The gatekeeper of the big estate was a fearsome creature with only one eye. He went to consult the steward, leaving Ruso to guess whether man and guard dog had gained their scars in a fight with each other, or whether there had been others involved.
Ruso was wondering whether the gatekeeper had wandered off and forgotten him when the heavy gate finally swung open on silent hinges to reveal the weasel-faced steward. He announced, ‘The agent’s widow will see you now,’ in a tone that suggested he had to obey his instructions but he didn’t have to like them.
Ruso followed the man in through the gates. The white roses trained around the pillars of the house contrasted with the dark cypress branches of mourning hung above the front door. From somewhere within came the sound of wailing. Ruso was relieved to be led away to the right, where a walled garden dotted with statues separated the house from the farm buildings. The garden occupied the sort of space the Army would have deemed adequate for five hundred infantrymen, their stores, their officers, and all their officers’ friends, relations and horses. As he crunched along a shaded pathway past a fishpond the size of a swimming pool, Ruso suspected that the slaves currently hoeing the flowerbeds were waiting to pounce on the gravel and rake away his footprints.
The place radiated the genteel elegance to which his stepmother aspired, but which she would never achieve. And access to this was what the charmless Severus had to offer that he himself didn’t, and never would have. The words of Lollia Saturnina came back to him: Claudia has made some very bad decisions in the last few years.
Oh, Claudia, he thought, you fool.
The steward motioned him to wait and approached a high-backed wicker chair facing away from them beneath the shade of a summerhouse. All Ruso could see of its occupant was one slender foot in a grey sandal. After a brief and inaudible conversation the man beckoned him forward.
Ruso was appalled to find himself wondering whether, if he hobbled fast enough, he could be out of sight behind the hedge before she turned round. Instead, he took a deep breath and approached the throne.
‘You can leave us, Zosimus,’ she told the steward. ‘I will ring if I need help.’
Ruso blinked. Between them on the little stone table there really was a brass bell.
The steward gave Ruso a look that said he had better not try anything and walked away.
Claudia’s skin looked waxy. Her eyes were puffy below the make-up, and the dark hollows beneath them matched the murky grey of her outfit. She said, ‘Zosimus thinks you poisoned my husband.’
Ruso shifted the bell to one side and sat on the table, since there was nowhere else and he was not going to hover like a servant. ‘I know.’
‘Well, did you?’
‘No. Did you?’
A crease appeared between the plucked brows. ‘Still as tactless as ever, I see.’
Ruso had wondered how this would go, and so far it was going just as he had expected. ‘Let’s start again, shall we? Hello, Claudia. I’m very sorry about Severus.’
She groped down in the side of the chair and drew out a fan. ‘Thank you,’ she said, wafting cool air across her face. ‘I’m sorry too. Surprisingly.’
He wanted very much to know what that meant, but knew it would be a mistake to ask.
She said, ‘Did he suffer?’
He told her the death had been very quick. He was not sure she believed him, but she seemed grateful. It occurred to him that he could not remember seeing her dressed without jewellery before.
‘I’m supposed to be up at the house, receiving condolences,’ she said, ‘but if I have to stay in that room with Ennia much longer I shall strangle her. I don’t care who’s going to take her back to Rome now, so long as somebody does. Preferably very soon.’
‘Did your husband have any other close family?’
‘No, thank goodness. Can you imagine what it would be like with a whole bunch of them, weeping and collapsing all over the place? All this is just a pantomime, you know. She did nothing but whinge when he was alive.’
It seemed to be the way with sisters. He said, ‘I suppose there’ll be an investigation.’
‘Eventually.’
‘Had he been ill recently?’
‘I thought you said he was poisoned?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m just trying to make sure of the facts. I’ve had some experience with things like this over in Britannia. Let me see what I can find out for you.’
‘You?’
Ruso could not think what he could say that would change the opinion Claudia had formed of him during three years of marriage, so instead he said, ‘I’d imagine Severus had enemies.’
‘Of course he did. It wasn’t his job to make friends, it was his job to manage the estate. As you know.’
‘I’ll need names. Details.’
She shook her head. ‘We don’t need you, Gaius. Daddy’s gone to see Fuscus to ask him to send a message to his cousin the Senator.’
His cousin the Senator. Even Claudia was doing it now.
She said, ‘We expect he’ll send one of his own men to investigate.’
‘From Rome? That’ll take for ever.’
There was still a hint of superiority in her tone as she said, ‘The message will go on the official despatch service.’
‘Even so, it’ll be at least two or three weeks.’
Claudia patted her hair. A couple of strands dislodged themselves and tumbled down over one ear, making her at once half as formal and twice as attractive. ‘Daddy said that’s what we should do,’ she said. ‘When he finds out I’ve been talking to you, he’ll be furious.’
Ruso knew better than to argue with Daddy. He got to his feet and stepped across to check that there were no gardeners lurking behind the neatly sculpted cypress hedges before saying, ‘This probably isn’t the right time to tell you, but you need to know. I was alone with Severus when he died. His last words were, The bitch has poisoned me.’
She fell back into the chair as if he had struck her. ‘What?’
‘Don’t make me repeat it.’
‘But I — that’s ridiculous!’
‘If I thought you’d done it, I wouldn’t be telling you.’
‘Well, you’d better not tell anybody else.’ When he did not reply she said, ‘You haven’t, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
She began to pick at the feathers of the fan. ‘You may as well know. The man was a reptile.’
‘I’m sorry you weren’t happy,’ said Ruso, and meant it.
‘There’s no need to gloat.’
‘I wasn’t.’
A spurt of gravel rose up as the fan hit it. ‘Stop being so gallant, Gaius! I know all about him chasing Flora. Arria came to warn me.’
‘So I heard.’
‘I’m not surprised somebody poisoned him, are you?’
‘Don’t let anyone else hear you saying that.’
‘You’re the one who said I should speak my mind.’
‘Did I?’
‘You always said you could never work out what I was thinking!’
Ruso, enlightened, bit back, ‘No, what I said was that I wasn’t a bloody mind-reader.’
She gestured round her at the elegant garden. ‘I put up with him in exchange for all this, Gaius. In return he had access to Daddy’s business advice. The local contacts were very useful for him, because everybody he knew was back in Rome, and he didn’t want to be too beholden to Fuscus.’
‘I see.’ So Severus had harboured ambitions of his own.
‘It was a business arrangement. I didn’t want him dead.’
It made sense, and it made sense of Lollia Saturnina’s assertion that Claudia had made some very bad decisions lately. ‘So if it wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘and it wasn’t you, who was it?’
‘How should I know? It must have been somebody in your house. I expect it was Arria.’
‘Arria didn’t go near him,’ said Ruso, rapidly considering and dismissing this alarming possibility. ‘I’ve already made inquiries at home. How did he get on with his sister?’
‘I told you. They argued.’