Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (7 page)

I shrugged. ‘How old is the old man?’

‘Sixty, perhaps sixty-five.’

‘And how old am I – hypothetically speaking?’

‘Perhaps forty.’

‘Time,’ I said. ‘Whatever the complaint, time will take care of it, as surely as any other remedy.’

Cicero nodded. ‘Simply wait, you mean. Sit back. Relax. Allow nature to take its course. Yes, that would be the easiest way. And perhaps, though not necessarily, the safest. Certainly, it’s what most people would do, confronted with another person whose existence they can hardly bear – especially if that person is older or weaker, especially if he happens to be a member of the family. Most especially if he happens to be one’s father. Bear the discomfort and be patient. Let it be resolved by time. After all, no one lives forever, and the young usually outlive their elders.’

Cicero paused. The yellow gauze gently rose and fell as if the whole house exhaled. The room was flooded with heat. ‘But time can be something of a luxury. Certainly, if one waits long enough, an old man of sixty-five will eventually expire on his own – though he may be an old man of eighty-five before that happens.’

He rose from his chair and began to pace. Cicero was not a man to orate while sitting still. I would later come to see his whole body as a sort of engine – the legs deliberately pacing, the arms in motion, the hands shaping ponderous gestures, the head tilting, the eyebrows oscillating up and down. None of these movements was an end in itself. Instead they were all connected together somehow, and all subservient to his voice, that strange, irritating, completely fascinating voice – as if his voice were an instrument and his body the machine that produced it; as if his limbs and digits were the gears and levers necessary to manufacture the voice that issued from his mouth. The body moved. The voice emerged.

‘Consider,’ he said – a tilt of the head, a subtle flourish of the hand – ‘an old man of sixty-five, a widower living alone in Rome. Not at all the reclusive type. He’s quite fond of going to dinners and parties. He loves the arena and the theatre. He frequents the baths. He even patronizes – I swear it, at sixty-five! – the neighbourhood brothel. Pleasure is his life. As for work, he’s retired. Oh, there’s money to spare. Valuable estates in the countryside, vineyards and farms – but he doesn’t bother with that any more. He’s long left the work of running things to someone younger.’

‘To me,’ I said.

Cicero smiled slightly. Like all orators, he hated any interruption, but the question proved that I was at least listening. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘hypothetically speaking. To you. To his hypothetical son. As for the old man, his own life is now devoted solely to pleasure. In its pursuit he walks the streets of the city at all hours of the day and night, attended only by his slaves.’

‘He has no bodyguard?’ I said.

‘None to speak of. Two slaves accompany him. More for convenience than protection.’

‘Armed?’

‘Probably not.’

‘My hypothetical father is asking for trouble.’

Cicero nodded. ‘Indeed. The streets of Rome are hardly the place for any decent citizen to go gadding about in the middle of the night. Especially an older man. Especially if he has the look of money about him, and no armed guard. Foolhardy! Taking his life into his hands, day by day – such an old fool. Sooner or later he’ll come to no good end, or so you think. And yet, year after year he keeps up this outrageous behaviour, and it comes to nothing. You begin to think that some invisible demon or spirit must be looking after him, for he never comes to harm. Never once is he robbed. Not once is he even threatened. The worst that occurs is that he may be accosted by a beggar or a drunkard or some vagrant whore late at night, and these he can easily handle with a coin or a word to his slaves. No, time seems not to be cooperating. Left to his own devices, the old man may very well live forever.’

‘And would that be so bad? I think I’m beginning to like him.’

Cicero raised an eyebrow. ‘On the contrary, you hate him. Never mind why. Simply assume for the moment that, for whatever reason, you want him dead. Desperately.’

‘Time would still be easiest. Sixty-five, you said – how is his health?’

‘Excellent. Probably better than yours. And why not? Everyone is always saying how overworked you are, running the estates, raising your family, working yourself into an early grave – while the old man hasn’t a care in the world. All he does is enjoy himself. In the morning he rests. In the afternoon he plans his evening. In the evening he stuffs himself with expensive food, drinks to excess, carouses with men half his age. The next morning he recovers at the baths and begins all over again. How is his health? I told you, he still patronizes the local whorehouse.’

