‘And you didn’t mind?’
‘Valerius Corvinus, my husband could have slept with half of Rome and I would not have minded one bit, so long as he did not advertise the fact and observed the proprieties. Knowing he did so with a nightclub slut far less than half his age meant nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. If we were still married after thirty-seven years it was by no doing of mine. Had he told me any time these thirty-odd years that he wanted a divorce, I would have agreed without a thought.’
‘But he didn’t. Not until a month ago.’ I hesitated. ‘Ah … forgive me for asking this, Cornelia Sullana, but why did he do it then? Not so he could marry Tarquitia, if that were possible, because he didn’t marry her when he could. And she didn’t claim that marriage in future was on the cards. So why the divorce?’
She was quiet so long that I didn’t think she would answer. Finally, though, she said: ‘Because I goaded him into it.’
‘Goaded?’
‘Made him angry. By telling him about my own affair.’
‘Uh …’ This I just didn’t believe: the lady, as I said, was well past fifty and looked like the back end of a cart into the bargain. Yet there she sat, like a dowager-matron who could’ve posed for the mother of the two Gracchi, confessing to screwing around behind her husband’s back. ‘Come again?’
She must’ve noticed my expression, because that sour smile was back, fleetingly. ‘Oh, not recently. It was twenty … no, twenty-five years ago. With a man called Cassius Longinus.’
That name rang a faint belclass="underline" I remembered Naevia Postuma mentioning it. ‘Surdinus’s colleague in the consulship?’
‘Yes. Although of course that was much later, and pure coincidence, when the affair was well and truly over. Longinus was everything that Lucius wasn’t, and still is. He’s governor of Asia at present, so I hear.’
‘Surdinus never knew?’
‘He never even suspected. We were very careful, and in any case I doubt if someone like Lucius would have noticed anyway.’
‘But he would’ve minded.’
‘Of course he would. And did, even twenty years after the event. That was the whole point of telling him.’ She stood up. ‘And now, Valerius Corvinus, that is about all I can tell you. I’ve answered your questions as frankly as I can.’ Jupiter, she’d done that right enough, latterly! ‘And I wish you every success. I may never have got on with Lucius — despised him, in fact, if the truth be told — but I bore and bear him no animosity, certainly not now he is dead. You can find your own way out, I think.’
I did.
EIGHT
So. Onwards and upwards. Or in this case, downwards, both physically and socially, all the way from the dizzy heights of the Pincian to the vegetable market, between the western slopes of the Capitol and the river, and Tarquitia’s Five Poppies Club. This, by a happy chance, would take me down Iugarius, where according to Sullana her ex-husband’s upwardly mobile not-quite-a-bailiff had his office. I could call in there on the way. Besides, it was an excuse to drop in at Renatius’s wine shop, also on Iugarius, for a quick restorative cup of wine and — hopefully — more detailed directions.
As it happened, the quick cup of wine turned into two slower ones plus a plate of cheese, olives and pickles, but I got the directions OK. Like Sullana had said, Gallio’s office was near the Carminal Gate at the south end of the street, on the ground floor of a newish tenement block which was owned by the family. According to my informant, one of the regular bar-flies, it was a pretty thriving business, and Gallio himself was now the senior partner of three, the other two being his sons. Certainly, when I pushed open the door and went in, the place had a busy feel to it, with half-a-dozen clerks working full out. I gave my name and business to the nearest one, and he led me through the back to a small inner office where the man himself was sitting behind a desk.
The senior partner was right: you didn’t get much more senior than Naevius Gallio and still be on the right side of an urn. He had to be eighty at least, and what he was doing still working the gods alone knew, because mobile — upwardly or in any other direction — was something the old guy, by the evidence of the crutches behind his chair, wasn’t any longer to any great degree. Even so, he seemed bright enough when he waved me to a stool.
‘Now, Valerius Corvinus, what can I do for you?’ he said. ‘I know, of course, of Naevius Surdinus’s death — a terrible business, that, simply terrible — but not what your connection with him might be.’
I told him, and he sat back.
‘Murdered?’ he said. ‘Surely not! Who would want to murder Master Surdinus? You’re certain?’
Same question as Sullana’s, and I gave him the same answer. ‘Absolutely. The stone that killed him was loosened and dropped on him deliberately.’
‘But this is — excuse me a moment, please.’ There was a cup of water on the desk. He picked it up with both hands and drank, so shakily that some of it was spilled. I waited until he’d put the cup down again. ‘It’s unbelievable. Why would anyone do something like that?’
‘His ex-wife, Cornelia Sullana, said that you managed his business affairs.’
‘That’s quite correct. Or administered, rather, under instruction. My family, as you’ll have guessed from our name, have had charge of the Naevius estate for three generations. My grandfather was the first Naevius Surdinus’s freedman-bailiff.’
‘So Sullana told me.’ This next bit was going to be tricky. ‘Uh … I understand that shortly after they were divorced, about a month ago, Surdinus made over part of the property on the Vatican Hill to his mistress, Tarquitia.’
The old lips pursed. ‘That is correct. Through a duly-witnessed process of sale, for the sum of five denarii.’
‘And that when Sullana ceased to be his wife she had no more to do with his financial affairs.’
‘Naturally not.’
‘Ah … have there been any other major changes since, do you know?’
‘I do.’ You could’ve used Gallio’s tone to sand wood. ‘Of course I do, since he gave the task of carrying them out to me. Four, to be precise, all in favour of the lady you named. The transfer of a tenement building in the Subura, for a similar amount to what she paid for the Old Villa. Ditto an oil-pressing concern in Veii. Ditto, a blacksmith’s and saddler’s business near the Capenan Gate, back here in Rome. Ditto, an ironmonger’s shop in the Velabrum.’
Jupiter! ‘All this was in a month?’
‘Yes. Total value in the region of three hundred thousand sesterces. And he was planning on more.’
Gods alive! The guy had been haemorrhaging money like there was no tomorrow.
And, of course, for him there hadn’t been …
‘You didn’t try to stop him?’ I said.
Gallio just looked at me. ‘Of course I tried,’ he said. ‘What do you think? But in the last analysis the property was his, to do with as he thought fit, and Master Surdinus was a very stubborn man. There was very little I could do.’
‘You didn’t tell anyone? Like his son, perhaps?’
‘Naturally I did. However, in the younger Surdinus’s case, the same strictures applied. There was nothing he could do about it either. His father was perfectly sane, so there was no question of diminished responsibility. Not legally, anyway. He had a perfect — and absolute — right to do as he pleased.’
And Tarquitia hadn’t told me. Nor, for that matter, had his son.
Shit.
I carried on down Iugarius to its end, by the Tiber. We were definitely downmarket here: the ground between the blunt end of Capitol Hill and the river, like that whole stretch of riverside south to Cattlemarket Square and beyond, is low-lying, and even nowadays after all the improvements to the drainage system and the riverbanks themselves, it’s prone to flooding. Added to which, in summer the stink from the Tiber and the thriving insect population are definitely two of the area’s most notable features, meaning that anyone of a sensitive disposition who can afford to own or rent elsewhere on higher ground, or at least somewhere that doesn’t smell so obviously of Tiber mud and sewage, generally does just that, for reasons of simple self-preservation. Mind you, there’re plenty who can’t or don’t, and the area round the vegetable market is seriously full of tenements that make up a micro-community of their own. Well-off it isn’t: the Poppies’ clientele would be low-spending regulars, porters and stallholders from the market, with a sprinkling of local tradesmen with actual shops to their names to add a bit of class and raise the tone.