Illegally Dead (18 page)

I set the tablets down and took a large gulp of the sub-standard Signinan. Yeah, well, it added up, in general terms anyway: Senecio does his stint behind an oar, survives it against all the odds and comes back with a grudge to pay against the two guys who’d defended him. Or failed to, rather. None the less, there were serious holes in the logic that needed filling. It sounded like a fair cop, for a start: the two had been convicted on circumstantial evidence, sure, but as it stood that was pretty damning. Even if by some wild stretch of the imagination they had been telling the truth, Senecio couldn’t complain that his advocates hadn’t done their best with what they’d got. He’d a right to feel angry against the jurymen who’d returned the verdict, yeah, no argument, or against the judge who’d done the sentencing; but not against Hostilius and Acceius, not to the degree of hunting them down twenty years later. That took real hatred, and unless he was totally out of his tree - which was a possibility, I admitted, after twenty years in the galleys - I couldn’t see he’d have a valid reason for it. Odd.

The second major hole was that with Lupus and Senecio both dead there should’ve been no one left. So who the hell had tried to put a knife into Acceius? Someone had, that was sure, and the chances there wasn’t a connection were pretty remote. Oh, the probable answer was obvious: a relative, a third brother perhaps, here in Bovillae, that Senecio had been in touch with before the attack. He wouldn’t’ve been involved in the affair, so naturally the trial record wouldn’t mention him, but with two brothers dead now - the second killed by Acceius personally - he’d have a grudge in spades. I remembered the guy Trophius had mentioned, the guy who’d been hanging around the tombs when Trophius’s lads burned Senecio’s body. Right. That fitted as well. He’d’ve wanted to be there, at the funeral - if you could call it that - but if he’d been planning then, as he would’ve been, to pay off his brother’s killer, plus the back-debt, there was no way he’d’ve come forward and shown himself properly...

It all made sense. The only question now was, how did I find him? I took another swig of the wine, the last, and emptied the cup.

Dyers. The record had described the brothers as ‘dyers from Bovillae’. It was a long shot, sure, twenty years long, but at least I was lucky there. Dyeing’s one of those professions that tends to go in families and stay there. Dyers, fullers and tanners largely keep to themselves, sticking to their own special area of town, because the raw materials of the trade can be pretty niffy when stored in bulk or put to use. In fact, there was a clear-cut dyers’ and tanners’ quarter in Bovillae. I could –

I stopped. Something was tugging at my memory; nothing to do with Bovillae or Senecio. Tanners’ quarter...tanners’ quarter...

Then I remembered. Acceius had said that the night he was attacked he’d been visiting a client in the tannery and slaughterhouse area of Castrimoenium, out by the Bovillan Gate. Shit! There had to be a connection! The guy could’ve moved, it was only four or five miles; would probably have moved, under the circumstances, with two of his brothers - we’d assume brothers - convicted of murder. He wouldn’t’ve changed his profession, though, there was no need for that, none at all...

Still, if I was going to find him then I needed a name. There was no point starting afresh with Castrimoenium, not when I’d got a lead here. I could come back tomorrow and ask around the dyers’ shops by the Appian Gate. If I was really, really lucky, then someone might just remember, and in that case we were in business.

Of course, there was that one, other possibility, that our mystery knifeman hadn’t been a knifeman at all. But then, tempting to pursue as that line might be, before you can start faffing around with complications you’ve first got to check the obvious.

Yeah, well: enough for the present. If that was my day in Bovillae then I’d had it. I left the empty cup on the table, returned the tablets to Latro with thanks, collected the mare from her long stint at the water-trough and set off back to Castrimoenium.

23

I called in at Hyperion’s in passing just in case Clarus was there - Marilla had told me the day before that he had something to tell me re the dead woman up at Caba - but he wasn’t, so the odds were he was helping Marilla on Meton-dogging duties and I’d catch up on both of them later. Hyperion, though, had two interesting pieces of news: one, that Libanius had put Veturina under the gentlest form of house arrest he could officially manage; and two, that Castor had flown the coop for a second time.

‘He has what?’ I said. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Oh, quite sure.’ We were in Hyperion’s workroom, and he was doing something complicated involving a lot of mixing and grinding of tiny quantities of dried herbs from stoppered pots. ‘According to Scopas - and he sent word to Libanius - he packed a bag and left shortly after Libanius did, without saying where he was going, why or for how long. Veturina might know the answers to any or all of these questions, in fact she probably does, but she refuses to say.’

‘Bugger!’ That Veturina had killed Hostilius, or connived at his death, purely out of love I could accept, absolutely; Castor, however, was much more of a grey area. Oh, sure, in my report to Libanius it hadn’t been up to me to make fine distinctions of guilt between them, and I’d been very loath to think along those lines in any case, under the circumstances: their motives - individual and shared - had been like one of these compact masses of underground roots that Alexis had shown me once, so tangled together that the plants and the weeds they belonged to were impossible to separate. All I could do, like Alexis, was dig the whole lot up, good and bad mixed, then hand them to Libanius to unravel as best he could. Even so, if one of the pair could be regarded as a proper murderer - and I wasn’t forgetting Cosmus - then Castor was it, no question. And now the bastard had done a runner and left his sister to face the music on her own.

