Poseidon s Gold

The blue dress and agates were significant. She may not have thought about it. Helena despised premeditated drama. But I recognised in her appearance a statement that she could be her own woman again any time she chose.

'Helena, it's best not to quarrel at night.' It was honest advice, but came out more like insolence. 'You're proud and I'm tough; it's a bad combination.'

During the day she must have withdrawn into her private self. Helena had given up a great deal to live with me, and tonight she must be as near as she would ever be to throwing that back in my face.

'I can't sleep beside you if I hate you.'

'Do you?'

'I don't know yet.'

I reached to touch her cheek; she leaned away. I snatched back my hand. 'I've never cheated you, sweetheart!'

'Good.'

'Give me a chance. You don't want to see me grovelling.'

'No. But if what I've heard is only half right, I'll be seeing you squirm soon!'

Helena's chin came up. Her brown eyes were bright. Maybe we both felt a thread of excitement, sparring like this. But Helena and I never wasted time inventing pretexts. Any accusations that were about to be flung would carry as much weight as wet sandbags.

I leaned back a little. I felt breathless. 'So what's the procedure? Are the questions to be specific, or shall I just warble cheerily?'

'You seem to be expecting a crisis, Falco.' That 'Falco' was bad.

'I do keep an eye on what you're finding out about me.'

'Have you something to say about it?'

'My darling, I've spent most of the afternoon thinking up explanations to win you round!'

'Never mind the explanations. I'm well aware you can invent wildly and phrase it like a barrister. Tell me the truth.'

'Ah that!' I always told her the truth. That was how I already knew the truth sounds more insincere than anything.

When I made no effort to respond further, Helena seemed to change the subject. 'How are you getting on with your mother's business?'

'It's my business now. I'm a murder suspect, don't forget!'

'What have you done today?' It appeared oblique, but I knew it would be relevant.

'Spoke to Maia; Mico; Allia. Got nowhere with any of them. I talked to the waiter at Flora's-and I inspected the corpse.'

I must have looked drawn. 'Did you have to do that?' Helena asked in a changed voice.

I smiled wryly. 'So you still have some heart?'

'I have always treated you reasonably!' That was a fierce dig. 'I think you have been wasting time, Marcus. It's obvious there were two people you ought to have seen immediately. You've spent a whole day dodging the issue, and contacted neither. The situation's too serious for this.'

'There is time.'

'Petronius only gave you today!'

'So you've been listening to private conversations?'

She shrugged. 'Thin walls.'

'Who are these people I'm supposed to be ignoring?'

'You know who. Your brother's old girlfriend for one. But first you should have gone straight to your father.' I folded my arms. I said nothing; Helena fought me silently.

'Why do you hate your father?' she demanded eventually.

'He's not worth hating.'

'Is it because he left home while you were just a child?'

'Look, my childhood is none of your business.'

'It is,' snapped Helena, 'if I have to live with the results!'

Fair comment. And I could not object to her interest. Helena Justina's main criterion for living with a man was that he let her read his thoughts. After thirty years of keeping my own council, I went along with it. Being an informer is a lonely profession. Allowing Helena free access to the inner sanctum had come as a relief.

'All right. I can see I have to suffer.'

'Marcus, you're trussed up like a bird in a braising pan-'

'I'm not done for yet. Mind you don't get pecked.'

Her eyes glimmered; that was promising. 'Stop prevaricating! Tell me the truth.'

'You won't like it.'

'I realise that.'

'You win.' I faced the inevitable. I should have told her all this a long time ago. She must have half guessed it anyway, while I had nearly forfeited the right to give her my version. 'It's quite simple. I don't know what went on between my parents, but I've nothing to say to any man who walks out on his children. When my father took a stroll I was seven. Just about to assume the toga praetexta. I wanted my papa to be there watching at my first big ceremony.'

'You don't approve of ceremonial.'

'I don't now!'

Helena frowned. 'Plenty of children grow up with only one parent present. Still, I suppose the lucky ones at least get a stepfather to despise or stepmother to hate.' She was teasing, and on this subject I object to being teased. She read my face. 'That was bad taste: Why did your parents never divorce formally?'

'He was too ashamed to do it; she was, and is, too stubborn.' I used to wish I was an orphan. At least then I could have started again, without the constant hope or dread that just when everything had settled down our paterfamilias might reappear, upsetting everyone with his old blithe smile.

Helena was frowning. 'Did he leave you without money?'

I began to answer angrily, then took a deep breath. 'No, I can't say that.'

When my father ran out with his redhead we never saw him for several years; I learned afterwards that he had been in Capua. Right from the start there had been a man called Cocceius who brought money to my mother on a fairly regular basis. It was supposed to be coming from the Auctioneers' Guild. For years I accepted that story, as Mother appeared to do. But when I grew old enough to work things out I realised that the Guild was acting as agent-a polite excuse for my mother to accept my father's money without lessening her disgust for him. The main clue was that the weight of the coin bag increased with time. Charitable hand-outs tend to tail off.

Helena was looking at me for more answers. 'We just about escaped being destitute. We were barely clad and fed. But that applied to everyone we knew. It sounds bad to you, love, with your privileged upbringing, but we were the swarming mass of the great Roman poor; none of us expected any better from life.'

'You were sent to school.'

'Not by him.'

'But your family did have benefactors?'

'Yes. Maia and I had our school fees paid.'

'She told me. By the lodger. Where did he come from?'

'He was an old Melitan moneylender. My mother found space for him so the rent money would help out.' She only let him have a fold-up couch and a shelf for his clothes in a corridor. She had assumed he would hate it and leave, but he clung on and lived with us for years.

'And your father disapproved? Was the lodger a cause of arguments?'

This was all wrong. I was supposed to be the intruder who went round asking awkward questions, forcing long-hidden secrets to bubble to the surface of other people's ornamental ponds. 'The Melitan did cause a lot of trouble, but not the way you mean.' The Melitan, who had no family, had wanted to adopt Maia and me. That had caused some tumultuous rows. To Helena, who came from a civilised family where they hardly seemed to wrangle over anything more serious than who beat the Senator to the best bread roll at breakfast, the riots among my own tribe must sound harsh and barbaric. 'I'll tell you about it some day. My father's disappearance was directly related to his flamboyant girlfriend, not the lodger. Times were hard and he wasn't prepared to endure the struggle with us. The Melitan was irrelevant.'