‘Food and drink have been known to kill a man,’ I ventured. ‘And they say that many a whore has stopped an old man’s heart.’

Cicero shook his head. ‘Not good enough, too unreliable. You hate him, don’t you understand? Perhaps you fear him. You grow impatient for his death.’

‘Politics?’ I offered.

Cicero ceased his pacing for a moment, smiled, and then resumed. ‘Politics,’ he said. ‘Yes, in these days, in Rome – politics could certainly kill a man more quickly and surely than high living or a whore’s embrace or even a midnight stroll through the Subura.’ He spread his hands wide open in an orator’s despair. ‘Unfortunately, the old man is one of those remarkable creatures who manages to go through life without ever having any politics at all.’

‘In Rome?’ I said. ‘A citizen and a landowner? Impossible.’

‘Then say that he’s one of those men like a rabbit – charming, vacuous, harmless. Never attracting attention to himself, never giving offence. Not worth the bother of hunting, so long as there’s larger game afoot. Surrounded on every side by politics, like a thicket of nettles, yet able to slip through the maze without a scratch.’

‘He sounds clever. I like this old man more and more.’

Cicero frowned. ‘Cleverness has nothing to do with it. The old man has no strategy except to slip through life with the least possible inconvenience. He’s lucky, that’s all. Nothing reaches him. The Italian allies rise in revolt against Rome? He comes from Ameria, a village that waits until the last moment to join the revolt, then reaps the first fruits of the reconciliation; that’s how he became a citizen. Civil war between Marius and Sulla, then between Sulla and Cinna? The old man wavers in his loyalty – a realist and an opportunist like most Romans these days – and emerges like the delicate maiden who traverses a raging stream by hopping from stone to stone without even getting her sandals wet. Those who have no opinions are the only people safe today. A rabbit, I tell you. If you leave it to politics to put him in danger, he’ll live to be a hundred.’

‘Surely he can’t be as vapid as you describe. Every man takes risks these days just by being alive. You say he’s a landowner, with interests in Rome. He must be a client to some influential family. Who are his patrons?’

Cicero laughed. ‘Even there he chooses the blandest, safest possible family to ally himself with – the Metelli. Sulla’s in-laws – or at least they were until Sulla divorced his fourth wife. And not just any of the Metelli, but the oldest, the most inert, and endlessly respectable of its many branches. Somehow or other he ingratiated himself to Caecilia Metella. Have you ever met her?’

I shook my head.

‘You will,’ he said mysteriously. ‘No, politics will never kill this old man for you. Sulla may fill up the Forum with heads on sticks, the Field of Mars may become a bowl of blood tipping into the Tiber – you’ll still find the old man traipsing about after dark in the worst parts of town, stuffed from a dinner party at Caecilia’s, blithely on his way to the neighbourhood whorehouse.’

Cicero abruptly sat down. The machine, it seemed, needed an occasional rest, but the cracked instrument continued to play. ‘So you see that fate will not cooperate in taking the odious old man off your hands. Besides, it may be that there’s some urgent reason that you want him dead – not just hatred or a grudge, but some crisis immediately at hand. You have to take action yourself.’

‘You suggest that I murder my own father?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Impossible.’

‘You must.’

‘Un-Roman!’

‘Fate compels you.’

‘Then – poison?’

He shrugged. ‘Possibly, if you had the proper access. But you’re not an ordinary father and son, coming and going in each other’s household. There’s been some bitterness between you. Consider: the old man has his own town house here in Rome, and seldom sleeps anywhere else. You live at the old family home in Ameria, and on the rare occasions when business brings you into the city, you never sleep in your father’s house. You stay with a friend instead, or even at an inn – the quarrel between you runs that deep. So you don’t have easy access to the old man’s dinner before he eats it. Bribe one of his servants? Unlikely and highly uncertain – in a family divided, the slaves always choose sides. They’ll be far more loyal to him than to you. Poison is an unworkable solution.’