‘It was to be expected, of course.’ Hyperion added a little water to the powdered herbs in his mortar and began to grind them to a paste. ‘He has very little to lose in any case, no property to be sequestrated, no family apart from Veturina herself. At least no family that he’d bother about, or who’d bother about him. No doubt he’ll take ship from Puteoli for Gaul, or Spain, somewhere suitably remote, and that’ll be the last anyone hears of the fellow.’

Shit, what a mess. ‘Libanius isn’t putting out the word on him?’

‘No. Definitely not. To tell you the truth, Corvinus,’ - Hyperion used a tiny metal spatula to transfer the paste into a pill-mould - ‘I suspect he was angling for something just like this. Libanius is a very astute man, in the political sense. With Castor escaping from justice the whole business, or the more unsavoury aspects of it like Cosmus’s murder, can be laid at his door unequivocably, and Veturina left out of the picture. He has become, as a Jewish colleague of mine would once have said’ - he pressed the mixture hard down into the mould - ‘a scapegoat. In the word’s best possible sense.’

Yeah, right, I could see the benefit of that, even if I couldn’t agree with it. Now Castor had gone - the guilty party fleeing, in admission of guilt - there would be no legal need for a trial, Veturina was off the hook and the whole sad mess could be shelved and forgotten. Like Hyperion had said, it was a politician’s solution to the problem, ends justifying means, and if there’s one thing I’m not it’s a politician. Still, I couldn’t complain: I’d handed the whole boiling over to Libanius to do with as he thought fit, and there was no point in grousing now about how he’d gone about it. ‘What about Veturina herself?’ I said. ‘Did Libanius say she’d admitted to anything?’

‘No. But neither did she deny it. In fact she said nothing at all, absolutely nothing. You’ve met the lady, Corvinus. You know, or you can guess, how stubborn she can be.’

‘Yeah.’ I frowned. ‘How about Paulina?’

‘Libanius has sent her to a sister of his own in Rome. With Veturina’s knowledge and consent, of course. That side of things will be very difficult, I suspect. However, I’m sure it’ll resolve itself in time.’ He set the mould aside. ‘Now. How are matters going otherwise? Libanius said you were still looking into that business of the woman at Caba.’

‘Uh-huh. Among other things. Call it idle curiosity, pal, because I doubt if any of the strands I’m following will lead anywhere particularly profitable. Even so, I can’t just let them go now the Hostilius problem’s over and done with. It just wouldn’t sit right.’

He smiled. ‘Oh, I can understand that perfectly, Corvinus. I hate to walk away from a puzzle myself, once I’ve set myself to solving it, no matter how unimportant I know the eventual answer will be. And Clarus would be very disappointed.’

‘Right. Speaking of which I’d best be getting back, see what he has to tell me. You know what it is?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed.’ Hyperion wiped the spatula on a cloth. ‘But I’ll let him tell you for himself because it belongs to his field of expertise, not mine. You’ll find it most interesting.’

I got back home just shy of dinner time. No sign of Perilla - the lady was up in Marcia’s room, because the old girl was still bed-bound and she was keeping her company - but Clarus and Marilla were deep in conversation on the terrace. I cleared my throat and they sprang apart.

‘Hi, Corvinus,’ Clarus said. ‘Any luck in Bovillae?’

‘Yeah.’ I carried my jug and winecup over to the table. ‘Chances are the tramp who attacked Hostilius was a guy called Brabbius Senecio. Hostilius and Acceius defended him in a burglary and murder trial twenty-one years back.’ I gave them a quick run-down of events. ‘So the next stage is to see whether we can trace the third brother, or whoever he is, who went for Acceius.’

‘I’ve got some news too,’ Marilla said.

Oh, yeah, right; Meton. Forget the case, this was important. ‘Go ahead, Princess,’ I said, steeling myself. ‘Did you see her? Did they meet?’

‘Yes, in the vegetable market. You were right, she is very good-looking, isn’t she?’

Hell; I was hoping against hope that somewhere there’d been a mistake. ‘You hear anything they said?’

‘No, they were too far away, and we - Clarus was there as well, of course - we didn’t like to get any closer in case Meton spotted us. They were...I know it sounds silly, but I think they were buying artichokes. At least, she was because she was the one who paid, but Meton was doing all the handling and all the talking. That’s right, isn’t it, Clarus?’

Clarus nodded.

