“I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” I said to Asklepiodes when they were gone. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting out here.”
“Your gracious lady has been wonderfully attentive,” he assured me.
“Let me offer you a late dinner, at least. I, for one, am famished.”
“I’ve already given orders,” Julia said. “The triclinium?“
“In my study,” I told her.
We retired to the little room off the small courtyard with its tiny pool and fountain. A goatskin bag of documents from the Tabularium sat on the fioor next to my desk. Moments later, my slaves laid out cold chicken, boiled eggs, sliced fruit, bread, pots of oil and honey, and cups of watered wine, lightly spiced and heated.
“A bit Spartan,” I said, by way of apology, “but I eat when I can these days. Never time for a proper dinner.”
“This is splendid,” he assured me. “I would rather help you and eat on the fiy than put in any ordinary day’s work followed by a lavish banquet. You’ve no idea how bored I get.” He spoke and ate rapidly, interrupting his words for small bites of food and sips of wine. He was an excitable little man for a philosopher.
“Ah, you’ve learned something!” I said. “Did the bodies display signs of foul play?”
“I couldn’t say,” he said, dipping bread in a mixture of oil and garum. “I didn’t see them.”
“Eh?”
“It seems there are no bodies.”
“Just a moment,” I said. “I distinctly remember bodies. Two of them. Lucius Folius and his wife. I couldn’t be mistaken.”
“Oh, certainly there were bodies; I have no doubt of it.” He vastly enjoyed my perplexity, as usual.
“Perhaps you had best describe your mission, in sequence and in detail.”
“Excellent idea. Well, from the ludus I went to the Libitinarii quarter near the Temple of Libitina. A bit of questioning got me to the establishment of one Sextus Volturnus, where the bodies had been taken from the destroyed insula. Upon questioning, the proprietor informed me that the bodies in question had been claimed.”
“By whom?” I asked.
“An heir presented himself, a certain Caius Folius, from Bovillae.”
“Young Antonius told me Folius was from Bovillae,” I said.
“It seems that the heir was in some haste to remove the bodies for burial in their ancestral town. He had them loaded on a cart and taken away.”
“Did this heir claim the bodies of any of the household slaves?”
“I didn’t think to ask. Excellent wine, by the way. Julia has improved your cellar.”
“Did this Caius Folius present any proof as to his identity?”
Asklepiodes’s eyebrows went up. “I did not think to ask that either. Is it customary?” He chewed an olive and spat the pit into a bowl that was rapidly filling with fruit peels and cheese rinds. “My old friend, you sent me there to examine the bodies, not to play the role of a State freedman.”
“Just so,” I said. You had to let Asklepiodes do things his own way. He could be as temperamental as a Greek tragedian. “It’s unfortunate that you couldn’t get a look at them.”
“And yet my visit was not entirely unfruitful.”
“How so?” I asked patiently.
“I spoke with the undertaker’s assistants. These men had the task of washing the bodies, disguising injuries, dressing hair, applying cosmetics, and so forth, to make them presentable for the funeral. They are highly skilled and, in their own way, are nearly as knowledgeable about wounds as many surgeons and physicians. I asked them about the condition of the bodies of Lucius Folius and his wife.”
“And?”
“Those who’d washed the bodies informed me that there were no cuts or severe abrasions. They might almost have died of suffocation like so many of the others, except that there were no signs of struggle.”
“Struggle?” I said.
“Yes. Suffocating people, unless unconscious, usually fight frantically, striking and kicking against whatever obstacle is pinning them down. When the medium is a relatively unyielding building material such as wood, stone, or brick, there is often extensive laceration of the hands, feet, elbows, and knees.”
“That makes sense.” I shuddered even to contemplate so hideous a situation. It makes death on the end of a Gaul’s spear seem pleasant by comparison.
“The hairdresser told me that there were no lacerations of the scalps, and he detected no shifting of the skull bones beneath the scalps. Had the bodies been dropped into the basement to land on their heads hard enough to break their necks, strongly depressed skull fractures would certainly have been the result.”