‘A failed conspiracy. You said it yourself.’
‘Let’s assume it hasn’t. Failed, I mean, or not completely. That it’s still up and running.’
She’d picked up her book when Postuma had stormed out. Now she set it down again.
‘Marcus, I will get really angry with you in a minute!’ she snapped. ‘The conspiracy is dead! Whatever else Gaius is, he’s no one’s fool, and your friend Felix certainly isn’t one either. Besides, they used torture on the poor men that they did catch. Don’t you think that if there were any other people involved they’d’ve had the names out of them long ago?’
I thought of Graecinus, or what Felix and his pals had left of him, anyway. I hadn’t mentioned that side of things to Perilla — as far as the lady was concerned, I’d just gone to the palace for a chat with the emperor — but she was no one’s fool, either, and where treason was concerned, torture was normal practice.
‘Maybe they didn’t know them,’ I said.
‘Of course they did! They must have done!’
I let that one pass for the present; Perilla wasn’t in any mood for a prolonged argument, and I wasn’t chancing my luck where getting mauled was concerned. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Then maybe they just decided that protecting them and giving them a chance of getting rid of Gaius after all was more important than saving their own lives. Or saving themselves pain, rather, since the poor buggers’d know they were for the chop whatever they said. Where they got the courage from, the gods know, but it happens sometimes.’
‘Not very often, I would imagine. If anything, I’d expect things to go the other way. The temptation would be to give the names of people who were completely innocent, simply to suggest that you were cooperating.’
‘Yeah, like Capito did. OK, fair enough. Good point.’
‘Who’s Capito?’
Oh. Right. She wouldn’t know about that side of things. Capito — or rather his evidence, relayed to me by Gaius — had fallen by the wayside in the rush to get down to Clarus and Marilla’s, and naturally once we were clear of Rome, anything to do with the case had become a no-go area. ‘Herennius Capito,’ I said. ‘The imperial procurator. You remember? His son Bassus was with Sextus Papinius when he had his riding accident and I found them both together in Capito’s office. Felix bagged them just after I left.’ I was frowning; there was an itch somewhere at the back of my mind, just where I couldn’t quite get to it. ‘Gaius mentioned it, that day at the palace. Capito claimed there were more people involved than he knew about, and the names he came up with were pretty impressive.’
‘Such as who?’
‘Arrecinus Clemens. He’s one of the two Praetorian prefects. And an imperial freedman, a guy named Callistus. One of the emperor’s top civil servants, seemingly a whizz kid on the financial side. Both good possibilities, according to Gaius.’
‘Then why weren’t they arrested? Or were they?’
‘No. Capito gave Gaius’s wife Caesonia as the third conspirator. At least, the third one he knew about, anyway. Gaius decided that he was doing just what you said, implicating innocent people in the hope of stopping the torture, so he didn’t take the matter any further.’ The itch was there again. ‘In any case, Capito died on him practically straight away, so that was the end of that. Of course …’ I stopped. Bathyllus had slipped back in and was doing his hovering-with-intent act. ‘Yeah, little guy, what is it? Postuma nick the best spoons on her way out?’
‘No, sir.’ He was looking self-important as hell. ‘A dinner invitation. From the palace.’
‘What?’ Perilla was up like a rocketing pheasant.
Oh, fuck, this I didn’t need! I swallowed.
‘Ah. Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Sorry, lady, my fault. I’d completely forgotten about that.’
‘How on earth could you possibly …’
‘Gaius did say when we met that he’d have us round to dinner when we got back. I hoped at the time he was just making polite noises.’
‘Marcus, you absolute idiot!’ She turned to Bathyllus. ‘When’s the invitation for?’
‘Tomorrow evening, madam.’
‘Oh, gods! Tomorrow evening?’
‘Yes, madam. The emperor’s social secretary apologizes for the short notice, but he says to be assured that the occasion will not be a formal one.’
