‘Yes. His widow feels the same way. Quite understandable. Still, I’ve got to go through the motions, if only for my own satisfaction, haven’t I?’
‘Of course you do, my dear fellow. And it’s highly commendable. Needless to say, should you find the explanation I’d be very grateful – and interested – to know what it was. And it goes without saying that if I can help in any way-’
‘I’ll be sure to ask.’ I stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your patience with me. I’ve disturbed you long enough.’
He stood up too. ‘Not at all, Valerius Corvinus, it was a pleasure. In fact, if your wife doesn’t mind a bachelor’s establishment she and you must come to dinner one evening before you leave. Oh … but I was forgetting. I promised to give you the contact details for the agent handling the Rusticellius let. If you can wait just a moment-’
‘No, that’s OK,’ I said. ‘Like I told you, it’s only an idea at present. We’ll take a stroll over there within the next few days and have a look at the place from the outside, see what my wife thinks. Plenty of time to contact the agent when we decide we’re interested.’
‘Very well. Don’t leave it too long, mind. It really is a first-class bargain, and it’s bound to be snapped up quickly.’ He held out his hand. ‘Delighted to meet you properly. Enjoy your stay, and don’t forget the dinner invitation. We’ll leave it open. Any day suits me, just send one of your slaves over to say you’re coming.’
We shook, and I left.
Yeah, that had gone OK, in the end. And there had been some interesting scraps of food for thought.
I was making my way round the corner of the villa towards the gate in the wall when I happened to glance in the direction of the other wing. There was a door in the side, and as I looked it opened and a man came out. He saw me, did a double-take, and ducked back quickly inside, shutting the door behind him, but not before I’d seen who it was.
Doccius.
Well, well, well.
NINETEEN
So. Time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s before we sat down and had a really hard think about how to go about things from here, and if that meant fishing for red herrings, maybe landing one or two, then so be it. Starting with the Vinnia side of things.
Oh, sure, the coincidence of the two dockyard accidents – Tullius’s and Vinnia’s ex-husband, Manutius’s – might just be that, a pure coincidence, especially since they were ten years apart; but the fact that the name Correllius figured in both of them lifted the thing just that necessary smidgeon clear of the bracket. If I was lucky, a talk with Manutius’s old pal Cispius, who’d worked for Correllius himself, might throw up some useful information. I needed badly to talk to someone on the inside, and that wasn’t likely to happen any other way, was it? The explanation of why Gaius Tullius had been stiffed lay here, at the Ostian end, I’d bet my last copper piece on that; the business with the Porpoise and its master’s brother Sextus Nigrinus – that bastard I knew I hadn’t seen the last of, unfortunately, but we’d cross that particular bridge when we came to it – made it a virtual certainty. How Correllius fitted in, mind, barring that his name was on the manifest as the cargo’s owner and that he’d been crooked as a Suburan dice game, I hadn’t the faintest idea as yet; but fit in he did, sure as eggs is eggs. It was just a question, as usual, of furkling around in the dark and seeing what I could turn up.
Cispius it was, then. Assuming, from what Rubrius had told me, that his daughter still had her fuller’s place near Guildsmen’s Square and the old guy himself was still above ground …
I’d just have to keep my fingers crossed.
Guildsmen’s Square, where the Ostian trade guilds’ offices are, is on the Roman Gate side of town, between the theatre and the river. There were quite a few side streets and alleyways in that part, but finding a fuller’s shop is always easy: all you have to do is follow your nose. Literally. So that’s what I did, and found the place no problem.
It was tucked away in a cul-de-sac just past the town baths, a single large room opening out directly onto the pavement and with a couple of mantles hanging from a clothes line stretched between the buildings either side. I edged carefully round them, trying not to breathe through my nose – fullers may be used to the smell of well-matured urine, but for those whose olfactory sense hasn’t been already blunted it’s a pleasure to be rationed – and went inside.
There were a couple of guys in loincloths knee-deep in a vat, treading the hell out of a bundle of dirty mantles, and a grey-haired man in a badly stained tunic ladling sulphur from a bag into a sulphur-burner. Obviously the boss: the first perk of seniority in the fulling trade is that you don’t spend a large slice of your working day up to the knees in diluted piss.
‘Good morning, sir.’ He set the cracked wine-cup he was using as a ladle down on the bench. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I was looking for a man by the name of Cispius.’
‘The Dad?’ His eyes widened, and I saw them stray to the purple stripe on my tunic. ‘Yeah, he’s upstairs. What do you want with him?’
Hey! At least I’d got the right place. And, it seemed, old Cispius was still alive and breathing. If being upstairs from a fuller’s establishment wasn’t a mixed blessing where the latter was concerned.
‘Just a word or two,’ I said. ‘It’s about a pal of his who died about ten years back. A Gaius Manutius. I understand he kept up for a while with the widow.’
The man grinned. ‘“Kept up”, is it? Well, the Dad’s always been a bit of a dark horse, but I never heard of no widow, me. Not that sort, anyway. Still, you’re more than welcome to go up and talk to him, whatever it’s about. You’ll be doing him a favour, stuck in that room on his own all day with only the wife for company. Stairs just outside and to the left there. I’d take you up myself but the wife would have a fit unless I’d had a good wash first.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal. Your wife’s at home?’
‘Nah, she won’t be back for an hour or two yet. Out doing the shopping. But you’ll have no trouble finding him.’
I went outside again and up the stairs. There was a wooden door at the top. I knocked and went in.
The room above the shop was empty, but the lady of the house was obviously the house-proud type: swept and dusted to an inch of its life, and what little furniture there was had been carefully polished with wax. There was even a bowl of fresh flowers on the table. Not a single sniff of urine.
‘That you back already, Cispilla, girl?’
An old man’s voice, from the room adjoining. I went through.
It was a bedroom, smaller than the living room, mostly taken up with a big bed, carefully made with a chequered cover. Next to it was a single unmade truckle bed propped sideways against the wall, and a high-backed chair next to a window overlooking the main street, with the old man sitting in it. His legs were swathed in a rug.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘My name’s Corvinus. Marcus Corvinus. Your son-in-law said it’d be OK to come up.’
‘That’s as may be. What do you want?’
‘Just a chat, if it’s OK with you,’ I said equably. ‘You mind if I sit down?’
‘Suit yourself.’ His eyes, like his son-in-law’s, were on the purple stripe. ‘What’s your business here?’
I sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. ‘I was hoping you could help me out with something. It’s about a friend of yours. A colleague, really. Guy by the name of Gaius Manutius?’
The suspicion hadn’t left the old man’s voice. ‘I knew a Gaius Manutius, sure. But he’s long dead, ten years back.’
‘Yeah, I know. That’s the point. I was hoping you could tell me about how he died.’
‘Why do you want to know that?’