"That is a very poor sort of religious practice, if you ask me," Asklepiodes maintained. "And the way you elect and appoint your priests, as if they were just ordinary officials. And most disgraceful is the way you appoint your augurs and give them a rule book for taking omens. Where is the art of divination without the divine afflatus?"
"That is because we are a rational and dignified people, and we are not about to conduct public affairs according to the ravings of a demented ecstatic. In times of crisis, I admit, we consult a sibyl, but I never heard that it did any real good."
"Because you Romans lack a true understanding of divine nature," he said stoutly.
"Nor have I ever heard of it doing Greeks any good. Even when their prophesies proved to be correct, the supplicant usually misinterprets it and comes to disaster."
Asklepiodes looked down his nose at me, a considerable feat since he was shorter. "It is always the occasional tale of irony that makes its way into legend. When approached in the proper spirit, sibylline oracles are usually quite reliable."
"I'll take your word for it," I told him.
"Now, on to less exalted matters. I fear I must bill you for one pig. A small one, originally intended for the gladiators' dinner."
My heart sank. "Then it was truly poison?"
"Healthy pigs are seldom struck dead by natural causes or the wrath of the gods. I fed it the pastries you gave me, and it was dead within an hour."
"An hour? That long? It must have been a weak poison."
"Not necessarily. Those instantaneous poisons one always hears about are fictitious. I have never encountered one that took less than an hour to kill a grown man, and most of them take much longer, accompanied by agonizing pains and convulsions. Somebody wanted you dead, my friend."
"Any idea what sort of poison?" I asked.
"I spoke before of the difficulty of this. I dissected the animal afterward and found no signs of hemorrhage. It did not go into violent convulsions. The poison might have been an extract of certain mushrooms, but it might as easily have been a decoction of Egyptian cobra venom which had been reduced and concentrated, then mixed with a stabilizing agent to form a powder."
"Cobra venom? That's a bit exotic. The boy had just visited a peasant herb-woman in the Forum. Do they traffic in such things?"
"They most certainly know mushrooms. Do not be fooled by appearances, Decius. She may never have attended lectures by learned physicians, but a peasant herbalist will have an intimate knowledge of the local plants and their properties. For all I know, there may be an herb or a root native to some local valley that produces a poison deadlier than any known to the school of Hippocrates."
"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."