I HAD BEEN an informer for over a decade when I finally learned what the job entailed.
There were no surprises. I knew how society viewed us: lowborn hangers-on, upstarts too impatient for honest careers, or corrupt nobles. The lowest grade was proudly occupied by me, Marcus Didius Falco, son of the utterly plebeian rogue Didius Favonius, heir to nothing and possessing only nobodies for ancestors. My most famous colleagues worked in the Senate and were themselves senators. In popular thought we were all parasites, bent on destroying respectable men.
I knew how it worked at street level – a hotch-potch of petty investigative jobs, all ill-paid and despised, a career that was often dangerous too. I was about to see the glorious truth of informing senatorial-style. In the late summer of the year that I returned with my family from my British trip, I worked with Paccius Africanus and Silius Italicus, two famous informers at the top of their trade; some of you may have heard of them. Legals. That is to say, these noble persons made criminal accusations, most of which were just about viable, argued without blatant lies and supported by some evidence, with a view to condemning fellow senators and then snatching huge proportions of their doomed colleagues’ rich estates. The law, ever fair, makes decent compensation for selfless application to demeaning work. Justice has a price. In the informing community the price is at least twenty-five per cent; that is twenty-five per cent of all the condemned man’s seaside villas, city property, farms, and other investment holdings. In abuse of office or treason cases, the Emperor may intervene; he can bestow a larger reward package, much larger sometimes. Since the minimum estate of a senator is a million sesterces – and that’s poverty for the élite – this can be a nice number of town houses and olive groves.
All informers are said to be vile collaborators, currying favour, contributing to repression, profiteering, targeting victims, and working the courts for their personal advantage. Right or wrong, it was my job. It was all I knew – and I knew I was good at it. So, back in Rome, after half a year away, I had to stick a dagger down my boot and make myself available for hire.
It started simply enough. It was autumn. I was home. I had returned with my family, including my two young brothers-in-law, Camillus Aelianus and Camillus Justinus, a pair of patrician wild boys who were supposed to assist me in my work. Funds were not flush. Frontinus, the British governor, had paid us only rock bottom provincial rates for various audit and surveillance jobs, though we did secrete away a sweetener from a tribal king who liked the diplomatic way we had handled things. I was hoping for a second bonus from the Emperor but it would take a long time to filter through. And I had to keep quiet about the King’s gift. Don’t get me wrong. Vespasian owed me plenty. But I wanted to stay out of trouble. If the august one called my double bonus an accounting error, I would retract my invoice to him. Well, probably.
Six months was a long time to be out of the city. No clients remembered us. Our advertisements chalked on walls in the Forum had long since faded. We could expect no meaty new commissions for some time.
That was why, when I was asked to handle a minor documents job, I accepted. I don’t generally act as someone else’s courier, but we needed to show that Falco and Associates were active again. The prosecutor in a case in progress had an affidavit to be collected, fast, from a witness in Lanuvium. It was straightforward. The witness had to confirm that a certain loan had been repaid. I didn’t even go myself. I hate Lanuvium. I sent Justinus. He obtained the signed statement without bother; since he was inexperienced in legal work, I myself took it to court.
On trial was a senator called Rubirius Metellus. The charge was abuse of office, a serious offence. The case had apparently been going on for weeks. I knew nothing about it, having been starved of Forum gossip. It was unclear what part the document we fetched had to play. I made the deposition, after which I suffered uncalled-for abuse from the filthy defence lawyer, who made out that as an informer from a plebeian district I was an unfit character witness. I bit back the retort that the Emperor had raised my status to equestrian; mentioning Vespasian seemed inappropriate and my middle-class rank would just cause more sneers. Luckily the judge was eager to adjourn for lunch; he commented rather wearily that I was only the messenger, then he told them to get on with it.
I had no interest in the trial and I wasn’t going to stick around to be called irrelevant. Once my job there was finished, I left. The prosecutor never even spoke to me. He must have done a decent job, because not long afterwards I heard that Metellus had been convicted and that a large financial judgment had been made against him. Presumably he was quite well off – well, he had been until then. We joked that Falco and Associates should have asked for a higher fee.
Two weeks later Metellus was dead. Apparently it was suicide. In this situation his heirs would escape having to pay up, which no doubt suited them. It was hard luck on the prosecutor, but that was the risk he took.
He was Silius Italicus. Yes, I mentioned him. He was extremely well known, quite powerful – and suddenly for some reason he wanted to see me.
I DID NOT respond well to a haughty summons from a senator. However, I was now married to a senator’s daughter. Helena Justina had become adept at ignoring stares as people wondered why ever she had anything to do with me. When she was not calmly ignoring stares, she had a scowl that could fuse brass locks. Sensing that I intended to be difficult about Silius Italicus, she began to frown at me. If I had been wearing a sword-belt, the fittings would have melted to my chest.
I was in fact wearing a light tunic and old sandals. I had washed but not shaved; I could not remember whether I had combed my curls. Acting casual was instinctive. So was defying orders from Silius Italicus. Helena’s expression made me squirm a bit, though not much.
