'It was too badly soiled to save. It has been burned now.'

'Disposal of evidence? How and when did it get soiled?'

'Since you ask - when my husband was dying.' That made out I was uncouth to ask such questions.

I carried on regardless. I was used to annoying the bereaved - especially when I thought they were to blame. 'Dying in his bed, according to you - so why use Saffia's quilt?'

'Because there was a filthy mess, and anything Saffia had owned was surplus to requirements.'

'Metellus had some violent gastric upset. Without insulting your cook, what was his last meal?'

'A mixed cold luncheon,' Calpurnia replied haughtily. 'And we both ate it!' That had to be a lie.

'I asked your gardener if Metellus spent much time out here. Was he given to inspecting his market garden?'

Calpurnia glanced around the patchy vegetables, before finally losing patience with me. She started walking back indoors. 'Metellus and I used to come out here,' she told me coldly, 'to be out of hearing of our household, when we were arguing.'

'And you argued a lot,' I said quietly, 'in the days before your husband died.'

'We argued a lot,' confirmed Calpurnia, as though she meant it had always happened.

'Were you arguing out in the garden when the hemlock struck your husband down?'

She stopped. She turned and stared at me. 'You have been told how my husband went to his death.'

'Lies! Metellus died out in the open.' I gestured back the way we had come. 'Wasn't he taken ill there by the fig tree? Someone ran into the house and brought Saffia's bedding to wrap him in. Then total paralysis would have taken hours.' I went up close to Calpurnia. 'I want to know what you did with him, once he was taken ill. I want to know who else knew what was happening. Did he die alone, or was he comforted - and had you locked him in that garden store? You can answer me now - or I'll see you in court.' She stared at me. 'Yes,' I said. 'I think you killed Metellus - and I intend to denounce you for it.

'You cannot prove anything,' Calpurnia sneered.

As she stalked off, I called after her loudly: 'So what happened two years ago?'

She turned back, aglow with fury. She gave me one filthy glance without speaking, then she disappeared from view.

x.x.xIII.

THE STEWARD had returned and was hovering in the atrium. As he showed me out, I took a chance: 'So Perseus is parcelled off to Lanuvium?' He looked shifty, but I sensed I might squeeze him. 'Things must be getting sticky. I a.s.sume the money has run out?'

'Nothing new in this house, Falco - unfortunately!'

'I thought the Metelli had funds? Still, I a.s.sume you haven't reached the low point - when the mistress sells her jewels and seeks consolation from an astrologer?'

His voice dropped. 'Oh she did that some time ago!' It seemed unlikely - in fact, I had been joking - yet he spoke with feeling. And I had never seen Calpurnia wearing even a necklace.

I whistled gently. 'Who's her confidante?'

'Olympia.' I noted the name mentally.

'A fortune teller?'

Nodding, he glanced over his shoulder. 'Everyone's jittery. We are all waiting to hear we'll be transferred to Paccius.'

'Calpurnia says he will wait until the court case ends.'

'That doesn't help,' replied the steward.

None of the slaves had been manumitted by the Metellus will. That was mean. A quarter of the labour force, up to a hundred in number, of those over thirty years of age, could have been freed when their master died. All the Metellus slaves would have a good idea how Saffia Donata might treat them if she ever possessed them. She might take out her spiteful feelings against her husband's family on the slaves. Paccius, more likely, would be indifferent - but he would sell them.

We were on the threshold now. The slave who was acting as doorkeeper stayed back, though not far enough for me. I offered the steward, 'Look, do you get time to yourself? Can I buy you a drink?'

He knew what this was for. He smiled. 'No thanks. I'm not naive, Falco!'

I shrugged. 'Will you clear up a domestic issue then? What was the menu for the last meal that your master had?' I thought the steward blenched. He was unhappy, that was sure. 'The lunch,' I prompted. 'The last lunch with his family.'

The steward claimed he could not remember. Interesting. He was the type who would regard it as his personal daily duty to plan menus and organise the shopping; maybe he even shopped himself The last meal eaten by a master who was subsequently poisoned should be etched into the elegant factotum's memory.

While I was in the Fifth Region I made another call, to Claudius Tiasus the funeral director. I implied I had lost a relative. Through a series of lesser players, I acted nervous; when it looked as if the sale might be lost, the great impresario came himself to clinch the deal..

He was a fat bundle with a greasy pigtail, at once subservient and sly. He had a disreputable air. His tunic was clean, and his hands were heavily be-ringed. It seemed unlikely he still carried out embalming, though when he patted my shoulder, thinking he was consoling the bereaved, I wondered where those podgy hands had been half an hour ago.

He realised I was a fraud.

'Sorry - though there is a corpse to bury, truly. Consider my visit official. The name is Falco. I am working with the vigiles on a suspicious death. It's somebody known to you.'

Tiasus had signalled to his staff to leave. We two sat in a small corridor partly in the open air, with a view over a fountain with a soppy nymph, and soft cushions on the bench. It would be suitable for discussing which scented oil had been a deceased's favourite, though it was inappropriate for being grilled by me. For one thing, I kept staring at the nymph. She appeared to have no nipples and two doves were sitting on her head, doing what doves do.

'Who is dead?' enquired Tiasus calmly. He had a light, rather high voice.

'Your clown, Spindex.'

