The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (24 page)

“Claudia, his wife.” Omba grunted, kneeling. “I checked, Master. Everyone’s eager to talk. The daughter of old King Caractacus of Britannia, they say.”

“A Roman citizen?”

“Pudens is, so she married one, she’s protected by citizen law.”

“Not much protection for long.” Quistus closed his hands around the shaft of the spear. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“It’s too thick, too long, too heavy.”

“That’s because” – Quistus placed his sandalled foot on Matrusus, tugged hard on the shaft, withdrawing it with a soggy sucking sound – “it isn’t a spear.”

He wiped the brains off the end. Blunt sawn wood. “It’s a pole.” Omba shook her head, impressed. “Someone very strong threw that thing. Phew.”

Quistus turned his gaze from the Christians, raised his eyes to the washing flapping in the sky between the apartment blocks, the Exelsius on one side, the Imperium on the other. “It’s a washing-pole.” He pointed at a rope, still with washing attached, hanging down from the top corner of the Exelsius, then turned back to the Imperium. No pole, no rope.

“No,” Omba said. “I’m not climbing up there, not me.”

The Imperium doorkeeper had fled. Light in the lobby came from above, down the light-well in the centre of the building. Quistus climbed the stairs past sturdy apartment doors, came out on the flat roof. He hung on as the wind gusted, about eighty feet above the street. The roof of the
Imperium was laid out like a small garden, carefully-tended shrubs, a trellis, a few benches, a pleasant place to relax on a summer evening but cold and breezy now. At each corner a washing-pole stood bedded in mortar, an endless line leading from the tip to another apartment block.

Except this corner. Quistus leaned out. Even Omba looked small, far below. He narrowed his eyes, peering across at the cream stucco of the Exelsius’s seven storeys. A mark on the corner just over half way down. He returned downstairs.

“Well? Thrown from up there?” Omba asked.

Without a word Quistus crossed to the Exelsius. He climbed three floors, orientated himself, then knocked on a door. It swung open. An old woman sat with a cat on her lap. “I thought you were my breakfast,” she said. “But you don’t sound like my daughter.”

“Did you hear the trouble last night, mother?”

“No, nothing.”

He stepped onto the balcony, reached out past the dangling, frayed end of the line to the gash in the stucco. Fresh. The end of something rounded had struck against the wall here, very hard – hard enough to break the line. He stared down, eyes searching. “Nothing at all?”

“No.” The blind woman stroked her cat. “At night I sleep. With my ears closed. It’s safer.”

“Thank you, mother.”

He closed the door and went downstairs to the street. He stood by Matrusus’s feet, on the exact spot Matrusus was standing when he was hit. It didn’t make sense. Then he saw the slope-roofed outhouse leaning against the ground floor of the Imperium. His eye traced an imaginary line. It beggared belief; but it had to be true.

He looked round, realizing everyone was watching.

“Don’t keep me waiting,” Stigmus said.

Quistus gathered his thoughts. “Let him think!” Omba
sounded proud, almost maternal. “That’s what my master does best, he does.”

“Keep her quiet,” Stigmus said.

“You can’t keep me quiet,” Omba said.

Quistus spoke. “The fact is, none of the Christians was strong enough to do this to Matrusus on the ground. To have shoved this blunt pole – not a spear – through his face would have required someone as strong as Matrusus himself. And why didn’t Matrusus defend himself? His sword was drawn.”

“Everyone can see the pole was thrown from a distance,” Stigmus said. “His sword was no defence.”

“The pole was thrown from up there.” Quistus moved a few steps from Matrusus, pointing up at the top corner of the Imperium that came into view.

Stigmus said, “The killer couldn’t even have seen his target! How could he aim? This is nonsense!”

“The wind killed Matrusus.” Quistus pointed at the washing line down the wall of the Exelsius. “There was a gust, the line was heavy with washing, the pole broke out of the mortar. As it fell fifty, sixty feet the attached line swung it like a slingshot towards the Exelsius. The pole struck the wall by the balcony with terrific force, breaking the line –”

“This is ridiculous! Still not in sight of Matrusus! How could it hit him?”

“The pole span downward, struck the sloping roof of that outhouse at just the right angle, then span outward on the new trajectory. Matrusus never knew what hit him.”

“Hit him with incredible accuracy. How do you account for that?” Stigmus was furious. “It beggars belief. I’ll tear the truth out of them.”

