“Yes, well, matrimony is never without hazard.”
“Remember that. Servilia keeps popping up in this because she is now close to Caesar, and somehow this business is all about Caesar. It’s his astronomers being murdered. This is aimed at him.”
“I agree. It’s an uncommonly oblique way of attacking him, though.”
“Easterners are involved and that is how they work,” she asserted.
It was after dinner, our guests had gone home and we were enjoying a rather crisp evening by the pool, sitting with a brazier of glowing coals between us. The year had been uncommonly mild but a chill was creeping into the air. Julia was wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak, but I preferred to exhibit manly hardihood by wearing nothing over my tunic.
“This is complicated even for our usual eastern enemies,” I said. “Maybe these people come from even farther east. What’s that place where silk comes from? I think it’s about as far east as you can go.”
“Keep your thoughts closer to home,” she advised.
“I know, the king of Parthia is the most likely contender for foreign action, but somehow I don’t think so. I think we have an oriental assassin working for somebody right here in Rome.”
“There is still Sextus Pompey,” she reminded me.
“Last I heard he was in Spain and our suspects came from the opposite direction. Admittedly, he could have agents working here in Rome who might have hired the killer, but young Pompey has no more imagination than his father. This is beyond him. If we can’t figure it out, how could he have dreamed it up?”
“We’re missing something,” she said.
“Of course we are. That’s always how it is when people behave in such a deceitful manner. Later on, when you have all the pieces in your grasp, you wonder why you never noticed those obvious factors that were staring you in the face all along.”
“Callista says you should write all this down. Perhaps you could give a course of lectures on your methods.”
“I ought to. Future generations will thank me.”
“What if the grain swindle was just practice?” Julia said.
“Eh? Where did that come from?”
“It just seems to me that they may have had something bigger in mind. Polasser and Postumius discovered their mutual criminal inclinations. Polasser was intrigued by the chariot race swindle Postumius boasted about, and perhaps wanted to give it a try himself.”
I saw what she was getting at. “But Postumius cautioned him against it. Felix the Wise might find out and punish them. Polasser was undoubtedly the more intelligent and imaginative man. He saw that the same swindle could be used in other venues. He had traveled widely, lived some time in Alexandria where the world grain trade is centered. He knew that trading in grain futures can be as much of a gamble as betting on the races. But you think it might have been just practice?”
“I believe so. Polasser needed some experience in this sort of criminality. He was already a fraudulent astrologer and needed to build up his confidence in the wider world of business.”
“What was he practicing for?” I asked, already thinking I knew the answer.
“What is the biggest, most profitable activity in Rome?” she asked.
“Politics,” I answered. “Politics as it is practiced at the highest levels, among the great families. How did he expect to—” Then it struck me. “Fulvia.”
“He already knew her as her astrologer. He asked her to pick out some likely grain merchants and recommend him to them, tell them that his predictions were infallible. It’s a sordid business for a patrician, but I wouldn’t put anything past Fulvia.”
I thought about it. “The temptation must have been strong. That was last year. Her husband, Curio, was dead and there was no love lost between her and the rest of his family. She hadn’t landed Antonius yet, and she’s a woman with expensive tastes. She had to sell off his last harvest before his male heirs could get their hands on it. Polasser held out the prospect of a huge profit from very little effort, and I’ve found patricians to be no less larcenous than the rest of us. They’re just more snobbish about it.”
She let that pass. “The question is, what sort of fraud was he perpetrating?”
I pondered it. “As a foreigner Polasser couldn’t hope to take an active part in Roman politics, but politicians can be manipulated. He couldn’t manipulate them directly, but he could do so through their wives. He had the tools he needed already at hand since most of his clients were highborn ladies.”
“That chariot race elimination scheme wouldn’t work, though,” Julia said. “He wouldn’t have a large enough pool of victims to begin with. Plus, these are people who talk with each other constantly. The ones he’d given bad advice would complain about him to the others.”