We were at breakfast in our house at the foot of the Aventine. This edifice had belonged to my father and was still being renovated to our taste. It was six months since any fresco painters had bothered to show up; their pigment odours had faded and the building had reverted to nature. It had the faint musty whiff that afflicts elderly homes which have suffered flooding in the past because they were built too close to the river (the Tiber was a mere twenty feet away). The building had mostly lain empty while we were in Britain – though I could tell Pa had been camping out here as if he still owned the place. He had stuffed the ground floor with pieces of hideous furniture that he claimed were in ‘temporary storage’. He knew we were back in Rome now, but was in no hurry to shift out his impedimenta. Why should he? He was an auctioneer and we had provided a free warehouse. I looked for anything worth pinching, but no reasonable customer would bid for this junk.
That didn’t mean it would not be sold. Pa could convince a ninety-year-old childless miser that he needed an antique cradle with its rattle-hook missing – and that the victim could afford to have its rockers renovated by a deadbeat carpenter to whom Pa just happened to owe a favour.
‘I’ll throw in this fine Alexandrian rattle,’ my father would say magnanimously (forgetting to do so, of course).
Since we could not climb into our dining room until my parent removed half a huge stone corn grinder, we ate upstairs in the roof garden. This was four storeys away from the kitchen, so we dined on mainly cold buffets. For breakfast, that posed no problems. Ever big-hearted, Pa had lent us a double-jointed Bithynian slave to carry up the trays. Bread rolls and honey survived, even when the sour-faced nonentity took his time. He was useless. Well, Pa would have held on to him, had he been any good.
We had family under our feet constantly. Helena and I had produced two daughters, one now two and a half and one six months. So first we had my mother weaselling in to check we had not killed her darlings while in barbarian territory, then Helena’s elegant mama sailed up in her sedan chair to spoil the children too. Our mothers each expected to have all the attention, so as each arrived, the other had to be shepherded out some other way. We did this without making it obvious. If Pa walked in to mouth more excuses about the grinder, Ma would openly storm off; they had lived apart for nearly thirty years and took pride in proving it had been a wise decision. If Helena’s mother were here when her father dropped by, he liked to play at being invisible so he had to be shunted into my study. It was tiny, so it was best if I were out at the time. Camillus Verus and Julia Justa did live together, with every sign of fond toleration, yet the senator always gave the impression he was a hunted man.
I wanted to discuss with him my summons from Italicus. Unfortunately when he called I was not at home, so he had a snooze in my one-man den, played with the children, drank us out of borage tea, and left. Instead, I was stuck with breakfast with his noble offspring. When Helena and her brothers assembled together, I began to see why their parents had allowed all three to leave their large but shabby home in the Twelfth District and share my desperate life in the much lower-class Thirteenth. The boys still lived at home, in fact, but hung around our easygoing house a lot.
Helena was twenty-eight, her brothers slightly younger. She was the partner of my life and work, that being the only way I could persuade her into my life and bed. Her brothers nowadays formed the junior sector of Falco and Associates, a little-known firm of private informers who specialised in background investigations of the family type (bridegrooms, widows and other cheating, lying, money-grubbing swine just like your own relatives). We could do art theft recovery, though that had been slack lately. We would hunt for missing persons, persuading rich teenagers to return home – sometimes even before they had been ravaged by their unsuitable lovers – or we would track down moonlit-flitters before they had unloaded their wagons at their next rental (although for reasons associated with my pauper past, we tended to be kind to debtors). We specialised in widows and their endless legacy problems, because ever since I was a light-hearted bachelor, I had done so; now I just reassured Helena they were my clients’ half-mad aunts. I, the senior and more skilled partner, was also an imperial agent, a subject on which I was supposed to keep my mouth shut. So I shall do so.
Breakfast was where we all met up. In the manner of traditional Roman marriages, Helena Justina would consult me, the respected head of our household, about domestic issues. When she had finished telling me what was wrong, what part she felt I had played in causing it, and how she proposed to remedy the matter, I would gently concur with her wisdom and leave her to get on with it. Then her brothers would arrive to take orders from me on our current cases. Well, that was how I saw it.
The two Camilli, Aelianus and Justinus, had never been too friendly together. Matters had deteriorated when Justinus ran off with Aelianus’ rich betrothed, thus persuading Aelianus that he wanted her after all (whereas he had been lukewarm about Claudia until he lost her) while Justinus soon saw that he had made a big mistake. However, Justinus had married the lass, for Claudia Rufina would one day possess a great deal of money and he was intelligent.
The brothers took their usual opposing attitudes to the Silius request.
‘Damned chancer. Don’t give him the time of day, Falco.’ That was Aelianus, the elder, tolerant one.
‘It’s bloody interesting. You should see what the bugger wants.’ Justinus, undogmatic and fair-minded, despite the bad language.
‘Ignore them,’ said Helena. She was older than Aelianus by one year and Justinus by two more; the big sister routine never died. ‘What I want to know, Marcus, is this: just how important was the document you fetched from Lanuvium? Did it affect the outcome of the trial?’
This question did not surprise me. Women, who have no legal capacity in our system, are not supposed to take an interest in the courts but Helena refused to hear patriarchal fossils telling her what she could or could not understand. In case you are provincials from maternalist societies, some sort of unfortunate Celt, for instance, let me explain. Our strict Roman forefathers, scenting trouble, had decreed that women should be innocent of politics, law and, wherever possible, money. Our foremothers had gone along with it, thus permitting the feeble sort of woman to be ‘looked after’ (and fleeced) while the strong sort overturned the system merrily. Guess which sort I had chosen.