“Stigmus, it was an accident,” Quistus said. “Pure chance.”

A voice called out, “No. Stigmus is right.”

Quistus turned to the bald-headed man in the crowd who had spoken.

“Stigmus is right,” the bald man repeated. “It was no accident. I witnessed what happened.” He stepped forward. “I am a Christian. I am the voice of this congregation. I saw –” A soldier whacked him in the belly with the butt of his sword, dropping him.

“Put him with the others,” Stigmus said.

“Stop.” The bald man struggled to his feet. His clothes were very poor, and his hands were gnarled. “You cannot touch me. I am a citizen of Rome.”

Stigmus glared, then waved the soldier away.

Quistus said, “Tell us your name.”

The bald man drew himself up with dignity, though he was so short and ragged. “To you Romans my name is Gaius Iulius Paulus,” he said. “To the Jews I was Saul. But a great light shone upon me on the road, and now to these folk my Christian name is Paul.”

Quistus glanced at Volusia. Paul, leader of the Christians. A man of great faith to risk himself here, or mad.

Quistus said, “Who did it?”

Paul said: “God did it.”

“God Himself.” Paul raised his voice. “The death of Matrusus the devil was an Act of God. A
Damnum Fatale
. God’s justice.”

“Dare you testify to this?” Stigmus said dangerously.

“Hear me!” This Paul was a natural orator, the crowd responded to him. “I am Paul of Tarsus, a Roman citizen of good family fallen on hard times, a tentmaker, a Christian. There is no Christian church, no temple, only the Jesus Christ we choose to carry inside our hearts, each of us.”

“I’m not listening to this drivel.” Stigmus beckoned the
soldier with the eager sword-butt, but Quistus said, “It can’t do any harm to hear him out.”

“Words are the most powerful weapons,” Stigmus hissed, but Paul was speaking.

“Merciful God killed the evil Matrusus just as he killed the evil men before Noah. God killed Matrusus just as surely as He slaughtered the pagan prophets of Baal. God struck down Matrusus just as He struck down the strong of Egypt and drowned their bodies beneath the waves. See!” He swept up his arms towards the roof of the Imperium. “Jesus Christ watches over us and cares for us. He is in our hearts and in the wind and in the sky, He
is
us. There is no chance, no accident. I saw Him blow the wind, I saw His perfect hand guide the pole like a spear through the air so that it struck that building and began a new path, struck the outhouse and was turned afresh again, ordained, so that Matrusus received the spear of God not one hair’s breadth to the right or left. How can that be chance? It proves the existence of God.
Damnum Fatale
. Amen.”

One by one the Christians spoke, though Stigmus shouted at them.

“I saw it too,” Faustinus croaked. “Matrusus carved me with the mocking cross, and died where he stood.”

The women shouted that they too had seen.

“
I
saw,” Timothy said. “But I don’t believe they did, because they are only women.”

“We all saw,” Volusia said. “Even us women.”

Then Peter spoke with dignity. “I am a poor fisherman,” he said. “Yet I know what I saw.”

“If any tongue speaks more,” Stigmus roared, “I shall order it cut out.”

Paul lived in the Transtiberium, the Jewish quarter. The wind blew brown waves along the Tiber, breaking white
against the bridge. The buildings lining the river were tall but falling down, decayed, and stank of strange food. Eyes watched them from alleyways, bearded men bargained, and talk stopped when Quistus’s toga passed: here a sign of rank was an unusual provocation. Footsteps padded after them. There was a masculine cry and a falling sound. Someone had tried to separate Omba from her gold.

“I fear nothing for I have Jesus in my heart,” Paul said. “But you should, here.”

“I have only curiosity in my heart.”

“And me behind you, Master,” Omba said.

Peter walked holding his belly where he had been struck; he was frail. “I’m a Jew, but these Jews are too poor to hate me for what I’ve become. Even they scratch a living sewing tents of forbidden pigskin for the army, as do I, and burn candles of pig-fat. I’m a Jew to the Jews, a Roman to the Romans. In Jerusalem I led riots against the Jerusalem Church to bring them to Christianity, to their senses. The priests arrested me.” He gave a cunning chuckle. “But as a Roman citizen I had the right to be tried here. The Roman courts grind slowly.”

“But thoroughly.”

