My surveillance had been fairly casual. This gave every suggestion that my presence had been noted; that giving me the slip at Tyche's had been deliberate; and that sending out the chair was a decoy.
Both women were now looking towards the cookshop. I waited by the fruit stall until they seemed satisfied by my empty bench. Eventually they set off on foot, this time with me adopting my strictest procedures for tailing a suspect invisibly.
If the visit to the fortune-teller had been indicative, that was nothing to what happened next: Severina Zotica took herself to a marble yard.
She was ordering a tombstone.
I could guess who it was for.
After selecting her square of marble, I watched her depart. As soon as I felt sure she was heading homewards, I nipped back to see the stonemason myself. His name was Scaurus. I found him deep in a narrow corridor amongst his stock. On one hand were room-high stacks of rough-cut travertine for general building purposes; on the other, pallets protecting smaller slabs of finer marble which would be made into self-congratulatory epitaphs for second-rate officials, monuments for old soldiers, and poignant plaques to commemorate sweet lost children.
Scaurus was a short, strong, dust-covered character with a bald dome, a broad face, and small ears which stuck out like wheelbosses each side of his head. Naturally his dealings with clients were confidential. And naturally the size of bribe my clients could afford soon got us over that.
'I'm interested in Severina Zotica. She must be the kind of regular client you love - so much domestic tragedy!'
'I've done one or two jobs for her,' Scaurus admitted, not quarrelling with my jocular approach.
'Three husbands down-and the next looming! Am I right that she's just ordered a new memorial stone?' He nodded. 'Can I see the text of the inscription?'
'Severina only came in for an estimate, and to put down a deposit on the slab.'
'She give you the deceased's name?'
'No.'
'So what was the story?'
'Other people are involved-a subscription effort. She has to consult them about the words to use.'
'I bet! The fact is, this poor fellow's relations may have the good manners to want him dead first, before they commit themselves!' I was starting to feel angry. 'Does she normally have the tombstone cut in advance?'
Scaurus was becoming more cautious. A thriving trade was one thing, but he did not want to be identified as an accessory before the fact. I warned him I would be back for a sight of the finished carving, then I left it at that.
He had given me what I needed. The horoscope and the memorial stone spoke for themselves. If nobody weighed in to stop Severina, Hortensius Novus was a dead man.
Chapter XVII
Some informers with a telling piece of information rush straight off to report. I like to mull things over. Since I met Helena Justina most of my best mulling had been done in company; she had a sharp brain, with the advantage of a dispassionate view of my work. Her approval always reassured me-and sometimes she contributed a thought that I could hone up into a clever ploy for solving the case. (Sometimes Helena told me I was a patronising ferret, which just proves my point about her perceptiveness.)
I arrived at the Senator's door at about nine, just before dinner. The porter on duty was an old antagonist. He eagerly told me Helena was out.
I asked where she had gone. The bathhouse. Which? He didn't know. I didn't believe him anyway. A senator's daughter rarely leaves home without mentioning where she is going. It need not be true. Just some tale to delude her noble father that his petal is respectable, and give her mother (who knows better) something new to worry about.
I shared a few choice witticisms with Janus, though frankly his intellect had never been up to my standard. I was turning away when their lost pigeon decided to wing in home.
'Where were you?' I demanded, more hotly than I meant.
She looked startled. 'Bathing...'
She was clean all right. She looked delicious. Her hair shone; her skin was soft, and perfumed all over with some distinctive flowery oil that made me want to move very much closer to investigate... I was working up a froth again. I knew she could tell, and I knew she would laugh, so I retreated into banter. 'I just encountered a fortune-teller who promised I was doomed in love. So naturally I dashed straight here -'
'For a dose of doom?'
'Works wonders on the bowels. You're due for "a higher destiny", by the way.'
'That sounds like hard work! Is it like a legacy? Can I pass it on hastily to somebody else?'
'No, madam, your stars are fixed-though luckily the prophetess has decided I am the constellations' agent. For a small backhander I can undertake to unfix fortune and unravel destiny...'
'Remind me never to let you near when I'm spinning wool... Are you coming in to make me laugh, or is this just a tantalising glimpse to make me pine for you?'
Since the porter had opened the door for her, I was already inside.
'Do you?' I asked nonchalantly.
'What?'
'Pine for me?'
Helena Justina gave me an unfathomable smile.
She whisked me further indoors and seated me under a pergola in a secluded colonnade. Helena slid onto a seat next to me and fastened a rose in my shoulder-brooch while she kept the houseslaves running about bringing me wine, warming it, fetching dishes of almonds, then cushions, then a new cup because mine had a minute chip in the glaze... I lay back in her own reclining chair and enjoyed the attention (gnawing my thumb). She seemed extraordinarily loving. Something was up. I decided some burnished bugger with a senatorial pedigree must have asked her home to see his collection of blackfigure jars.
'Marcus, tell me about your day.' I told her, gloomily. 'Cheer up. You need more excitement. Why not let some floosies flaunt themselves at you? Go and see your clients. The lapidary sounds a complete waste of time, but tell them about the astrologer and the mason, then see how they react.'
'You're sending me into a witches' lair!'
'Two overfed spenders, with no taste and even fewer scruples, both falling out of their frocks... I think you can handle them.'
'How do you know all this?'
'I've been to have a look at them.' Her face grew warmer, but she faced me out as I screwed round in the chair, full of alarm.
'Helena Justina! How?'
'I called on them this afternoon. I said I was trying to start a school for female foundlings, and-as women of feeling, and in one case a mother-could I persuade them to contribute?'
'Mars Ultor! Did they?'
'Only Atilia at first. That Pollia is an unyielding little bodkin-but I shamed her in the end. Then of course she gave me a huge donation, trying to impress on me what plutocrats they are.'
'I hope you never told them who you were?'
'I certainly did. There was no reason for them to connect me with you.' Cruel, but true. I was having a hard time connecting us myself. 'People who live on the Pincian are terrible snobs. They were delighted to have a senator's daughter sip mulled wine amid their outrageous artwork, while she entreated them to involve themselves in her modest civic works.'
'Did they get you drunk?'
'Not quite. Trust them to believe they were immaculate hostesses for giving a visitor monstrous goblets of boiling hot liquor, totally unsuited for the time of day; what I really needed was a nice fingerglass of herbal tea. Did they get you drunk?'
'No.'
'Bad luck! They wanted me to admire their solid silver goblets - too heavy to lift and too ornate to clean. Mine had the biggest topaz I have ever seen.' She looked thoughtful, then commented, 'They judge the world by what it costs. Unless the price is vulgar, nothing counts... Your rates are too reasonable; I'm surprised they employed you.'