‘You need to know what the trial was about first,’ I set about explaining.
‘Rubirius Metellus was accused of trafficking in offices, Marcus.’
‘Yes.’ I refused to be surprised that she knew. ‘While his son was the curule aedile in charge of road maintenance.’ A twinkle appeared in Helena’s fine brown eyes. I flashed a grin back. ‘Oh, you asked your papa.’
‘Yesterday.’ Helena did not bother to be triumphant. Her brother Aelianus, a repressed traditionalist, tossed olives into his open mouth after a tut of disgust. He wanted a routine sister, so he could lord it over her. Justinus gave a superior smile. Helena took no notice of either, simply saying to me, ‘There were a lot of charges against Metellus, though not much evidence for any of them. He had covered his tracks well. But if he was guilty of everything he was accused of, then his corruption was outrageous.’
‘The court agreed with that.’
‘So was your document important?’ she insisted.
‘No.’ I glanced at Justinus, who had ridden to Lanuvium to fetch it. ‘Ours was only one of a whole bunch of sworn statements that Silius Italicus produced at the trial. He was bombarding the judge and jury with examples of misconduct. He lined up every pavement-layer who had ever bought favours and had them all say their piece: I gave the Metelli ten thousand, on the understanding it would help us win the contract for repairs to the Via Appia. I gave Rubirius Metellus five thousand to get the contract for maintaining the gullies in the Forum of Augustus…’
Helena sniffed her disapproval. For a moment she leaned back with her face turned to the sun, a tall young woman in blue, quietly enjoying this fine morning on the terrace of her home. A lock of her fine dark hair fell free over one ear, its lobe bare of ear-rings this morning. The only jewellery she wore was a silver ring, my love gift from before we lived together. She looked at ease, but she was angry. ‘It was the son who held the office, and who abused his influence. He was never charged, though?’
‘Papa had all the money,’ I pointed out. ‘There was no financial mileage in accusing a legal minor who had not been emancipated from parental control. People who have no money of their own never get sued. The case still worked in court: Silius played it by painting a picture of a powerless junior, trapped under the authoritarian paternal thumb. The father was judged a worse character because he had subjected a weakling to his immoral influence at home.’
‘Oh, a tragic victim of a bad father!’ Helena scoffed. ‘I wonder what his mother is like?’
‘She was not in court. Dutiful matron who plays no part in public affairs, I expect.’
‘Knows about nothing, cares about less,’ Helena growled. She believed a Roman matron’s role was to take strong umbrage at her husband’s failings.
‘The son may have a wife of his own too.’
‘Some washed-out whimpering wraith,’ decided my forthright girl. ‘I bet she parts her hair in the middle and has a high little voice. I bet she dresses in white. I bet she faints if a slave spits … I hate this family.’
‘They may be charming.’
‘Then I apologise,’ Helena said. Adding viciously, ‘And I bet the young wife wears lots of dainty bangles – on both wrists!’
Her brothers had emptied all the food dishes so began to take more interest. ‘When they worked the scam,’ suggested Justinus, ‘it probably helped that Papa received the bribes while Junior sealed the dodgy deals behind the scenes. A little separation would let them cover their tracks better.’
‘Almost too well,’ I told him. ‘I heard Silius had a hard time winning.’
Helena nodded. ‘My father said the verdict caused surprise. Everyone was sure Metellus was as guilty as Hades, but the case had dragged on too long. It was mired in bad feeling and had lost public interest. Silius Italicus was reckoned to have bungled the prosecution and Paccius Africanus, who defended Metellus, was thought to be the better advocate.’
‘He’s a viper.’ I remembered him going for me harshly at the trial.
‘Doing his job?’ asked Helena mischievously. ‘So why do you think Metellus was successfully convicted, Marcus?’
‘He was a grubby cheat.’
‘That would not have mattered.’ Helena smiled drily.
‘They voted against him on technicalities.’
‘Such as?’
It was obvious, and quite simple: ‘He thought he had the court in his pocket – he despised them and he let it show. The jury felt the same as you, love. They hated him.’
THE FORUM ROMANORUM. September. Not as hot as it could be in midsummer. The shade was cooler than the open sunlight, but compared with northern Europe still intensely warm. I had thought of bringing my toga, unsure of protocol, but could not face even carrying the heavy woollen folds over an arm. There was no way I would have worn the garment. Even without, patches of sweat made my tunic feel damp across my shoulders. Brilliant light pounded on the ancient cobbles of the Sacred Way, throbbed off the marble statues and cladding, heated the slow fountains and the shrinking pools in the shrines. On temples and plinths that lined the roadways, motionless pigeons lurked with their heads pulled in, trying not to faint. Old ladies, made of sterner stuff, battled across the space in front of the Rostra, cursing the trains of effete slaves, uniformed retinues of fat old men in litters who thought too much of themselves.
A mile of stately buildings lined the Forum valley. The Golden City’s marble monuments towered above me. Arms folded, I took in the spectacle. I was home. Intimidation and awe are how our rulers keep us respectful. In my case the grandiose effects failed. I grinned at the glorious vista defiantly.
