‘Not that I blame him for it. She’s a good-looking woman, Hermia, and he was lucky to land her. She knows it, too, if you catch my drift, but then she’s got him wrapped round her little finger. Still, where Vecilius is concerned she’s a subject best avoided.’
Joy in the morning! I’d got a real gossip-monger here. Mind you, it was lucky there were no other customers or he might not’ve been so chatty. Even so, it’d be a mistake to push too hard. I didn’t comment, just nodded, drank some more of my wine, and got on with the olives and cheese. The silence lengthened. Finally, I crossed my fingers in the hope that he hadn’t heard anything about the murder and said casually:
‘Strangely enough, he was telling me he had a bit of a run-in with an admirer of hers the other day. Or a would-be admirer, rather.’
‘Vecilius?’ The guy gave me a sharp look. ‘Did he, now? Well, well, you don’t say.’ He pulled up a high stool and sat directly opposite me, like a Suburan housewife settling in to dig the local dirt over the wall with her neighbour. ‘Three or four days back, would that be?’
‘Yeah.’ I tightened the crossed fingers. ‘Yeah, it would, actually. He say anything about it?’
‘Not as such. Not the run-in side of things. But he was in here in the morning, practically first thing, sinking wine like it was out of fashion and spouting off. The way he does sometimes.’
My interest sharpened. So much for Vecilius’s claim to have spent all day, sunrise to sunset, at the glassworks.
‘That usual for him?’ I said. ‘Morning drinker?’
‘Nah. He’s a worker, Vecilius, I’ll say that for him. Careful, too; he’d have to be, in his line. A glassworks is no place to be when you’ve had one over the odds. Normally it’s just the half jug at the end of the day, maybe a whole one if he’s something to celebrate or the company’s good.’ He filled a spare cup from a jug on the counter and took a contemplative sip. ‘Tullius, would that be the guy’s name, now, by any chance? Hermia’s admirer’s, I mean? Gaius Tullius?’
Heavenly choirs sang, but I kept my face straight.
‘It could’ve been,’ I said. ‘Something like that, anyway. Three days back, did you say?’
‘No, it was four for certain. The monthly delivery arrived just after he left.’
‘Vecilius left?’
‘Sure.’ He chuckled. ‘About this time, it was. My suggestion: he’d had two full jugs, and he was practically legless. But he was back an hour later to finish the job.’
‘Still talking about this Tullius?’
‘No. Never said a word about anything, in fact, just took his jug and cup into the corner there and drank his way through it. Then he passed out and I had a couple of the lads take him home.’ He grinned. ‘That’s Titus Vecilius for you. Not the man to do things by halves.’
‘Right. Right.’ Shit! I’d got him! Not only had Vecilius lied about being at the workshop all day, the day of the murder, but after getting thoroughly canned and cursing Tullius six ways from nothing he’d gone walkabout for an hour. And when he’d come back the subject of Tullius had been shelved. Like, I suspected, the poor bugger had himself …
Titus Vecilius was so much in the frame you could’ve hung him on the wall of the Danaid Porch.
The barman had picked up a rag and was wiping the counter in an absent-minded way. ‘This Tullius, now,’ he said, sucking on a tooth. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, sir, but wasn’t that the name of the stiff the Watch picked up knifed in Melobosis Alley?’ He gave me a sly sideways look. ‘If so then your mentioning him off the cuff, like, and showing a bit of interest in Titus Vecilius’s movements is quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Tullius was a friend of yours, perhaps? Or maybe you’ve got some other vested interest in finding out who knifed him?’
Bugger.
‘Uh-uh,’ I said. ‘No connection. I’d never met the man, just heard the name. It could be the same guy, sure, but if so then like you said it’s just pure coincidence. These things happen.’
‘Sure they do. All the time.’
Well, I supposed the chances of the local wineshop owner not knowing about the murder had been pretty slim, after all. I was just lucky the gossipy bastard also had a nasty, muck-raking streak a yard wide. Even so, I’d no desire at this point to complicate matters. I finished my wine at a gulp and stood up.
‘Thanks, pal,’ I said. ‘Be seeing you.’
‘Pleasure. Call again.’
I went out. I’d talk to the third supplier, Vibius, sure, while I was in the area, but at this point I suspected that it’d just be a matter of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. I’d got my killer cold.
Case over. Done and dusted.
Like Poetelius had told me, Vibius’s pottery was further along the road, past the Emporium and opposite the end of the Aemilian Porch. Just as at Festus’s place, there were the usual bread-and-butter amphoras and rough clay storage jars piled up in the yard outside, but when I went in most of the racks held the sort of items you’d only find in shops specializing in upmarket tableware and fine decorative goods. Pretty expensive shops at that: from what I could see, the stuff was first-rate, pick-of-the-range formal dinner party rather than everyday domestic standard for the dishes, and birthday-present quality for the vases. Yeah; Poetelius had said that the guy was a master craftsman, in a different league from Festus altogether. Losing the contract to an also-ran when you were producing work like this must’ve rankled.
It didn’t seem to have hurt him in the longer term, anyway. The place was busy enough, with five or six slaves bringing up one-off pots and jars on the wheel and a dozen more working at the benches packing moulds and glazing or painting the biscuit-fired pieces. I paused to watch one old guy in a freedman’s cap who was using a tiny brush to paint the lid of a cosmetic box no more than three inches long and wide with a scene involving nymphs and satyrs. Lovely stuff.
Finally, he put the brush down and turned towards me.
‘Yes, sir?’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I was looking for the owner,’ I said. ‘Titus Vibius. He around at present?’
‘I’m afraid not. But if you’re a customer then perhaps I can help you myself.’
Ah, well, I couldn’t be lucky every time. ‘No, it’s a private matter. You have any idea when he’ll be in? Or where I can find him?’
‘That I don’t know. But you could try his house, sir, on the off-chance that he might be there. Down the road a little on the Porch side. The one with the red-painted door.’
‘Thanks, pal.’ I left him to his finicky work and went back out into the street.
I found the house – like Vecilius’s, a two-storey property with a garden to the side – and knocked. A couple of minutes later, it was opened by an elderly slave.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘The master at home?’ I said.
‘He is. Who shall I say?’ I gave him my name, and then repeated it louder when he cupped his hand to his ear. ‘Thank you. The master’s in his study, sir. If you’d like to come in and wait, I’ll fetch him for you.’
No lobby and atrium here – the place wasn’t big enough – but it was a lot more spacious than a tenement flat in the town proper would be; one of those older upper-working-class houses you get on the outskirts, with two or three rooms off a central corridor ending in a staircase leading up to the first-floor landing. The slave opened the door on the left.
‘In here, sir,’ he said.
‘Who is it, Silvius?’
I looked up. A girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, was leaning over the balustrade. Quite a looker: brunette, and from what I could see of her with quite a nice figure.
‘A Valerius Corvinus, miss. Come to see your father.’
‘Oh.’ She disappeared, and I heard a door close upstairs.
‘Sir?’ The slave was standing aside, waiting.
‘Uh … right. I’m sorry.’ I went past him into the room.
‘The master won’t keep you a moment. Make yourself at home, please.’
He shuffled off, closing the door behind him.