‘There you are, Perilla,’ I said. ‘Informal. No worries.’ That just got me a Look, after which she was up and moving in the direction of the stairs. ‘You going somewhere?’
‘I am going,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘shopping. Just as soon as I’ve changed and collected my cloak.’
‘Shopping for what?’
‘A new mantle, of course. If, that is, thanks to you it’s not too late to find a decent one.’
‘Come on, lady! The invite said informal and you’ve got dozens of the things already!’
That didn’t even get an answer. ‘Bathyllus, I need the litter,’ she said. ‘Inside of five minutes, please.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘And Marcus, if you ever, ever do anything like this again I shall kill you in the slowest and most painful manner I can think of. I may even do it anyway, after I get back. Particularly if I can find nothing suitable. Is that clear?’
‘Yeah, well …’
But she was already gone. Sometimes I wonder about that lady’s sense of priorities.
‘Hey, Bathyllus,’ I said before the little guy buggered off in his turn. ‘A half-jug of wine, please. No hurry. After you’ve broken the bad news to the litter slaves will do fine.’ It was throwing it down outside, which was why I was hanging around the house, and no doubt our matching set of lardballs were toasting their toes in front of a brazier somewhere. Plus, knowing Perilla’s hyper-picky approach to shopping, they were in for a good few hours of lugging her round most of the mantle shops in the city. Fun, fun, fun. ‘Make it the Special.’
I might as well use the lady’s sudden absence to put in a bit of constructive thinking regarding the case. Because case it undoubtedly still was; Postuma’s Alexander had been right about that. And there wasn’t a better way of lubricating the brain cells than a cup or two of the Special.
Five minutes might have been pushing it, but she was back down in short order, dressed for a cold, wet January tour of the clothes shops. I got a distinctly acid look as she passed me going in the direction of the lobby. A couple of minutes later, the front door slammed hard enough to shake the paint off.
Well, that one certainly wouldn’t go down in the annals of How to Keep the Shine on your Marriage, would it?
I sighed. Bathyllus brought in the half-jug and cup, and I took a contemplative swallow.
Right. So where did we start? First, and pace Perilla, with the assumption, crazy as it might seem, that Postuma’s Alexander was more than the product of a slightly nutty middle-aged woman’s fevered imagination; that, in fact, imaginary or not, dead over three hundred years or not, the guy was worth listening to. Alexander had been fairly insistent throughout that what I was looking for was a solution to Surdinus’s murder, not the uncovering of a conspiracy against the emperor. Oh, sure, the two were bound up together, no arguments there — and in the end I’d bet that it came to the same thing — but even so there had to be a reason for the preference.
So. Given the ongoing impossibility of tracing the actual perp - our freedman friend with the scar or birthmark or whatever — it was back to my four original suspects for the role of murderer-by-proxy, the guys at Longinus’s house: Cassius Longinus himself, Valerius Asiaticus, Anicius Cerialis and Julius Graecinus. Graecinus was dead, of course — at least I assumed and hoped he was — but I’d’ve taken him off the list anyway. Conspirator or not, if he’d been lying when he’d sworn under torture that he knew nothing about Surdinus’s death then he had a lot more courage and strength of mind than I could ever have mustered. So not Graecinus.
Not Cerialis, either. Given the theory — and I could see nothing wrong with it — that X, the killer, had had Surdinus murdered because he was threatening to expose the conspiracy to Gaius, Cerialis had no motive, because he was working for the emperor himself. Oh, sure, running the chance of having their clandestine operation put in jeopardy by a premature whistle-blower might’ve been an inconvenience — I only had to think about what had happened in my own case to see that — but it surely didn’t warrant taking the guy out. He’d’ve shown himself a loyal and conscientious subject of the emperor, and a quiet word would’ve been enough. Besides, if for one reason or another that had been the way things had happened, either Felix or Gaius himself would’ve made no bones about telling me so straight out.