This was the business end of the historic area. I was standing on the steps of the Temple of Castor, with the Temple of the Divine Julius to the right – both places of nostalgia for me. To my far left, the hundred-foot-high Tabularium blocked off the foot of the Capitol. The Basilica Julia was next door, my current destination; opposite and across the worn stone piazza lay the Senate House – the Curia – and the Basilica built by Aemilius Paullus, with its grand two-storeyed galleries of shops and commercial premises. I could see the prison in a far corner; immediately below me, the office of weights and measures lurked under the podium of the Temple of Castor; near the Rostra was the building that housed the secretaries of the curule aediles, where the corrupt young Metellus had worked. The piazza was awash with priests; crammed with bankers and commodity brokers; flush with would-be pickpockets and the loitering sidekicks to whom they would swiftly pass whatever they stole. I looked in vain for the vigiles. (I was not intending to point out the pickpockets, only to demand loudly that the officers of the law should arrest the brokers for usury and the priests for telling lies. I felt satirical; setting the vigiles a task even they would shrink from would be an amusing way to rejoin public life.)
The messenger had left no directions. Silius Italicus was a grand type who expected everyone to know where he lived and what his daily habits were. He was not in court. Hardly surprising. He had had one case this year. If the convicted Metellus had paid up, Silius could have avoided work for another decade. I frustrated myself for a long time at the Basilica Julia, discovering that he was also the type whose home address was closely guarded, to stop lowly bastards from bothering the great bird in his own nest. Unlike me, he did not allow clients to call around at his apartment while he was dining with his friends, screwing his wife, or sleeping off either of those activities. Eventually I was informed that in daylight hours Silius could generally be found taking refreshments in one of the porticoes of the Basilica Paulli.
Cursing, I barged through the crowds, hopped down the steps and marched across the roasting travertine. At the twelve-sided well called the Pool of Curtius, I deliberately refrained from chucking in a copper for good luck. Amid the multicoloured marbles of the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius on the opposite basilica I expected a long search, but I soon spotted Silius, a lump who looked as if he made greedy use of the money he earned from his high-profile cases. As I approached, he was talking to another man whose identity I also knew: about the same age but neater build and more diffident in manner (I knew from recent experience how that was deceptive!) When they noticed me, the second man stood up from the wine-shop table. He may have been leaving anyway, though my arrival seemed to cause it. I felt they should have kept their distance, yet they had been chatting like any old friends who worked in the same district, meeting regularly for a mid-morning roll and spiced Campanian wine at this streetside eatery. The crony was Paccius Africanus, last seen as opposition counsel in the Metellus case.
Curious.
Silius Italicus made no reference to Africanus. I preferred not to show I had recognised my interrogator.
Silius himself had ignored me on the day I attended court but I had seen him at a distance, pretending he was too lofty to take notice of mere witnesses. He had a heavy build, not grossly fat but fleshy all over as a result of rich living. It had left him dangerously red in the face too. His eyes were sunk in folds of skin as if he constantly lacked sleep, though his clean-shaven chin and neck looked youthful. I put him in his forties but he had the constitution of a man a decade older. His expression was that of someone who had just dropped a massive stone plinth on his foot. As he talked to me, he looked as if it was still there, trapping him painfully.
‘Didius Falco.’ I kept it formal. He did not bother to return the courtesies.
‘Ah yes, I sent for you.’ His voice was assertive, loud and arrogant. Taken with his morose demeanour, it seemed as if he hated life, work, flavoured wine, and me.
‘No one sends for me.’ I was not his slave, nor did I have a commission. It was my free choice whether to accept, even if he offered one. ‘You sent word that you would appreciate a discussion, and I have agreed to come. A home or office address would have helped, if I may say so. You’re none too easy to find.’
He modified his confident manner. ‘Still, you managed to root me out!’ he replied, full of fake friendliness. Even when he was making an effort, he remained dour.
‘Finding people is my job.’
‘Ah yes.’
I sensed that internally he sneered at the type of trade I carried out. I didn’t waste a truculent reaction on him. I wanted to get this over with. ‘Down at the rough end of informing we have skills you never require at the Basilica. So,’ I pressed him, ‘which of my skills do you want to use?’
The big man answered, still with his offhand manner and loud voice: ‘You heard what happened to Metellus?’
‘He died. I heard it was suicide.’
‘Did you believe it?’
‘No reason to doubt,’ I said – at once starting to do so. ‘It makes sense as an inheritance device. He freed his heirs from the burden of the compensation he owed you.’
‘Apparently! And what’s your view?’
I formed one quickly: ‘You want to challenge the cause of death?’
‘Being paid would be more convenient than letting them off.’ Silius leaned back, his hands folded. I noticed a cabochon beryllium seal ring on one hand, a cameo on a thumb, a thick gold band marked like a belt buckle on the other hand. His actual belt was four inches wide, heavy leather, wrapped around a very clean fine wool tunic in plain white with the senatorial trim. The tunic had been carefully laundered; the purple dye had not yet leached into the white. ‘I won the case, so I don’t personally lose –’ he began.
‘Except in time and expenses.’ At the rough end, we were rarely paid time and expenses, and never at the glorious rates this man must command.
