump.

"You swore you wouldn't hurt me!" she shrieked, and pulled out a long, thin dagger. I knocked it from her hand and she covered her face.

I looked hurriedly around, but saw no one in the bushes. She had come armed, but alone.

"Yes, Claudia, I swore it and I meant it, though neither gods nor men would object if I were to strangle you here on this spot! You can drop your haughty demeanor; it doesn't suit you. You'll listen to all I have to say, and together we'll arrive at the truth. Nothing can proceed without that, so don't deny it when I say you intended to poison me.

Congrio has confessed! You grew impatient. Months passed, intimidation had failed to move me, and so you were finally ready to resort to the murder of a freeborn citizen—ah, but only an upstart plebeian! Did you think that with me gone you could more easily pressure Bethesda and Eco to sell the farm to you? Or would you have poisoned them as well?

"You wanted Congrio to poison me. Your agent kept pestering him,

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but Congrio resisted. That was a little too much for him, a little too dangerous. Clementus he had poisoned for his own protection, but to murder his master was too grave a sin. And then disaster—Congrio and your agent were indiscreet and let a little girl overhear them. You know the rest. What I don't know is what you could have been thinking when you sent your men to leave Diana in the mine. Were they meant to strangle her and leave her body there? Were they to abandon her alive and let her slowly starve to death? Or would you have rescued her in time and sold her into slavery, sending her to some foreign city on a ship out of Ostia while her parents mourned her for dead?"