“Aren’t you the clever one,” she said tonelessly.
“Actually,” I told her, “Hermes figured that one out. He has his moments. That leaves only Quadrilla. Why did you kill her?”
“The dagger.”
“What?” I said.
“She’d taught me that trick with the little dagger, hiding it in your hair. Greek hetaerae don’t use it, you see. They don’t stoop to common, brutal clients. They’re too expensive. But Italian whores know the trick, and Quadrilla had been forced into prostitution when she was a young girl, after her father was ruined. Like so many of the wives around here, she came to me to learn refinements. In return, she taught me some of the baser realities of a whore’s life. Just in case I should ever be cast aside, you see.”
“But she smuggled you into her house,” Julia said. “You were sleeping with her, too.”
“With quite a few of the local ladies, actually. As I said, they came to me for lessons. What better way to teach? But Quadrilla began to tease, to let me know she knew I’d done away with Gaeto. Maybe she would have kept silent. But I couldn’t risk it.”
“And the bandits?” I said. “How did you contact them?”
She livened a bit. “By pure luck. They found me arranging Charmian’s body. They’d been driven from Vesuvius by the smoke and ash and were foraging in the countryside. They wanted the horses. I told them go ahead and take them. Then I told them that I could pay them handsomely of they’d get rid of a Roman praetor and his prisoner for me. You’re such a troublesome snoop. I told them when Gaeto’s funeral would be and which road you would be on.”
“How did you know I’d let Gelon go and that I would attend?”
“Because I’d already seen what a dutiful man you were, what an examplar of Roman pietas, when you were so generous about Gorgo’s funeral. You were so punctilious about matters of religion and ritual. I never thought you’d be so handy with a sword. I was very impressed.”
“But why,” Julia asked, “did you take Quadrilla’s sapphire?”
She looked at my wife, and for the first time her eyes revealed the madness within. “As a keepsake. I truly liked Quadrilla.”
“Why didn’t you kill Diocles?” Antonia asked.
“He was next,” Jocasta told us. “But Diocles presented difficulties. He would never let me get close. The others allowed me to get close.”
There was silence for a while, then I rose from my chair. “It is almost sundown and I told the town that I would render judgment by then. Let’s go to the forum and set this matter at rest.”
“Actually,” Jocasta said, “I don’t wish to provide a spectacle for all these Campanian snobs. But I don’t mind letting a Caesar and a Metellus see this.” Her right hand went to her hair.
“Stop her!” Julia shouted.
But Jocasta was too swift for our stunned senses and she hadn’t run out of daggers. This was not one of her needlelike weapons. It was no larger, but its blade was flat and double-edged, with a keen point. It flashed across and went in beneath her left ear. She jerked it across, all the way to the other ear. The she stood there, with her blood flowing like a waterfall. Throughout, she glared at us with defiance, standing erect, letting us know who was the true aristocrat here. Then the light went out of her eyes.
I sat again, ignoring the wails and sobs of the women, the strangled noises made by the men.
“I should have had her stripped and her hair searched,” I said. “I must be getting old.” But I was truly not unhappy that I would not be condemning her to death. In spite of all she had done, I did not want her blood on my hands.
“I LOST THE CASE BUT MY CLIENT WAS exonerated,” Tiro mused. “I am not sure how I feel about that.”
“Feel happy,” Cicero advised. “The law is a chancy business. I was exiled for the finest legal judgment I ever delivered.” He shook his head. “This district is so pleasant it’s hard to believe it’s such a sink of corruption.”
“I like it anyway,” I assured them. “They know how to have a good time, and you can’t get fish stew like this just anyplace.”
We were lounging in a dining room of the Villa Hortensia while my household packed up for the trip to Bruttium. We were dipping crusts of bread into the last of the stew, having put away a prodigious amount of it.
“Did you hear?” Hermes inquired. “Diocles opened his veins last night.”
“With all his guilt,” I said, “what he couldn’t stand was for people to know he’d been the slaver’s partner. This is one funeral I’ll pass up.”