Silius snorted. ‘Oh I can wave goodbye to the time charges. It’s the million and a quarter winnings I prefer not to lose!’
A million and a quarter? I managed to keep my expression blank. ‘I was unaware of the compensation limit.’ He had paid us four hundred, which included a mule allowance for the ride Justinus took; we had bumped up the travel costs in accordance with the customs of our trade, but compared with his great windfall, our return wouldn’t buy us a piss in a public lavatory.
‘Of course I share it with my junior,’ Silius grumbled.
‘Quite.’ I hid my bad feeling. His junior was a snivelling scrivener called Honorius. It was Honorius who had dealt with me. He looked about eighteen and gave the impression he had never seen a woman naked. How much of the million and a quarter sesterces would Honorius take home to his mother? Too much. The dozy incompetent had been convinced that our witness lived in Lavinium, not Lanuvium; he tried to avoid paying us; and when he did write out a docket for their banker, he misspelled my name three times.
The banker, by contrast, had coughed up quickly, and was polite. Bankers stay alert. He could tell that by that stage anyone else who upset me would have been sodomised with a very sharp spear.
I sensed further stress coming at me over the horizon on a fast Spanish pony.
‘So why did you want to see me, Silius?’
‘Obvious, surely?’ It was, but I refused to help him. ‘You work in this field.’ He tried to make it sound like a compliment. ‘You already have a connection with the case.’
My connection was remote. I should have kept it that way. Perhaps my next question was naïve. ‘So what do you want me for?’
‘I want you to prove that it was not suicide.’
‘What am I going for? Accident or foul play?’
‘Whatever you like,’ said Silius. ‘I am not fussy, Falco. Just find me suitable evidence to take the remaining Metelli to court and wring them dry.’
I had been slumped on a stool at his table. He had not offered me refreshments (no doubt sensing I would refuse them lest we be trapped in a guest/host relationship). But on arrival, I had assumed equal terms, and seated myself. Now I sat up. ‘I never manufacture proofs!’
‘I never asked you to.’
I stared at him.
‘Rubirius Metellus did not take his own life, Falco,’ Silius told me impatiently. ‘He enjoyed being a bastard – he enjoyed it far too much to give it up. He had been riding high, at the top of his talent, dubious though it was. And he was a coward, anyway. Proof of something that will suit me is there to be had, and I shall pay you well to look for it.’
I stood up and gave him a nod of acknowledgement. ‘This type of investigation has a special rate. I’ll send along my scale of charges –’
He shrugged. He was not at all afraid of being stung. He had the confidence that only comes with the backing of huge collateral. ‘We use investigators all the time. Pass your fees to Honorius.’
‘Very well.’ There would be an on-cost for having the awful Honorius as our liaison point. ‘So let us start right here. What leads do you have? Why did you become suspicious?’
‘I have a suspicious nature,’ boasted Silius bluntly. He was not intending to tell me any more. ‘Finding the leads is your job.’
To look professional, I asked for the Metellus address and went to get on with it.
I knew then that I was being taken for a sucker. I decided I could outwit him. I forgot all the times that manipulating swine like Silius Italicus had outplayed me on the draughtboard of connivery.
I wondered why, if he used his own tame investigators normally, he selected me for this. I knew it was not because he thought I had a friendly, honest face.
RUBIRIUS METELLUS HAD lived in the style I expected. He owned a large home occupying its own block, on the Oppian Hill, just beyond Nero’s Golden House, half a step from the Auditorium should he want to hear recitals, and an easy walk from the Forum when he conducted business. Booths for shops occupied street frontages on his home; some rich men leave them empty but Metellus preferred rents to privacy. His impressive main entrance was flanked by small obelisks of yellow Numidian marble. They looked ancient. I guessed war loot. Some military ancestor had grabbed them from a defeated people; perhaps he was in Egypt with Mark Antony or that prig Octavian. The former, most likely. Octavianus, with the nasty blood of Caesar in his veins and his eye to the main chance, would have been busy turning himself into Augustus and his personal fortune into the largest in the world. He would have tried to prevent his subordinates carrying off loot that could grace his own coffers or enhance his own prestige.
If a past Metellus had nonetheless snaffled some architectural salvage, maybe that was a clue to the whole family’s attitude and skills.
I leaned on the counter of a bowl-and-beaker snackshop. I could see across the street to the Metellus spread. It had a weathered, self-confident opulence. I had intended to ask questions of the food vendor but he looked at me as if he thought he had seen me before – and remembered we had had a row about his lentil pottage. Unlikely. I have style. I wouldn’t order lentils any day.
‘Phew! It’s taken me hours to find this street.’ It was a ten-minute walk from the Sacred Way. Maybe if I looked fagged out he would pity me. Or maybe he would think I was an ignorant deadbeat, up to no good. ‘Is that the Metellus house?’
The man in the apron amended his glare to suggest I was a dead bluebottle, feet-up in his precious pottage. Forced to acknowledge my question, he produced a quarter of a nod.
‘At last! I have business with the people there.’ I felt like a clowning slave in a dire farce. ‘But I hear they had a tragedy. I don’t want to upset them. Know anything about what happened?’
