‘So it’s still an open field,’ I finished. ‘Leaving Vecilius aside, it’s looking promising for Annia and A. N. Other, probably Poetelius, but I’d take side bets on Quintus Annius, the gods know why. Vibius is in there too, now. That last bit about his wife sounded pretty close to self-justification, because he’d no cause to tell me how she died off his own bat. At the very least, he couldn’t’ve made it plainer that he was glad to see Tullius dead and that all his sympathies were with the killer.’
Perilla was still watching the Sprog doing his rolling-about act.
‘Do you think that’s good for him, Clarus?’ she said. ‘Or should I give him a hand?’
‘No, he’s fine,’ Clarus said. ‘Leave him to it; he needs the exercise. And they all do that at his age.’
‘If you’re sure, dear.’ She looked doubtful.
Uh-huh. Well, at least she was talking, if not to me or Marilla. And I noticed that Clarus was still keeping his head diplomatically below the parapet. I sympathized: neither lady was one to cross, and he’d probably been getting it from both sides recently. When that happens, you lie low and say nothing. Clarus was certainly learning fast.
‘So how would it work, Corvinus?’ Marilla said. ‘In practical terms, I mean.’
‘You want the odds?’ I said.
‘Yes, please. Just to be clear.’
‘OK. Like I said, Annius is the least likely. Until we get a sniff of a genuine motive, at any rate. He and his sister are obviously very close, so if she did confide in anyone that she wanted rid of her husband he’d be first in the queue.’
‘Assuming there’s nothing between her and Poetelius.’
‘Right. Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes. Otherwise, at present he’s a non-starter. He may be a cold-hearted bastard’ (‘Marcus, please!’ from Perilla; I ignored her) ‘who wouldn’t fight shy of murder – at least, I don’t think he would – but he didn’t have any connection with Tullius, either socially or business-wise, so-’
‘Hang on! You don’t know that for certain.’
‘Yeah, I do. Poetelius confirmed it, and if Poetelius isn’t A. N. Other, then what he says has weight.’
‘Fair enough. But he is in business himself, and Tullius was his brother-in-law. And as far as “socially” is concerned, if he and Annia were in it together then it’d be easy to cover up any compromising details.’ Marilla grinned. ‘I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, you understand.’
‘OK. All that’s true enough. But the bottom line is we’ve got nothing concrete on the guy. Poetelius, now, he’s a lot more likely. He’s got a motive, both personal – given the existence of the affair with Annia – and financial, and he’s also got opportunity, because he was definitely in the area when the murder happened.’
‘Oh, come on! He’d a good reason for being there!’
‘I’m not so sure about that. At least, not of the reason he gave.’
‘But Vibius confirmed it. He was there on business.’
‘Look, Marilla, Vibius owes Poetelius for the fact that he’s not short one pottery and signing on for the corn dole, OK? Plus the fact that he hated Tullius’s guts for seducing his wife and driving her to suicide. Given the choice between confirming the guy’s story and sending him up the creek without a paddle, which way do you think he’d jump?’
‘Yes, well, if you put it like that, I suppose …’ Marilla frowned.
‘It still wouldn’t explain how he engineered the opportunity, though, would it, Marcus?’ Perilla said.
Hey! I turned towards her. ‘How do you mean, lady?’ I said.
‘Poetelius couldn’t have known that his partner would be in Trigemina Gate Street that day. It was a holiday, the office was closed. Oh, yes, as he said he had his reasons for going there himself. But Tullius didn’t, or not as far as he was aware.’
Yeah; fair point. That had been bugging me, too. Sure, Tullius had called in on Hermia, that was certain. But it just didn’t square that any erstwhile lover with a grain of common sense would deliberately plan a visit the day after the lady’s husband had gone looking for him with a meat cleaver, nor that said lady would suggest it to him. A seized opportunity – straight in and straight out – while he was already in the neighbourhood for compelling and unrelated reasons, now, that might be another thing again. At least for a guy like Tullius. Which left the problem of the compelling reasons. If not to try it on with Hermia, then why the hell had he been there?
‘It could’ve been coincidence,’ I said. ‘They could just have bumped into each other.’
‘Marcus, do you honestly-?’ There was a howl from the Sprog, who’d suddenly and spectacularly managed to flip himself over and found he was face down on the mosaic tiling. ‘Oh, my!’
Marilla got off her couch. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It happens every time. He’s perfectly all right.’
She scooped him up and calmed him down, cradling him against her shoulder and walking him around the room until comparative peace was restored.
Well, the kid had a good pair of lungs, anyway.
‘Sorry, lady, you were saying,’ I said.
‘Do you really believe that they could’ve met by accident, dear?’ Perilla said. ‘Personally I would have thought that unless the killer is Vecilius after all, everything points to the murder having been planned.’
Hell. She was right; I didn’t believe it, and it had been. Planned right down to the last detail. Forget Vecilius, it was far more complicated than that. Tullius had been suckered into a meeting, he’d called in first at Hermia’s and then gone on to Melobosis’s shrine, where whoever the killer was had knifed him.
Maybe.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then Poetelius could’ve arranged the meeting himself.’
‘Why should he?’ Perilla said. ‘They saw each other in the office every day. Tullius would scarcely be persona grata in any negotiations involving Vibius, and he’d have to be a complete fool to think otherwise. Besides, as I said, it was supposed to be a holiday. Poetelius couldn’t possibly have invented an excuse that Tullius would believe for one second.’
I sighed. True, all of it. Unless there was something I was missing, which was perfectly possible. I took a morose slug of wine.
‘So what’s the next step, Corvinus?’ Marilla had settled down on the couch again with the still-grizzling young Marcus. ‘What’re you going to do now?’
I hesitated. Bugger. Well, it had to be done. ‘Actually, Princess, I thought I might go down to Ostia tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Check out the-’
‘Ostia? Great! While you’re there you can-’
‘No I can’t,’ I said firmly. ‘Definitely not. Forget it, right? The only reason I’m going to Ostia – the only reason, read my lips here – is to check out this business of the falling amphoras. Straight in, straight out, or as close to it as I can manage. Understand?’
‘But surely if you’re going there in any case-’
‘No. That’s final. As it is, the whole thing’s probably a wild-goose chase. All it has going for it is that when I mentioned the place in front of Annia and her brother the idea of me going there went down like finding a slug in a salad. Like I say, it shouldn’t take long because I’ve got the number of the quay where the accident happened.’
‘Poetelius told you that, didn’t he, Marcus?’ Perilla was looking pensive.
I turned to her. ‘Yeah. So?’
‘It’s just that surely it militates against him being the killer, doesn’t it?’
I frowned. Bugger, she was right again: the fact that it’d been Poetelius who’d told me was relevant. In fact, it was crucial. If there was something screwy about the business with the amphoras and Poetelius was our man, then he’d be a fool to put me in the way of finding out what it was. Unless he was playing the innocent deliberately, of course, because I would’ve found out eventually and then he’d be in deep trouble. But then it’d been Annia who’d mentioned the accident unprompted in the first place, and if the two of them were in this together …