Varus shrugged. “What’s to report? Another dead senator. It’s not like a visitation from Olympus, is it?”
Yes, the times were like that.
“I’ve sent for Asklepiodes,” I said. “He may be able to tell something about the condition of the body.”
“I doubt he’ll be able to come up with much this time,” Varus said, “but if you want, I’ll appoint you to investigate. Make a note of it, Junius.”
“Will you lend me a lictor?” I asked. “I’ll need to summon people.”
Varus pointed to one of his attendants, and the man sighed. The days of cushy duty in the basilica were over. I said, “Go and inform the family of the late Senator Aulus Cosconius that they have just been bereaved and that they can claim the body here. Junius should be able to tell you where they live. Then go to the contractor who built this place. His name is...” I opened one of my own wax tablets “...Manius Varro. He has a lumberyard by the Circus Flaminius, next to the Temple of Bellona. Tell him to call on me first thing tomorrow morning, at my office in the Temple of Ceres.”
The man handed his torch to a companion and conferred with Junius, then he shouldered his fasces and marched importantly away.
Asklepiodes arrived just as Junius and Varus were leaving, trailed by two of his Egyptian slaves who carried his implements and other impedimenta. Hermes was with him, carrying a wineskin. I had trained him well.
“Ah, Decius,” the Greek said, “I can always count upon you to find something interesting for me.” He wore a look of bright anticipation. Sometimes I wondered about Asklepiodes.
“Actually, this looks rather squalid, but the man was of some importance and somebody left him in a building I was inspecting. I don’t like that sort of thing.” Hermes handed me a full cup, and I drained it and handed it back.
Asklepiodes took the lantern and ran the pool of light swiftly over the body, then paused to examine the wound. “He died within the last day, I cannot be more precise than that, from the thrust of a very thin-bladed weapon, its blade triangular in cross-section.”
“A woman’s dagger?” I asked. Prostitutes frequently concealed such weapons in their hair to protect themselves from violent customers and sometimes to settle disputes with other prostitutes.
“Quite possibly. What’s this?” He said something incomprehensible to one of his slaves. The man reached into his voluminous pouch and emerged with a long bronze probe, decorated with little golden acanthus leaves, and a stoppered bottle, rather plain. Asklepiodes took the instrument and pried at the wound. It came away with an ugly little glob of something no bigger than a dried pea. This the Greek poked into the little bottle and restoppered it. He handed the probe and the bottle to the slave, who replaced them in his pouch.
“It looks like dried blood to me,” I said.
“Only the surface. I’ll take it to my surgery and study it in the morning, when there is light.”
“Do you think he was killed somewhere else and dragged down here? That’s not much blood for a skewered heart.”
“No, with a wound like this most of the bleeding is internal, I believe he died on this spot. His clothing is very little disarranged.” He poked at the feet. “See, the heels of his sandals are not scuffed as usually happens when a body is dragged.”
I was willing to take his word for it. As physician to the gladiators he had seen every possible wound to the human body, hundreds of times over. He left promising to send me a report the next day.
Minutes later the family arrived, along with the libitinarii to perform the lustrations to purify the body. The dead man’s son went through the pantomime of catching his last breath and shouted his name loudly three times. Then the undertaker’s men lifted the body and carried it away. The women set up an extravagant caterwauling. It wasn’t a patch on the howling the professional mourners would raise at the funeral, but in the closed confines of the cellar it was sufficiently loud.
I approached the young man who had performed the final rites. “I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, plebeian aedile. I found your father’s body, and I have been appointed investigator by the praetor Varus. Would you come outside with me?”
“Quintus Cosconius,” he said, identifying himself, “only son of Aulus.” He was a dark, self-possessed young man. He didn’t look terribly put out by the old man’s passing, not an uncommon attitude in a man who has just found out that he has come into his inheritance. Something about the name ticked at my memory.
“Quintus Cosconius? Aren’t you standing for the tribune-ship for next year?”
“I’m not alone in that,” he said. Indeed he wasn’t. Tribune was the office to have in those years. They got to introduce the laws that determined who got what in the big game of empire. Since the office was restricted to plebians, Clodius, a patrician, had gone to the extremity of having himself adopted into a plebeian family just so he could serve as tribune.
“Did your father have enemies? Did any of the feuding demagogues have it in for him?” I was hoping he would implicate Clodius.
“No, in recent years he avoided the senate. He had no stomach for a faction fight.” I detected a faint sneer in his words.
“Who did he support?”
“Crassus, when he supported anyone. They had business dealings together.” That made sense. Crassus held the largest properties in Rome. If you dealt in real estate, you probably dealt with Crassus.
“I take it you don’t support Crassus yourself?”
He shrugged. “It’s no secret. When I am tribune, I shall support Pompey. I’ve been saying that in the Forum since the start of the year. What has this to do with my father’s murder?”
“Oh, politics has everything to do with murder these days. The streets are littered with the bodies of those who picked the wrong side in the latest rivalries for office. But since your father was a lukewarm member of the Crassus faction at best, it probably has no bearing upon his death.”
“I should think not. What you need to do something about is the unchecked and unpunished violence in the city. It strikes me as ludicrous that our senatorial authorities can pacify whole provinces but are helpless to make Rome a safe city.” He looked as if a new thought had occurred to him. “Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger? A friend of Milo’s, are you not?” It wasn’t the first time that association had been held against me.
“Yes, but like your father’s political connections, it has no bearing here. If Milo should prove to be responsible, I shall hale him before the praetor like any other malefactor.”
“Rome needs a genuine police force,” he said, heatedly. “And laws with teeth.”
I was getting tired of this. “When did you last see your father?”
“Yesterday morning. He spoke to me in the Forum. He had been out of the city, touring his country estates—” I saw that look of satisfaction cross his face. They were his estates now. “—but he came back to inspect one of his town properties. This one, I think.”
“He certainly seems to have ended up here. What plans did he have for this building?”
He shrugged again. “The usual, I suppose: let out the ground floor to some well-to-do tenant and the upper floors to the less affluent. He owned many such properties.” He smoothed a fold of his exceptionally white toga. “Will there be anything else?”