The Year of Confusion(66)

We went back downstairs and I took another cup of the hot, spiced wine. I needed it. “It’s dawn,” I said. “You and your men can go now. I won’t forget this favor, Felix.”

“Always happy to be of service to the Senate and People,” Felix said. He knew that I might again be a sitting magistrate and in a position to spare him serious punishment. His class and mine had an understanding in these matters. They left me alone with my thoughts and the remaining wine. It was almost gone when Asklepiodes arrived.

He was as cheerful as usual, despite the hour. “Murder never waits upon our convenience, does it, Decius?”

“I fear not. Hermes will show you where he is. Have a look and tell me what you think.” They disappeared upstairs. From outside, I heard morning sounds as the neighborhood embarked upon the coming day. Birds sang and I heard distant hammering. They were not upstairs for long.

“That’s enough to put a man off his breakfast,” he said.

“Have some wine,” I advised. “There’s a bit left.”

He held up a hand. “I don’t drink wine before noon.”

“That’s an odd habit,” I commented. I peered into the bottom of the pitcher. “Just as well. There really isn’t all that much left. Were you able to learn anything?”

“Only that the torture was carried on far too long. Painful though they were, his injuries were not sufficient to kill him by themselves. Signs of suffocation are absent. He died from the pain or terror or a combination of the two.”

“From the look of him they would have been sufficient for the task,” I observed. “It seems Felix the Wise was right. He didn’t have whatever information they wanted from him.”

“You assume that this was a torture for information?”

“Naturally. That’s the most common reason to give a man a working over like that.”

“Might it not have been revenge?”

I thought about it. “He seems hardly the sort to have earned such enmity, but then, how much do we know about him? I suppose someone truly vindictive might have wanted him to expire with embellishments. Rome abounds in men qualified to deliver the treatment.”

“I will take my leave then. I am still working on the neck-breaking puzzle. It seems to me that I must be overlooking something abundantly obvious.”

“I’ve had that feeling for this whole weary business,” I told him. He left with my thanks.

Hermes and I went outside to the now-awake neighborhood. A barber had set up his stool, his basin of warm water, and his vials of oil. A shopkeeper opened his shutters and dragged out his display cabinets of copper pans and platters. I walked over to this man.

“Good morning, Senator,” he said. He didn’t seem to recognize me as the infamous calendar tamperer.

“Good morning. Would you happen to know who owns that house?” I pointed to the one from which I had just emerged.

“It’s been standing empty for quite a while,” he said. “Last I remember, it belonged to that tribune of the people, the one who died in Africa a while back, fighting for Caesar’s cause.”

“Curio?” Hermes said.

“That’s the one.”

“Did he actually live there?” I asked him.

“I don’t recall ever seeing him there.”

“Has anybody lived there recently?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not in months. There were some funny-looking people there a few months ago, foreigners of some sort, but they were only there for a little while, less than a month.”

“What sort of foreigners?” Hermes asked.

“Couldn’t say. Not Greeks, but that’s as much as I can tell you. They didn’t show themselves much and never talked to anyone here that I heard of.”

“Have you seen anyone go in or out the last few days?” I inquired.

“Not in the daytime,” he said. “As for the nights, I couldn’t say.”

I thanked him and we walked away a few steps. “Curio again,” I said.

“So this place belongs to Fulvia?” Hermes said.

“I hope not. Let’s not assume so. It may have passed to someone else in his will. I hope that’s the case. I don’t want to have to haul Fulvia into court. She’d probably just have me killed, even if Antonius didn’t.”

We conferred for a while with the neighbors to either side and across the street. Nobody had seen or heard anything. All remembered some “foreigners” living there a few months previously, something that might or might not be significant. Much of the Trans-Tiber district catered to the river trade and there were many resident foreigners living there. It would not be at all unusual for such people to rent a house while its owner was away. On the other hand, we had the odd foreigners the sailor had told us of. Was there a connection between the two and this house?