'I was told Saffia's stuff was "stolen" when she left here,' I said.

'If chattels went astray,' the steward put in indignantly, 'I knew nothing of it.'

'You should,' snapped Birdy. 'Saffia has been erupting.'

The steward believed the missing items could be found. He went off to investigate. Negrinus continued throwing his own possessions together for removal to his sister's house. Goading him, I commented, 'I was told that your communication with Saffia had broken down.'

'Ah, but now Saffia wants something!' Negrinus spoke with a new bitterness. He stood in the centre of his old bedroom. It was a finely decorated room in bluey-green, with curliculed pictures of sea monsters. His feet were planted on a well modulated geometric mosaic. All this decor went back several decades and was starting to look tired. So was Birdy. He ran his hands through his hair. He had looked neat when I first met him, but he now needed a haircut. 'Anything Saffia wants, Saffia will get!' He seemed furious, but reined it in.

'This stinks,' I said quietly. More and more I saw him as the wronged son, whose father had had an adulterous relationship with his wife. It left a very unpleasant question mark over the paternity of Saffia's unborn child.

'Oh yes! She has bled me dry. Now she is making a dramatic fuss about a few unnecessary bedclothes, although believe me, Saffia has plenty - plenty of everything nowadays.'

The bed in his own room here remained fully equipped with covers. 'Did you and Saffia share a bedroom?'

'Not during her pregnancy. She had a boudoir next door -'

I went and looked; the room was a sh.e.l.l. 'She's stripped out everything that would move, I see.'

'She would have us hack off the frescos,' Birdy said, 'but that would lower the value of this house when she comes to sell it!'

'You are clinging to your sense of decency.' I did not understand it though I admired his stoicism.

'She was my wife, Falco. I made a mistake there, but I live with its consequences. She is the mother of my children.' He never raised doubts over their paternity, I noticed. 'Oh, she ensured that I had children,' he exclaimed grimly. 'We are permanently tied together. And I tell myself,' he reasoned, with more feeling than I ever heard from him, 'that if I always respond courteously to each indignity this woman hurls at me, that is my one chance!'

One chance for what? More than a quiet life, by the sound of it. I dropped my voice. 'So you are a man charged with parricide - but you're hunting for pillows?'

'Pillows,' he raged. 'Bolster, under-sheet, mattress - and her d.a.m.ned down-padded, peac.o.c.k-embroidered coverlet.'

He did not have to hunt for long. The steward returned with news of the lost items. Perseus, the door porter, had appropriated them. Metellus Negrinus let out a furious exclamation, then strode to the slaves' quarters and robustly set about retrieval.

The porter was taking his ease in his cubicle, reclining on a decent mattress which he had put on the ledge in place of a slave's thin pallet. He had surrounded himself with knick-knacks, all stolen property, I suspected. Well, Saffia Donata was to have hers returned, though I myself would not have been keen on bedding that had been used by a leering and obnoxious house slave.

Maybe she deserved that. Anyway, Negrinus threw the porter off and began to haul the mattress up through the slaves' corridor to the atrium. I brought the pillows and linen for him. The steward, waiting in the atrium, began to rebuke Perseus.

'Leave him to me!' snarled Birdy. This was a revelation. He dropped the mattress on my feet; I jumped back. Negrinus grabbed Perseus by the tunic, glancing at it briefly and swore, as if he recognised the garment as one of his own. It was closely woven green wool, with ribbed braid at the neck, an expensive item. Clearly this porter lifted anything he fancied. The steward, who mostly seemed so efficient, looked powerless in his company.

Negrinus had backed the porter up against a painted wall. 'Where's the coverlet?'

The porter feigned ignorance. Negrinus pulled him forwards then bashed his head back against the plaster. Trying to escape him, Perseus stumbled and fell to the floor. After that, the surprise hero used his feet. Negrinus was a senator. He had been in the army. When he stamped on Perseus, Perseus learned the meaning of a military training.

