The answer was in the looks on their faces. The best he could do was to get home and try and persuade someone — Lollia Saturnina? — to let him borrow a fresh mount. ‘This one’s lame,’ he said, ‘and so am I. It’ll take me hours to walk anywhere.’ He glanced from one to the other of them.
‘Get on Stilo’s horse,’ ordered Calvus. ‘The exercise will do him good.’
The glare that accompanied Stilo’s handing over of the black horse’s reins suggested that Ruso would be sorry for this later.
51
Ruso had hoped to leave out parts of the truth. Omission was easier than lying. As he and Calvus rode slowly back along the road with a resentful Stilo leading the lame horse, it seemed that he might get away with it.
He summarized the circumstances of Severus’ death, adding that Claudia had since confirmed that her husband was not in the best of health.
‘Yes, I hear you’ve been to see the widow,’ observed Calvus. ‘Twice.’
‘We used to be married,’ said Ruso, noticing the heavy ring on Calvus’ right hand and wondering whether a stone that size was there to add a sharp edge to his punch.
Calvus said, ‘What was Severus doing at your house?’
‘We were both involved in a court case.’
‘He was going to wipe you out, and you’re telling me he just dropped by for a chat?’
Ruso suspected the investigator would not believe that Severus had come to discuss a settlement, and he was right.
‘Why would he do that?’
They were approaching the ox-cart they had overtaken a few minutes before. The driver looked them up and down, noted the lame horse and passed by with the barely concealed superiority of one who had known that too much rushing about never came to any good in the end.
Ruso said, ‘It’s complicated. There was a falling-out between the women in both families.’
‘And Severus let it affect his business decisions?’ It was obvious that Calvus was not convinced.
‘Judge for yourself,’ suggested Ruso. ‘You’ve met Claudia.’
‘Somehow,’ said Calvus, ‘I don’t see a man like the Senator choosing an agent who’s told what to do by his wife.’
‘Severus made some remarks about my sister,’ Ruso explained. ‘Apparently he meant it as a compliment, but my brother took it as an insult, and my stepmother reported it to Claudia, who gave him a very bad time about it. He was angry with my family for stirring up trouble in his marriage, and since — according to him — we owed him money, he decided to make things difficult for us.’
‘I see.’
‘Only later on, he realized things had gone too far,’ said Ruso. ‘We’d just done a deal to straighten things out when he was taken ill.’
‘We’ll need to talk to whoever witnessed the agreement.’
‘There wasn’t anybody,’ explained Ruso. ‘There wasn’t time to get things organized. I was more worried about his state of health.’
‘I see.’
‘I know this doesn’t sound very likely.’
‘Did I say that?’ asked Calvus.
‘You didn’t say that,’ confirmed Stilo across the horse.
Ruso said, ‘Severus was a bully and a liar. We can’t have been the only people he tried to swindle.’
‘The first rule of investigating,’ said Calvus. ‘Never trust a suspect who tries to blame somebody else.’
‘I’m trying to help.’
‘If Severus went round swindling people,’ put in Stilo, ‘where’d he hide the money? The wife says he didn’t have a bean.’
‘All I’m saying is, he might have had other enemies. People with fewer scruples.’
‘We’ll bear it in mind,’ said Calvus.
‘If we get desperate,’ said Stilo.
‘It could be somebody who knew he was coming to see us and who deliberately tried to blame us for his death.’
‘Talks a lot, don’t he?’ observed Stilo to his partner. ‘I reckon it was him.’
‘Before we jump to conclusions,’ said Calvus, frowning at Stilo across the back of the lame horse, ‘go through again exactly what happened when Severus fell ill.’
Ruso’s account was as accurate as he could make it. So accurate, indeed, that, as he explained the process by which he had eliminated all the causes he could think of, Stilo began to yawn. ‘So you’re saying he was definitely poisoned, right?’
Ruso said, ‘I think so.’
‘Well was he, or wasn’t he?’
‘I can’t think of anything else that would make sense of the symptoms.’
‘Is that yes or no?’
‘Probably.’
Stilo sighed. ‘You’re all the same, you medics. It might be this or it might be that, or it might be some other bloody thing altogether. Do you have a special school where they teach you how not to answer questions?’
‘Yes.’
Calvus said, ‘What were his last words?’
‘Somebody’s poisoned me,’ said Ruso.
‘Hah!’ Stilo raised his free hand to the sky as if imploring the gods to listen to this idiot.
‘Somebody has poisoned me,’ repeated Calvus slowly, as if he were speaking to a foreigner who was just learning Latin. ‘I’d say that was a clue, doctor, wouldn’t you?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Hmph,’ put in Stilo. ‘For a minute there I thought we were going to get a straight answer.’
‘He might have been wrong.’
Stilo muttered something that sounded very much like ‘Smartarse.’
Ruso had a feeling that, had their positions been reversed, he would have felt the same way. The most convincing part of his story was the censored version of Severus’ last words. All the rest — the conveniently unwitnessed offering of a truce, the victim’s sudden collapse in the lone company of a man equipped with medicines and a motive — pointed in entirely the wrong direction.
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Ruso. ‘If I were going to murder Severus, I’d have found a much cleverer way of doing it. I’d have used a poison that wasn’t so obvious, or I’d have found a way to blame somebody else right from the start.’
‘I see,’ said Calvus.
‘It can’t be him, boss,’ said Stilo. ‘It weren’t clever enough, see?’
‘I see,’ said Calvus again. ‘Tell us how you would have done it, then, doctor.’
52
Ruso surveyed the household lined up along the porch in an awkward parody of the welcome he had received only a few days before. This time nobody was looking cheerful. Lucius was striding up and down and muttering to himself despite being ordered to stand still. Arria and the girls looked bewildered, Galla pale and even the nieces and nephews were temporarily overawed by the presence not only of Calvus and Stilo, but of four grim-faced men armed with clubs. Ruso recognized a couple of them as Fuscus’ men. Try as he might, Ruso could not imagine Fuscus had sent them to protect the family of his dear departed friend Publius Petreius.
Evidently the staff did not like the look of the Fuscus thugs either. The cook was clutching a saucepan as if it were a weapon. The kitchen-boy and Arria’s maid seemed to be trying to hide behind him. The bath-boy was a picture of drooping misery, and the cleaning girl and the laundrymaid were standing with heads bowed, each seemingly examining the reddened hands clasped in front of her for some explanation of why this was happening.
The stable lad scurried in through the yard gate and ran up the steps to join the others, trailing a strong whiff of embrocation in his wake. The nine farm labourers, not usually allowed to enter the house, hesitated down on the path.
‘And you lot,’ ordered Calvus. ‘Up you go.’
The men looked variously at Calvus, at Ruso and at Lucius, evidently not sure whom to obey.
Ruso moved forward. ‘Go and stand next to the other staff,’ he ordered them, counting the line to make sure nobody was missing except the two women who were at this moment heading into unsuspected trouble in Arelate.