Wrinkled eyelids closed, and for one heart-stopping second, Claudia thought the draught had kicked in, but no. Lavinia let out a loud sigh and laced her fingers together. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I did set you off on a paperchase, and I’m jolly glad I did. What else could an old cripple do?’
Of course, Claudia told herself, she hadn’t really doubted the paralysis. Or suspected the old bird of fabricating an attempt on her life in order to gain a bit of attention. Had she?
‘Until you showed up,’ Lavinia was saying, ‘there was no one in whom I dared confide my suspicions-especially not that sourpuss physician. Half of them were his patients.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘It was the boy, you see,’ she said quietly, ‘the orphan who died in the hunting accident, and whose cousin so fortuitously inherited. Things like that must not happen again.’ Then she cleared her throat, and when she spoke, there was a distinct edge to her tone. ‘But I didn’t expect you to drag my son into this. Anyone would think you’re suggesting he was part of the conspiracy, trying to bump off his old mother to get his hands ort her olive grove.’
For Claudia, patience was more a sideline than a strong point, but she was prepared to invest it in this and since Lavinia’s wits hadn’t dimmed with the medicine, Claudia knew that to rush it would not be the answer. She would need to be reeled in carefully, especially when the foundations of her whole life were about to wobble. Were Ruth or Lalo in on it, too? The ugly sisters? Claudia sniffed at the phial and was about to launch into a complicated dissertation on herbal poisons, when she realized the contents were far from medicinal. No wonder Lavinia hadn’t fallen asleep.
Dammit, the harpy was cackling. ‘Don’t tell Fab and Sab,’ she said. ‘It’s the only way I can sneak wine past them these days.’
So much for hard evidence. Shit!
‘You’re wrong, you know,’ Lavinia said, pulling on her wig, ‘about my son. He means his old mother no harm.’
‘You’re biased-’
‘Lavinia can prove it.’ Carefully she tucked her white frizz under the pile of immaculate curls. ‘Open that box, the one with the elephant carved on the top. That’s the one. Now take out the blue phial and sniff it. You can even,’ she let out an evil chuckle, ‘drink it, if you like.’ Medicinal smells exploded into Claudia’s airways, but one stood out clear above the rest. She sniffed again to make sure-but yes. Loud and clear came out balsam, gentian, peppermint and-goddammit…
‘Hemlock?’ In the distant recess of her mind she heard two fat women chanting.
‘She wouldn’t take her medicine, you know.’ ‘Wouldn’t. Not a drop.’ Holy Mother of Mars, had Lavinia drunk it, she’d be dead already.
‘I’m fully aware of what it is,’ Lavinia said slowly. ‘Kamar brings me a gallon of the frightful mixture every single morning, but,’ she pierced Claudia with her scimitar blue eyes, ‘even if I downed the lot, it wouldn’t kill me. Just make me very woozy.’ The wizened claw now wrapped itself round Claudia’s wrist and gave it a motherly shake. ‘You’re young,’ she said, ‘and Lavinia’s not just old, she’s a country woman, who happens to know more than a thing or two about hemlock. Have you, for instance, ever seen me retching? Vomiting? Complaining of stomach cramps?’
‘No-o,’ Claudia said, trying to hide the gloat in her voice. ‘But I’ve witnessed first hand some of the other side effects. Take those occasions when you’ve been rendered unable to speak, for instance. How do you account for those, eh?’
That first night on the sun porch, when Lavinia had gone all stiff, eyes bulging, throat too tight to speak…if that wasn’t classic hemlock poisoning, what was? Looking back, Claudia realized Lavinia hadn’t been concerned with someone moving in the shadows. She’d been in the early throes of an attack. Dammit, the same thing happened on the grandstand during the run-up to the foot race. No more, though! Lavinia was safe from now on. No more hemlock, no more poison, goodbye Fab and Sab. They had to be in on it, Claudia thought. But then again, those two were so bound up with themselves, maybe not. Lavinia’s son probably used them as cover.
‘And,’ she pressed relentlessly, ‘have you ever asked yourself why Kamar should prescribe hemlock in the first place?’
‘Mercy, child, I can see you’re not going to let me go without a fight.’ The old woman laughed. ‘Lavinia’s going to have to own up.’
‘Own up?’ Claudia’s speculations reeled themselves back with a jolt.
‘Claudia, the reason Kamar brings me hemlock every day is because I’m dying.’
A burning pain shot through Claudia’s gut.
‘Tch, stop that.’ The old woman sliced the air with her hand to brook any sympathy and clucked her tongue again. ‘In very small doses, hemlock can relieve pain, you know. Acts as a kind of anaesthetic. But time is precious to me, you can understand that, I know you can. The same as you can appreciate that Lavinia doesn’t want to spend her last days-yes, child, we’re talking days-I don’t want to lose these precious moments in a woozy haze. I want to see and taste and touch everything around me to the very end. That’s why my son mortgaged the grove to the hilt. To send me here for a holiday. That ship sinking off Alexandria fetched him to his senses and for the first time in her life, Lavinia’s confident he’ll settle with our little patch of olives and find contentment there.’
Claudia could not speak. There was a trapdoor across her throat and a mountain in her lungs. No, not a mountain. A volcano. Desperate to erupt.
‘Lavinia-’
‘That,’ the old woman said purposefully, ‘is why I won’t drink that wretched medicine. Since they found that tumour inside me, large as a fist and hard as lead, well…since then, I put myself into a trance whenever I feel the pain coming on. It’s a trick I picked up nearly fifty years ago, and it’s served me well ever since. Now, stop that grizzling, girl, I’m not dead yet. There’ll be time enough for sorrow, then, if that’s what takes your fancy.’
Claudia gulped back her sobs. Lavinia was right. If her estimation of the timescale was correct, better she lapped up every moment.
‘H-how long have you known?’ she asked. A quernstone seemed to have settled in her stomach.
‘Long enough for the pain to have aged me ten years,’ Lavinia replied. ‘But if I don’t make my sixty-fifth birthday, so what? Can you think of a more idyllic way to end my days, and if I have no regrets,’ she reached for another wine-filled phial, ‘neither should you.’ She gulped the contents down in one go. ‘But like I said, Lavinia’s not dead yet. In fact, she’s relishing her role in rooting out these murders. So then.’ She smacked her wrinkled lips. ‘Without any hard evidence from me, where does that leave the investigation?’
‘Grounded,’ Claudia snapped. Completely and utterly grounded.
Tarraco, goddammit, was going to get away with it.
XXXI
The electric storm trapped by the Etruscan hills which surrounded Lake Plasimene had little impact down in Rome other than to compress the clouds low on to the rooftops and tickle the tiles of the Imperial Palace. As more lamps were lit to counteract the blackening sky, the wife of the Emperor picked up a silver hand mirror and patted her hair in place. Greying only at the temples, she was still a handsome woman and she knew it. Straight of back, sharp of eye…and sharper still of mind. For a quarter of a century she had been married to Augustus and for a quarter of a century she had striven to bear him a child. She ran her tongue over her teeth. Neither of them was at fault-both had been parents in previous marriages, he with Julia, she with two sons, Tiberius and Drusus-therefore, by definition, this barren marriage must be the will of the gods. Livia breathed on the mirror, then cleared the mist with the heel of her hand. Surely, then, it followed that the gods were pushing Julia and Tiberius together?