‘No idea,’ he said. Trust me to choose the outlet where Metellus deceased always bought his morning sesame cake. Loyalty makes me sick. Whatever happened to gossip?
‘Well, thanks.’ It was too early in the game to make myself unpleasant, so I refrained from accusing him of ruining my livelihood with his stingy responses. I might need him later.
I drained my cup, wincing at the sourness; some bitter herb had been added to much-watered-down wine. It was not a success.
The food vendor watched me all across the street. Being turned away by the door porter would be a deep humiliation, so I made sure it didn’t happen. I said I was from the lawyer. The porter thought I meant their lawyer and I failed to put him straight. He let me in.
So far, so good. A small battered sphinx guarded the atrium pool. The wide-eyed wise one had stories to tell, but I could not dally. The décor was all polychrome floors and black frescos with gold leaf touch-ups. Perhaps an old house, revived by recent new money. Whose was that? Or was this an old grand mansion, now sinking into disarray? – I noticed an air of dusty neglect as I craned to look into the side rooms.
I did not make contact with any of the family. A steward saw me. He was an eastern-born slave or freedman, who seemed alert. Late forties, clearly with status in the household, efficient, well-spoken, probably cost a packet to purchase though that would have been some years back. I decided not to prevaricate; incurring a false-entry charge was a bad idea. ‘The name’s Falco. Your porter may have misunderstood. I represent Silius Italicus. I am here to check a few details about your master’s sad demise so he can write off his fees. First, allow me to express our most sincere condolences.’
‘Everything is in order,’ said the steward, almost as if they had expected this. It was not quite the correct response to my condolences and at once I mistrusted him. I wondered if Paccius Africanus had warned them here that we would try to investigate. ‘Calpurnia Cara –’
I took out a note tablet and stylus. I kept my manner quiet. ‘Calpurnia Cara is?’
‘My late master’s wife.’ He waited while I made notes. ‘My mistress arranged for seven senators to view the corpse and certify the suicide.’
I held my stylus still and gazed at him over the edge of my notebook. ‘That was very cool-headed.’
‘She is a careful lady.’
Protecting a lot of money, I thought. Of course if it really was a suicide, the husband and wife may well have discussed what Metellus intended. Metellus may have instructed his wife to bring in the witnesses. Paccius Africanus would certainly have advised it, if he were involved. It was a chilling thought that counselling his client to die might be good legal advice.
‘Do you know whether Calpurnia Cara tried to dissuade her husband from his planned course?’
‘I imagine they talked about it,’ the steward replied. ‘I don’t know what was said.’
‘Was the suicide announced to the household staff beforehand?’
He looked surprised. ‘No.’
‘Any chance I might talk with your mistress?’
‘That would not be appropriate.’
‘She lives here?’ He nodded. I made a small symbol on my tablet, without looking up. ‘And the son?’ Another nod. I ticked that off too. ‘Is he married?’
A minute pause. ‘Metellus Negrinus is divorced.’ I made a longer entry.
‘So.’ Now I raised my eyes to the steward again. ‘Calpurnia Cara ensured that her husband’s death was formally witnessed by noble friends. I assume you can provide me with the seven names, incidentally.’ He was already producing a tablet from a pouch. These people were expertly organised. Grief had not confused them at all. ‘Was the viewing conducted before or after your master actually – ?’
‘Afterwards. Straight afterwards.’
‘Were the witnesses in the house while he –’
‘No, they were sent for.’
‘And do you mind – I am sorry if this is very painful – but how did he…?’
I was expecting the classic scenario: on the battlefield a defeated general falls on his sword, usually needing help from a weeping subordinate because finding the space between two ribs and then summoning the strength to pull in a weapon upwards is damned difficult to fix for yourself. Nero cut his throat with a razor, but he was supposedly hiding in a garden trench at the time, where there may have been no elegant options; to be skewered on a dibber would have lacked the artistry he coveted. The traditional method in private life is to enter a warm bath and open your veins. This death is contained, relaxing, and reckoned to be more or less painless. (Mind you, it presupposes you live in a grand home with a bath.) For a senator, such an exit from disaster is the only civilised way out.
But it had not happened here.
‘My master took poison,’ said the steward.
TO INTERVIEW SEVEN senators, I needed help. I returned home and summoned the Camilli. They had to be found first. I sent out my nephew Gaius, a lad about town recently returned from having his habits reformed in the country. It had not worked. He was still a layabout, but agreed to be my runner for his usual exorbitant sweetener. Trotting off to the senator’s house to ask where the lads were supposed to be, he soon rousted out Aelianus from a bath house then rounded up Justinus, who was out shopping with his wife.
While I was waiting I did some budgeting, wrote an ode in my head, and replanted some flower tubs little Julia had ‘weeded’. Helena pounced. ‘I’m glad you’re here. A woman called for you.’
‘Oh good!’ I leered.
‘One of your widows.’
‘Sweetheart, I promise you: I gave up widows.’
‘You may do this one,’ Helena assured me cruelly. ‘Her name is Ursulina Prisca and she is about sixty-five.’
I knew Ursulina. She had been badgering me for a long time to take on an extremely complex wrangle involving her estranged brother’s will. She was half crazy. I could have coped with that; most of my clients were. But she talked a torrent, she smelt of cats, and she drank. A friend of hers had recommended me. I had never worked out who the friend was, though I would like to have strong words with them.
