corruption charges, in a case which he won. The son's wife, Saffia Donata, turned against her husband and, he says, stripped him of everything. Another informer who sits among us here, Paccius Africanus – with or without connivance from Silius-moved in on the family with motives that may have seemed helpful at the time but which now look only sinister. At least one of their slaves, a door porter, Perseus, seems to have discovered secrets they wanted to hide, and ran rings around them. And harboured in their midst was Calpurnia Cara, apparently a devoted wife and mother, but as we shall show you, a woman of strong passions and determined hatreds, who would not flinch from the worst possible action.
Following his condemnation in the court case, Rubirius Metellus was advised to commit suicide. This did not suit the informer who had accused him of corruption, for if the condemned man took his own life, Silius would lose his compensation. To the dismay of Silius, Metellus died. From motives we can only despise, the informer rallied; next he accused the elder daughter of poisoning her father, after Metellus had allegedly declined to take his own life. Rubiria Juliana was tried in the Senate, but was acquitted and lives blameless. Thwarted, Silius Italicus has now allied with his colleague, Paccius Africanus, to accuse the son instead, in a case which has yet to be heard. Truly, the children of the late Rubirius Metellus carry a heavy burden. It weighs worst on the son. Disinherited by his father, for reasons of which he is totally ignorant, he now learns he has a brazen and callous mother. The unnatural woman whom we have brought before you intends to give evidence that will condemn Metellus Negrinus, her only son, for his father's murder.
We, however, will be able to demonstrate that it was not the ill-fated Negrinus who killed his father – but his mother Calpurnia Cara. She may have been a blameless wife – certainly she will tell you so. You will be shocked by what drove her to the dreadful crime she committed. She had had to endure a husband who exhibited, in the most public way, a shameful partiality for his own daughter-in-law. That young woman has unfortunately died in childbed this very week and cannot be questioned. But her influence on Rubirius Metellus is demonstrated by the way he treated her financially and it is the root cause of this family's misery. The rapacious and blackmailing demands of the daughter-in-law led to an unenviable need for money, which resulted in the corruption for which Metellus was found guilty. And the unnatural favour shown to his daughter-in-law in his will led to his death at the hands of his embittered wife. You may feel sympathy for her predicament, but her unflinching dispatch of her husband and her desperate measures to conceal the crime deserve only condemnation.
Fuelled by sorrow, shame, and anger at her omission from the will of a husband of near forty years, Calpurnia Cara turned on Rubirius Metellus and removed him from the world. We shall show you that she sold her jewellery, then consulted a woman familiar with the black arts, to learn what fatal poison she should choose and how it might be administered. She arranged to obtain the noxious drug, through the medium of Paccius Africanus – a man who must be no stranger to the disreputable side of life. They used one of his creatures, a man of such appalling habits that he has employed violence on the very streets of Rome in a foolish attempt to dissuade us from bringing this case. You can see sitting there, my colleague Didius Falco, still bearing the scars of that vicious attack.
Calpurnia arranged to have the chosen drug, insidious hemlock, secretly given to her husband in his lunchtime meal. Metellus succumbed, and far from committing suicide among his loving family as the world was informed, he may have died a lonely death. Certainly his corpse was accorded no respect. Calpurnia attempted to hide the results of her actions by concealing the body; Metellus may not even have been dead when she secreted him in a crude garden shack – but it was in that sorry place that he met his end. For three whole days the body of Rubirius Metellus lay concealed in that mean location, without the honours due to a man of his rank or the sorrowing ministrations of his children and his friends. Neither his children nor his friends were aware of what had happened.
Then the body was at last removed from its hiding place. Realising that concealment would not work, Calpurnia had invented an elaborate lie about the time and the manner of her husband's death. Under her instructions Rubirius Metellus was laid on his own bed as if he had perished there that day. A false story of his suicide was concocted. Calpurnia Cara lied to her household. She lied to her children. She lied to the seven senators who were suborned into witnessing their noble friend's supposed suicide, allegedly at his request. When we call her to give evidence, let us all be aware that this terrible woman may yet lie in court…'
That was a rather exciting statement. Marponius had reached the limit of his concentration. He adjourned the session.
XXXIX
THE ADJOURNMENT provided a respite and an opportunity. Honorius went off by himself, looking exhausted. Flushed with his success at tracking down the hemlock-salesman, Aelianus volunteered to seek out Olympia, supposedly consulted by Calpurnia as a fortune-teller. Honorius had previously been looking for this crone, or so he said, but with no results.
`Where will you start, Aulus?
I have my methods!'
I knew he had only one method, to which he stuck with a rigidity I would need to shatter. But it served here. Any highborn ladies would know how to reach this star-gazer. Once again, Aelianus was going home for lunch. There, he would ask his mother.
The principled Julia Justa would never have handed over any of her tight household budget to a fashionable seer, but she might possess acquaintances who did. I could imagine my dear mother-in-law reproving them for their daftness in her silky, sarcastic way. Even if she had been extremely rude in the past, that would not stop her now. I don't suppose her cronies would admit to being scared of the noble Julia, but she would get an address for her boy.
I was glad to have back-up from Aelianus. With Justinus away and Honorius resting (or whatever he was up to), we needed to deploy our resources well. I myself had to tackle someone else: I grabbed sustenance, then headed off to stick my mark on Licinius Lutea.
The one-time near-bankrupt lived in an apartment not far from that in which he had established Saffia. He managed to rent half a house, divided up tastefully in what had once been a rich man's mansion. Lutea had the part above the sausage shop, the least desirable to discerning tenants – though it must be handy for a divorcee who owned no slaves. I guessed he lived on hot pies from the bakery and cold pork sausage – when he was not cadging dinners from old friends who could not shake him off.
I found him in a reading room, stretched on a couch. There was not much else in the elegant space, just a couple of lamps. I call it a reading room because there was one silver scroll box; I wondered if it had been a gift from the grateful Saffia – and instinctively, I reckoned it was empty. The whole apartment was extremely bare, its decor standardised by a landlord – though one who had used expensive designers for the black and vermilion paintwork.
`Isn't this place a bit above your price?' I asked Lutea frankly. `I heard you had no credit.'
Lutea gave me a sharp look. Rallying from his listlessness, he admitted in a douche way, `Yes, it is. I survive, though.'
`They call you an entrepreneur. It usually means a confidence trickster, in the world I come from.'
`Then you inhabit a tragic world, Falco.'
`It's improving. How about yours?'
`One lives in hope.' He pretended to be too subdued to argue, though I wasn't fooled.
Lutea kept acting out low in spirits. Underneath, he remained the brazen, well-manicured type with a flash tunic and no conscience. I was glad I had not brought Helena. Her open disapproval would not win his confidence. I myself would feel dirty afterwards if I played the sympathetic playboy with him, but that was nothing to me. You can scrub off the taint of lousy immorality like his.
I had noticed there was no sign nor sound of a child in the house. I asked after his son.
`Lucius is being looked after. Poor little terror. It's very hard on him – well, it's hard on both of us. Oh we shall both miss darling Saffia!' That might be so, but they would miss her in different ways.
`You seemed remarkably attentive to your ex-wife. Was the split from her a subject for regret?'
`I was heartbroken. Her damned father…' Lutea tailed off sadly. `I had hoped when she left old Birdy, I might
