I forestalled him, choosing my words carefully. ‘I am afraid not, citizen. I think my patron will wish to question you. When Ulpius was found there was a dagger in his back. A very unusual dagger, with a carved black wood handle. They say it is yours.’
He looked at me for a moment, the colour in his cheeks darkening. Then he snorted. ‘Mine! Well, what of that? It was on the table in the ante-room for all to see. It does not mean I killed him. What sort of assassin would leave an identifying knife in his victim?’
Perhaps the sort of assassin, I thought, who expected us to reason in that way. But I did not say so. ‘Perhaps a man who had no choice,’ I said. ‘Withdrawing the knife from the wound was difficult. It is possible the killer intended to remove it, but could not stop to do so. There was so little time in which to commit the crime — unexpected delay would be fatal.’
Flavius licked his lips. ‘So you think. .?’
‘I do not think anything, citizen. Except that owning the murder weapon does not absolve you from the crime. Marcus will wish to question everyone. You too, I’m afraid, Lupus.’
Lupus looked too terrified to protest, but Flavius was still scowling. For a moment he was silent. He seemed to be thinking furiously. Then he did speak, and when he did so his words were unexpected.
‘I want to speak to Julia,’ he said.
Chapter Five
Flavius got his chance to see Julia more quickly than he imagined. When we reached the house she was already in the atrium. She had changed into a simple dark brown Grecian coat, presumably out of respect for the dead, and was looking pale and shaken. Indeed, she was leaning heavily on Sollers for support, to Marcus’s obvious irritation. The news of her husband’s death had been a visible blow to her. She looked, if possible, more beautiful in grief.
I tore my eyes away from her and turned to Marcus. ‘I bring you the citizens Flavius and Lupus, Excellence. I found them waiting in the colonnade.’ I said nothing about hearing their conversation. That was information I preferred to keep to myself, at least for the present.
Lupus greeted Marcus with all the deference due to his rank, and Flavius muttered his way through the appropriate formula. His attention, though, was elsewhere. Throughout the whole of the formalities his eyes never left his former wife.
‘Julia!’ he said, as soon as it was decently possible to do so. Marcus, who was already frowning, compressed his lips. ‘Julia, I must talk to you.’
At that she relinquished Sollers’s arm — to the satisfaction of every other man present — and drew herself up proudly. She had stripped herself of her finery — presumably in deference to the news — and wore a simple jet necklet. She looked pale, but magnificent. ‘Flavius. I heard that you were here. I have nothing to say to you. Our marriage is over. And you can have nothing to say to me — at least nothing that cannot be said here, in public.’
It was courageous. Now that Julia had no husband as protector, she had few legal rights. Flavius was a wealthy man and he would make a powerful enemy.
At the moment, however, he merely looked despairing. ‘But Julia! You know what I want to say to you.’
‘I know,’ Julia said, ‘I have heard it all before and I do not want to hear it again. There was no sorcery which made me leave you. I left because I did not want to stay. And do not send me gifts and messages. I will not accept them — do you understand? You are wasting your time. I shall simply throw them away, as I did the others.’ I looked at her with growing admiration. A lady to be reckoned with, obviously.
‘Julia! I came here to plead with you. .’
‘You lie!’ the woman said. ‘You knew I would not speak to you. You came here to “plead” with my husband, as you call it. My poor sick, wounded husband. To threaten him, or try to bribe him, perhaps? And then he is found with your knife in his body. What am I to think of that, Flavius?’
He interrupted her. ‘I did not stab Quintus, I swear it. By all the gods.’
She withered him with a glance. ‘Perhaps you did not strike the fatal blow yourself — perhaps you are too much of a coward for that — but I know you, Flavius. I know what you are capable of.’
‘Julia. .’
She ignored him. ‘I do not know, Flavius, what you hoped to gain by this. Did you think that with my husband dead I would turn back to you? If not from love, then at least from fear? Never, Flavius. Do you hear me? Not even if he leaves you guardianship of me under his will. I shall kill myself first. And if this death is proved against you I shall have my revenge, never fear. Citizen you may be, but if you did this, I swear I will see you thrown to the beasts.’
That was even possible, in fact — the murder of a decurion would call for the most savage rigours of the law. But even if wealth and status saved Flavius from being tied bleeding to a stake in the arena, to be set on by wolves or dogs, the other legal remedies were unpleasant enough. Flavius paled.
‘I swear I did not murder Ulpius. Before Jupiter, Greatest and Best, I didn’t even see him. I came to seek an audience, but he treated me like a common trader. I was sent away to wait. It was humiliating, but I had to see him. I was in the front court all the time after that. Lupus was there. Ask him.’
But they hadn’t been together all that time, I thought. I knew that, if the others didn’t. I looked at the elderly decurion, in his absurd wig.
Lupus licked his lips. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I am an old man. I can’t walk about like Flavius can, I just went to the arbour and sat down.’ He looked at Flavius nervously. ‘But he was in the garden, certainly. He couldn’t have got into that room to stab Ulpius without my seeing him. And I couldn’t have done it, either. He would have seen me. We can vouch for each other in that, can’t we, Flavius?’
If Lupus had been paid money in the public theatre to represent the part of a shifty and untrustworthy conspirator, he could not have done it better. Everything about him — his faltering tones, the way he fidgeted from foot to foot and the way he refused to meet our gaze — contrived to make him seem about as reliable as a second-hand donkey dealer at a fair.
‘Well, we shall hear your story in a moment,’ Marcus said, in a voice which suggested that he shared my opinion of donkey dealers. ‘I shall want to question everyone. Libertus will assist — he witnessed the original attack, and he may have additional questions.’ He turned to Lupus and Flavius. ‘I am sorry to make you wait again, citizens. Perhaps you should send a message to your homes. This may take a little time. I presume you could give them a bed here, if necessary?’ he added, to Julia.
She looked at Sollers uncertainly. He nodded, and she said, ‘I am sure we can contrive something. There are couches in the triclinium.’
‘Great Minerva! I can’t stay here,’ Flavius expostulated angrily. ‘I am expected tonight at the dinner of an important client. Besides, I have appointments, business, affairs. .’
Marcus looked at him coolly. ‘Of course, if you prefer a more formal detention, I am sure that it can be arranged. A night in the town gaol, perhaps?’
Flavius subsided, still muttering.
‘Then if there is no objection. .’ Marcus began, but he was interrupted by a loud disturbance in the front court. There was a great deal of banging, followed by cursing and raised voices, and we all stopped, silent in amazement.
A moment later Maximilian stormed into the room, accompanied by two slaves. He wore a clean toga, this time edged with the black stripe of mourning that tradition demanded. Following a recent custom there were ashes rubbed onto his forehead, but otherwise he was hardly the traditional picture of grief. On the contrary, he was clearly furious.
He wasted no time on civilities. ‘What is going on here? I am to be master of this house, yet I come home to start mourning my father, and find myself locked out of it like a criminal, and have to threaten the gatekeeper before he will consent to let me in. On whose authority were the gates locked?’