The River God's Vengeance(69)

“And the wound you describe: Not only did the dagger have to penetrate a heavy woolen toga and a layer or two of clothing beneath that, but it was dragged upward several inches. That takes a strong man.”

“Yes, I suppose it would,” he agreed, nodding.

“And it didn’t occur to you to point this out at the time?” I asked, exasperated. “A whore can easily murder a man, but first she gets him out of his clothes, relaxed and unsuspecting. Then she can stick a tiny knife into his jugular or slip a stiletto into his heart, and he’ll die practically without noticing it!”

“Yes, that makes sense. But, my old friend, I was summoned to give the man what aid I could, which was very little indeed. I was never questioned by an investigator.” This, to Asklepiodes, took care of everything.

I sighed. Sometimes I wondered whether I was the only man in the world who reasoned in the fashion I did. “And you’ve done well, if somewhat belatedly. Thank you. I thank you.”

“Always happy to be of assistance to Senate and People,” he assured me, and went off to rejoin his companion for the night, probably some painted, pretty boy. He was, after all, a Greek.

“I hope you’ve kept your ears open through all this,” I said to Hermes. He was purchasing a bundle of small torches from a vendor.

“Yes, though those dancers strained my eyes.” He ignited a torch at a wall sconce and preceded me back toward the bridge. “The whore Galatea sounds like she might have been that poor, whipped girl we saw at the insula.”

“My own thought. Andromeda said her accent sounded local but not Roman. Bovillae is only about thirty miles down the Via Appia. People there talk almost like Romans. And the bouncer, Antaeus—”

“The big slave. He was hiding behind the door. There was plenty of space there and no window in the wall on the courtyard side where someone might see what was going on inside.”

“I’ve taught you well, Hermes!” I commended him. Sometimes the boy was almost worth what he ate, drank, and stole. “Lucilius must have been attacked and stabbed as soon as the door was shut. Then the big slave and the girl would have left the room separately, after an interval. With all the comings and goings in a place like that, who would notice?”

“That’s why they went to work there a few days before the killing!” Hermes said, getting excited. “They needed to be there long enough so nobody would notice them, and they needed to pick a good room to carry it out. They settled on one way on the top fioor, with plenty of room behind the door and no window in the front wall! The big man went up there earlier; so if anyone knocked, he’d yell that the room was occupied.”

“You’re learning to think like a criminal, Hermes, but I suppose it must come naturally to you. Now I am wondering who the man in the hooded cloak might have been and why Lucilius went up to that room with Galatea.”

“The man in the hood was probably Folius,” Hermes said. “The girl and the big slave were his property. And as for going upstairs with Galatea, I know why I’d have been going up there with her.”

“No doubt. But you shouldn’t always jump at the easiest answer. There are too many people involved in this.”

“What, then?”

“I was thinking about Lucilius’s dying words.” Ahead of us I could see the torches burning along the parapets of the Sublician Bridge. Beneath them people were still watching the ominous rise of the river.

“You mean ‘?lthy dog?’ What—oh, I see what you mean.”

The boy still had much to learn. It had just occurred to him what had occurred to me the moment Asklepiodes had said it. The Greek physician, whose ear for Latin was not as perfect as he liked to think, had heard the gritted, dying words of Lucilius incorrectly.

He hadn’t been saying canis. He had been saying Caninus.





11


WAIT,” I SAID AS HERMES WAS about to set his foot on the bridge.

He turned. “What?”

“Go upriver. We’re going to cross at the Cestian Bridge.”

“We’re going to the Island?”

“Well, I suppose we could jump into the river instead, but ordinarily if you cross the Cestian, you end up at the Island.” The long, puzzling, fatiguing day had reduced me to second-rate sarcasm.

“Whatever you say.” He turned left and preceded me along the embankment, which on this side of the river was well above the waterline. As Ogulnius had told me, the current was far slower and less destructive here on the inner curve of the river bend than on the opposite bank. I do not know why this should be, but perhaps it is rather like the way the hub of a chariot seems to be turning rather slowly, while the rim, which is still part of the same wheel, is turning furiously. I decided I would have to ask a philosopher about this sometime.