Still, it was odd. And getting mixed up with two unconnected murders – or whatever you liked to call the second one – inside ten days was really pushing the boat out. Those evil-minded gods hovering around with their ears pricked were really working their socks off this time round. One way and another, the next day was going to be busy, busy, busy.
For the present, though, I’d settle for the roasted pigeons.
FIVE
I was up betimes the next morning: Trigemina Gate Street is a fair way from the Caelian, on the south-west edge of the city where most of the big workshops and warehouses are so as to be handy for loading and unloading cargoes to and from Ostia, and if I wanted to fit in a visit to the Palatine Watch-house on Tuscan Street as well – which I didn’t, really, but there you go – I’d have to get my skates on. Plus there was the head of the Aventine Watch to see, re the details of the actual murder as far as he knew them.
Like I say, busy, busy, busy.
Added to all this, I wanted to be gone before Marilla put in an appearance, because the lady would take it as her natural right to tag along on the promised visit to Lippillus, at least. And that, considering it was going to be a thanks-but-no-thanks call, I could do without. The chances were there’d be serious ructions when she found out in any case, but at least it’d be a fait accompli.
Besides, so far she didn’t know anything about the Tullius business. How long we could keep to that happy state of affairs I didn’t know, but the longer the better.
So I grabbed a roll with a slice of cheese between the two halves to eat on the way and headed towards Tuscan Street.
I was lucky: Decimus Lippillus was at his desk in the Watch Commander’s office.
‘Hey, Marcus!’ he said when I came in. ‘I’ve been expecting you. How’s the lad?’
‘OK.’ Lippillus and me went way back, almost pre-Perilla: a good twenty years, in other words. Despite that, he still looked like he had a year or so to go before his first shave and adult mantle; not just because of his height, or lack of it, either. Even so, midget and fresh-faced kid lookalike or not, Decimus Flavonius Lippillus was the best Watch Commander in the city, bar none. ‘How’s Paullina?’
‘Flourishing. Putting on weight, but there you go.’ Lippillus’s common-law wife and former stepmother Marcina Paullina was African, twice his size and a real honey. ‘Perilla well?’
‘Yeah, she’s fine.’ I pulled up a stool and sat. ‘What’re you doing here at Tuscan Street? They kick you out of Public Pond?’
He laughed. ‘In a way. Old Titus Fannius retired last month and the City Prefect decided to move me. It’s a promotion, sure, but one I could do without. The air on the Palatine’s a bit rich for my taste.’
‘So. Tell me all about this murder over at the Pollio. Or stabbing, rather.’
‘All is stretching it, Marcus, because we know practically zilch. The dead guy was an Ostian by the name of Correllius. Marcus Correllius.’
‘Ostian?’
‘Yeah. A businessman, seemingly, according to his slave. And no, you’re right; it wasn’t murder, not according to that smart-as-paint doctor son-in-law of yours, although that wasn’t for the want of trying on the part of the guy who put the knife in. What’s his name? Clarus?’
‘Cornelius Clarus. Yeah. He’s the local doctor down in Castrimoenium.’
‘So he said. Smart cookie, that. Well, he’s saved us a bit of work, anyway, and I’m grateful for that, at least. You can have the case if you want it, the whole boiling, with my blessing.’
Bugger; this didn’t sound good; I was glad that Marilla wasn’t here. ‘Hang on, pal,’ I said. ‘Death was from natural causes, fair enough. But if the guy was stabbed, then-’
He was shaking his head. ‘Marcus. Watch my lips here. I hate to say this, but it’s a question of the constructive use of Watch time.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean that we’ll probably have to stamp this one “Unsolved”.’
‘Come on! That’s ridiculous!’
He held up his hands, palm out.
‘Yeah, I know, I know!’ he said. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do. OK, a crime’s involved, absolutely, no argument, and personally I’d love to take the thing up. But I’m short-staffed, I’m up to my eyeballs already. Between ourselves, old Fannius left things in a bit of a mess that it’ll take me months to sort out, and finding the guy who’s shoved a knife into someone who’s already a corpse comes pretty low on the list of priorities. Besides, I told you: the man was over from Ostia, and that’s the best part of a day’s journey each way for a start. Plus it’s technically beyond my jurisdiction, and I’d have to clear any investigation with the Ostian boys, or set up some sort of liaison arrangement. Frankly, there’re just too many complications. To tell you the truth, I was relieved when your Marilla suggested you might like to take it up.’
Shit; I was being ganged up on here. First Marilla, now Lippillus.
‘Truth is, pal,’ I said, ‘I’ve got enough on my plate myself to be going on with. Guy by the name of Gaius Tullius, killed a few days ago in Trigemina Gate Street, and I’m right at the start of things. When she volunteered me, Marilla didn’t know that.’ Not that, knowing the lady as I did, it would’ve made a blind bit of difference, mind, but still …
Lippillus frowned. ‘Damn. Well, it can’t be helped. I’ll do what I can, of course – am doing what I can, with what resources I can spare – but I can’t promise much. You want the details anyway? Just in case?’
‘Sure. So what’ve you got?’
‘Not a lot so far, and it all comes from the slave he brought with him. Like I said, the guy’s name was Marcus Correllius, and he was an Ostian businessman.’
‘What kind of businessman?’
‘Mercurius – that’s the slave – didn’t say, but he gave me a contact address. Private house, on the Hinge to the south of Ostia’s Market Square. That’s a pretty expensive area, seemingly, so chummie wasn’t short of a silver piece or two.’
‘The slave wasn’t in the Pollio garden at the time of the murder, presumably?’
‘No. Correllius had sent him away, told him to come back in a couple of hours. Which he did, just after your Marilla and her husband found the body.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Curious; you’d’ve thought his master would’ve wanted the bought help to be on call. ‘So what was he doing at the Pollio in the first place? Correllius, I mean?’
‘A business meeting. Mercurius didn’t know the details, just that the meeting was with a guy named Marcus Pullius.’
‘In Rome? And at the Pollio? Why the hell not in Ostia?’
Lippillus shrugged. ‘No idea, and like I say the slave didn’t know either. But it’s not all that strange. Most Ostian businessmen have dealings with people and companies based in the city, and who did the travelling would depend on the circumstances. As far as the Pollio goes, it’s a common enough meeting place. Well-known, central, easy to find if you’re from out of town like Correllius was.’
Yeah, true: even so, if this Pullius were local himself – which, presumably, he was, or why Rome at all? – and a businessman in his own right, then surely he’d have an office where they could’ve met and discussed things in privacy and comfort. And if Correllius was as big a wheel as his private circumstances suggested then he was no hick from the sticks; he’d know his way round Rome well enough. So why choose a park bench to meet, for the gods’ sakes?
‘Who’s this Marcus Pullius, then?’ I said. ‘He come forward?’
‘No, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. And Mercurius didn’t know anything about him, either. He’d never seen the guy before, never even heard the name.’
Odder and odder, and the whole thing was beginning to stink to high heaven. Even if, contrary to all indications, Pullius wasn’t the actual perp and had just decided for reasons of his own not to get involved, if he’d been important enough for Correllius to have travelled all the way from Ostia to see then I’d’ve expected his slave to know something about him. Unless he did and wasn’t telling, of course, and that made things more interesting still.