Inside, the room was surprisingly spare and unadorned for a man so rich. There was a small table and a low bed just large enough for his corpulent body. I have noted this about ex-slaves many times. A bedroom is no more than a place for exhausted sleep. Paulus’s pleasures were those of the table and the bath.
He lay on the bed, his face contorted, a deep, livid line encircling his neck. Despite his expression, there were no signs of a struggle. He had gone to bed drunk and probably never woke up. The cord had not been left in place.
High on the wall opposite the door was a window which measured no more than a foot on each of its four sides, perhaps even a little less. Only a boy could have entered that way. I suspected that one had. I left and gave orders that no one was to enter.
I was standing on the ladder, examining the roof, when I heard someone call my name. I looked down and there stood my father with a knot of other officials.
“Why are you standing on a ladder like a housepainter when you should be attending to official business?” he demanded.
“I am attending to official business,” I said. “I am examining this roof. It’s in shocking condition. Decrepit tile and moss everywhere. Why be as rich as Paulus if you can’t have a decent roof?”
“Approving of construction standards may be your duty when you are a quaestor. Not now.”
I took a tile at the edge of the compluvium and shook it. Fragments of decayed tile dropped into the gutter that drained rain from the courtyard. There were no other fragments on the ground. I descended the ladder. “Whoever it was didn’t come in over the roof. The moss and the tiles would show that.”
“Why this philosophical interest in such details?” someone asked. I saw that it was my colleague Rutilius. Op-imius was there as well.
“I want to find out who the murderer was.”
“It’s obvious,” Opimius said. “That fat eunuch killed him. The window’s too small to let in a housebreaker, and the slave slept across the door. Who had a better opportunity?”
I looked at him disgustedly. “Don’t talk like an idiot.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Even a blockhead like that would know better than to use a garrote,” I said. “Or a dagger or any other weapon. You’ve seen how big he is. With Paulus in a drunken stupor, he’d just smother him with a pillow. The next morning it would look like he’d died naturally, the way fat men who drink too much often die. I’ll bet many a master who was too free with the whip was helped along in such a fashion.”
“Don’t speak so!” said Rutilius, deeply shocked.
“Why not? We all live in fear of being murdered in our beds by our own slaves. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of it. Why else do we crucify a whole houseful of them for one murder? Why else did Crassus crucify six thousand rebel slaves last year?”
They were all shocked and deeply offended. I was speaking of something far more sensitive than their wives’ chastity. It was the secret fear we all live with and deny. On a better day, I would not have spoken so loosely, but this was definitely not one of my good days.
“If not the eunuch, then who?” my father said, dragging us back to the matter at hand.
“I don’t know, but…” I realized that I was admitting uncertainty at the wrong time, to the wrong people. I sought to cover my gaffe. “I have strong, almost certain suspicions. However,”—I looked around and lowered my voice—"now is not the time or place to say anything, if you know what I mean.” Of course they didn’t, but they nodded sagely. All Romans love a conspiracy.
“Carry on, then,” Father said. “But don’t take too long at it.” He turned and bellowed, “Secretary!” in the voice that had once struck terror into a veteran legion. An ink-fingered Greek came running. “Did Paulus leave a will?” Father demanded.
“Yes, Praetor. Copies are filed at the Archives and in the temples of Vesta and Saturn. The master always made out a new will in January of each year.”
“A new one each year?” Father said. “Had a hard time making up his mind, did he? Well, a testament will simplify things greatly.”
Rutilius snorted. “Forgive me, Praetor, but it will do no such thing. If he’d come from a great family, with many important relatives to uphold it, who would contest such a will? But when it was a mere freedman, and so much property at stake? The fighting will be vicious and will go on for a long time.”
“You are probably right,” Father said. “Perhaps we can get the reading delayed until after the new year and the next board of magistrates can handle it. I’ll be in Hither Spain and out of all this.” In those days, when the new praetors for the year entered office, the Senate decided what their pro-praetorian provinces should be when they left office. They would govern these provinces for a year, or perhaps two or three years. Even for an honest administrator, there were legitimate opportunities for growing very rich in such an office. Father had drawn Hither Spain as his province. It wasn’t one of the real plums, but it wasn’t bad at all.