The Ides of April (33 page)

‘You need not have. I am having the woman fetched back to Rome.’

‘She won’t come.’

‘No choice. Official custody.’

‘Well, I tried. She seems unlikely to give anything up.’

‘No, not to me either,’ Tiberius agreed ruefully. ‘Morellus can tackle her. I want him to keep her here at the station house.’ Seeing my expression, he was quick to add, ‘He can hold her for a couple of nights – for security – no brutal methods. That never brings out the truth. She has lived all her life in comfortable surroundings. The sights and sounds of a neighbourhood barracks should be enough to frighten her into a confession. To somebody.’ He meant me.

‘Laia Gratiana,’ I said. ‘The maid will talk to Laia, if she talks at all.’

Tiberius raised his eyebrows with a gleam that said I had had a smart idea. So; we were back on good terms.

I rode out an important pause. Tiberius began fiddling with the styluses and pens, the equipment Morellus had warned me not to break. We were both uneasy; we had to find a way to initiate a dark conversation.

Sticking with the maid, I approached the subject obliquely. ‘I doubt she herself has done anything wrong, but Venusia is shielding someone.’ The runner stopped fiddling. ‘I may be the only person in the Empire who believes this, but even if you fail to close the deal you wanted, a long journey is never wasted. You have a lot of time to think.’

Tiberius leaned back again, arms folded. ‘Spill those thoughts?’

I braced myself to share all my sorry conclusions. I felt like Kylo – with the great difference that I understood the implications. ‘Start with Aricia. I went there the day after the Ides. I had a long and frankly tedious interview with the maid. She told me nothing, not directly. Venusia is . . .’

I was groping for words because I wanted to be fair to her; I had some sympathy with what I now saw as her personal predicament. Tiberius smiled wryly. ‘Yes. I have met her.’

‘Recently?’

‘No, not for years.’

‘You are not her secret lover then?’

At that, he choked, full of masculine horror. ‘No! . . . Does she have one?’

‘I came to think so, although not the man I was being encouraged to identify. According to Andronicus, it’s your darling master, the aedile.’ Tiberius breathed visibly. ‘He alleges Faustus dallied with this maid, then dropped her for his patron’s wife, causing Venusia to destroy his marriage out of jealousy. That is the Andronicus version. Mine is different.’ I was watching Tiberius closely; he was restraining a tetchy response. Our eyes locked; he still refrained from comment. He in turn was watching my emotions as I speculated. I liked the fact he waited to hear my verdict; I liked him giving me credit for reaching one independently. ‘I asked Venusia if she knows Andronicus; she denied it. I think that’s untrue. I think she has known him very well. She mentioned that, as she put it, I “went around with him”, and I had the impression it mattered to her.’

‘Which means?’ asked Tiberius.

‘Andronicus has engineered a connection with her.’ My companion pursed his lips enigmatically. ‘I can imagine his method, unfortunately. He wormed his way in close then tried to winkle out of her what she knows about Faustus.’

‘Was he successful?’

‘Not sure. He knows about the old affair, but it’s recent; he heard it from Laia. He is a manipulator,’ I admitted. ‘Venusia may have believed it was love, but I have heard Andronicus describe her harshly. He despises her – as he does many people.’ I tried not to think that perhaps he despised me, too.

‘Contempt is the key to him.’ Tiberius almost spoke in parenthesis. ‘Albia, I tried to warn you not to engage with him. He bounces from woman to woman – has done so since his teens. He started early, I’ve been told. Why is he digging anyway? Blackmail?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘It wouldn’t work. Faustus has nothing to lose. Laia Gratiana already thinks he is dirt. His uncle doesn’t care. His patron and the wife are both long dead.’

I was not so confident. ‘It could make your aedile’s life uncomfortable. Scandal always matters. A revelation of adultery, even now, would sully his term of office – and he could get into serious trouble with the emperor. Faustus may think it long dead, but you know how congealing flotsam bobs up again, with the same old stink. Andronicus believes he can control people through any knowledge they don’t want him to have.’

Tiberius frowned. ‘That was exactly why he was denied the post as secretary.’

‘He resents that so bitterly; he constantly harps on it . . . But let me finish. The mad fancies get worse. Andronicus wanted me to believe Faustus was so vengeful about Venusia informing, he actually stalked and attacked her. We are asked to believe he killed the other maid, Ino, by mistake.’