'No!' He calmed down fast, no stranger to tragedy. 'Spindex is a freelance. I haven't seen him since, oh -'

'For about four months? Since the Metellus do? I'll be blunt: Spindex was strangled. We think he knew too much about someone. Metellus probably.'

'This is a lot to take in,' complained Tiasus. He changed position, easing his bulk on the stone seat. I could see him thinking. When Aelia.n.u.s came on reconnaissance, he received the brush-off, that would not happen today.

'Sorry to rush you. Most clients must have aeons at their disposal,' I said drily.

'Not Rubirius Metellus!' Tiasus aimed it heavily.

'Explain, please?'

'He needed fast burial.' I raised an eyebrow. 'If it is all coming out, Falco -' I nodded. 'The body was... not fresh.'

'I know that it stank.'

'We are used to that. Even the diarrhoea...' He tailed off. I let him. He rallied. 'This cadaver was, in my professional opinion, over three days old by the time we were called to the house.'

'Unusual?'

'Not unheard of. But-'

'But what, Tiasus?'

'There were odd features.'

I waited again, but he had dried up. I tried encouragement: 'When you arrived to view the body, was Metellus in his bed?'

A grateful look came into the undertaker's eyes. 'So you know, then?' I pursed my lips. He took it as an answer. 'Yes, he was. But he must have recently been placed there.'

By now, this was no surprise. 'Had they put him on his back?'

'Yes. But the dark red marks - which indicate settlement of the blood in the body after death - showed me that the deceased had lain somewhere else, in a different position, for a considerable while. Nothing too odd!' Tiasus rea.s.sured me. I blinked. I had never suspected perversion. I found it disturbing that Tiasus had routinely considered it. Did he often encounter necrophilia? 'Metellus had been on his side, rather than his back, that's all. No doubt,' he suggested, with a kind of disapproval, 'the family thought he looked more peaceful face-up.'

'That's normal. But why not arrange him as soon as he died, I wonder?'

'I wondered that,' Tiasus agreed eagerly.

'Any thoughts?'

'Well... You know what happened at the funeral? A lot of stress - this was an overwrought family. There may well have been panic when Metellus first died. The son was away somewhere. Maybe the widow became distraught before her son came home -'

'Not that widow, surely?' I smiled.

'Oh you met her! Well, perhaps not.'

'The death scene will have shocked her. Metellus had taken poison, Tiasus.'

'Yes but it was suicide. They were expecting it.' Tiasus paused. 'Weren't they?'

'So I am told.'

'Have we been told the truth?' he mused portentously. I was sure we had not.

'You really came about Spindex,' Tiasus murmured in his comforting undertaker's voice.

'Any help you can give?'

'He liked a tipple, but he was a good satirist. He went to the heart of a man's character. And he had judgement. He knew what was permissible, what was too sensitive.'

'Not in the Metellus case. The family sacked him.'

'Ah.' Tiasus took a long breath, with his mouth wide open. He had gum problems. 'Well, I don't know the story there, and that's the problem. Spindex was let go - but they never told me why.'

'Who dismissed him? Was it the son?'

'No...' Tiasus looked thoughtful. 'No, I think it was another man.

'Name?'

'I never knew that.'

'Licinius Lutea? He's a friend of the son; I think he was helping Negrinus at the funeral.'

'Means nothing,' said Tiasus. 'It was a freedman who a.s.sisted. I had a few words with him in a quiet moment. Alexander, he was called.'

'Not him who paid off Spindex?'

'Er... No. Possibly a relative?' Tiasus quavered. This was hard work.

'A brother-in-law?' I suggested. 'Canidia.n.u.s Rufus, Rubiria Juliana's husband?'

'Yes, perhaps...'But then Tiasus wavered yet again. 'I don't think it was Rufus. He had a right temper; I remember him! I think the second one dealt with Spindex.'

'Second brother-in-law? Laco? Verginius Laco, the husband of Carina, the woman who got upset?'

'Yes, that was him.'

Dear G.o.ds, just when you think you have scanned all the scenery, up pops some new partic.i.p.ant.

The two doves had finished. The female preened, looking as if she wondered what the fuss had been. The male thought he might be up for another go. She shrugged off his nonsense. The deformed nymph shivered mournfully. Part of her drape had been chipped off in an accident.

'Do you think Spindex discovered something about Metellus or his family, something they did not wish the world to hear?'

'Oh no doubt of it,' Tiasus exclaimed. 'It must have been a stupendous secret! Wouldn't it be wonderful, Falco, if we knew just what?'

I agreed dourly.

I went to visit Rubiria Carina's husband.

For once, he was at home and he agreed to meet me. He was more than a decade older than his wife, a thin, cultured man who implied he was being more patient than I deserved. 'You have always refused to be interviewed, citing your privacy,' I reminded him. 'Now will you answer me?'

'You can ask. I may not be free to answer.' Interesting: why?

'So what changed your mind?'

'You intend to accuse my mother-in-law of killing her spouse.' He was a man of some refinement; I omitted the obvious son-in-law jokes. 'Do you think Calpurnia did it?'

'No,' he said.

'There is a case to answer,' I told him. 'Metellus made unhealthy provision for his daughter-in-law, and disinherited his wife. It's vicious and it's public; Calpurnia Cara must be furious. Murky circ.u.mstances cloud what happened when Metellus died.' Laco shrugged. He wanted to see what I knew. 'At first I was told that your wife refused to go to lunch that day - but she says she was not invited.'