‘Marcus Caesius, hey?’ he said when I’d told him why I was there. ‘Now there’s a name from the past! Yes, I witnessed his will, me and Gaius Tucca, gods rest him. About fifteen years back, that would’ve been.’
‘Did you read it?’ I said.
‘Of course I did! You fooling me, boy? Marcus insisted on it, said he didn’t want anyone querying the thing when he was dead and burned, meaning that no-use second son of his. Quite rightly so, as it turned out, for all the good it did him.’ He chuckled. ‘He was a canny bugger in his time, was old Marcus, one of the best. You didn’t get much past Marcus Caesius.’
‘So he definitely disinherited Lucius? You’re sure about that, sir?’
‘Nothing wrong with my memory, son. I was in the banking business for sixty years, good at it, too, never mislaid a copper piece and practically carried the ledgers around in my head. When I start forgetting things as important as the content of wills you can shovel me into an urn and put the lid on.’ He raised his voice. ‘Is that not right, Desmus?’ The old major-domo — he was at least as old as his master — nodded and carried on with his dusting. Ampudius turned back to me. ‘That was the whole point of the thing, where Marcus was concerned. Ditch the useless bastard. He’d had his chance years before, several chances for that matter, and blown the lot. Marcus never did believe in throwing good money after bad, and letting that shiftless scrounger get his hands on half his property when he was gone would’ve been tantamount to dropping it down the nearest latrine.’
Damn. So Lucius Caesius’s insistence that the will had been forged was complete wishful-thinking moonshine. Well, it made sense, and it certainly fitted in with everything else. Lucius had been pretty convincing at the time, sure, but maybe he couldn’t admit the truth even to himself.
‘He tried to get it overturned, of course,’ Ampudius was saying. ‘Lucius, I mean. You know about that?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Not in any detail, though.’
‘The bastard claimed undue influence by his brother while the balance of Marcus’s mind was disturbed. That’s how the fancy lawyer he drafted in from Rome put it.’ He chuckled again. ‘Means the old man was gaga when he came to make the will and Quintus virtually told him what to write. Rot, complete rot, then at least. I told the judge straight when I was called — that was Publius Avianus, he had the chair that year, fine old buffer, he’s long dead himself now from a bad oyster, bless his socks — that Marcus was as sane as any of us at the time. And even if he’d been right about the influence, what did it matter? It was all for the best. Quintus Caesius was worth ten of that soak where a head for business was concerned. If he hadn’t been practically running things single-handed in his father’s last few years the family would’ve been paupers before you could spit.’
‘Hold on, sir,’ I said. ‘You said Marcus Caesius was sane at the time he made the will. You mean things changed?’
‘Certainly they did. The poor old bugger went downhill pretty quickly latterly, didn’t he? Mentally as well as physically, body and mind a complete wreck. The full catastrophe. Could hardly do a blessed thing for himself at the end, no more than can a baby, and he’d nothing left in the attic, couldn’t remember his own name, let alone anyone else’s. Just a living shell. I was sorry as hell for old Marcus, because like I said he was a canny man of business in his day and sharp as a knife, but his son was quite right to have him declared incapable.’
‘Quintus Caesius had his father certified?’
‘Of course. About a year before the old man died, when things started to become obvious. Only thing he could’ve done, and choice didn’t enter into it. Can’t have a man who sits down to dinner in his underpants and dribbles in the soup making deals and signing important business documents, can you? If it was me, mind, I’d rather someone knocked me on the head and be done with it, but there you are.’ He raised his voice again. ‘Hey, Desmus? You hear what I’m saying? You’d do that for me, would you?’
The duster paused. ‘Yes, master. It’d be a pleasure.’
Ampudius grinned toothlessly. ‘Bugger off, Desmus. Well, he was a good son, Quintus. He knew where his duty lay, however unpleasant it was, public or private.’
Shit. ‘And he used his friend Publius Novius to get it done? The certifying?’
‘Who else would he use, boy? He was the family lawyer, and it had to go through legal process. Besides, he’s a smart man, Publius. There’d be no querying anything he drafted.’
My brain was buzzing. I stood up. ‘Thanks for your help, sir. You’ve been very informative.’
‘Don’t mention it. My pleasure. I don’t have many visitors these days, and I don’t get out much myself. I was sorry to miss young Quintus’s funeral. A good man, that, and a good citizen of Bovillae. It isn’t often you get them both together, and the town’s a lot poorer without him.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, so I imagine.’
‘You nail the bastard who killed him. You won’t find us ungrateful, boy.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said, and left.
TWELVE
Where to now?
Well, you win some, you lose some: that conver-sation had blown out of the water the theory that the will was a fake engineered first to last by Novius and Caesius together. Old, Ampudius might be, but he’d certainly got all his faculties intact, there was nothing wrong with his memory, and he’d convinced me absolutely on that score. So scrap the idea that Aulus Mettius had been blackmailing Caesius and his employer, got himself framed and relegated as a result, and stiffed his uncle in revenge as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Which didn’t, of course, let him off the hook altogether: even if his reasons for hating Caesius hadn’t been as clear cut as a trumped-up charge and a ten-year relegation would’ve made them, the hatred he’d shown at the funeral had been there in spades, whatever the cause of it had been, and the timing still fitted. So Nephew Mettius was still firmly in the frame.
There again, there was still the question of Quintus Caesius’s power of attorney — or whatever the legal phrase was — to consider. Even if his father’s will itself had been genuine, the business of the old man having been certified towards the end of his life was something I’d known nothing about, and it might well be a key point where relations between the two brothers were concerned; Ampudius had been pretty definite that Caesius Senior had been in sound mind when he disinherited Lucius, sure, no arguments, but he’d also said that the guy had known he was failing during his latter years and had relied increasingly on his elder son’s judgement. Influence — possibly undue influence, based on personal motives — was a grey area, and if it’d been a factor in the disinheritance then it might be relevant, both where Lucius himself — and possibly even Mettius, if he’d come to know about it in some way — was concerned.
So another chat with Anthus was in order. Plus, following my interview with Baebius, he might be able to provide an update on the missing figurine; my gut feeling was telling me that that fitted in somewhere or other along the line, and I’d bet we hadn’t heard the last of it. Also, since it was cropping up too frequently to be ignored, I thought I might give the burned-out wool store a quick look-over, if only for completeness’ sake.
Even so, we were halfway through a busy morning here. Like I’d said to Perilla, I was officially on holiday, and after dutifully talking to Baebius and Ampudius I reckoned I deserved a break and a cup of wine. So back towards the centre of town and my usual wine shop.
On the way — what made me do it, I don’t know; call it instinct, if you like — I happened to glance over my shoulder. I hadn’t been looking out for my pal the lounging freedman recently, but there he was, large as life, a dozen or so yards behind and keeping pace. Uh-huh. Coincidence, nothing, not this time: Bovillae wasn’t all that small. Maybe it was time we had a word. I turned.