‘Oh for heavens’ sake! Flavia Albia, you don’t believe any of this filth?’

‘No.’ I let a beat pass before I added, ‘Not now.’

‘Meaning?’

I paused again, then for once teased him. ‘You need to be careful. He blamed you first!’

‘He’s a fool then.’

‘Yes, luckily for you, that was what I thought.’

‘Thanks!’

Tiberius dropped his arms onto the table. I reached and took up his wrist. He had no bandages today, so without undue intimacy I could inspect that wound I had given him, flopping his hand over to see both sides. The punctures were drying out and scabbing over at last.

‘I should have listened to you.’ His tone was easy. ‘It needed air. I was laid up briefly; one morning there was even excited talk of blood-poisoning, though I recovered and disappointed them.’

‘I heard you were feeling seedy.’ In fact, that was not exactly what I heard. Releasing his arm abruptly, I dropped my gaze from this new clean-shaven version of the runner. ‘It was strangely self-destructive for Andronicus to insist that the mystery killer comes from your house.’

‘That’s him. Stupidly impulsive. You would never have thought of it, if he had left the subject alone.’ Tiberius clearly anticipated what I was going to say next.

‘He knows how to create a story. His reasoning is that you, or Faustus, were well-placed to find victims in the street, directly familiar with all the relevant locations. But he, too, passes freely between your house and the temple. Nobody monitors his movements, well not much.’ I knew Tiberius did on occasions. ‘And once I started to wonder –’ I took a deep breath. ‘Andronicus himself became my prime suspect.’

There. It was said. I had made the accusation that had bothered me all the way along the Via Appia yesterday.

In his dour way, at first Tiberius barely blinked. This was not a man who sensationalised.

He must have heard how dry my mouth had become from tension. Without a word, he stood up, took a jug from a shelf and went outside, reappearing with water. He found beakers, selecting the least chipped from a misshapen collection that Morellus kept in a basket on the floor. After he poured, we drank slowly, our mood of bitter preoccupation ruling out enjoyment. That assumes anyone ever could savour the bouquet and undernotes of the sludge the vigiles had in their water fountain for fire buckets.

The situation changed at that point. The runner fumbled in a pouch on his belt, one of those over-elaborate leather devices men favour to carry their small change, notebooks and whittling knives. Their only benefit, it seems to me, is that they make good presents when you are stuck over relatives’ birthdays. Men are so fussy about these things, they really want to choose their own, but you can fix that for them. Did Tiberius have someone with whom he would pre-arrange a ‘secret’ anniversary or Saturnalia gift for himself? Somehow I doubted that, though he seemed like a man who would be amused to do it.

He withdrew a couple of objects, placing the first on the table in front of me, one-handed, while he kept back something else. This was a small, round glass flask, with a thong round its neck to carry it by. Green glass, brown thong, no distinguishing marks. A lock-up shop alongside Prisca’s baths sold scores of them. That was repeated throughout Rome, and on all across the Empire. A standard ablutions flask.

‘Mean anything?’

‘Possibly. Andronicus had one like it the other morning. I assumed it was bath oil. Most people take their own oil if they can afford it.’

‘Can you identify this bottle certainly as his?’

‘Not without perjury. Sorry; I am a classic bad witness.’ Informers hate being reduced to the level of general uselessness they themselves encounter in enquiries. Ashamed of myself, I reached for the flask, unplugging the wooden stopper to sniff.

Tiberius shouted,
‘Careful!’
so I nearly dropped it. I don’t know what the contents were; not oil. Some thinner liquid, with a strange odour that could be chemical or plant-derived. I had opened a palm to pour some out but then, abruptly wary, I made sure not to. Tiberius reclaimed the flask and closed it, still one-handed. ‘Silly girl, Albia! Tests will be carried out.’

‘How?’

‘As a gesture to you, on some creature even you would see as vermin. How are you with pigeons?’

‘Try a rat. You expect fatal results?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Where did you find this?’

‘His room was searched this morning.’

‘So you knew the truth already?’

‘Not “knew”. I
suspected
. Because he and I are so constantly at loggerheads, I have been trying not to condemn him until I had to.’