'I have had enough of you,' Negrinus told him. He stamped. He put his weight into it. I glanced at the steward and we both. winced. 'I am sick of people hurting me, so I am going to -' Stamp! 'hurt -' Stamp! 'you!' A final stamp did the trick.

Perseus confessed that the missing bedspread might be in the garden shack. The keys were required; I had seen the place chained up. Calpurnia had said 'unwanted household goods' were stored there. Regaining his authority, the steward slid off and produced Calpurnia's bunch of domestic keys.

Still fired up, Birdy dragged the porter to his feet and strode out to the garden, pulling Perseus with him. It was a mild day, surprisingly bright for winter. By now, I had stiffened up badly from the attack on me last night, so I limped painfully at a distance as the pair approached the little hillside store. A few wasps still buzzed around the area in the late afternoon sunlight. I caught up as Birdy wrestled with the lock, while the discarded Perseus whimpered nearby beneath a fig tree. He looked ready to run off, so I stood over him. Birdy heaved open the door of the shack. He ducked inside. I heard him exclaim, so I started forwards, with a sense of dread as if I thought he had discovered a dead body.

He reappeared in the doorway, holding nothing worse than an armful of brightly coloured material. It was badly crumpled and as he was inspecting it in the light, an expression of disgust appeared on his face. He threw the coverlet down, and came towards the porter. Scared of another kicking, Perseus took the initiative and went for Birdy. They fell back into the store, fighting.

I reached the low doorway just as Birdy staggered out again. I thought he might have been wounded, though I could see no blood. He lurched past me, as the porter came towards the door. I could just make him out in near darkness; I must have been outlined against the sunlight. He started jabbing at me with a long tool, the sort used for pruning trees, with a thick curved hook. Because my back was hurting, I grabbed at the lintel to support myself. That was when I noticed that the crude roof of the hutment had a warm spot. I recognised the symptoms. After years of living in attic apartments, I knew the wasps must be right there overhead. The light was too dim to spot any ceiling stains, but above me there could be a honeycombed nest three feet across.

I dropped down, grabbed a broom and stood up sharply, holding it by the brush end. As the porter lunged at me, I rammed the stave upwards into the rough boarded roof, hard. Then I spun out of the doorway, slamming the door after me.

I heard furious wasps storm down from their shattered nest. Even at this time of year they were active. The porter started screaming. I hobbled away from the door while Birdy stared at me, white-faced.

At my feet lay the coverlet, embroidered with multicoloured threads in shimmering blues like peac.o.c.k feathers. It was beautiful to view but it smelt dreadful. I could understand why it had been taken out of the house - though not why it had been hidden in the store. It reeked, and the foul odour was of rotting human excrement.

XXVIII.

PEOPLE CAME from the house and dragged out the porter. He was just about alive. He was lucky. Some go into convulsions, with their mouths and throats swollen. Some die. Maybe I should have felt some remorse, but he was a blatant wrongdoer. I said I would be back to interrogate him.

Birdy seemed in shock too. I tried to talk to him, but it was useless. Thwarted, I saw our jittery client put into his litter, to be returned to his sister's house.

In an aside, I demanded of the steward what hold over the family the porter had. He just gave me a guarded look. The steward seemed bemused by the smelly coverlet, muttering obsessively that it should have been burned. Like Negrinus, he had stared at the thing in the garden, transfixed. Both of them clearly thought it had significance. I warned the steward that I would pursue enquiries into how the ruined throw came to be in that condition and why it had been locked away.

Saffia Donata's other bedding was being carried to her apartment. Leaving the hysteria at the Metellus mansion to settle down, I walked along after the slaves who manhandled the mattress and pillows through the streets; at the apartment Lutea had found for her, they gained admittance to dump their burden, but then all of us were brusquely turned away. We could hear Saffia still in the throes of labour. This woman held the key to many puzzles. There too, I took my leave but grimly promised to return.

The crazy scenes I witnessed had helped me reach a conclusion. I could not prove my newly forming theory, but the stained and stinking coverlet seemed relevant to the Metellus death. I was coming to believe that Metellus senior had not, as we had always been told, retired to his bedroom to await his end, conducting a half-hearted suicide.

