`I'm sure the defence will bungle it!' Helena was even more cynical than me. I was not sure whether this had always been so, or whether living with me had hardened her. `She's a woman. With scandal in the air, she will stand no chance. The prosecution will allude to the previous corruption trial whenever possible, implying by association that Juliana is corrupt too. Like father, like daughter. In fact yes, she did buy the pills – but her father had declared to all the family that he intended to commit suicide. That is a recognised device at his rank, sanctioned down the centuries. Juliana was simply his instrument.'
I sniffed. `He changed his mind.'
`So he was a vacillating coward! But Juliana had tried to save him, so that's a double tragedy for her. And to be then accused of murdering him is vile.'
We were sitting in my office at home, me on a couch with the family dog shoving at me to make more room available, and Helena sitting on a table swinging her legs. The scrolls she had moved to clear a space for herself were squashed against a wall cupboard. From time to time she fiddled with my inkwell, while I watched, waiting for it to go over. It had a non-spill device, supposedly, which I was curious to test. `You met the apothecary, Marcus. What did you think of him?'
I repeated what I told Silius: Rhoemetalces was a successful professional who seemed to know what he was doing. Even accused of murder, I thought he would hold up well in court. As well as he could, that is. He had sold the pills which killed a man, he could not alter that. Everything hung on the court's interpretation of Metellus senior's intentions. Suicide is not illegal, far from it. So could the apothecary be held liable for a man who changed his mind? I thought it would be unfair – but fairness and justice are two different bines on the hop.
`You met Juliana,' I reminded Helena. `What was your opinion?'
Helena acknowledged that she had not viewed Juliana as a prospective killer. `I wanted family background. I did not scrutinise her as a possible suspect.'
`Still, what about her behaviour struck you?'
Helena pulled back the scene from her memory. `I saw her only briefly. She had a family resemblance to her mother Calpurnia, but younger of course, and softer. Sad and strained, but it looked well etched, so either those were always her natural features or all this business has worn her out.'
`Happy marriage?' I asked.
`Nothing to say yes or no,' Helena shrugged. 'Juliana thought I had come to express condolences. I felt she liked that. She seemed more genuine in her feelings than her mother had been – much less conscious of how everything would look.'
`Someone had told her not to answer questions.'
`Oh yes. She was quick to bridle and she jumped up to call for more attendants, once she realised what I had really come for.'
`Was she frightened?' I wondered.
`A little. Whether scared of me and what I might ask her, or afraid of whoever had told her to be very careful, I can't say.'
`The husband?'
`Most likely. What did you think of him, Marcus?'
Rufus? Unhelpful bastard. Not just to us – to his wife too.'
We talked about the second time Juliana was questioned, after she became a suspect, when Justinus and I had interviewed her formally, with her husband grimly sitting by. We had seen Paccius Africanus lurking at their house, so he was clearly still advising the family, including Juliana. So at what stage had it struck him that her involvement with the pill purchase might cause her problems? Presumably now he would be the defence in the new court case.
`Will you attend the trial, Marcus?'
`Love to, but it will be an impossible squeeze. If the case is heard in the Curia, only senators will be admitted inside the chamber. You know what it's like. The open doorways will be packed with nosy sightseers, most of whom won't hear a word. I can't face that.'
`You produced the initial evidence from which Silius must be working. Would he not take you, in the prosecution party?'
`He might if I had kept in with him. He has not been friendly since your brothers grabbed our fee.'
Helena looked serious. `And how, exactly, did they achieve it?' I looked vague. She tapped a fingernail on the inkwell. `Which of your dubious methods, Falco?'
`Oh… they visited the informer's underling, that useless Honorius, in his office.'
`And?’
'And persuaded him to produce a banker's order.'
`Persuaded?' asked Helena, with a glint. `They beat Honorius up?'
`Nothing so subtle. They locked themselves in with him and stayed there until he gave in. As I heard it, Aelianus took along some reading matter and sat casually immersed in scrolls. The lads peed out of the window, but Honorius was too shy, so he was suffering. After a few hours Honorius also became very hungry; Justinus fetched out a very large lunch basket – which they proceeded to devour with relish and did not share with the scribe.'
`I suppose Honorius caved in by the time they reached the forcedmeat balls?' Helena chortled.
`I think it was the giant shrimp tails that did the trick. Quintus sucks them out of their shells so very suggestively. But you get the idea.'
Helena Justina, the light of my life, gave me a look that said she was never quite sure whether to believe my rampant stories – but she rather suspected the worst of them were true. This look contained enough underlying humour to show she did not entirely disapprove. I like to think she was proud of me. After all, she was nicely brought up and would not have wished her husband to collect his debts using sordid brutality.
I had done that once. But those days were past.
We found the easiest way to take an interest in the trial was to take an interest in my noble in-laws. Helena's father, who rarely attended the Senate, was no great lover of gossip, but he was now intrigued by this case which had involved both his maverick sons and his daughter's low-class lover. Decimus trotted along every day, then most evenings either we dined with the Camilli, or we invited them to us. In this way, Julia Justa managed to see plenty of her little granddaughters, which pleased at least her.
She was about to be an even happier woman. Helena and I had popped in and out of the family home near the Capena Gate several times since we returned from Britain, but we were both preoccupied. We now realised that neither of us had set eyes on Justinus' wife, Claudia Rufina, since before we left. When she appeared at dinner, it turned out that, like Saffia Donata, Claudia was pregnant, due any day apparently.
`It's a new fashion!' I joked feebly, to disguise my shock. Fathering this baby must have been the last thing Justinus did before he left Rome with me. His languorous brown eyes, the delight of so many infatuated British bar-girls, met mine above a bread roll he was now conveniently munching. Behind it, his expression was invisible. `You kept this quiet!' I muttered to him privately. I had been fairly sure that during our trip abroad he had decided that he would end his marriage, which had become so uncomfortable despite Claudia's financial expectations.
`I would have told you, had I known,' he answered in a quietly savage undertone. But next moment he was smiling proudly, just as a father is supposed to do when his first child is due – due while we were eating our dessert custards, judging by the size of Claudia.
She was wearing a necklace of extremely large emeralds, with the air of a girl who thinks she may as well flaunt the one aspect of her personality that her husband truly admires. If they separated now, then as soon as the baby was old enough to travel, Claudia – a bright, goodhearted young woman who understood her own mistakes all too well – would finally return to her home province of Hispania Baetica. Justinus knew the implications. He would have to repay her dowry. He would concede that so young a child should live with its mother, so he would never see the child. He would not receive a sestertius from Claudia's much-vaunted inheritance. His mother would never forgive him, his father would be quietly furious, his sister would despair and his brother would gloat.
The trapped young husband looked at me again. I kept my face neutral and congratulated Claudia.
Claudia Rufina thanked me, with the dignity we had come to expect from her. To my relief, I heard Helena asking her father about the trial.
The senator sat up on his elbow, eager to take the stage. He was a grey-haired diffident man of deep humanity. Life had made him wealthy enough to have standing, yet too poor to do much with it. Just at the
