'What irony,' he said at last. 'So much effort on all sides, and in the end even Sulla is disappointed. Who profits, indeed?'
'You, for one, Cicero.'
He looked at me archly, but could not conceal the smile that trembled on his lips. Across the room, Tiro looked more confused and crestfallen than ever.
Rufus shook his head. 'Sextus Roscius, a suicide. What did Sulla mean, saying justice had been done, that Roscius had executed himself?'
'I'll explain everything to you on the way back to Caecilia's house,' I said. 'Unless Cicero would rather explain it to you himself' I stared straight at Cicero, who clearly did not relish the prospect. 'He can also explain to me exactly how much of the truth he knew when he hired me. But in the meantime I see no reason to accept that Roscius's fall was a suicide, not until I see the evidence with my own eyes.'
Rufus shrugged. 'But how else to explain it? Unless it was simply an accident — the balcony is treacherous, and he'd been drinking all night; I suppose he could have tripped. Besides, who in the household would have wanted him dead?'
'Perhaps no one.' I exchanged a furtive glance with Tiro. How could either of us forget the bitterness and desperation of Roscia Majora? Her father's acquittal had dashed all her hopes for revenge, and for the protection of her beloved sister. I cleared my throat and rubbed my weary eyes. 'Rufus, if you will, come back with me now to Caecilia's house. Show me how and where Roscius died.'
'Tonight?' He was tired and confused, and had the look of a young man who had drunk too much wine too early in the evening.
'Tomorrow may be too late. Caecilia's slaves may disturb the evidence.'
Rufus acquiesced with a weary nod.
'And Tiro,' I said, answering the plea in his eyes. 'May he come as well, Cicero?'
'In the middle of the night?' Cicero pursed his lips in disapproval. 'Oh, I suppose he may.' 'And you, too, of course.'
Cicero shook his head. The look he gave me was part pity, part disdain. 'This game is ended, Gordianus. The time has come for all men with a clear conscience to take their well-earned rest. Sextus Roscius is dead, and what of it? He died by his own choice; Sulla-from-whom-there-are-no-secrets he himself says so. Give it up, Gordianus. Follow my example and go to bed. The trial is done with, the case is over. It's finished, my friend.'
'Perhaps it is, Cicero,' I said, walking towards the vestibule and gesturing for Rufus and Tiro to follow. 'And perhaps it is not.'
'It must have been here, from this very spot,' Rufus whispered.
The full moon shone down brightly on the flagstones of the balcony and the knee-high stone railing that bordered it. Peering over the edge, I saw the stairway Rufus had mentioned, thirty or more feet directly below; the smooth, well-worn edges of the steps gleamed dully in the moonlight. The stairway twisted down into darkness, surrounded by tall weeds and overgrown shrubbery, and obscured here and there by overhanging branches of oaks and willows. From deep within the house the sound of wailing carried across the warm night air; the body of Sextus Roscius had been placed in the sanctum of Caecilia's goddess, and her slave girls were mourning with ceremonial wails and screams.
"This railing seems woefully short,' said Tiro, kicking at one of the squat pillars from a safe distance. 'Hardly high enough to keep a child safe on the balcony.' He backed away with a shiver.
'Yes.' Rufus nodded. 'I made the same remark to Caecilia. It seems there used to be a second railing atop it, a wooden one. You can see the metal brackets for it here and there. The wood got all rotten and dangerous, and someone had it torn away. Caecilia says she meant to replace it but never got around to it; the back wing of the house hadn't been used for a long time until Sextus and his family arrived.' He stepped beside me and peered cautiously over the edge. "That stairway down there is steeper than it looks from here. Very steep and worn, slippery and hard. Dangerous enough to walk down; for a man who'd fallen or tripped…' He shuddered. 'He tumbled halfway down the hill before his body came to rest. There, you can see the place, through that opening in the oak tree, where the stairway takes a sharp bend. You can see. the very spot — where the blood catches the moonlight, like a pool of black oil.' 'Who found him?' I said.
'I did. That is, I was the first actually to go down and turn his body over.'
'And how did that come about?' 'Because I heard the scream.' 'Whose scream? Roscius, as he fell?'
'Why, no. Roscia, his daughter. Her bedchamber, the one she shares with her little sister — it's just within the house, the first doorway down the corridor.'
'Explain, please.'
Rufus took a deep breath. It was clearly a struggle to keep his muddled thoughts straight. 'I had already gone to my own bedchamber — the one I always sleep in when I stay over. It's near the centre of the house, about midway between Caecilia's chambers and these. I heard a scream, a girl's scream, followed by loud weeping. I ran from my room and followed it. I found her here on the balcony, shaking and weeping in the moonlight — Roscia Majora. Of course she'd been crying all night, but that hardly explained the scream. When I asked her what was wrong, she shuddered so violently she couldn't speak. Instead she pointed there, to the spot where Roscius's body had come to rest.' He frowned. 'So I suppose it was actually Roscia who first discovered the body, but I was the one who ran down to have a look.'
I glanced over my shoulder at Tiro, who shook his head sadly. His worst suspicions seemed confirmed. 'And just how did Roscia happen to be standing here on the very balcony from which her father had fallen?' I said.
'I asked her that myself,' Rufus said, 'once she was finally able to stop trembling. It seems that she'd just awakened from a bad dream, and she decided to step out onto the balcony for some fresh air. She stood here for a short while, just looking at the full moon, she said, and then she chanced to look down—'
'And just happened to see her father's body, fifty feet or more away, amid all the jumble of leaves and grass and stonework?'
'It wasn't so unlikely,' said Rufus defensively. 'The moon was shining right on the spot, I saw it myself right away when she pointed. And the sight wasn't pretty, the way his limbs and neck were twisted so unnaturally….' He stopped and sucked in a breath, suddenly understanding. 'Oh, Gordianus, you don't think the girl…'
'Of course she did,' said Tiro dully from the shadows behind us. 'The only question is how she managed to lure Sextus out here onto the balcony, though I'm sure that was no challenge to her.'
'That is not the only question,' I objected, though it seemed merely pedantic to consider all the possibilities. 'For example, why did she scream after she pushed him, if indeed she did push him, and especially if it was a premeditated murder? Why did she stay on the balcony until someone could find her?'
Tiro gave a disinterested shrug; his mind was already made up. 'Because she was shocked at the reality of what she'd done. She's only a girl, after all, Gordianus, not a hardened assassin. That's why she was weeping, too, when Rufus came to her; the horror of having actually done it, the relief, the sight of his broken body…. Oh, these Roscii! Cousins and brothers and sons and even daughters all desperate to exterminate their own line. I'm sick of them all! Is it a poison in their blood? Some foul imbalance in their humours?' Tiro shook his head in despair, but when he looked up and I saw his face, half in moonlight, half in shadow, what I read were not thoughts of foulness or horror, but the memory of something irretrievably lost and too painfully sweet to bear.