"Or he might have obtained it elsewhere," I said.
"I marvel as always at your discernment in these matters. Most men are inclined to accept the quickest or most convenient answer to everything."
"It's what makes me so good at my work," I admitted. "There is a faculty in me that refuses to accept face value. If an explanation is easy or obvious, I get suspicious. If someone wants me to believe something, I suspect an ulterior motive."
"It must be a useful faculty indeed. In kings it becomes overdeveloped and they see assassins everywhere and overindulge themselves in executions."
"It's a good one for a man on the service of the Senate and People of Rome," I maintained. "And sometimes the lethal designs of enemies are real, as witness the unfortunate pig. How much for the animal, by the way?"
"Twelve sesterces."
"Twelve? That seems a bit steep for a small pig. Couldn't you have gone ahead and fed it to the gladiators? Surely the poison affected only the vital organs and could not have permeated the flesh."
"It is always inadvisable to take liberties with the diet of professional killers. Twelve sesterces, Decius."
I took out my purse and counted out the coins. "Now, as I see it, the boy may have been consulting the woman in her fortune-telling capacity, as she claimed. When I took his hand, I noticed that he was wearing a suicide ring. My slave Hermes followed him home and he vomited twice on the way. These seem to me to be signs of a very young and inexperienced conspirator, unused to murder. Well, he will be sorry he picked me for his maiden effort."
"And the fortune-teller?" Asklepiodes inquired.
"He probably wanted to confer about favorable signs or some such. I rather doubt he confided to her the nature of his mission, but a boy nervous enough to wear a poison ring would want to be sure that the gods favored that day for a momentous enterprise, or perhaps he wanted confirmation that he has a long life ahead of him."
"Yet he was a stranger to you. Who do you suspect set him upon you?"
"I have a short list this time, but more names may be added as I investigate further. Clodius, of course, but I think he would rather do me in with his own hand."
"Even Publius Clodius may have attained a certain discretion and maturity with the advance of years," Asklepiodes said. "I hear him spoken of as a promising figure in city politics."
"Oh, that. It just means he's the most successful criminal now operating."
"I also hear your good friend Titus Milo spoken of in the same fashion," he added.
"That's just because they're rivals. But Milo is my friend!" Sometimes I just could not understand Greeks.
"Now, you asked me to view the corpse of Aemilius Capito," the physician reminded me.
"Oh, right. I almost forgot. Being the would-be victim of a murderer makes you forget other people's problems in that area. What did you make of it?"
"Most odd," Asklepiodes said.
"How so?" My attention sharpened. "I thought it seemed rather ordinary, apart from the two-blow style of dispatching."
"That was the oddity. I persuaded the undertaker's men to allow me to examine the wounds closely. The persuasion will cost you another ten sesterces, by the way."
"Ten sesterces just to handle a corpse?" I said. "The necrophiles who lurk around the amphitheaters only pay five."
"Please!" he said, offended. "I did not 'handle' the corpse. That would be unclean. I examined closely. And one would expect the price to be higher for a Senator than for some poor, condemned wretch."
"It had better be worth it," I said, counting out yet more coins.
"It was most intriguing. The cut, or rather, stab in the throat was delivered with the most precise expertise. The blade was double-edged, no more than an inch wide, not a sica or a pugio, but rather an extremely sharp, flat-ground blade with a short point section." He gestured at the armory hanging on his walls. "I have nothing quite like it among my collection, but I think it must be rather like the sticking knife used to slaughter animals."
"That is odd," I admitted. "I know of nobody in Rome who kills like that. Perhaps that's why he knocked poor old Mamercus on the head first-to set him up for the artistic death-blow."
"Now I come to the oddest part," Asklepiodes said, relishing this slow process of revelation. "Come to it quickly," I said.
"When I examined the depression on the brow, I had no difficulty in identifying the weapon. It was a hammer, one with a round, flat face approximately one and one-half inches in diameter. The circular depression lay just above the nose, and it was twice as deep on the lower or nose side as on the upper side, toward the hairline."
"You speak as if this unevenness of depth were fraught with significance," I commented.
"And so it is. It means that the hammer blow was not delivered first, to stun the victim. Had that been the case, the depression would have been deeper toward the hairline. No, the murderer struck Capito with the hammer after he lay on the floor. He stood behind the body, about a foot from the top of the head, and struck downward at a rather sharp angle."
" After he was already down!" I said. "Whatever could have been his purpose? Capito was as good as dead when the knife blow was struck."
"Decidedly. A severed left carotid brings unconsciousness within a very few seconds, and death only a few seconds after that. There is no saving the victim. The hammer blow must have been for another purpose." He wandered over to his window and gazed down at the men practicing in the yard below. "It reminded me of something, and I think it was a thing I saw many years ago, but I cannot call it to mind. I do not have your facility for summoning up odd facts and putting them together."
I might have known. He probably knew something vital, but he couldn't remember what it was. I decided to be patient. My near-poisoning concerned me far more than the unfortunate Capito.
"Well, should you remember, please send for me."
"I shall. And should there be more of these murders, please feel free to consult me." He patted my shoulder as I left his quarters. "If I know you, there well be more of them."
Chapter VI
The next morning, at the house of Celer, I eyed the callers most closely. Clodius was not there, nor was Nero. Neither was Caesar, but he might have been busy divorcing his wife. I saw my kinsman Creticus and went to pay my respects. He wasn't much of a figure as the senior members of my family went, but he had once stood up to Pompey and came out on his feet, for which I respected him greatly.
"Decius, good to see you," he said. "Odd business the other night, wasn't it?" Nobody in Rome was talking about anything else.
"What does Felicia tell you?" I asked. Felicia was the daughter of Creticus.
"She just takes a smug attitude and claims she can say nothing while hinting she knows things we men can only dream about. What's your wife say?"
"I'm not married, Uncle," I said. He wasn't Father's brother, but I had always called him that. He was actually a second cousin, or perhaps it was a third.
"Lucky you. Well, my money is on Clodia as the instigator, and Felicia and Clodia are as close as two women can be, but I can't get a thing out of the girl. I've told her husband to put a stop to it, but the boy dotes on her and won't say a word to offend her."
The boy was the younger Crassus, and it was true. His love for Felicia was the talk of Rome. They had been united in a typical political marriage, but some people are just meant for each other. When she died he built her the most splendid tomb ever seen in Rome.
"When it comes to Clodia," I said, "it is often best not to inquire too closely."
"Jove has spoken," he vowed. Our conversation was interrupted when Celer beckoned for me to join him. I went over, and he excused the two of us from a knot of magistrates and foreign ambassadors. We walked not merely to a private corner of the atrium but all the way out into the peristylium, where we could be sure even the slaves wouldn't overhear.