Zetso shrugged. ‘There is no mystery. We had made good time from Letocetum, and my master preferred to enter Glevum in daylight. He sent me to the villa to ask for lodging. The ex-centurion agreed at once.’
I nodded. The poor fellow must have been tripping over his tunic-hems in his anxiety to offer hospitality. One glimpse of that imperial warrant, and any man with a sense of self-preservation would have turned his dying mother out of bed in order to comply. ‘And when Felix moved to Glevum you went back to the villa?’
‘There was unfinished business to attend to, and I returned to the villa afterwards. Is it significant? The facts are easily verified.’
I sighed. Inwardly I was convinced that Zetso had some hand in all this mystery, but it seemed he had not only a warrant to protect him but a witness too.
I tried again. ‘Yet the news did not surprise you? You said you had not expected to hear of his death “so soon”. And do not think to deny it. I am sure this gentleman’ — I indicated the octio who was still standing, terrified, at the entrance — ‘would testify to the truth.’
The guard looked baffled but, taking my cue, gave an unwilling nod.
‘So you were expecting to hear of his death sometime?’
Zetso shot me a look which would have withered oaks, but at least he was talking now. ‘It is true that he had many enemies. I have expected for many months that one of them would find him. There have been plots against him before — it is no secret in Rome. Have they arrested the killers?’
‘What makes you talk of killers?’ I said carefully. ‘Rumour has it that he choked to death on a nut.’
The effect was astonishing, but it was not the guilty stammer I had half expected. Zetso leaped to his feet as though lightning had struck him. All deference had left him and he was his old arrogant self again.
‘In that case, you have nothing to hold me for.’ Zetso turned to the octio. ‘You! Fetch me a stool and writing materials here. You will find them in my saddlebag.’
The soldier looked at me and hesitated. It was not the kind of instruction he expected from a prisoner.
‘Now! Or by the imperial deities I shall have you strung from the nearest oak bough!’
The octio cast a frightened look in my direction.
I could hardly object. A man without a charge against him was entitled to send a letter if he could. What impressed me was that Zetso could. Most members of the army can read enough to interpret their written orders, but few do it willingly and fewer still can casually summon wax and stilus to pen a letter for themselves.
I nodded, and the soldier scuttled away.
Zetso rounded on me. ‘Now, you may arrange for my release from here. I have unfinished business to complete. I was delivering letters from my master when you dragged me in.’
‘All in good time. I have unfinished business of my own. It was from the villa that your master sent to Marcus? With the results I saw?’
‘Ah yes, the herald.’ Zetso was unabashed. ‘The ex-centurion sent one of his own messengers to the town, but Marcus’s herald returned to say he was not available.’
‘Marcus was in Corinium,’ I said. ‘The herald could hardly help that.’
Zetso sneered. ‘My master did not like the tone in which the news was delivered.’ His hand strayed again to the pouch which contained the imperial seal. ‘Does that offend you, citizen?’
The octio, who had just come back through the door with the leather saddle-pouch in his hands, caught his breath sharply.
This was absurd, I thought. Zetso was a suspect in at least two murders, yet here he was effectively defying authority — threatening us almost — because he held an imperial warrant in his pocket. Such is the power of the Emperor.
But it was real power. A single wrong move might be the death of either of us. News of this incident would certainly reach Rome, and the Emperor is not a man to reason with. I said, ‘That was not the purpose of my questions, carriage-driver. I heard that Perennis Felix had rented a house near here, the day before the feast.’
Zetso looked startled, but he said nothing. He sat down abruptly on the bench.
I sat down companionably beside him. ‘Or rather,’ I went on, ‘it seems you rented it. Using his name. That is not quite legal, I think.’
That was an understatement. For a slave to impersonate any citizen — let alone a purple-striper of Felix’s rank — is a capital offence. Not a neat death either, but often an unpleasantly gruesome one, involving floggings and stab wounds and then slavering wild dogs in the arena.
Zetso was not cowed. ‘I was acting as my master’s agent, as I am entitled to do by the warrant. I did nothing against the spirit of the law.’
I saw the octio smile faintly. It was not the spirit of the law which counted in the courts. Zetso scowled at him, and he subsided.
‘There was no impersonation. I was acting on Perennis Felix’s express instructions. He learned of the house from a friend in Letocetum, and told me to come ahead and hire it in his name. He gave me gold and that is what I did. I never claimed to be him. I simply did not deny that I was.’
I could not argue with that. ‘What did he want it for? He could have had any accommodation he wanted — here or with his ex-centurion. And for nothing too. Why did he want to rent a bawdy-house?’ The octio looked up with sudden interest, and I finished hastily, ‘He didn’t even want the girls.’
A dozen expressions chased each other across Zetso’s handsome face. At last he said, ‘It was. . for a business acquaintance.’
‘Egobarbus? The Celtic gentleman?’
Zetso seemed to have forgotten his reluctance to talk. He said simply, ‘The Celt demanded a meeting with Felix, and my master arranged it. It was very generous. He paid for the accommodation out of his own purse.’
‘A meeting about what?’ I asked. I moved a little closer on the bench. ‘The money that your master owed to him?’
He edged away from me. ‘I was not party to the business. You will have to ask him yourself.’
‘I can hardly do that. You know that Egobarbus is dead? His body was found yesterday, in the well.’
I surprised him, if I am any judge of men. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened like a startled man in a mural.
He sounded more startled still. ‘Here? But I saw him in Glevum at the feast.’
‘That was not the real Egobarbus,’ I said. I explained about the little finger.
‘Then. .’ Zetso began. He seemed to be thinking frantically. ‘After all he must have. .’ He tailed off.
‘Must have. .?’
‘Must have been murdered by one of his servants. Someone must have poisoned him, thrown his body down the well and taken his place in Glevum,’ Zetso said. His confidence was increasing as he spoke. ‘Not an easy task with that moustache.’
I had come to much the same conclusion myself. ‘You had seen him before?’
Zetso shook his head. ‘Never. He tried to barge in once, when my master had a meeting in Letocetum, but the servants chased him away. We never saw him, except at a distance, but he was a startling figure, with that red hair and plaid. I would have recognised him by those things alone.’
‘A fact which his impersonator depended on,’ I said reflectively. I was sure of it now. I wondered how the moustache had been managed. Hot wax would have held it, at least for a few hours. And, now I came to recall it, the Egobarbus at the feast had been constantly dabbing at his mouth with his napkin. I had remarked on it at the time.
‘You did not see him when you called at the hired house again? It was you, I presume? The hooded rider who called that evening at the house?’ I got to my feet. ‘The owner heard the horse’s hooves and saw you.’
He looked up at me. ‘Then he will tell you that I never entered the premises. I merely brought the message that Felix could not come. And no, I did not see the Celt himself, although I heard his voice — I assume that it was his voice — bellowing at a servant. One of his slaves opened the door. I simply delivered my package and was gone. Ask the slaves, if they are still alive.’