There was a loud crash just outside the dining-room door.
‘What the fuck?’ I said.
‘Marcus!’ Perilla snapped.
‘Yeah, well …’
Bathyllus came in holding a silver tray; just the tray itself, with nothing on it. He was closely followed by Lupercus, and neither of them, to use a gross understatement, looked a happy bunny. No eye contact between them, for a start.
Bugger. This did not look good. The family dinner was turning into a major disaster.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Lupercus said stiffly to Clarus. ‘There’s been an accident with the wine. No real damage done though, and I’ll see that the mess is cleared up immediately.’
‘Yes, OK, Lupercus,’ Clarus said. ‘No problem. These things happen. Go ahead.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He turned.
Accident, nothing: I hadn’t seen our respective major-domos put in a simultaneous appearance since we’d got here. And going by the body language blood was within an ace of being spilled on both sides.
‘Hang on a minute, Lupercus,’ I said. ‘OK, Bathyllus, your turn. Let’s have your version of the story. In detail, and unexpurgated this time, please.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, sir.’ Innocence radiating from every pore, combined with overtones of politely understated outrage: a chief Vestal nailed for shoplifting couldn’t’ve done it better. Still, I wasn’t having any of that, not even from Bathyllus. When someone says I don’t know what you mean, the chances are that they know damned well, and the business smells as high as an eight-day-old sprat.
‘Think about it, sunshine,’ I said. ‘Weigh up all the semantic possibilities. Meanwhile, I’ll count to five, and if you still haven’t given me a straight answer you’ll be mucking out the latrines with a very small sponge. Clear? One.’
‘Lupercus has already told you, sir. It was a simple accident.’
‘Two.’
‘He was carrying the tray of wine cups and the jug and he tripped.’
‘Three, four, five.’
‘Sir, that is not fair! You cheated!’
‘Bugger that. Just take a deep breath, think of the latrines and tell me the truth. Now. Last chance.’
Bathyllus fizzed for a bit. Finally, he held up the tray he was carrying.
‘There’s a thumbprint on this, sir,’ he said. ‘A greasy thumbprint.’
‘What?’
‘It’s perfectly distinct. Look for yourself.’ He thrust the tray under my nose. ‘I’ve told him several times about washing his hands before he touches the silver, but he just won’t listen. It’s appalling! Besides, serving the wine is my job. It has to be done properly.’
I stared at him. He was almost gabbling, which was about as likely from Bathyllus as seeing him do a tap dance round the dining room wearing a tutu and clogs.
‘Is that all?’ I said. ‘This is all about a fucking thumbprint?’
‘But, sir!’
Jupiter in bloody spangles! ‘Right, little guy,’ I said. ‘A word, please. Outside. Now.’
He gave me a look, then tucked the tray under his arm and marched out into the corridor. I got up and followed.
‘Now,’ I said quietly when I’d got him alone. ‘You remember what I said when we arrived? About give and take while we’re here?’
‘Yes, sir, I remember very well.’
‘So quote me. Verbatim.’
‘You said, “We are not at home to Mr Refuse to Compromise”, sir.’ A sniff. ‘Whatever that meant.’
‘Correct. And never mind the qualification; you get the general gist, don’t you?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Listen, pal, we’ve all got to learn to share, OK? It’ll be the Winter Festival in a few days, and that’s no time for throwing tantrums, is it?’ Still silence. ‘Now you go back in there and apologise to Lupercus, or you go straight home on the next available cart. Got it?’
‘But …’
‘Ah-ah. I mean it. No buts. Just do as you’re told. Repeat after me: “Lupercus, I am very sorry …”’
‘Sir!’
‘Come on, Bathyllus. You can do it if you try. “Lupercus, I am very sorry …”’
He clenched his teeth. ‘Lupercus’m’ver’sorry …’
‘“For the way I behaved …”’
‘F’r’way I b’haved.’
‘“And it won’t happen again.”’
‘’N’ it won’t h’ppn ’gain.’
I patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good. Well done. That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Now in you come.’
I went back in, with Bathyllus trailing behind.
‘Bathyllus has something to say to you, Lupercus,’ I said, lying down again. ‘Go ahead, sunshine. In your own time.’
Bathyllus drew himself up to his full five feet four. ‘Lupercus,’ he said, ‘I apologise for having tried to take the wine tray from you before you brought it in, even if its filthy condition was totally obvious to anyone not completely devoid of-’
‘Bathyllus!’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘I am doing what you asked. Apologising.’ He turned back to Lupercus. ‘Please accept my assurances that the incident will not be repeated. Always, that is, given that in future you-’
Gods! ‘Bathyllus! Just cut it out, OK?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course. That is all I have to say at present, Lupercus. Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, madam.’ He left, with huge dignity.
Bugger.
‘You can go too, Lupercus,’ Clarus said. ‘Tidy up the mess, please, and bring us some more wine.’
‘Certainly, sir.’ Lupercus left. There was a long silence.
‘Oh dear,’ Perilla said faintly. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’
Marilla giggled.
The lady put down the stuffed olive she’d been holding. ‘It’s not funny, Marilla,’ she said. ‘Not really. Bathyllus takes himself and his position very seriously. And he has very high standards.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Like I told him outside, he’s got to learn to share. This isn’t his house; he’s a guest, even if he is one below stairs. Lupercus is the major-domo here, and there’s an end of it. He’ll just have to accept that.’
‘Do you think he will?’ Perilla said.
‘Maybe not. But that’s his problem, unless he wants to be shipped back to Rome and spend the festival there. I told him that, too.’
‘You ever happen to notice the interesting thing about thumbprints, Corvinus?’ Clarus said. ‘Any fingerprints, really.’
‘What?’ I looked at him blankly. Shit, you expected non sequiturs like that from airheads like Priscus, but Clarus was the solid, no-nonsense, sensible type.
‘They’ve got sort of whorls, and every one’s just that little bit different.’
‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘So?’
‘So if someone picked something up, like a silver tray, like Lupercus did, and left a fingerprint on it, you’d be able to tell who’d done it. Picked up the tray, I mean.’ He was looking at the expression on my face. ‘Because if you got him to leave another fingerprint on something else and compared the two it’d prove that … I mean, you’d know …’ We were all staring at him now. He tailed off and cleared his throat in embarrassment. ‘Or there again maybe you wouldn’t. Forget it. It was just an idea.’
Gods! And I’d thought Priscus was bad! ‘You been talking to Alexis, pal?’ I said. Our clever-clever gardener had this theory that you could breed better peas by using a small brush to smear the pollen from one plant inside the flower of another one. The philosophy of it seemed fairly run-of-the-mill conventional, no problems there — something about each grain of pollen containing the element of bigness or hardiness or whatever embodied in the whole plant — but it wasn’t a comfortable thing to watch, especially when he explained it in terms of male and female.
Clarus shrugged. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘Like I said, it was only an idea. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. So. Back to the case. What comes next, Corvinus?’