“You knew he had made himself unpleasant to Caecilia Paeta?” I insisted.
“Yes, I knew that,” Laelia answered in a low voice.
“It was you she confided in?”
“Yes.” I wondered briefly: If Caecilia had attracted the lecher but Laelia did not, was Laelia jealous?
“Did she tell you of her fears that he might one day go for Gaia?”
“Yes!” These affirmatives were snapping out now.
“Did anybody tell Laelius Numentinus?”
“Oh no.”
“You already had enough troubles in this family?” I asked dryly.
“How right you are!” returned Laelia, rather defiantly. That did not mean she would expound on what those troubles were. Ariminius, I noticed, looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“Did Terentia Paulla know what the man she had married turned out to be like?”
Laelia now sought support from her husband. He was the one taking decisions on what confidences to reveal-or what lies to tell. He said, “Terentia Paulla knew what she was doing when she married.”
I gazed at him. “How did she know?”
“Uncle Tiberius was a very old friend of the family.”
I paused. That, colleagues, is always an intriguing situation. Old friends of families are rarely what everyone pretends. They may well be like this one: dirty swine who can never keep their pricks under their tunics, men who bully the women into tolerating their abuse because quite simply no one ever complained before and it seems too late to say anything after so many years.
“So why, if his predilections were obvious, did an extremely holy woman who had just spent three decades living modestly ever want to marry him?”
“Only she can answer that!” cried Laelia harshly.
“Well, if I have no luck finding Gaia, I may have to talk to your aunt.” I noticed that caused a shock of panic, at least in Laelia. She hid it well.
Despite her disguised alarm, for once it was the wife and not her husband who came out with the official tale: “Aunt Terentia prefers to see nobody at present. She is in mourning for her husband-and not in the best of health.” Mourning for her husband-or mourning her own stupidity in marrying a philanderer? Poor health-or just poor judgment?
“I shall try to spare her then. I met your brother,” I told Laelia. “Do you get on with Scaurus?”
“Yes, we’re very close.” I let that go too. I would not fancy having my sisters asked the same question.
“I believe you have seen him recently?”
“Not for anything special,” gasped Laelia, looking nervous at the question. Her shiftiness seemed to have something to do with her husband, as if he might not know.
“Wasn’t there a family conference?”
“Minor legal issues,” Ariminius put in. Still watching Laelia, who was now feigning wide-eyed innocence, I remembered that Meldina, the girl at the farm, had mentioned that Scaurus had been to Rome recently “to see his sister.” Once again, I yearned to interrogate Laelia without her husband. They seemed welded together, unfortunately.
“Issues arising from the death of Terentia’s husband?”
Ariminius did not want to go down this route. “Partly.”
“So Terentia was present?”
“Terentia Paulla is always welcome.”
Why, then, had the slave with the sponge and bucket been instructed to say that Terentia never came anymore?
“This family conference must have been a lively occasion!” I remarked quietly. Laelia and Ariminius exchanged glances in which more was being said than I yet understood. “By the way,” I enquired casually, “what did your ever-so-friendly Uncle Tiberius actually die of?” When nobody answered I did not press the point, but asked, “Was his wife with him when he died?”
Ariminius looked me straight in the eye. “No, Falco,” he said gently, as if he knew why I was asking. “Terentia Paulla was dining with her old colleagues at the House of the Vestals that night.”
The ultimate unshakable alibi-had anybody needed one, of course.
I stared straight back at Ariminius. “Sorry,” I said, not bothering to explain why.
“You know nothing about it, Falco.” The Pomonalis suddenly sounded tired. “And this has nothing to do with finding Gaia.”
I pulled up.
He and his wife were involved in some deceit; I had no doubt of it. But he was right. A young child was in danger, and that took precedence. Finding Gaia was my job.
I asked Ariminius to supply me with slaves to assist, and then I set about completing a systematic search of the entire house and grounds.
XXXVII
IT MUST HAVE been early afternoon when we set out. With the help of a large contingent of slaves, the whole place was gone over within a few hours.
Ariminius Modullus hung about. I might have wondered if he knew something bad and was watching in case I got too close. I did not trust him, but he was straight about the search. He watched and listened when I first gave orders, then he joined in. He did seem to understand how urgent the situation was, yet in a perverse way he was starting to enjoy the action, as he collected a posse and began supporting my efforts to show them how they must look into every chest and hamper, then under, in, and behind anything that had even a crack of room to squeeze inside.
He liked having something to do. I always kept an eye out, but his cooperation took some of the strain off me. I was grateful. The responsibility of finding the child was a hard one. Not finding her would be a grim burden to live with. It would have been oppressive enough, even if I did not know she had asked for my help and I had refused her.
My bet was that since he married Laelia, Ariminius had sunk into apathy, living with such a strong figure as his father-in-law. By the end of the afternoon I actually went so far as to tell him, man to man, “Numentinus has no patriarchal authority over you. You may respect him and the honored position he used to hold in your priesthood- but you answer to your own father.”
“Grandfather, actually. He drools a bit, but he lets me do what I like.” He seemed almost human; still, before he joined the pointyheads, he had been as common as I used to be. We were both born plebs.
“My advice is to leave here when this episode is over, and become head of your own household.” When he looked uncertain, I remembered the drab side of being a plebeian and asked, “Is funding a problem?”
To my surprise he said at once, “No. I have money.”
“But living in the Flaminia was too attractive?”
He smiled wryly. “I was ambitious once! But I shall probably not be promoted above Flamen Pomonalis now.” He did not say, even with the ex-Flamen Dialis as my father-in-law.
“I suppose you get sneered at by your in-laws for that?”
At first he was not intending to answer, then he squeezed out an affirmative. “And there is my wife to consider.”
“But Statilia Laelia does not remain in her father’s patriarchal control now she is married.”
“Not legally!” he said, with feeling.
“If her husband left to live independently, she would go with himof course.”
Ariminius was silent. Interesting. “At the moment,” he then said, like a man who had thought this out already, “desertion would be a cruelty.” Desertion seemed a strong word to use for moving out of his father-in-law’s house-though Numentinus was no ordinary father-in-law. Then I wondered if he meant more; if he left, would he shed the whole pack of them, wife and all? Would he want to leave Laelia behind?
