"We were lucky to get him and Doctor Ruso here tonight. They work very hard at that hospital."
"It'll be easier when we get the CMO back," said Ruso.
The plump woman looked puzzled. "The chief medical officer,"
Valens explained. "He's on long-term sick leave."
There was a "Hmph" from the second spear as Valens added, "Frankly, he's not likely to come back," and Rutilia Paula could be heard whispering to her sister, "Was that the hairy old man with cold hands?"
"Shut up!" hissed the sister.
As Rutilius beckoned a sharp-faced slave and murmured something in her ear, the plump woman said, "I'm sure one of you doctors would make a lovely chief medical officer."
Valens grinned at Ruso. "One of us would," he agreed. He gestured toward the bird. "This duck is excellent," he said. "Which reminds me, does anyone know somebody wanting to hire out a good cook?"
Neither of the ladies could suggest anyone. "It is terribly hard to get good staff here," sympathized the wife with the chins.
"This is the best meal we've had in ages," said Valens. "When we're off duty we tend to eat out, but you never know what you're getting when you eat in public bars. The other day I was nearly killed by a dish of oysters."
Encouraged by the interest this aroused, Valens went on to explain the effect of the oysters in the sort of detail that demonstrated another reason why people didn't socialize with doctors. Ruso took a long drink of well-watered wine. He was praying for a medical emergency that would require his immediate presence when he heard Paula suggest, "Perhaps they used poisoned oysters to murder that girl in the river."
Rutilia shot his wife a look as the sister retorted, "Don't be silly. She was strangled."
Before anyone could reply, the wife said brightly, "Girls! It has been lovely to have you dining with us but unfortunately-"
"Is it true she was bald?"
"— it's time for bed," continued her mother, gesturing toward the slave. "Atia will take you to your room."
The sharp-faced woman stepped forward and Ruso heard the elder girl hiss to her sister, "Now look what you've done!"
"Lovely girls!" enthused the woman with the chins after they had been ushered out of the room.
"Huh," grunted their father. "Need some discipline." He turned to Ruso. "Sorry about Rutilia Paula. I'll be having words with her."
There was a pause and Ruso realized he should say something. "Your daughter is…" he began, "she's, ah-very, ah…" The woman with the chins emitted a burp. A servant reached forward and removed an empty dish. "She's actually quite funny," he said.
The man scowled. "I'm not raising a comedian: She needs to learn to behave herself." He turned to his wife. "How did she get hold of that business about the murder?"
The earrings swayed and sparkled as she shook her head. "This is a very small place, dear. People talk."
"It's nothing for you ladies to go worrying about," put in the second spear. "Just a runaway barmaid."
"I wouldn't be surprised if it was her own people," said the woman with the chins, "They have some very odd ideas here, you know." She leaned closer to Ruso and her voice dropped to a loud whisper. "I didn't like to mention it with the girls here, but some of them share their wives."
"Really?" said Ruso. "Who with?"
The woman gave an alarming giggle that suggested she thought he was flirting with her. "Each other, of course."
Ruso, sensing that some reaction was needed, said, "Glad I'm not a native."
"Some of them," she continued, "don't like the girls mixing with our men. You see, the truth is, Doctor, our men are a much better prospect than theirs." She turned to her husband. "Aren't they, dear?"
"Much."
"Our men have education and training and discipline, you see. Not that theirs couldn't join the auxiliaries if they wanted to, but most of them are too lazy to work their way up. I suspect she was strangled by a jealous native."
Ruso scratched his ear. The idea that Saufeia had been killed because the locals were jealous of the army's suave sophistication was something he had not considered.
Their hostess leaned forward. "Wasn't there another girl from a bar who went missing?"
"It was the same bar," put in Valens.
"Really?" demanded the woman with the chins. "The same bar?
Perhaps there's a madman lurking there, pretending to be a customer!"
"Must be mad if he goes to the bother of getting them out past the doormen," put in her husband.
"Perhaps he is one of the doormen. You never can tell with those types."
The man ignored her. "If he wants to murder women why doesn't he just snatch 'em off the street?"
Their hostess looked alarmed. "We make sure our girls never, ever go out without a chaperone."
"We're not talking about daughters of decent families," pointed out the second spear. "And the bar's just having a run of bad luck. The owner reckons the first one eloped with a sailor."
The woman with the chins assured the second spear that he was bound to catch the murderer soon.
He took a sip of wine and said, "We'll see. Trouble is, nobody's got time to turn the place upside down looking for him. It's not as if the girl was anybody important."
"Not to us, perhaps." The words were out before Ruso had thought about them. Suddenly he was aware of a silence and the eyes of everyone around the table were trained on him. "What I mean is," he continued, realizing this apparent questioning of the second spear's judgment was just the sort of thing that would have annoyed Claudia, "she must have been important to somebody, once. She had some education."
Valens grinned. "Ruso's been making inquiries."
"Really?" The eyes above the chins were wide.
"No," he said, glaring at Valens, who had now managed to imply that he didn't trust the second spear to investigate properly. "I just happened to pick it up in conversation."
"Well, you have to expect these things from time to time," observed the husband of the woman with the chins. "We've got three or four thousand men stationed here at the moment. We don't pick them to be country gentlemen."
"What a very sad end," murmured their hostess. "The doctor's right.
Somebody must have cared about her."
"Somebody ought to ask the servants what happened to her," ventured the plump woman, dabbling her fingers in the bowl held by a patient slave and drying them on the towel over his arm. "Servants always know everything, you know. It's amazing."
As Ruso dipped his hands into the warm water, he glanced at the face of the slave holding the bowl. The man's expression gave nothing away.
26
Ruso had just persuaded his stomach to calm down after the unaccustomed riches of a good dinner when the answer to his prayers arrived, much too late. He was woken with the message that he was needed at the hospital. The unlucky patient had been on the way back to barracks from guard duty. In the dark he had tripped, landed badly, and dislocated his shoulder. He was finally drugged into semi-consciousness, then painfully and forcefully reshaped and bandaged. Ruso trod the couple of hundred steps back to his bed with more care than usual, only to be summoned an hour later to prescribe medicine for a man having a seizure. On return he left the message slate propped against his bedroom door with SLEEPING IN, DO NOT DISTURB scrawled across it.
Thus it was with neither joy nor enthusiasm that he opened the front door to urgent knocking shortly after dawn and found his clerk calling to ask whether there was anything he wanted done.
"What I want done," explained Ruso, summoning all the patience he could muster and wondering what sort of a clerk could fail to understand a staff rotation, "is for you to push off and not bother me until I tell you to. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Dismissed."