Jupiter! Well, if it’d been anyone else then yes, it would’ve sounded silly. We were talking about Meton here, though: only our food-fixated chef could use the criteria for choosing a good artichoke as a chat-up line. Which I’d bet was what he’d been doing. If this seduction went through - and I’d guess, thank the gods, from what I’d seen myself and what Marilla was saying that we were only in the early stages here - then if they finally did get the length of going to bed together as far as a practical knowledge of culinary ingredients, their choice and preparation, was concerned the lady would be world class.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So what happened then?’

‘They bought some leeks.’

I sighed. ‘Just skip the blow-by-blow account of the vegetable purchases, Princess.’

‘Very well. When they’d bought the...artichokes, leeks, beetroot, carrots and dill, wasn’t it, Clarus?’ - nod - ‘they walked back towards the town square. They stopped for a minute, then they split up. Meton went...where did he go, Clarus? You followed him.’

‘To the meat market. At least, that was where he was heading, but I think he saw me and got suspicious because he gave me the slip before he got there. Sorry, Corvinus.’

Damn! If Meton knew he was being watched now, trailing him another day would be much trickier. Still, the woman was the important one of the pair. Meton we could always find. ‘What about Renia, Princess?’ I said.

‘Oh, that was okay. I followed her to Ceres Temple Street. She’s got a house about half way along, next to the baker’s. At least, that’s what I assumed, because she went in there and didn’t come out. And there’s a locksmith’s sign next to the door.’

Right, that seemed to be pretty conclusive. I’d get together with Perilla and we’d move on to the next stage. ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Well done.’

‘Let Clarus tell you about the body now,’ Marilla said.

Oh, yeah; the Caba woman. I turned to Clarus. ‘Go ahead, pal.’

‘I think she was dumped.’

‘What?’

‘Corvinus, I don’t believe she was killed where she was found at all. Of course, I haven’t been up there myself, but I’ve talked it over with Dad, who has, and he agrees.’

‘Hang on, Clarus,’ I said. ‘What leads you to think she was dumped?’

‘The condition of her tunic. You wouldn’t’ve had a chance to spot it for yourself, and neither would Dad, because she was lying face-up and the front and sides of her tunic are clear. But the back’s covered with cement dust. At least, I’m almost certain that’s what it is. And it couldn’t’ve got that way where she was found.’

‘Maybe she just had a dirty tunic.’

‘Uh-uh. I told you, the front and sides were clean. Or clean of cement, anyway. And the back was caked in places to the depth of my fingernail, especially just under and level with the shoulder-blades, like she’d been pulled over the stuff. My guess is that she was loaded onto a wagon that’d been carrying cement, driven up into the woods then hauled out by her feet.’

‘What about the cart they took her home in?’

He shook his head. ‘That was the first thing I checked. Wood shavings, sawdust, sure, plenty of that, but no cement. Not a trace. Besides, the slaves left her on the stretcher so she could be lifted out easily. Her back didn’t touch the boards.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘Like I say. She was killed elsewhere, loaded onto a cart with a good quarter inch of cement dust on its floor, probably covered over with a tarpaulin and taken up to Caba to be dumped. Caba’s a sensible choice, and not just because it’s wild country. There’re plenty of carts use that road anyway, with the quarry being there. No one’d think anything about it. And Dad says you can see the road for half a mile in each direction from the start of the cart-track. That’s important. All it’d take would be for the killer to make sure there was nothing coming that might see him when he turned in and again when he left and he’d be perfectly safe.’

I whistled. ‘You do anything for an encore, pal? Like pull live chickens out of hats?’

He grinned. So did Marilla.

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ she said.

‘He is bloody brilliant! We can take it further, too.’

‘Can we?’

‘Yeah. Horses, mules, donkeys, no problem, anyone can get one of these at five minutes’ notice. But a cart? Uh-uh, that’s tricky, not everybody has one of these, not in town, anyway. And you couldn’t risk borrowing or hiring one, not if you were going to use it to transport a corpse, because later someone might just make the connection. On the other hand, if you’d got a cart already then -’

‘Oh, gods,’ Clarus said softly. ‘Bucca Maecilius.’

‘Spot on, pal. At least, one gets you ten. I’d take a small side bet on his brother, mind, because he’s a farmer, but Bucca’ll do nicely to begin with.’

‘Why should Bucca kill the woman?’

I shrugged. ‘Tell me who she was and I might have an answer. In the meantime, bring those eyes and that brain of yours round to his yard tomorrow morning and we’ll sweat the bastard, together, see if he’s got answers of his own.’

‘What about -?’ Marilla said; which was exactly when Bathyllus buttled in.

‘Dinner, sir,’ he said.

I stood up. Fair enough, sleuthing over for the day. Well, at least Meton was still alive and cooking, and after the ride into Bovillae and back my stomach thought my throat was cut.

I hadn’t mentioned it to Clarus, but after what he’d told me that theoretical complication re the Brabbii had just moved up a slot and become a definite possibility.