‘She’s a menace.’
Helena grinned. ‘I said you would be delighted to take on her work.’
‘I am not available to the widow Ursulina! She tried to grab me by the balls once.’
‘Don’t make excuses.’
Luckily the lads turned up and I forgot the harassing widow.
I divided up the suicide witnesses, two to each of the lads while I took three.
‘What was the point of having all these witnesses, Falco?’ Aelianus asked fretfully.
‘It’s like getting your will ratified, if you are an important bean. Looks good. Deters questions. In theory it stops Forum gossip. In this case it also raises expectations of a good scandal.’
‘Nobody will query certification by seven senators,’ mocked Helena. ‘As if senators would ever conspire to lie!’
We would be lucky if any of the seven agreed to see us. Having signed the certificate, they would hope to be left alone. Senators try to be unobtainable to the public. To be asked about their noble signatures by a pack of harrying informers would seem outrageous.
Sure enough, Aelianus failed to interview either of the men allocated to him. Justinus saw one of his.
‘A strike! How come?’
‘I pretended I had a good tip on a horse race.’
‘Smart!’ I must try that.
‘I wish I hadn’t bothered. He was rude, Falco.’
‘You expected that, you’re grown up. Tell.’
‘He grudgingly said they were all called to the house by Calpurnia Cara. She announced calmly that since losing the court case, her husband had decided to seek an honourable exit from public life. She told them he had taken poison that afternoon; he wished them – as his circle of friends – to observe the scene and formally certify suicide. This, she said, would simplify matters for his family. They knew what she meant. They did not see Metellus die, but inspected the corpse. He was lying on his bed, dead. He wore a grimace, had a nasty pallor, and smelt of diarrhoea. A small sardonyx pillbox lay open on a side table. The seven men all signed the declaration, which the widow has.’
‘Flaw,’ I chipped in. ‘Metellus did not himself tell them his intentions. Then they did not see him actually swallow any pills.’
‘Quite. How can they say he did it willingly?’ Justinus agreed.
‘Still, well done; at least we know what song these warblers want us to listen to.’
‘How did you get on, Falco?’ Aelianus then asked, hoping my record with the witnesses was as bad as his. I had spoken to all three of my targets. Experience tells. Aelianus replied that it also causes pomposity.
‘All my subjects told the same story,’ I reported. ‘One did concede it was bad form that they had not been addressed by Metellus beforehand. That’s the ideal procedure in a council of friends. But they trust his wife, apparently – or they are scared of her – and I was assured that availing himself of the suicide ploy was entirely in character. Metellus hated to lose. He would enjoy thwarting his accusers.’
‘He won’t enjoy much from the Underworld,’ Aelianus muttered.
‘Right, I think we’ll end up telling Silius it stinks. Before we do, we’ll go one stage further.’
‘You’ll try to see the strangely calm widow!’ Justinus thought he was ahead of me.
I grinned. ‘Helena hates me seeing widows.’
‘I know –’ Helena herself had it right: ‘He is sending me. And if I am successful in gaining entry, Falco will arrive halfway through, as if innocently collecting me to walk me home.’ I had not thought of that. ‘Don’t do it,’ she said immediately. ‘Keep out of my way, Falco. Calpurnia and I may become great friends.’
‘Of course. You’ll go back there to swap bangles and gossip every afternoon.’
‘No, darling. I just want to ask her advice on procedure, in case I ever decide things are so bad, you should poison yourself.’
‘I’ll take that as a threat! – Well if I do it, I don’t want seven sleazebags invited to sit on the bed and watch.’
I waited around a corner, perching on a bollard. I might be banned from joining Helena in her visit to Calpurnia Cara, but I had brought her to the Metellus spread and I would walk her safely home. Rome is a city of dangers.
When she reappeared, looking thoughtful, I decided not to press her but to make the long hike home first. We had to traverse most of the length of the Forum, pass around the base of the Capitol and Palatine Hills, then skirt the end of the Circus Maximus. At least since moving to Pa’s house, we no longer had the steep haul up the Aventine, but Helena looked tired when we finally staggered home. It was dinnertime, we had our children to attend to, and before we found a chance to talk the rest of the household was in bed. We went up to the roof terrace to watch the bright stars overhead and the dim lights down along the riverbank. A single oil lamp glimmered on a table among the trained rose trees. Insects plunged at it madly, so we sat a little apart in shadow.
‘So,’ I prompted. ‘You were welcomed in?’
‘Well, I was allowed in,’ Helena corrected me. ‘I pretended that my mother had sent commiserations. Calpurnia Cara knew she had never met me, but she may have been unsure who Mama was. In case they were old acquaintances who had talked for four hours at the last secret gathering for the Good Goddess, she felt obliged to be polite.’
I shuddered. Traditional religion has that effect. I was relieved that Helena had never expressed any interest in the notorious female goings-on in honour of the so-called Good Goddess. My own religious observance stopped short at the guano-spattered environs of the Temple of Juno, where I had duties as the Procurator of Juno’s Sacred Geese – a merry jest of the Emperor’s. ‘So what is Calpurnia like?’
