“Excellent. Had Paulus a wife?”
“He had a slave-wife before he was emancipated, but she died before he was freed.” Slaves, of course, cannot contract legal marriage, but only the hardest masters fail to recognize these slave liaisons.
“Any free children?”
“None, sir.”
The vultures would be gathering with a vengeance, I thought. We entered the peristylium. Paulus’s was a colonnaded courtyard without a pool but with a sundial in the center. The space was ordinary for a country house but extremely large for a town house. This was all to the good because there were at least two hundred slaves assembled there.
The tears were copious; the sobbing and shrieking would have done credit to a band of professional mourners. It might have been because Paulus had been a kind master, but more likely because they were terrified, and with good reason. They were trapped in a slave’s worst nightmare. If it should happen that the master had been murdered by one of them, and should that slave not come forth to confess, or be exposed, every one of them would be crucified. It was one of our crudest and most detestable laws, but it stood, and should I not find the murderer, Cato (the repulsive Senator, not my excellent slave) would insist that it be put into effect. He probably would not bother to take into account that the victim had been a freedman rather than freeborn; a master was a master to Cato. He never passed up a chance to be as primitive and brutal as the ancestors he worshipped.
“Who last saw the master alive?” I said loudly enough for all to hear. Hesitantly, a very large, pudgy eunuch came forward.
“I am Pepi, sir,” he said in a fluting voice. “I always sleep across my master’s doorway, to protect his rest and to come at his call should he need help in the night.”
“You were not much help to him this night. Someone got past you.”
“Impossible!” he insisted, with a eunuch’s childlike indignation. “I wake at the slightest sound. That is why my master chose me for this duty. That, and because I am strong and could easily get him out of his bed and to the chamberpot when he was in no condition to do so himself.”
“Excellent,” I said. “That makes you the prime suspect.” The almost-man went terribly pale, already feeling the nails in his flesh. “Was there anything unusual last night when he went to bed?”
“N-nothing, master. He had drunk much wine, as on most nights. I undressed him, put him into his bed and covered him. He was snoring before I left the room and closed the door. I lay on my pallet and went to sleep. Like every other night.”
"Was there nothing unusual? Did nothing wake you? Think hard, man, if you fear the cross.”
He thought, sweat coming forth on his pale brow. His eyes widened a bit as a thought came into his dull mind. “Yes, there was something. Once, in the very early morning hours, something caused me to wake. I thought that the master might have called me, but there had been no sound. Then I knew that the master was no longer snoring, and that was why I woke. That happens sometimes. I went back to sleep.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Dead men seldom snore. How did you know what the hour was?”
“From my pallet I can see down the hall into the per-istylium. There was a very faint light, the light of the hour before dawn.”
I addressed the slaves. “All of you are to stay in the house, and stay calm. Should anyone try to escape, that will be a confession of complicity and you will be crucified. Be of good heart. I will have the murderer soon, and I do not believe it is one of you.” I had no such assurance, but I could not afford to have mass panic here. They looked at me gratefully, and with hope, making me feel like a wretched fraud.
Burrus entered the peristylium. “No other doors but the street door, sir,” he said, then chuckled. “And we always wonder why so many die in fires. All the windows are too small for any but a child to pass through, as in most town houses. Of course”—he jerked a thumb at the wide opening over the courtyard—"you could drop an elephant through this compluvium.”
I crooked a finger and the majordomo sprang to my side. “Have a ladder fetched,” I said. “I want to examine that roof.” He snapped his fingers and a slave went running.
“Now I want to see Sergius Paulus,” I said. I followed the majordomo down a short hall to an open door. The eunuch’s pallet still lay on the floor, shoved aside and forgotten. Before going inside, I swung the door back and forth. It opened outward, into the hall. Eunuch and pallet would have to be moved before anyone could get in. Also, it creaked loudly on unoiled hinges.