I did believe he had been poisoned.

Once I suspected Metellus had not died in his own bed, my task was to find out if he had been in the bed of someone else. The coverlet pointed to Saffia - but by then she had already left the house. Besides, if guilty, why would she draw attention to herself by whining for the return of her property? So my new theory was this: Metellus senior did not die in bed at all.

And that was fun to play with. It threw up a whole bunch of exciting possibilities.

XXIX.

'HEMLOCK,' I said.

The vigiles doctor, a morose blue-chinned cur called Scythax, glared at me nastily. I won't say Scythax looked unhealthy, but he was so pale and haggard that if he arrived on a cargo ship from a foreign province, port officials would quarantine him.

He was eating his lunch. It was eggs on salad leaves. He pushed his bowl away slightly.

'How's that eye, Falco?' I grimaced. He perked up. 'Hemlock, you said?'

'The philosopher's oblivion. Tell me about it, Scythax.'

'Poison parsley,' sneered Scythax. He always looked down on anything to do with apothecaries. He enjoyed manipulating splints but hated ointments. Since the vigiles acted as a fire brigade, his unwillingness to soothe burns did hamper him, but he had worked with the Fourth Cohort as long as they could remember and the vigiles dislike changed. Scythax was marvellous with broken limbs and internal crushing, but no one went to him for a headache cure. His remedy when squad members had a heavy hangover was to shower them with very cold water. They preferred to sign out sick - but that meant Petronius Longus turned up at their lodgings, cursed them for drinking, and kicked them downstairs. He could do that even with his own head splitting.

Petronius and a couple of his lads were now lounging on benches. As I quizzed Scythax, they listened in, always glad to have me in their station house bringing some new jollity from my repertoire of crazy cases.

River-rat weed, my country relatives call it,' I told the doctor. 'I need to know, what happens to a victim, Scythax?'

'A long, slow, creeping, very permanent sleep, Falco.'

'Before the sleep, what are the symptoms?'

Scythax gave up on his food bowl. Petro and the vigiles came to attention too, mimicking their bone-setter, folding their arms with their heads c.o.c.ked. 'All parts of the hemlock plant are poisonous, Falco, especially the seeds. The root is supposed to be harmless when young and fresh, but I have never tested that. The leaves -'He paused, looking at his lunch - 'have often been used to kill off the unwary when served up as a green garnish.'

I had no idea how the poison had been administered to Metellus. 'After it is ingested, how long to an effect?'

'I don't know.' It was the doctor's turn for grim humour. 'We don't get cases of poison making complaints at the visitors' desk.'

'Can you look up hemlock in a compendium? I'm consulting you about a crime, remember.'

For that I got a filthy look, but Scythax reluctantly found and pored over a scroll he kept in his infirmary cubicle. I waited. After a long interval of squinting at tiny Greek lettering in endless columns, sometimes accompanied by blotted diagrams of plants, he grunted. 'It works quickly. An initial reaction in as little as half an hour. Death then takes a few more hours. The method is paralysis. The muscles fail. The brain stays alert, but the subject slowly fades.'

'Any distressing side-effects?'

Scythax was sarcastic. 'Other than death?'

'Yes.'

'Vomiting. Evacuation of the bowels - with diarrhoea.'

I sniffed. 'They never tell you that in the lofty story of Socrates.'

'In the Greece of antiquity, the innocent were allowed their dignity.' Scythax, a man of grandiose gloom added, 'Unlike here!' He came from slave stock, and may well have had Greek origins. 'I a.s.sure you, the tragic death of Socrates will have been accompanied by gruesome effects.'

I was satisfied. 'Gruesome effects' had certainly been inflicted on Saffia Donata's embroidered coverlet. 'Would you appear as an expert witness in court for me?'

'Get lost, Falco.'

'I shall have you issued with a subpoena then.'

