“It was Pelotas that found him. He was paying a visit here when he saw the corpse.”
“I smelled it first,” Pelotas said.
“I don’t want to ask why you were here,” I said.
“Just as well. Anyway, when I came in—”
“I don’t suppose you just knocked and come through the front door,” I said.
“Well, no. I came in through the roof.”
“All right, I’ll assume you were doing some repair work up there, had to remove a few tiles, that sort of thing?”
“Exactly, Senator. Anyway, I dropped in and the first thing hits me is the smell. I looked around until I found the room with the body. As you know, I see good at night, and that hour there was moonlight coming in through the window. I saw right away it was Postumius. I knew him from the races. He knew his horses better than most, and he knew all the drivers, so he was always good for a tip. Felix had put the word out a few days back that anyone who saw Postumius should come tell him right away, day or night, so I ran right over to the Labyrinth.”
“Why did you pick this house to visit tonight? Other than the necessary roof repair, I mean.”
“Well, I’d heard it was a rich man’s place. I’d looked it over the last few nights and never saw anyone here, nor any lights.”
“Always good to do repair work when the owner is away,” Hermes commented. “That way he’s not disturbed by all the noise.”
“That’s how it is,” Pelotas agreed.
“Does anyone know which rich man owns this house?” I asked. All I got were some shrugs. “Where did you hear that a rich man owned the place?”
“From the neighbors. I never asked his name.”
“Er, Senator,” Felix said, “what’s all this about?”
“It’s how he works,” Hermes assured him. “He collects all the available facts before he makes any assumptions.”
“Philosopher, eh?” Felix said. “I never would’ve expected.”
I looked around. The house was of modest size, but even the houses of the rich were relatively small in those days. The wealthy spent money on lavish country houses, maintaining a pose of antique virtue in Rome. There was more room for sprawl in the Trans-Tiber, but this house was on one of the smaller streets near the river and was typical of the district.
Not that it was all that modest inside. The walls in the room where we sat were adorned with frescoes of the highest quality and the floor was tiled in intricate geometrical patterns. There was a statue of Apollo just outside the door that opened onto the impluvium. It looked like a very superior copy of the original by Praxiteles, probably a product of Aphrodisias, and I knew from experience how expensive Aphrodisian sculptures could be.
No sense putting it off any longer. “Well, let’s have a look at him,” I said.
We got up and passed through the colonnade surrounding the impluvium. In the rear of the house we took a stair to the second floor and walked a few paces along the balcony to where another armed man stood guard at a door. We went inside.
As Pelotas had hinted, the smell was awful. It usually is when someone has been tortured to death. The late Postumius had been bound naked to a chair and worked over by an expert, or more likely by a team of them. He had been burned, beaten, partially flayed, and bits of him hung loose, apparently torn by pincers.
“As a soldier and magistrate,” I said, “I’ve witnessed a good many military and judicial tortures. I’ve never seen anything this comprehensive.”
“Somebody wanted some answers from him,” Felix said. “From the look of it, he didn’t know what they wanted him to tell them.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“I knew the man. He didn’t have the backbone to hold his tongue under a working over like this.”
“Very likely. Hermes—”
“I know. Go get Asklepiodes.” He turned and left the room, for once all too eager to run off on an errand.
There was a single window at the rear of the room. I went to it and opened the shutters and leaned out to breathe some clean air. Below was a short embankment, and beyond it the river. It was a good place to torture someone. It was upstairs in the center of the house, with a number of walls between this room and the neighboring houses. It was as far as you could get from the street and nothing was to the rear but the river. A man could scream as loud as he liked and not be heard.
“Any idea who owns this house?” I asked.
“None,” Felix said. “I could find out.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll just ask the neighbors as soon as the neighborhood is awake. Well, there’s nothing to be gained standing around here.”