‘Between fifty and sixty, as you would expect from her husband’s and son’s positions in the Senate. I wouldn’t call her handsome, but –’ Helena paused. ‘She had bearing and presence.’
That sounded as if Calpurnia was a vicious old bat. Since my own life’s companion certainly had presence, I was careful of my phrasing: ‘She would have been no cipher in the marriage?’
‘Oh no. She’s a little defensive –’
‘Bad tempered?’
‘Let’s say, very confident. Well groomed, but not wearing much jewellery. She seems cultured; there were reading-scrolls in the room. Mind you, there was a wool basket too, yet I reckon that was just for show! I can’t see the lady actually spinning like a traditional good wife.’
‘You suspect a slave had been sent out in a hurry to buy some wool so they could stage-manage appearances?’
‘Could be. She had a mousy maid in attendance, to look modest.’
‘How formal? Was she veiled?’
‘Don’t be silly, Marcus; she was at home. Her manner was reserved, but it should be, with nosy strangers coming to her house for days, trying to catch her out.’
‘She was receiving well-wishers, though?’
‘A queue of callers; I gathered I was lucky to find her alone. I felt that accepting condolences – from both genuine friends and even the wickedly curious – was an ordeal which Calpurnia Cara quite enjoys.’
‘A duty?’
‘A challenge.’
‘She wants to test her own endurance?’ I wondered.
‘Oh I think she knows how capable she is,’ Helena replied warmly.
The air temperature was dropping. Helena reached for her stole, which I helped to tuck around her. As usual it was a good excuse to explore her body affectionately.
‘Do you want to hear this, Marcus?’
‘Of course.’ I was perfectly capable of groping a woman while extracting her evidence. My profession calls for a man to be physically adroit and mentally versatile, often at the same time. I could take notes while scratching my bum too.
‘She told me what you already knew. Nothing added and nothing different. It seems very well rehearsed.’ Despite the dusk, I knew that Helena had read my thoughts and smiled. ‘That does not necessarily make it untrue.’
‘Perhaps,’ I agreed.
‘One other thing –’ There was a new note of mischief in Helena’s tone. ‘I didn’t see the son, of course. I couldn’t tell if he was in the house. They call him Birdy, by the way; I don’t know why. I took the opportunity to ask one of the staff for an address for junior’s divorced wife – ostensibly so I could pay condolences there too.’ I said nothing. ‘Unless you want to take over that visit?’ she enquired, in apparent innocence.
‘You know me so well.’
‘I expect you will claim,’ Helena scoffed, ‘the divorcee may give us another side of the story. This may be a crucial breakthrough and you need to expose her directly to your experienced interrogatory skills?’
‘My love, how comfortable it is to have a wife who understands my business.’
‘Her name is Saffia Donata – and you need to know in advance that she is causing trouble!’
I said that sounded like exactly the kind of sweet little breakthrough I was looking for.
‘She has three children and some money.’ An excellent briefing. Helena Justina made a wonderful work partner – thorough, discreet, witty, and even fair to me. ‘I did not ask if she is pretty.’
I said I could discover that for myself.
NEXT MORNING I began to see why Silius Italicus was so secretive about where he lived: self-protection. We were still at breakfast when a message was brought up that Ursulina Prisca had arrived downstairs. I sent Justinus to get rid of her. I could be magnanimous. Let her have a few minutes of pleasure being rebuffed by a handsome, polite young fellow.
Once that role would have been mine. Now I was middle-class, middle-aged, and full of middle-rank anxieties. When you have no money there is no point worrying. Once you obtain some, all that ends.
While dear Quintus interviewed the persistent baggage, using a side room which we kept tidy for that purpose, I kissed Helena, pulled a face at the baby, tickled Julia, locked the dog in a bedroom, and slipped out of the house. (Leaving home in a hurry was much slicker when I was single.) If Ursulina decided our boy was adorable, she might dig in her talons. My youngest brother-in-law was very polite and hated saying no to women in distress. I knew that all women were hard as nuts, but he would easily be manoeuvred into taking the commission. Fine. He could do it. Now our team had a nagging-granny specialist.
I was off to try my skills on a much more difficult female. Forget the divorcee. My motto was hit them gently to see what happens – then hit them again, hard. I was going to revisit Calpurnia Cara.
There is a trick informers use. If you have assailed a house once in the afternoon and want another attempt, go next time in the morning. If the household is wealthy, they may work their porters in shifts. Mind you, many rich families work their door porters to death, thinking that the provision of a cubicle with a stool means the porter has an easy life. It’s a boring career, and that can work to your advantage. On the whole though, door porters become obstructive, maybe because sitting on a stool all day cuts off the circulation painfully in their legs. It affects their brains too. They get above themselves. I hate the swine.
The Metelli, as I might by then have expected, kept their porter in situ all day. I observed this from the same unfriendly snackbar where I had rested my trotters on the counter yesterday. This meant I might have to wait around for hours before that other informing trick: knocking on the door at lunchtime when the porter takes his meal break. Luckily, I did not need to wait so long. While the door was open for a delivery, I heard the porter ask another slave to stand in while he went off for a pee.
Thank you, gods!
(Which reminded me again that I was Procurator of the Sacred Geese of Juno, and I ought to say hello to my fat feathered charges, now I was back in Rome.)