“I shall be found guilty and killed. But I have bought a little time.”

Quistus took a long step over a stinking puddle. “For what?”

“For Jesus to come again.”

“Did you truly see Matrusus die by God’s hand?”

Paul stopped on the bridge, the river rushing beneath. “There is no other explanation. There was no crime.”

“I think there was,” Quistus said. “I think Linus escaped out of the back of the house under cover of smoke, climbed that apartment block, cut the rope, broke the washing-pole out of its mount, and ran along the roof until he got a clear
view of Matrusus. Then he threw the pole. And he was lucky. Incredibly lucky.”

“How do you explain the gashed wall of the other apartment block?”

Quistus was silent.

“He’s got you there, Master,” Omba said.

“And you told us the rope was not cut but broken,” Paul added. “Even Linus is not that strong. I cannot believe you.”

“It can’t have been the wind, chance. It just can’t. The odds are incredible. Unbelievable. A murder requires a murderer.”

“You know I am right.” Paul smiled for the first time. “It was I who sent Volusia to fetch you. By the way, this fell out of your clothes.” He held out a slim book. “The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. My foot covered it before Stigmus saw.”

Quistus took it wonderingly. “She must have slipped it to me in the sedan.”

“Perhaps you are one of us, a little. You did not mention your suspicion of Linus to Stigmus.” Paul shrugged. “They will all die anyway.”

“All? But Pudens and Claudia are Roman citizens, and Volusia too –”

“Surely you know Volusia and her parents are not citizens? For Pudens and Claudia death will inch its way through the courts, as it does for me. For Volusia and the others it will come running.”

“When Stigmus puts them to the test surely they will agree to curse Christ, and live.”

“The only way to live,” Paul said, “is to die in Christ.”

Quistus shook his head. “Get out of Rome, Paul. Go. Save yourself.”

“No, my friend. I am a citizen of Rome. Rome is the centre. If Rome is Christian, all the Empire is Christian. I stay.” He shrugged. “Perhaps not all will die. Peter may be
allowed to live. He heads a different sect from mine, one that believes in churches and priests, not Christ within each heart. The Emperor may dream of placing himself at the head of such an organization as Pope.”

“But Volusia will die for a crime she did not commit.”

“There was no crime, there is no death. Only eternal life with Jesus Christ.”

“But still she will die in agony.”

Paul turned, frowning. “Does it matter?”

Septimus Severus Quistus sat in his office reading a book. He turned the pages, his lips moving as he read.

Omba sat silently behind him, arms massively crossed. For days her tongue had not spoken. Even the many gold ornaments and bangles that clothed her body were silent.

He spoke without turning.

“I know,” he said.

Night. At the centre of the square four crosses stood, dimly lit by red firelight from below, blue moonlight from above.

The crosses had been planted upside-down. The crossbars were nailed, not near the top, but close to the base.

The Christian rebels were crucified head-down, their feet against Heaven, their heads towards Hell. Upturned, they had screamed as the nails were hammered home.

By now the crowd of thousands that mocked them and roared its pleasure at their cries had gone as though it never was.

The screams had died down to low, gasping moans. Almost no one heard them; only two footsoldiers on guard, and the old madwoman, a scarf over her head, bent double by arthritis, feeding crumbs to the birds. “Here birdie birdie.” Her low cackling voice got on the soldiers’ nerves. They exchanged glances.

Suddenly soldiers of the Imperial Guard trod steadily into the square, forming a circle facing outward from the crosses. They drew their swords and touched them to their foreheads in obeisance, as though to an approaching god.

The imperial palanquin of gold and purple was carried into the square. The curtains were reverently opened by slaves, and a god stepped down.

The Emperor Nero,
pontifex maximus
, his hair tightly oiled, a gold stick in his hand, his tunic dusted with chalk so that it was a perfect holy white, unsoiled by any earthly imperfection, walked to the crosses. A purple carpet was unrolled before him so his sandals did not touch the bloody, filthy stones.

He stared down at the faces, then raised his little finger.

“Stigmus.”

Stigmus ran forwards. “Your Grace.”

“This one is already dead.”

Stigmus crouched. “The one called Faustinus, your Grace.”

“
Damnum Fatale
.” The God-Emperor smiled. “Well, this is Emperor’s justice. Let their god save them now, eh?” He touched a face with his stick, tutted. “This one’s gone too.”