‘Let’s just hope that Lucius does not come and interrupt you,’ Junio went on. ‘It won’t impress Quintus if the pie-seller is here, imploring you to take the greasy remnants from his tray. And I won’t be here to help you get rid of him. Get Minimus to guard the door and send the man away.’
I nodded. Minimus was my private slave, one of a so-called ‘matching pair’ on loan from Marcus while he was away, and though he showed no aptitude for pavement work at all — more hindrance than help when I tried him out at it — he was good at turning people politely but firmly from the door. He would not be swayed by sentiment for one-eyed pie-sellers. I smiled grimly. ‘That’s just what I intend.’
But now the time was here, and so was Lucius, it seemed. It looked as though even Minimus had not been firm enough, and I would have to go and shoo him off myself. Suppose that Quintus Severus arrived and found him in my shop!
I confess I was annoyed. I was already flustered. I had been busy in the workshop until well past noon, fixing the remaining tiles on a mosaic plaque which Junio and I had been working on for days. It was a tricky commission, a half-circle piece with the Greek name ‘Apollos’ worked across the top. It was intended for a garden shrine in a country villa several miles away, but I had elected to assemble it at home, gluing the tesserae to a linen back, on which I’d sketched the pattern in reverse, so that I could instal it in a piece and soak the cloth off when the mortar set. (Inscriptions are always tricky and round letters most of all, and I didn’t want my rather capricious client watching me and deciding that he wanted something different after all.)
So when I received a sudden summons from the customer — via a rather flustered little garden slave of his — I did not have much option but to go. Normally, I might have sent Junio to deal with this, but he was not available and it was no good sending anybody else. It was inconvenient: I’d hoped to have the piece finished and the workshop cleared and swept in time for Quintus’s visit, but I hastened off — to find, when I got there, that the man was not at home. (No doubt he thought my arrival was unduly slow, although I’d downed tools instantly and hurried all the way.) Such things were not unusual, but today it was especially tiresome. From the angle of the sun above the rooftops now, I calculated that the errand had taken me two hours. I was lucky that Quintus was not already here.
But there was no one waiting in the front part of the shop, where the chair was kept for important visitors. In fact, the place looked unattended. I frowned impatiently. I’d left Minimus in charge. He was supposed to stay at the counter in case of customers. But there was no sign of him. Inside, sampling the greasy pies, no doubt! And then there was the tray! Leaning on my most fragile and expensive pile of stock as well — the lapis viridis, a rare imported green.
So I was not in the best of tempers as I reached the outer shop, skirted the counter and pushed open the door into the dusty gloom of the partitioned area at the back which was my working space.
‘Minimus! Where are you? What do you mean by this?’
No answer. In fact, no sound of any kind. No sign of anyone. It was more than usually dark in there. I had put the shutters quickly in the window space myself — lest cats or sudden gusts of wind should get into the room and disturb my careful work — but there was no taper lit and I realized that Minimus had let the fire go out. That was worse than careless — it was unforgivable. He knew we were out of the dried fungus tinder for the making of a fire. I would have strong words with that young scoundrel when I got hold of him. We would have to go out and buy or beg embers from the tanning shop next door before we had the means of any heat and light.
I tutted audibly. The darkness made it difficult to move about. I could distinguish the outline of the workbench well enough, but the floor was littered with little heaps of stone that I’d been working with — the painstakingly shaped and sorted tesserae — visible only as darker shadows in the gloom. One careless foot and they’d be scattered everywhere.
‘Minimus!’
Where was he anyway? Obviously off with Lucius somewhere, eating pies, I thought. But where? There was no back entrance to the workshop space. I had fully expected to find them both in here, since it appeared that Lucius had talked his way inside. Offered a bribe to Minimus, perhaps? One of his wares, no doubt, since he had little else. So where had they got to? It was a mystery.
Had Minimus been taken ill from sampling a pie? If that was the case, I thought, it served him right. I would make him finish it as a punishment. Then I glimpsed the trapdoor to the sleeping space above. That gave me an idea. They could have climbed up to the attic room — it had been damaged by fire a long time ago and was now used only as a store, but Minimus had been up there many times and it would make a good hiding place for illicit feasts.
I groped towards the ladder, calling, ‘Minim-’
I broke off in dismay, for the first time feeling seriously alarmed. My foot had nudged against something on the floor. Something strangely heavy and horribly inert. I knew at once that it was not a heap of tiles. I bent over, peering. There was a suspicion of a sour, familiar smell, and I could just make out a shape I thought I recognized.
I no longer cared about where I put my feet or keeping my heaps of sorted tiles apart. I rushed to the window space and took the shutter down, letting the light in, hoping I was wrong.
But there was no mistake. I had found Lucius, and he was very dead.
Two
He was lying face downward on a heap of tiles, and I turned him over gently. In the dusty daylight, it was clear how he had died.
He had not simply fallen, as I had first supposed — tripped on the stone piles and hit his head against the bench — or perished from eating his own disgusting wares. There was a savage dark-red line of bruise around his throat. Around the burn-scars his face was swollen purple now, his tongue bulged from his lips and his one eye protruded horribly. His dead hands were still clawing at his throat, where they had dug bloody channels as he fought for breath. Someone had pulled a cord around his neck and throttled him. I could see the dark smudge behind the ear where the cruel knot had been. This looked like murder.
And it hadn’t happened very long ago, I realized, when my shocked mind recovered sufficiently to think, because although the corpse was cooling, it was not yet actually stiff. As I had turned the body gently on its back, one arm had slid limply down on to the floor. Just to be certain, I raised the limb once more: it was unresisting, but heavy — like a roll of sodden wool — and in a sudden horror I let it go again. It fell grotesquely, like a stuffed thing, and hit the bench leg with a hollow thud. I rather wished that I had not made the grim experiment, but it confirmed the obvious: that Lucius had been killed quite recently, while I had been out of the shop this afternoon.
Not necessarily in this room, of course. He was not likely to have come into the back workshop without an invitation, especially when I wasn’t here. Unless for some extraordinary reason Minimus had lured him inside? I thrust that theory instantly away. Minimus would never have murdered anyone. I was quite ashamed for having thought of it.
Besides, when I looked more closely, I could see two faint grooves running in the stone dust from the doorway to the pile, and Lucius’s toes and sandals were abraded at the front as if he’d been hauled ignominiously along with them dragging on the floor. It suggested that he had been murdered outside of the shop, then half lifted up, dragged in by the armpits and flung face down on the tiles.