`What I know is my affair.'
I kept trying. `Have you seen any of the men who used to work with him recently? The Miller? Little Icarus? Julius Caesar, and that lot?'
`No. I never mixed with the work force.' `Is it true they are all out of Rome?'
`So I heard. Driven out by the vigiles.'
`So you cannot say if any of them were behind the recent theft from the Emporium?'
`Oh, was there a theft?' cooed Flaccida, this time scarcely concealing her prior knowledge. The raid had certainly not been announced in the Daily Gazette as a national triumph, but word had galloped around the bathhouse circuit the same day. Flaccida was just giving us the routine false innocence of a regular villain.
`A big one. Someone who wants to be very big must have organised it.' Flaccida herself, for instance. If she had done it, though, she knew better than to signal the fact. I wondered how she would react to the notion of a female rival. `Do you know Lalage?'
`Lalage?'
`Keeps the brothel called Plato's Academy.' Helena, who had not previously heard the popular name for the Bower of Venus, stifled a giggle. `She's a business contact of your, husband's.'
`Oh yes. I think I've met her.' They were probably best friends, but Flaccida would never admit it under official questioning. She would lie, even if there was no reason to do so. Lying was her way of life.
`Do you think Lalage might be trying to take over where your husband was forced to leave off?'
`How should I know? You'd better ask her.'
`Oh I've done that. She knows how to lie as well as you.' I changed tack wearily: `Let's start again. Nonnius Albius, your husband's one-time associate, turned him in. It could be suggested that now your husband has left the Empire, you may be acting as his agent of revenge against Nonnius.'
This charge, though unproven, could go straight into the mouth of a prosecutor in a court of law. Flaccida started fighting back seriously. `You have no right to make such suggestions to an unsupported woman.' Legally this was true. A woman had to have a male representative to speak for her in public. The answer was well rehearsed too. Not many women I knew would raise that objection. But not many of my associates needed to shelter behind the law.
`Quite right. I apologise.'
`Shall I strike the question from the record?' Helena interrupted demurely.
`I shouldn't think it matters, since the lady has not answered it.'
Helena smiled gently at my anger. She suggested, in a way that sounded straightforward but was actually sceptical, `Perhaps Flaccida has a guardian acting for her now her husband is away?'
`I have a guardian and a battery of barristers, and if you want to ask questions about the business,' barked Flaccida, using the word `business' as if the family were engaged merely in carving cameos or in scallop fishing, `you can go through the proper procedures.'
`Make an appointment?' I grinned, but my tone was bitter. `Send a prior written list of queries to some pompous toga who charges me five hundred just to tell me you cannot comment? Expect a writ for slander if I mention this discussion in public? Find myself barred from the Basilica Julia on some frivolous charge? Discover no one in the Forum wants to talk to me? Lose my clothes every time I go to the bath, find my mother's rent has been put up threefold, receive a summons from the army board of deserters, have mule dung shovelled into my doorway?'
`You've done this before,' smiled Flaccida. She was quite blatant.
`Oh I know how intimidation by the powerful works.'
`Lucky for you, you didn't tell me what your name is!'
`The name's Falco.' I could have used an alias. I refused to be dragged down to the level of fear these operators used. If they wanted to humiliate me, they would have to find me first. My normal clients were sadder and seedier; I was not well known amongst major criminals.
`And who's your friend?' This Flaccida was nasty work. It was a threat against Helena – and not a subtle one.
`No one you should tangle with,' I answered coolly. `Unusual to see an official with a female scribe!' `She's an unusual scribe.'
`I assume you sleep with her?'
`So long as it doesn't affect her handwriting…' I rose. `I'm not intending to bother you further. I don't like wasting effort.'
`I don't like you,' Flaccida told me frankly. `Don't harass me again!'
I said to Helena, `Make a note that the wife of Balbinus Pius refused to answer routine questions, then described polite enquiry by a civil investigator as 'harassment'.'
`Get out!' sneered the more-or-less blonde.
In some circles the women are more fearsome than the men.
XXXIV
OH YOU REALLY made a mess of that!' Helena Justina was furious with me. `Is that how you normally conduct interviews?'
`Well, yes. With slight variations.'
`For instance, sometimes people throw you out right at the start?'
`Sometimes they never even let me in,' I admitted. `But it can be easier than that was.'
`Oh? Sometimes the women are all over you?'
`Naturally a handsome lad like me gets used to asking questions while fending off attention.'
`Don't fool yourself. She slaughtered you!' growled Helena.
`Oh I wouldn't say that. But what a hard-faced hag! At least she gave us the full flavour of life among the big- time crooks: lies, threats, and legal bullying.'
We were standing in the street outside Flaccida's house, having a warm set-to. I didn't mind. Arguing with Helena always cheered me up. So long as she thought I was worth fighting, life still held some hope.
`You leaned nothing from her, but you told her all the lines of enquiry you're pursuing – plus the fact you can't prove any of them! This is no good at all,' Helena continued crossly. `We'll have to go and see the daughter. We'll have to go fast, before the mother sends to warn her, and when we get there, leave the talking to me this time!'
Investigating with Helena as my partner was wonderful fun. I gave way gracefully and we marched off to see the girl.
Milvia and her gambling husband, Florius, lived pretty close to her parents' house. Perhaps that was how Balbinus had come to notice the young equestrian on whom he had foisted his daughter. At any event, this house was even larger and more elaborate than the one where Flaccida had seen us off. That probably meant we should expect an even more rapid dispatch here.
The husband was out. The girl saw us. She was about twenty, dark, sharp-faced, very pretty. Nothing at all like either of her parents. She was dressed in an extremely expensive gown of deep purple silk weave, with panels of silver-thread embroidery. None too practical for eating pears in a sloppy honey sauce, which was what she was doing. Somehow I doubted whether young Milvia had ever worried about a laundry bill. Her jeweller was more tasteful than her mother's; she was decked out in a complete set of antique Greek gold, including a neat little stephane on her crisply curled hair.
She saw us without any chaperone, so I could not check whether the maids who wielded the curling tongs in this mansion had to endure being thrashed if they misplaced a ringlet. Milvia had a bright, intelligent expression that suggested she could manage staff by guile. Or bribe them, anyway.
Taking charge firmly, Helena proffered a smile that would polish sideboards. `I do apologise for bothering you you must have lots to do. This is Didius Falco, who is conducting enquiries on behalf of an important committee. He'll be sitting here quietly while we have our chat, but you don't need to worry about him. It was thought that you
