Ruso knew better than to argue with Daddy. He got to his feet and stepped across to check that there were no gardeners lurking behind the neatly sculpted cypress hedges before saying, ‘This probably isn’t the right time to tell you, but you need to know. I was alone with Severus when he died. His last words were,
She fell back into the chair as if he had struck her. ‘What?’
‘Don’t make me repeat it.’
‘But I — that’s ridiculous!’
‘If I thought you’d done it, I wouldn’t be telling you.’
‘Well, you’d better not tell anybody else.’ When he did not reply she said, ‘You haven’t, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
She began to pick at the feathers of the fan. ‘You may as well know. The man was a reptile.’
‘I’m sorry you weren’t happy,’ said Ruso, and meant it.
‘There’s no need to gloat.’
‘I wasn’t.’
A spurt of gravel rose up as the fan hit it. ‘Stop being so gallant, Gaius! I know all about him chasing Flora. Arria came to warn me.’
‘So I heard.’
‘I’m not surprised somebody poisoned him, are you?’
‘Don’t let anyone else hear you saying that.’
‘You’re the one who said I should speak my mind.’
‘Did I?’
‘You always said you could never work out what I was thinking!’
Ruso, enlightened, bit back, ‘No, what I said was that I wasn’t a bloody mind-reader.’
She gestured round her at the elegant garden. ‘I put up with him in exchange for all this, Gaius. In return he had access to Daddy’s business advice. The local contacts were very useful for him, because everybody he knew was back in Rome, and he didn’t want to be too beholden to Fuscus.’
‘I see.’ So Severus had harboured ambitions of his own.
‘It was a business arrangement. I didn’t want him dead.’
It made sense, and it made sense of Lollia Saturnina’s assertion that Claudia had made some very bad decisions lately. ‘So if it wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘and it wasn’t you, who was it?’
‘How should I know? It must have been somebody in your house. I expect it was Arria.’
‘Arria didn’t go near him,’ said Ruso, rapidly considering and dismissing this alarming possibility. ‘I’ve already made inquiries at home. How did he get on with his sister?’
‘I told you. They argued.’
‘About what?’
‘Going back to Rome, what else? As if any boyfriend would wait for her for this long!’
‘These were serious arguments?’
Claudia sighed. ‘Don’t be silly, Gaius. She didn’t kill him. She was hoping he would take her back there. Promise you won’t repeat what he said. You know what everyone will think.’
‘People will ask what his last words were.’
‘Then make something up.’
It was the second time in two days that he had been told to stave off questions with lies.
Claudia was frowning at him. ‘You’ll have to practise. You’re a terrible liar, you know. Try not to look shifty. And whatever you do, don’t scratch your — you’re doing it now! For goodness’ sake, Gaius!’
Ruso snatched his right hand away from his ear.
‘That always gives you away,’ said Claudia.
He said, ‘I’m not prepared to wait for a man from Rome. I want this looked into now.’
‘But Daddy said — ’
‘Daddy isn’t suspected of murdering him,’ pointed out Ruso. ‘And unless I tell people what Severus said, neither are you.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I want permission to talk to the household here,’ he said, wondering if she realized that it was unlikely to be her household for much longer. ‘I need to find out what Severus did that morning. What he ate, where he went, who he spoke to.’
In the silence that followed he watched her fiddle with her hair.
‘Think about it, Claudia. The investigator from Rome won’t know any of us. As long as he can offer up somebody plausible to the court, he won’t care who it is. He’ll get a smooth lawyer to drag up everything that person’s ever supposed to have done or said, and the magistrates will convict them. You know what happens after that.’
She sank back into the chair. Behind her, a lizard skittered up the plinth of a statue, and vanished amongst the folds of a stone toga. Finally she said, ‘All right. We’ll start before we get instructions from Rome. But I want it done properly.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he insisted, feeling old resentments rise.
‘There’s only one way to do this sort of thing.’ She lowered her voice and glanced round to make sure the garden slaves were safely out of earshot. ‘The funeral contractor — a horrible man, he smells — has offered to supervise the questioning.’
Ruso stared into the eyes of his former wife. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Well, you aren’t going to do it, are you? I can hardly ask the staff to question each other, and besides, you know what will happen. Unless you frighten them enough, they’ll just all cover up for each other.’
‘And if you frighten them too much, they’ll make up whatever you want to hear.’
‘That’s why we need an expert. Attalus knows what he’s doing, even if he does smell. He has the contract for the amphitheatre.’
‘Just because he can shift dead bodies — ’
‘He’s had to do this sort of thing several times before.’ She paused. ‘I know it’s not nice, but he’s promised to be very discreet. He’ll do everything a long way from the main rooms so there’s no disturbance, and his men will bring their own equipment and clear up afterwards.’
‘But — ’
‘This is not the time to be squeamish! What else are we going to do? We’ll tell him to stop as soon as we’ve found out who did it.’
Ruso clamped his fingers around the warm stone of the tabletop. ‘No.’
‘Oh, do make your mind up! You said yourself, we need to question everybody. I’ll get Daddy to pay him for doing the people here, and you can pay for yours.’
Ruso frowned. ‘My what?’
‘Your household, of course. He did die in your house, after all.’
‘No.’
The painted eyes locked with his own. ‘I’m the family,’ she said. ‘I decide what’s to be done.’
‘If you insist on having the staff tortured,’ said Ruso quietly, ‘I’ll have to tell people what Severus said. That way at least the male slaves will stand a chance of being left alone.’
‘Oh, Gaius!’ Claudia flung her hands in the air in exasperation. ‘Why do you always have to be so difficult?’
He was spared having to answer this question by the arrival of a kitchen slave with a plate of Claudia’s favourite honey cakes. He wondered what the staff who had arranged this kind gesture would think if they knew she had been discussing having them questioned under torture.
‘All right,’ she conceded, reaching for a cake. ‘You talk to people here and I’ll ask Daddy about Severus’ business contacts. But I can’t see how it’s going to help.’
Ruso waited until the slave was out of earshot. ‘Yesterday morning,’ he said, ‘can you remember exactly what Severus did? Was there anything out of the ordinary?’
She hesitated for a moment. Then she said, ‘He’d been having trouble sleeping lately. He was like that sometimes. Business worries, I suppose. Anyway, he woke up much too early as usual, farted, scratched his
