Under Vesuvius

haste, but I've had worse than mutters thrown at me in my day. Hermes came up to me. He had been away all day investigating.

'No luck finding the merchant who sold it,' he said, referring to the fabulous necklace. 'But it's Phrygian in origin.'

'That's not much help,' I said. 'Keep looking. And don't assume that any merchant is telling the truth.'

'Do you think I'm a beginner at this?'

'Go. I'm headed for the house of Gaeto to talk with his wife Jocasta, She may be the boy's only alibi.'

'Don't assume she'll tell you the truth,' he said, grinning.

'Get out of here.'

I saw the messenger slave and beckoned him to me. 'Take me to your mistress,' I told him. Silently he turned and I followed him from the forum, bidding my entourage to meet me in the evening at the villa. They were mystified. Ordinarily, one as august as a praetor goes nowhere alone, without even his lictors. But I wanted to question the woman by myself, and witnesses are the same thing as spies.

The boy led me to a house of modest size, by the standards of Baiae. It lay on one of the broader streets, near the edge of town by the city wall. I placed a hand on my guide's shoulder. 'Is this the house of Gaeto?' It seemed entirely too small and was nowhere near the slave market.

'This is my mistress's town house,' he explained. 'My master's house is on the bay, outside the city wall.'

'I see.' He would not be the first husband to indulge his wife in this lavish fashion. Nor the first to regret it, either. Wives with their own houses have been the subject of scabrous comedies since the days of Aristophanes.

We entered the courtyard, and moments later the woman appeared, this time wearing a dress no more extravagant than was common for the wealthy women of Baiae. Apparently, she reserved silk for special occasions.

'You honor my house, Praetor,' she said. 'And you must have hurried right over from court. You must be hungry.'

'Famished,' I agreed.

She led me to a table in the impluvium next to the pool with its fountain playing around a figure of a dancing faun. There a table had been laid out lavishly.

''This,' I said, eyeing the superb viands, 'could be construed by some to be a bribe.'

'I won't tell anybody,' she said. 'Besides, it rates far below the standards of Baiae bribery.'

'Senators and magistrates come cheaper in Rome,' I told her, reclining on the couch. Instantly, a slave removed my sandals and another pair commenced washing my feet. Others filled my cup, arranged my cushions, and fanned me, all unnecessarily, but then that is what luxury is all about.

Jocasta took a couch opposite me, artfully allowing her peplos to gape slightly. Well, more than slightly. Clearly, the garment had been designed to gape and she had a good deal to display thus. Women have frequently practiced these wiles upon me, almost always with success.

'Try some of the honeyed pheasant breast,' she suggested, serving me a plate of it with her own hands. I took it and tried a slice. It was superb, but I had by this time come to expect no less. I took a good swallow of the wine, which I recognized to my surprise as Gaulish. I had always thought that benighted province would never produce drinkable wine, but a few years before some vineyards there had begun producing a rather decent vintage, and this was far more than decent. I refer of course to our old, southern province of Gaul, where the people were respectably clad in togas, not to the trousers-wearing part.

'Gelon tells me,' I began, 'that he spent the night of the murder at his father's house and that you were there.'

'Yes, I was there.' She popped a ripe strawberry into her mouth.

'Why weren't you at the dinner given by Norbanus? Your husband was there.'

'I don't like being snubbed by all those grand ladies. My husband enjoys flaunting his wealth and influence at such events, but I can do without them. The civic banquet where you were honored was quite another sort of thing.'

'I see. Will you be able to testify that Gelon was in that house for the entire night?'

'Yes-that is, I believe he was.'

'Your memory seems to be less than certain on this point,' I noted.

'Gelon was in the house in the early evening, after his father had departed for the house of Norbanus. We had dinner together. Afterward, I retired to my bedroom. I never heard anyone leave during the night, and he was there the next morning, when your men came to arrest him.'

I washed down a fig with the excellent wine. 'Forgive me, Jocasta, but that is thin.'

'Does it matter? I am just the slaver's wife and everyone will think I am covering up for the slaver's son.'

'You would have to come up with a much better lie than that to rouse such suspicion.'

'I fear it is the best I can do. My husband may forbid me to testify, anyway.'

'I will speak to him on the matter. You requested my presence here,' I reminded her. 'Surely it wasn't just to tell me that you have no compelling reason to believe that Gelon killed the girl.'

'No, I had a different but connected reason to ask you here.'

'This sounds devious. Please continue.'

'I believe you should be looking into the activities of the priest Diocles.'

My cup hand paused halfway between table and mouth. 'Why?' The cup resumed its progress.

She grew oblique. 'Tell me, have Norbanus and Silva approached you, urging you to execute Gelon and be done with it?'

I was no slouch at obliquity myself. 'And if they have?'

'Ask yourself why.'

I had been asking myself exactly that, but I would have been foolish to reveal this to her. 'Come to the point, Jocasta. What are the priest and the duumviri up to?'

'By now you've seen that Baiae and much of southern Campania are fat on the luxury trade. Landowners control things up in Rome, but down here the likes of Silva and Norbanus and all the rest are cocks of the dunghill. Silk, perfume, incense, dyestuffs, gems, gold, extraordinary slaves-if it is precious, expensive, rare, those men control it and they make millions from it. Where there is so much wealth, there is corruption. I doubt I am telling you anything terribly surprising.'

'I am aware of the connection between money and political influence. I fail to see what this has to do with the case at hand.'

'Where there are luxuries, there are sumptuary laws, import duties, trade restrictions, and many other inconveniences to the pursuit of further wealth. Even in a common year there is a great deal of bribery, coercion, and influence buying to be done. In a censorship year like this one, the problem increases tenfold.'

'I can see that this might be of concern to men like the duumviri and their colleagues including, I am sorry to say, your husband. How might the priest be involved? He seems an austere man. His house is modest, as are his clothes, his household, and his late daughter.'

'That girl was not the modest, blameless idol the old man described in her eulogy.' What she felt delivering these words was difficult to read, but I sensed deep emotion there.

'What mortal has ever matched up to his or her eulogy? The form is stylized and consists almost entirely of conventional phrases. I myself have delivered eulogies for utterly wretched human beings and made them sound like fit companions for the gods.'

She laughed, and she had a good laugh, one that made all the flesh she was displaying jiggle. 'Well, be that as it may, the girl was-I don't want to speak ill of the dead and attract her vengeful spirit-' she spilled a few drops of wine onto the pavement in propitiation '-but that young woman was spreading herself pretty thin.'

'And if she was promiscuous, what of it? That's the stuff of family scandal, not the concern of a senior magistrate.'

'It is if her activities involve treason.'

'Treason?' I said, intrigued. In those days treason was an exceedingly slippery concept. With so many men and factions vying for supreme power, each tended to define the concept his own way. These days, it just means