“Must it be only one?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“As you’ve said, Celer had no dearth of enemies. Might Ariston not have shopped his services around to a number of them? He might have taken pay from more than one, and each would think that he was the only one who had hired Ariston.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted, intrigued by the idea. “It would present some interesting judicial problems in assigning guilt, wouldn’t it? I mean, if it wasn’t, technically, a conspiracy, how would the courts go about punishing them? Give each a portion of a death sentence? Find extremely tiny islands for them all?”
“Rein in your imagination,” she said. “Probably only the saga would get the full sentence of the law; perhaps the Greek physician as well. Those who hired him might get off with exile, since they were probably of the nobility. They would at least be given the option of honorable suicide.”
“Probably,” I mused. Then I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work anyway. The more people Ariston involved, the greater the chance of discovery. He was a cautious man, and poison is notoriously the weapon of a coward. I can’t imagine him being so bold as to dupe a number of murderously inclined men that way. I think he sold his services to one of them and deemed himself safe.”
“It is worth considering. Anything else?”
“Yes, I conferred with Flavius, the fire-eating tribune of last year.” I told her of my interview. “He was everything I’d hoped: violent, abrasive, obnoxious, and a firm supporter of Pompey.”
“So what is wrong?”
“He’s too good to be true. Besides, everything about him proclaims a willingness, even an eagerness, to shed his enemy’s blood with his own hands. I just don’t think poison is his style, although Celer’s death was awfully convenient for him, coming when it did. His anger when I brought up the subject of poisoning was too convincing. If he’d been expecting the accusation, I doubt he’d have been able to summon up that extravagant facial color on cue.”
“I am not convinced that your judgment of men is as accurate as you think, but where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us with the curule aedile Murena, who reported upon the death of Harmodia and then sent for the report, which has subsequently disappeared.”
“Have you found him?”
“I have. I told you I haven’t been wasting my time today.”
She patted my hand. “Yes, dear, I didn’t mean to imply that you are an irresponsible overgrown boy who drinks too much. Now proceed.”
I told her of my interview with Murena in the jeweler’s market, finishing with: “And then I walked out into the Forum and you found me.”
“Politically, he sounds just like you,” she observed.
“That’s the problem. I rather liked the man. But I won’t deny that I have been fooled before.”
“There are too many things that don’t fit together,” she said. “There has to be something we are overlooking.”
“Undoubtedly,” I said, gloomily. “I am sure it will come to me in time, but time is just what we’re short of. It’s going to do us little good if, six months from now, I wake up in a leaky tent in Gaul while the savages beat their drums and toot their horns all around the camp in their massed thousands and I cry, ‘Eureka!’ ”
“Yes, that would do us little good,” she agreed.
“Did you hear anything last night?”
“I may have. After the banquet was over and the slaves had departed for the festivities, we cleaned up the triclinium and the ladies of the various households visited among themselves, bringing gifts. It’s traditional.”
“I’m familiar with the custom,” I told her. “My father’s house has been without a lady since my mother died and my sisters married, but I remember them all flocking about on Saturnalia.”
“Since my uncle is pontifex maximus, we went nowhere. Everyone came to us. Only the family of the Flamen Dialis has as much prestige, and there hasn’t been one of those in almost thirty years.” The high priest of Jupiter was so bound by ritual and taboo that it was increasingly difficult to find anyone who wanted to assume the position, prestigious as it was.
“I know why Caesar wanted to be pontifex maximus,” I said. “His mother put him up to it. Aurelia just wanted to have every woman in Rome, even the ladies of the highest-ranking households, come to her and abase themselves.”
She punched me in the ribs. “Stop that! As usual, there was gossip. People speak more freely at Saturnalia than at other times. A lot of it was about Clodia.”