The yellow curtain rippled. A gust of warm air slipped beneath its hem and entered the room like a mist clinging low to the ground. I felt it pool and eddy about my feet, heavy with the scent of jasmine. The morning was almost over. The true heat of the day was about to begin. I suddenly felt sleepy. So did Tiro; I saw him stifle a yawn. Perhaps he was simply bored. This was probably not the first time that he had heard his master run through the same string of arguments, refining his logic, worrying over the particular polish and gloss of each phrase.

I cleared my throat. ‘Then the solution seems obvious, esteemed Cicero. If the father must be murdered – at the instigation of his own son, a crime almost too hideous to contemplate – then it should be done when the old man is most vulnerable and most accessible. Some moonless night, on his way home from a party, or on his way to a brothel. No witnesses at that hour, at least none who’d be eager to testify. Gangs roaming the streets. There would be nothing suspicious about such a death. It would be easy to blame it on some passing group of anonymous thugs.’

Cicero leaned forwards in his chair. The machine was reviving. ‘So you wouldn’t commit the act yourself, by your own hand?’

‘Certainly not! I wouldn’t even be in Rome. I’d be far to the north in my house in Ameria – having nightmares, probably.’

‘You’d hire some assassins to do it for you?’

‘Of course.’

‘People you knew and trusted?’

‘Would I be likely to know such people personally? A hardworking Amerian farmer?’ I shrugged. ‘More likely I’d be relying on strangers. A gang leader met in a tavern in the Subura. A nameless acquaintance recommended by another acquaintance known to a casual friend . . .’

‘Is that how it’s done?’ Cicero was genuinely curious. He spoke no longer to the hypothetical parricide, but to Gordianus the Finder. ‘They told me that you would actually know a thing or two about this sort of business. They said: “Yes, if you want to get in touch with the kind of men who don’t mind getting blood on their hands, Gordianus is one place to start.” ’

‘
They
? Whom do you mean, Cicero? Who says that I drink from the same cup with killers?’

He bit his lip, not quite certain how much he wanted to tell me yet. I answered for him. ‘I think you mean Hortensius, don’t you? Since it was Hortensius who recommended me to you?’

Cicero shot a sharp glance at Tiro, who was suddenly quite awake.

‘No, Master, I told him nothing. He guessed it –’ For the first time that day, Tiro sounded to me like a slave.

‘Guessed? What do you mean?’

‘
Deduced
would be a better word. Tiro is telling the truth. I know, more or less anyway, what you’ve called me for. A murder case involving a father and son, both called Sextus Roscius.’

‘You
guessed
that this was my reason for calling on you? But how? I only decided yesterday to take on Roscius as a client.’

I sighed. The curtain sighed. The heat crept up my feet and legs, like water slowly rising in a well. ‘Perhaps you should have Tiro explain it to you later. I think it’s too hot for me to go through it all again step by step. But I know that Hortensius had the case to begin with, and that you have it now. And I presume that all this talk about hypothetical conspiracies has something to do with the actual murder?’

Cicero looked glum. I think he felt foolish at finding that I had known the true circumstances all along. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s hot. Tiro, you’ll bring some refreshment. Some wine, mixed with cool water. Perhaps some fruit. Do you like dried apples, Gordianus?’

Tiro rose from his chair. ‘I’ll tell Athalena.’

‘No, Tiro, fetch it yourself. Take your time.’ The order was demeaning, and intentionally so; I could tell by the look of hurt in Tiro’s eyes, and by the look in Cicero’s as well, heavy-lidded and drooping from something other than the heat. Tiro was unused to being given such menial tasks. And Cicero? One sees it all the time, a master taking out petty frustrations on the slaves around him. The habit becomes so commonplace that they do it without thinking; slaves come to accept it without humiliation or repining, as if it were a godsent inconvenience, like rainfall on a market day.