‘Well, we don’t want to be unfair to a multiple murderer, do we? – Gods, it is so much easier to form charges against a stranger.’

Tiberius was looking concerned for me. ‘Has this become too personal? Do you want to stand aside?’

‘I want to see it through.’

‘It’s hard.’ Voice low, the runner seemed affected himself.

‘It has to be done,’ I answered, though my jaw set and my tone was drab. ‘So what else was in your evidence haul?’

Displayed with a conjurer’s gesture, his second item was my own bone needle-case.

‘That belongs to me.’ I heard my voice croak. I felt hot, then sick, even though I was not surprised.

‘Don’t protect him, Albia.’

‘I don’t even want to. He must have taken it.’

I sat silent, remembering that afternoon when I had been stitching braid. I saw Andronicus examining my sewing box, hazel eyes bright with curiosity as he opened the box and explored the contents. He must have palmed the needle-case, right there in front of me.

I pulled out the plug, a tiny wad of old papyrus, and shook, aware once again that my companion flinched at the danger, though this time I was ejecting any contents safely onto the table. Nothing fell out; the case was empty. Tiberius asked how many needles I had owned. ‘One in this case, plus another still at home. Even two is a luxury. Do you know what needles cost?’ In my head I heard Andronicus say,
I don’t do sewing . . .
Like so many of his utterances, it had had a double meaning.

Tiberius confirmed in a quiet voice, ‘Identical killings elsewhere have been carried out with poisoned needles. One was found stuck in a victim, over on the Esquiline. He felt something prick him, so spun around unexpectedly, causing his attacker to let go and leave the needle behind. That lunatic was caught, incidentally, so we can be sure the deaths on the Aventine have been caused by someone else. The method has been known for a while, but was deliberately kept from the public.’

‘Oh your damned secrecy! You got it wrong, Tiberius. Someone who did know could use the idea to make it look as if his killings were part of the general epidemic. That would divert attention.’

‘Yes.’

‘Andronicus must know.’

‘I never told him, Albia.’

‘Are you sure? Andronicus once said he has taken the notes at situation meetings with the four aediles. When they reviewed the needle killings, he must have heard the method discussed.’

‘That fits.’ Tiberius drained his beaker, refilled it, drank to the bottom again. He leaned on his elbows once more, in order to move a little closer to me. Mornings were quiet for the vigiles. There were no sounds of anyone outside in the colonnade, or beyond in the muster yard. Yet even though we were alone in the enquiry room, Tiberius instinctively dropped his voice: ‘So, Flavia Albia, let us say it: you and I are both convinced that the needle-killer on the Aventine is our archivist, Andronicus.’

A
ndronicus was the killer. Now that someone else agreed with my suspicions, it all seemed horribly obvious.

To diffuse my panic, I fell back on nervous humour. ‘Oh he can’t be a murderer; his eyes twinkle!’

The runner sat tight while I grappled with the truth. I was stalling. He knew it. For the first time, I faced up directly to the personal implications. It did not take long, because the dread had been lurking all last night. Not for the first time, I had given my heart impetuously to a man who then betrayed my trust – but this was by far the most sinister occasion.

‘Story of my life,’ I admitted bitterly. ‘Being strung along by a bastard, taking far too long to notice it . . .’

Judging by his expression, Tiberius had met embittered women before and had little patience with my self-pity, but what he said was, ‘From my observations, Andronicus truly fell for you.’

I flared up. ‘And I stonkingly, inexcusably, ridiculously fell for him!’

‘Steady.’

‘But for a series of accidents – and my own unease, it’s fair to say – it could have been worse. At least I never slept with him.’

I wanted Tiberius to know. Why? It was none of his business.

He brushed the statement aside. Embarrassed perhaps.

‘I am furious. He stole something of mine to use in his terrible attacks – worse, it was something I had been given by my dear young sister! That’s a good needle-case, it had associations with Julia, but I will never feel able to use it again.’

Tiberius took it back from me. He needed it as evidence anyway.

I buried my face in my hands, raging now at myself.

‘What a mess. This is what everyone expects if you do a traditional man’s job. Oh Juno; if you are an honest woman, it’s what you dread yourself. Sheer bloody incompetence. You will tangle yourself up in some terrible case; make things far worse; sleep with a killer; compromise yourself, your future chance of work, even risk not convicting him—’