blatantly he was lying. Behind the counter, Ruso heaved up the heavy clay container by its handles and scanned the surface for the vintner’s mark. There, painted in long thin letters, was the expected AMIN… The writing faded into a clean patch where something else had been scrubbed off. He shook his head and expressed regret that this wine had not come from his fictitious friend. What he did not tell Susanna was that although he had no idea where it had come from, he had a very good idea of where it should have gone, and it was not into the mouths of paying customers at a snack bar. No, Susanna did not know where Felix had gotten it. She seemed surprised that anyone might have considered asking him.
“I know you’ve been through everything with Metellus,” Ruso said, making his way back to where Albanus was waiting, “but it would help me to know exactly who was in the bar the night Felix died.”
Susanna perched her ample bottom on the next table and sighed. “This is never going to end, is it?” she said. “Years of building up a respectable family business and now we’ll always be the place where the trouble started.” She spread her arms wide to indicate the bar. “Look at it. Where is everybody?”
“It’s probably not you,” suggested Albanus brightly. ‘Everyone’s frightened to be out in the evenings because of the Stag Man.”
“If you could just tell me about that night-” put in Ruso.
“He’s not real, you know,” continued Albanus. “He’s just a man with a dead thing on his head. And there are extra patrols out.”
“Fat lot of good they’re doing,” retorted Susanna.
“That night?” prompted Ruso, realizing Albanus’s sudden chattiness was inspired not only by the wine but by the appearance of the other waitress, the little mousy one he thought of-if he noticed her at all-as being “not Dari.”
Susanna flapped one hand to send the girl away and described what had started out as a normal evening: the bar crowded, the staff harassed, and the customers no ruder than usual-until by some unlucky oversight the beer ran out. At this point several of the infirmary staff who had joined Gambax to celebrate his birthday expressed their disgust and went elsewhere.
“But Thessalus didn’t go with them?”
“I should think he was glad to see the back of them,” said Susanna. “He’d been paying for everything. So then it was just him and Gambax left there.” She pointed to a table halfway across the room. “And some wagon drivers from Vindolanda next to them, and a merchant and a girl he was pretending was his wife in the corner, and Felix and his friends over by the door.”
“If I needed to know, do you have names?”
“We get to know our customers, doctor. And we look after them. Not like some places I could mention, where they’d steal the fleas off your dog.”
“Any reason why any of them might have had a grudge against Felix?”
She shrugged. “If they did, they kept it quiet.”
“So then what happened?”
There was little new in what she told him. Thessalus had been trying to persuade an unusually cheerful Gambax that it was time to go home when there was a commotion over by the door, and Rianorix was yelling abuse as he was being shoved out into the street by Felix’s cronies. Moments later he returned. Felix’s friends seemed to find this very funny, and promptly threw him out again.
“What was he shouting?”
Susanna frowned. “Something about ‘you will see what happens to men who don’t honor their debts.’ The rest of it was in British.”
That would have been the curse, presumably. “And everyone in the bar heard this going on?”
“I was out the back sorting out a new beer barrel, and I heard it.”
“The native didn’t say what he would do to Felix?”
Susanna shook her head. “I’d have remembered.”
“And then what?”
She shrugged. “And then nothing. Felix and his friends settled down, the merchant complained about the disturbance, the wagon drivers started shouting for beer, and Thessalus must have persuaded Gambax it was time to go. Thessalus is a good man, sir. I think it says a lot for a man when he’s kind to his staff like that. Taking someone out on his birthday and seeing him home. Even when you could see he wasn’t enjoying it much.”
Ruso tried to imagine himself paying for a fun evening with Gambax, and failed.
“Was Thessalus acting strangely?” he asked. “Drinking too much?”
Susanna shook her head. “He was a bit quiet. That’s all. I didn’t see him again until he came in the next day. He was in a terrible state by then. His hands were shaky and his hair was all over the place. He came up to the counter and told me he’d killed somebody. He asked whether I thought he should confess to the prefect. I told him to go back to the barracks and lie down.”
“Did you mention this to anyone else?”
“No!”
“Nobody at all?”
She fiddled with her shawl. “Well… when they arrested Rianorix later on, I thought they would know the doctor hadn’t done it. I may have mentioned it to one or two people after that.”
So that was how the story had escaped. Ruso decided not to tell Metellus that it was Susanna who had wrecked his plans for an easy conviction.
“But I told them not to tell anybody.”
“Of course.”
“He didn’t say it was a secret,” she added.
“If it was a secret,” said Ruso, feeling sorry for her, “he wouldn’t have told you, would he?”
She looked relieved.
He said, “I heard Felix was talking to Dari late that evening.”
“Dari? She didn’t have anything to do with what happened.”
“Did you mention her to Metellus?”
“I didn’t want to waste his time.”
“Humor me for a moment,” said Ruso. “Waste mine.”
Susanna paused to pull the shawl forward over her hair and repin it. She said, “I think Dari owed him money. She gave him something, and I saw him get his note tablet out. Then I got rid of him. I didn’t know Rianorix was lying in wait for him, did I?”
“Of course not.”
“In the end I told him to go or he’d miss curfew.” She cleared her throat. “To tell you the truth, doctor, I was annoyed. I’ve had to speak to Dari before about standing around chatting when she’s supposed to be working.”
“So Felix was a nuisance?”
Susanna folded her arms. “I didn’t say that,” she said. “I don’t imagine he was much of a soldier, but he was good company. He had a way of talking to you as if you were the most important person he’d ever met.” She wrinkled her nose. “ ’Course, I didn’t fall for it at my age.”
“Of course not,” agreed Ruso, then wondered if he had said the wrong thing.
“Anyway,” Susanna continued in a tone that suggested he was right, “we never had any bother with him. And frankly, I’d rather have him than some of the so-called heroes we get in here trying to bully my girls.” She got to her feet. Now, gentlemen, can I get you something to eat? There’s plenty left.”
After Susanna had gone in search of food, Ruso swilled the last drop of Aminaean at the bottom of his cup and said, “Why do you think Susanna thought Gambax was telling her to hide this?”
Albanus looked blank. Ruso explained about Susanna’s belief that Gambax had told her not to serve the wine in the presence of Doctor Thessalus.
With an uncharacteristic lack of charity Albanus said, “I expect Gambax was lying because he wanted it for himself.”
Ruso grinned. “Travel has certainly changed you, Albanus.”
“Well, sir, as Socrates would have said-”
“Ruso! There you are! I’ve been waiting in that miserable bathhouse for hours!”