'You'll have to find him first,' commented Petro. 'I'm not having him hanging around the b.l.o.o.d.y Basilica; we need him here.'

'What about my case? I'm trying to nail a killer.'

'And my lads need their grazes dabbed clean.'

'Oh pardon me.' I looked down my nose at him. 'I'll have to hire some d.a.m.ned informer to deliver the summons, I suppose.'

They all laughed.

x.x.x.

SOME DAYS an informer spends in endless walking. In the pursuit of comfort, I always wore hobnailed, well-worn-in boots.

My plans to pursue the issue of lethal herbage had to be put on hold; there was no time to work out how Metellus had been persuaded to imbibe or digest the hemlock, or else how it came to be administered secretly. I had promised Honorius he could come with me that afternoon to investigate the clown who had been deprived of performing at Metellus senior's funeral.

Sadly for Honorius, the logistics were against him. I was now up at the vigiles' station-house on the Aventine crest; he was right down by the river at my house. The vigiles had given me a bread roll and a drink, so I did not need to go home for lunch. Then I knew where to find Biltis; her hangout had been listed in Aelia.n.u.s' original notes. The funeral firm operated in the Fifth Region, so when I left Petro's squad, it was least effort just to plod down from the Aventine at the eastern edge, skirt the Circus Maximus at its rounded end, and head off past the Capena Gate to the Fifth. Honorius would have to miss the fun.

I had already made this tiresome hike twice, going to and coming back from the Metellus house. By the time I encountered the mourner I was in a bad mood. Biltis was, as Aelia.n.u.s had tersely noted, a woman who pressed too close and took too much interest in anyone who had to interview her. She was shabby and shapeless, with restless dark eyes and a mole on her chin, and was dressed in a style that proved funeral mourners are just as overpaid as you always suspect when you are arranging some loved one's last farewell. Plenty of bills that people were too distressed to query must have helped provide the gla.s.s bead edging on the woman's brightly coloured dress and the faddy fringe on her lush crimson stole.

'Of course I wear dingy tones when I'm working,' she explained, no doubt aware I was sizing up how much her zingingly gay apparel must have cost. 'All the effort goes into dishevelling the hair to tear - Some mourners use a wig, to spare their scalps, but I had some false hair fall off once. Right in the street. It doesn't impress the bereaved. Well, they are paying, aren't they? And with Tiasus they hope they are paying for quality. You have to avoid discourtesy.'

'Quite.'

'You don't have much to say for yourself, do you?'

'True.' I was listening. We had doubts about her reliability. I was trying to evaluate her from the stream of chat.

'I liked the other one.' That was a first for Aelia.n.u.s. I would enjoy telling him.

'Would it be rude to ask what happened to your eye?' asked Biltis.

'Why not? Everyone else does!' I made no effort to tell the woman.

Miffed, she shut up. Now it was my turn. I ran through what she had told Aelia.n.u.s about the family tensions at the Metellus funeral: strife among the relatives and Carina's outburst about her father having been murdered. Biltis confirmed the routine details too: the procession to the Via Appia and burning of the bier at the mausoleum, where Negrinus had presided with Juliana's husband and a friend who was presumably Licinius Lutea. The chief clown they had first intended to use in the procession was called Spindex. He worked for Tiasus regularly, though Biltis said it was ages since anyone had seen him.

'He went all huffy when he was dumped by the Metelli. Tiasus sent him one or two commissions afterwards but he failed to confirm or show up. He just dropped out of sight.'

'So why, exactly, was he omitted from the Metellus do?'

Exactly must have worried her. From pretending to be the expert on everything, she started to look shifty.

'Don't worry then,' I said. 'I can ask Spindex himself, if I find him. I hope he didn't go off into retirement at some homestead in a remote province.

'Oh he has no connections,' Biltis a.s.sured me. 'He has no friends and never mentions family.'

'Probably because he spends his days being rude,' I suggested.

'And is he rude!' the woman exclaimed. 'You won't find better than Spindex for rooting out the worst in human nature. Once he gets the dirt, he does not hold back.'