I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe so, from what Radixrapum said to me. He only knew Lucius distantly by sight — and that would accord with his reaction when he saw the corpse: shocked and appalled, but not personally upset. In fact, his chief response was curiosity, I think.’
‘And now he’s died for it,’ the tanner said, obviously beginning to apply this to himself.
I nodded grimly. ‘It rather looks that way. Which means that all of us may be in danger too.’ I was increasingly aware that this was very likely true. ‘You, for instance, tanner. The fewer people who know that you’ve been here, the better for us all.’
The tanner stared at Radixrapum. It was not a happy sight. ‘You’ll have to tell somebody about the corpse,’ he said. ‘You can’t just leave it here. Has he got family who’d come and bury him?’
I realized that I did not have the least idea, or any real notion where Radixrapum lived beyond the fact that it was out of town. But it was likely that he had a wife and family, and possibly a plot of land where they could bury him — in that respect at least, he was distinct from Lucius.
‘I’ll report this to the garrison,’ I said. ‘They’ll have to sort it out. Radixrapum was a farmer so he probably paid tax. If so, the authorities will have a note of it. If not, no doubt they’ll send the army cart to move the corpse again.’ Thank heaven I had spent today in front of witnesses, I thought, and had a driver who could swear he drove me home the night before. I might have found it difficult to explain the presence of a second dead body in my workshop otherwise.
The tanner had another unhappy problem on his mind. ‘Burial or carnal pit, it makes no difference. In either case, the killer will know that you were here.’
I looked at him, surprised. ‘He’d know that anyway.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Junio put in. ‘If he was a comparative stranger to the town, he might have thought that no one was using the workshop currently — when Lucius was killed, it was mid-afternoon and there was nobody in sight. Though he knows by now the shop is occupied, since the first body has been moved away.’
I was about to point out that he knew that anyway, because there had been work in progress on the floor, but I remembered the tanner’s wagging tongue and held my peace.
‘That’s right,’ the tanner said, referring to what Junio had said. ‘You go to the army and you make it clear you’ve seen the corpse. If you are right about his motive for strangling this man, then you. .’
‘Must be in danger too.’ I was ahead of him. ‘Exactly so. He must expect that I would come back to this room again — if only to arrange a ritual cleansing of the place — but he need not know that I had company. So, tanner, be careful that you don’t reveal the fact. If you value your own safety, and your family’s, it is essential that the killer doesn’t know that you were here.’
My warning was hardly needed, it appeared. The tanner gulped. ‘You can rely on me. I shan’t say a word to anyone at all. Not even to my wife. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to her.’ He made as if to move towards the outer shop and street, but as he reached the entrance he stopped and turned to me. ‘Though I shall have to think of something to tell Glypto, I suppose. Do you think that this strangling’ — he gestured to the corpse — ‘was what he heard last night? There was likely to have been a struggle, don’t you think?’
I shot a warning glance at Junio, who seemed about to speak. ‘I’d like to talk to Glypto, as I said before,’ I answered. ‘He may yet know something that may be of help. If you could send him to me, I will deal with him — or, better still, allow him to go out to the midden-pile a little later on and I’ll keep a watch for him and try to meet him there.’ I didn’t mention that Glypto was expecting that.
The tanner sighed. ‘Safer than having him come into your shop and see the corpse and put himself in danger as a consequence? That is sensible. I suppose the killer must be watching quite nearby, or he would not know that the turnip-man was here. Oh, great Jupiter!’ His cracked voice was getting higher and higher in distress. ‘In that case, he’ll see me leaving, as sure as Greeks are Greek. There’s no back entrance to your workshop as there is in mine. Oh dear Mars, I wish I’d never come.’
I glanced at Junio. This was an outcome I had not foreseen. I had hoped that the tanner would make haste to leave, but, instead, it seemed I’d frightened him too much to go at all. ‘I’m sure the killer isn’t watching now,’ I said. ‘I was sitting for a long time on my own outside the shop, and there was absolutely nobody suspicious in the street. I would have noticed it.’
The tanner looked a little mutinous. ‘He must have watched the place. How else did he know about your turnip-selling friend?’
‘Supposing you are right, and he’s a stranger to the town. He kills and robs poor Lucius and leaves him in my shop. He may have come back later on — perhaps to move the corpse — and seen the turnip-man outside the door (which is where I left him when I came to you).’
Junio nodded. ‘He may even have supposed that this was the shopkeeper and decided that for safety he must be murdered too. Presumably he followed Radixrapum when he left and chose a quiet moment where he could strangle him.’
‘It is even possible the turnip-man led him straight back here. I owed him money so he may have returned, and that would have strengthened the impression even more that this was the owner of the premises,’ I went on. ‘So, we assume, the killer strangles him and leaves him in the shop, presumably believing that he is safe by now. He surely wouldn’t want to linger near the scene in case he drew unwelcome attention to himself.’
The tanner was not comforted at all. ‘I suppose all this is plausible. But it is only supposition. If you’re wrong, I’m trapped.’
‘You could get out through the window space,’ Junio observed. ‘I think it’s wide enough, though you’re not very tall. Father and I would have to hoist you up and let you drop the other side. That would bring you into the alleyway that leads down to the pile. It is a little smelly, but it should be safe enough.’
To my astonishment, the tanner looked relieved and, far from rejecting the suggestion as absurd, began at once to think of ways in which it could be done. ‘If we brought the table over, I could stand on that. .’
It was a tight fit through the window space. The man was rather stout, but he was so determined that he managed in the end — at the cost of bloodying his elbows on the shutter-slots. It was not a very dignified descent — he landed in a tangle in a smelly pool — but he picked himself up quickly and, without a backward look, hurried down the alley that ran out to the lane.
Junio and I watched him scuttling away. It would have been comic in any other circumstances, but I was hardly in a smiling mood.
Junio was the first to leave the window space. He gestured to the corpse. ‘The tanner was correct about one thing anyway. You knew the murdered man and liked him very much. I see that in your face.’
I nodded. ‘This is the man I told you of, who helped me yesterday — which meant he saw too much. If he hadn’t done so, I’m sure he’d be alive.’
‘So you meant what you said earlier? You really believe this murder was just to silence him?’ Junio looked and sounded unconvinced.
‘What other explanation is there?’ I demanded. ‘He saw the other corpse. It is the only link.’
‘Apart from the fact that they both sold things in the street,’ Junio pointed out.
‘But it is hardly likely that there’s someone stalking round the town, strangling innocent street-vendors and dumping them on me. I rather think that whatever happened here, it must be something close to what I outlined to the tanner — although, as he rightly said, it is only speculation. I have no proof of it.’
Junio was looking at me with an odd expression on his face: a mixture of pity, concern and disbelief. ‘But of course there’s a connection. A much more likely link. Are you really going to tell me that you don’t see what it is?’