the cemetery all night with a pair of lanterns for company. Dias had observed that nobody was going to steal it, and if anyone but Ruso had felt a slight chill at the thought of ghosts and murderers, or imagined they glimpsed some movement in the darkness as they glanced back over their shoulders, they had not spoken of it. Dias had promised to alert the local doctor and ask him to join them in the morning to see what they could find out before a hasty cremation. Finally, once Tilla had been safely delivered back to Camma’s house with the bad news, Ruso had returned to the mansio, dismissed his guard, and made sure the doors of Suite Three were securely locked.
He swung his feet onto the floor and stretched and yawned before splashing his face with water from the bowl. Then he wandered barefoot out onto the wooden walkway and told the passing slave that he would not be needing breakfast after all. Before long he was going to have to face the remains of Bericus in daylight. He leaned out over the rail that separated the walkway from the garden and took a deep breath of chilly air. The sun was not fully up, but the sky was clear. It would be a fine morning.
A servant emerged from the main kitchen, carried a pail across to one of the flowerbeds, and carefully ran a stream of water along a row of seedlings. Another appeared farther along the walkway with a bundle of bedding clutched to her chest and threw it over the rail. Ruso wondered whether Asper’s funeral procession had set off yet. Tilla had promised to break the latest bad news to Camma and the housekeeper last night.
He wished Tilla were not caught up in this wretched affair. She was only trying to help, but her presence was a further complication. Her courage was beyond doubt. But courage and loyalty would not be enough. He needed to be impartial, objective, and highly alert if he was to steer a safe course for them both among the procurator’s politics, Metellus’s scheming, and whatever the hell Caratius-and possibly Dias-had been up to. He did not need the distraction of worrying about his wife.
Ruso frowned at a beetle scurrying along the edge of a flowerbed and tried to order his thoughts. Caratius had strenuously denied any involvement in the murder, but he had no explanation for why Julius Bericus had been found on his land. It must be the work of “some enemy,” or “that woman’s curse.” The servants and laborers whom there had been time to question seemed as shocked as their master.
Camma had been right about Bericus all along. He was not responsible for the death of his brother. Ruso wondered briefly if events might have happened the other way around-if Asper had been injured while murdering Bericus for his share of the money-but digging even Bericus’s pathetically shallow grave would have been beyond the strength of a man with a serious head injury.
There seemed to be three versions of events, and not all of them could be true. He pressed his right forefinger onto the rail as if to hold down the first version while he considered the others.
Asper and his brother had taken the money, intending to deliver it to Londinium.
Second finger.
Asper and his brother had taken the money, intending to steal it.
Third finger.
Asper and his brother had not taken the money at all, as they were intending to visit Caratius and then go home.
This led to three possibilities. Left hand.
Asper had lied about his intentions.
Second finger.
Someone was mistaken about what Asper had said and done.
Third finger.
Someone was lying to him.
Perhaps the answer lay in whatever Asper had been trying to tell Metellus in that ill-fated letter to Room Twenty-seven. That was unfortunate because he still had no idea what it was. He was going to have to recheck everyone’s story. He also needed to go to a funeral, examine a body, report officially to the Council, get into Asper’s office, talk to the local money changer…
Farther along the walkway, a door opened. A child’s voice was raised in complaint. A slave emerged with both hands full of bags. Behind her he heard the child insisting that she wanted to stay here. Ruso shrugged his shoulders a couple of times to loosen them before he turned and headed back into Suite Three to get properly dressed and face the day.
That was when he noticed the pale rectangular shape lying just inside the street door. He flipped open the thin leaves of wood. Neatly penned across them in a bland script were the words, Get out of town as fast as you can. From a well-wisher.
He snatched the key from the hook, sliding it back and forth in the lock with an unsteady hand and swearing as the prongs failed to find the holes. Finally he wrenched the door open.
Dias was leaning against the stable wall opposite. The rest of the alley was empty except for a couple of hens scratching in the dirt.
Ruso forced himself to stay calm. “How long have you been there?”
“I came to take you to the cemetery, sir. The doctor’s on his way out there now.”
“Why didn’t you knock?”
“I did.”
“Did you see anybody put a note under my door?”
“No. Is there a problem?”
Ruso retreated. “No. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Get out of town as fast as you can.
Why? And how long had Dias been standing there? Had he put the note there himself and then waited calmly for Ruso to find it?
He should have checked the street door as soon as he got up. Instead, he had wandered out to the garden with his mind full of the day ahead. The note could have been there all night.
He was halfway to the reception area when Serena’s cousin, whose name he had forgotten again, came out of the door clutching a ring of heavy keys. “Hello Ruso! There’s a message for you to pop next door and look at a carriage. How was your dinner party?”
“Short,” he said. Evidently the news about Bericus had not reached her yet. “I’ve had a confidential note pushed under the door,” he continued, “but nobody’s signed it. Could you ask the staff if anyone saw anything? Has anyone been asking which room I was in?”
“Of course.” A furrow appeared between the neatly plucked brows. “Are you all right? You look a bit pale.”
“I’m fine,” he assured her, backing away and giving what he hoped was a reassuring wave. “Absolutely fine. No problem at all. Fine.”
Any illusion that she might have believed him was spoiled as he heard her say, “Oh dear.”
39
There was no need to go to the stables to find Rogatus: Outside the mansio the overseer’s bandy legs were stationed next to a vehicle whose roof was being loaded with luggage.
“You wanted to see it before it went out, boss.”
The carriage was old and much repaired. Ruso walked all around it, conscious that Dias was watching him and wishing he knew what he was looking for. There was a fresh scrape along one side at about the right height for the overhanging oak. Other signs of damage to the woodwork could have been caused by wear and tear. There were no marks that looked like weapon scars. Rogatus, who clearly thought this was a waste of time, said he could see nothing, either.
“Perhaps,” said Ruso, crouching to squint along the shadowy line of a mud-spattered axle and wondering who wanted him out of town, “you could remind me exactly what Asper said about where he was going.”
“He was on the way to your office, boss,” replied the man without hesitation. “He’d got the tax money ready to go.”
Noting that he had now become boss instead of sir, Ruso said, “Did he mention calling on anyone on the way?”
