"An efficacious decoction?"
"Give me essence of thyme. Where is he hurt?"
That I could not tell her, for I never saw the man. His doctor barged out from the bedroom, highly annoyed at me being there. He mentioned an ague, then wouldn't discuss the gout story. Servants were called to escort me from the house in a style that only just stopped short of compensatable assault.
I then tried to see Scilla, the ex-praetor's supposedly wild girlfriend. I always enjoy interrogating a woman with a dirty past; it can pose a challenge in several ways. Scilla was not having it. She lived at the praetor's house-and she stayed indoors. As a female way of life it was suspiciously respectable, though I sounded like a cad when I went home and said so.
Thwarted at every turn, Anacrites and I went back to routine enquiries. That meant asking questions of everyone who was known to have been at the barracks the night Rumex was killed, in the hope that someone would remember seeing something unusual. The vigiles were following up the case in parallel with us, though all their enquiries turned up negative too. Eventually they filed the case in their "No further action" pigeonhole, and not long afterwards, so did we.
Thirty-five
WELL, DON'T BLAME me.
Sometimes there is quite simply nothing to follow up. Life is not a fable, where stock characters seethe with implausible emotions, stock scenes are described in bland language, and every puzzling death is succeeded in regular progression by four clues (one false), three men with crackable alibis, two women with ulterior motives, and a confession which neatly explains every kink in events and which indicts the supposedly least obvious person-a miscreant any alert enquirer could unmask. In real life when an informer runs a case into the ground, he cannot expect a fortuitous knock on the door, bringing just the eyewitness he wants, with confirmation of details that our shrewd hero has already deduced and stored in his phenomenal memory. When enquiries run into the ground it is because the case has gone cold. Ask any member of the vigiles: once that happens you may as well go sheepshearing.
Better still, have a drink in a wine bar. There you may possibly strike up a conversation with a man you haven't seen for twenty years, who will spin you an intriguing yarn about a mystery he hopes you can solve for him.
Don't bother: his wife's dead and buried under the acanthus bed; the tortured wag with the haunted eyes who is cadging the house bilgewater off you in this pitiful manner is the bastard who put her there. I can tell you this without even meeting him. It's just a knack. A knack called experience.
People lie. The good ones do it so niftily that however hard you press them you will never catch them out. That presupposes you can even tell which liars you should be pressing. It's pretty hard, when in the real world everyone is at it.
Witnesses are fallible. Even the rare specimens of humanity who honestly want to help may fail to spot the vital scene taking place under their noses, or they misread its significance. Most of them simply forget what they saw.
Draft blackmail letters are never left lying around. Anyway, who needs a draft to say, Give me the money, or else?
If footprints turn up in a newly dug asparagus patch, they never belong to anyone with an easily identifiable limp.
Long-term bullied spouses do not devise schemes of fiendish complexity and then trip themselves up over some tiny detail. They just snap, then grab the heaviest household tool available. The sexually jealous boil over equally messily. The financially greedy may plot with some skill how to escape detection, but they tend to walk away with the money and are long gone, using a new identity, before you even start your detective work.
Murderers sometimes, somehow, do manage to approach their victims when no one is looking. They kill in silence, or when nobody notices the gurgles and thumps. They leave the scene unobserved. Then they sometimes keep quiet forever.
The fact is, many murderers get away with it.
I suppose the trusting among you still believe I am now going to say that Anacrites and I gave up-yet then stumbled by chance upon a clue?
Excuse me. Go back to the start of this scroll and read it again.
Thirty-six
HELLO. STILL WAITING for an unexpected development?
There was none. It happens. It happens all the time.
Thirty-seven
SINCE FALCO &PARTNER were unable to solve who had killed Rumex, we returned to our commission for the Censors. We were not men who became obsessed. I, Marcus Didius Falco, was an ex-army scout and an informer of eight years standing: a professional. Even my partner, who was an idiot, could recognize a dead end. We felt frustrated, but we handled it. After all, we had our fortunes to earn. That always helps maintain a rational attitude.
At the end of December was Saturnalia, my daughter's first. At seven months, Julia Junilla was still too young to understand what was going on. Far from clamoring to be King-for-the-Day, our prim miss hardly noticed the occasion, but Helena and I happily made fools of ourselves arranging presents, food, and fun. Julia endured it gravely, already aware that her parents were as crazed as a cheap pot. Since we had no slaves we made Nux take the role of lording it over us; Nux got the hang of being insubordinate very fast.
Saturninus and Calliopus both left Rome, ostensibly for the festival. When neither had returned after several weeks, I made enquiries and discovered both had now gone to Africa, taking their wives. Hunting, it was said. Lying low, we thought. I asked at the Palace if we could head off in pursuit but, unsurprisingly since there was no evidence against either man in the Rumex case, Vespasian sent word that we were to buckle down to our Census work.
"Ow!" said Anacrites. I just got on with it.
For three months we worked harder than either of us had ever done. We knew these enquiries were a finite gold mine. The Census was supposed to take a year, and it would be difficult to extend much beyond that unless we had exceptional grounds. We just made out our report on the evidence we had, and the culprit was told to cough up. This was a job where suspicion alone sufficed. Vespasian wanted the income. If our victim was important it was wise to be able to substantiate our accusations, but in the arena world "important" was a contradictory term. So we suggested figures, the Censors issued their demands, and most men did not bother to ask if they could appeal. In fact, the grace with which they accepted our findings told us we perhaps even underestimated their degree of fraud. Our consciences, therefore, remained clear.
Of course we did have consciences. And we hardly ever had to bend them into shape.
I received a letter from Camillus Justinus who had reached the city of Oea, thanks to the money I had sent. After some swift exploration, he confirmed that Calliopus had no "brother," though he did own a thriving business supplying beasts and gladiators for the local Games as well as exporting them; the arena was a highly popular sport in all parts of Tripolitania. Horribly Carthaginian. A religious rite, replacing actual human sacrifice, in honor of the harsh Punic Saturn-not a god to tangle with.
Justinus supplied enough details of the lanista's Tripolitanian landholdings for us to inflate our estimate of unpaid tax in his case by a satisfying whack. In return for these efforts I sent the fugitive lad my drawing of silphium, though no more money. If Justinus wanted to make a fool of himself in Cyrenaïca, nobody was going to blame me.
The day after the letter went off my mother was visiting; as she poked around in her usual fearless way she saw my rough for the sketch.