‘Hold on, Marcus! I’ll allow you Annia and her brother, yes, but not Poetelius. He didn’t know you intended going to Ostia at all.’
‘Sure he did. Maybe not when, but he knew I knew about the accident, and he knew I’d be looking into it. That’d be enough. So X sends to Nigrinus, warning him that I’m coming, telling him to look out for me and to take appropriate action.’
‘It still doesn’t explain how this Nigrinus knew you’d be over at Ardeatina Gate Street this morning.’
I shrugged. ‘I gave Annia my address right at the start, and either of the other two could’ve got it from her easily enough, even if she isn’t involved herself. Given that X’s instructions to Nigrinus were to follow things through at the Rome end if need be – which they must’ve been – that’d be all he’d need to be able to tail me. Then it’d just be a case of jumping me and finishing the job the first chance he got.’
‘Do you think Annia is involved?’
Yeah, that was the question I’d been asking myself, and I still didn’t have a definite answer.
‘Lady, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘On the one hand, for things to make any kind of sense she’s got to be. There’s certainly steel there, and a brain, and where the cui bono’s concerned she has motive in spades. If anyone could plan a murder, I reckon she could.’
‘And the execution?’
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘No, I don’t think she’d be quite up for that. But it doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t be in it alone, and she’d provide the necessary link.’
‘How so?’
‘The only other two front runners are Poetelius and Brother Annius, right?’
Perilla sniffed. ‘If you say so.’
I grinned. ‘OK. Possibly them. The problem is, neither fits the frame on his own. Sure, in Poetelius’s case he’s got the motive that his business partner’s a liability, and it’s turned out he had the opportunity as well, so in a way he’s by far the more likely. The guy’s no natural killer, not on relatively slim grounds like that, I’d take my oath there, but if he and Annia were having a serious affair – serious on both sides – then that’d be a completely different story. Tullius might not’ve cared about the hole-in-corner stuff, but I’d bet Poetelius did. He’s a pretty conventional guy, he’d want marriage, and without a divorce he couldn’t have it. Added to which, under the status quo Annia’s stuck with a philandering husband who only keeps her for her money and has no intentions of giving her up. Get rid of Tullius and all their problems are solved at a stroke. It’d be just too convenient a solution to ignore, especially with Annia behind him, maybe doing the pushing.’
‘If the affair existed in the first place. It all hinges on that.’
‘Sure. Granted. But then why would Tullius tell Marcia it did when it didn’t?’
‘Marcus, you really are naive sometimes. Marcia may have been bored and looking for some excitement, but she was a respectable married woman. There’s a big difference between starting a relationship with a man who has a faithful wife at home and one whose wife already has a lover of her own. If Tullius wanted to seduce Marcia, then presenting himself as a husband in a loveless marriage would be a natural ploy for him to use.’
I frowned. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I suppose that’s possible. Even so-’
‘How about your second possibility? The brother?’
‘That’s just pure gut feeling. Annius is a cold bastard, and as far as temperament goes I’d back him as a killer over Poetelius any time. If Annius is our man, though, then his sister really has to be mixed up in this, because the only motive he’s got is sheer altruism. Not that that’s a barrier necessarily, because they’re obviously pretty close.’
‘Would that be enough?’
‘Maybe not in itself. But remember, lady, we’re dealing with business families here, and they take the financial side of things very seriously. Annia’s already bankrolling her husband’s company on a month-to-month basis and watching him in effect throw the money away to finance his tomcatting. I’m guessing, sure, but let’s say things have got worse recently – as, from what Poetelius told me, they probably have -and he’s pressing her to release some of the capital. Her brother’s a businessman himself, he’d be a natural for her to go to for advice. And being the guy he is, unlike in Poetelius’s case, I reckon where Annius is concerned that might be enough to swing it. Opportunity – well, we don’t know anything about his movements at all, do we? The day of the murder, he could’ve been anywhere.’
‘Hmm.’ She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: ‘Marcus, you do realize that none of this explains the Ostia connection, don’t you? Quite the contrary. And there’s no room for Correllius at all. Where does he fit in? If indeed he does.’
I took a swig of wine, and made a face. ‘Yeah. That’s the stumbling block, and it’s a biggie. Correllius must fit in somewhere, that’s for sure. And the fact that he and Tullius were both stabbed – taking Correllius’s stabbing as murder, which to all intents and purposes it was as far as the perp was concerned – we’re almost certainly looking for a single killer. Ostia’s starting to look like a major lead, but for it to work then Annia must be on the level. Or the chances are that she is, at any rate, because if she was responsible at least in part for her husband’s death then why the hell put me on to it in the first place? Plus, when I talked to her today I’d swear she genuinely didn’t know any more about it than she told me.’ I set the wine-cup down. ‘Ah, hell. Leave it. Maybe Agron’ll come up with something on the Siddius front. And then I’ve got this lady’s maid to see. If we’re really, really lucky, she’ll be able to give us a good description of the guy at the Pollio, in which case we might be home and clear.’
Perilla was twisting her hair. ‘You’re absolutely sure that Annia, her brother and Poetelius are the only likely suspects?’
I stared at her. ‘Yeah, more or less. If you discount Vecilius, but I thought we’d agreed that solution was too simple.’
‘I don’t mean Vecilius.’
‘Jupiter, lady! Who else is there?’
‘Marcia. Or rather, Marcia and her husband.’
‘Perilla, that’s crazy! Marcia was long gone, helping her mother in the cookshop by the Capenan Gate. And the day of the murder Festus was either at the pottery or over there with her.’
‘So she told you, certainly. You don’t have any definite proof of that, though, do you? They both had a motive, after all. And setting it up would be easy. Marcia could’ve persuaded Tullius into a meeting at the shrine, say by suggesting she might be willing to discuss sharing him with his new girlfriend. And then Festus would’ve done the actual killing.’
Oh, shit. It was possible, sure it was. The lady was right. All the information I had for Marcia’s and Festus’s movements and actions on the two days in question came from the pair themselves. And even then there’d been a discrepancy, with Festus telling me he’d filled in the missing few hours on the day of the murder with a visit to the Temple of Mercury.
‘What about the Ostia side of things?’ I said. ‘Neither Marcia nor Festus has anything to do with-’ I stopped.
‘Marcus? Marcus!’
‘When I talked to the local Watch Commander – Memmius – he said that when Festus had married her Marcia had been a widow from out of town. If “out of town” was Ostia, as well it might be, then she’d still have connections there.’ Gods! ‘Oh, it could be coincidence, and the accident on the quayside happened two days before Annia sent her the letter, but all it’d take for that not to matter would be that Marcia already knew she’d been ditched and made her own arrangements. There’d still be the problem of how she worked things, sure, but it’s at least feasible.’
‘And the Correllius side of things?’
‘Lady, I told you: I don’t know yet. So get off my back, OK? Correllius was Ostian, we’re talking Ostia, that’s as far as it goes at this stage.’
‘Very well. Then how about the spat with Hermia? Surely if Marcia knew that Tullius was being unfaithful already, before the letter arrived, then she’d already have confronted her.’