Part 16 (2/2)

Petronius and a couple of his lads were now lounging on benches. As I quizzed Scythax, they listened in, always glad to have me in their station house bringing some new jollity from my repertoire of crazy cases.

River-rat weed, my country relatives call it,' I told the doctor. 'I need to know, what happens to a victim, Scythax?'

'A long, slow, creeping, very permanent sleep, Falco.'

'Before the sleep, what are the symptoms?'

Scythax gave up on his food bowl. Petro and the vigiles came to attention too, mimicking their bone-setter, folding their arms with their heads c.o.c.ked. 'All parts of the hemlock plant are poisonous, Falco, especially the seeds. The root is supposed to be harmless when young and fresh, but I have never tested that. The leaves -'He paused, looking at his lunch - 'have often been used to kill off the unwary when served up as a green garnish.'

I had no idea how the poison had been administered to Metellus. 'After it is ingested, how long to an effect?'

'I don't know.' It was the doctor's turn for grim humour. 'We don't get cases of poison making complaints at the visitors' desk.'

'Can you look up hemlock in a compendium? I'm consulting you about a crime, remember.'

For that I got a filthy look, but Scythax reluctantly found and pored over a scroll he kept in his infirmary cubicle. I waited. After a long interval of squinting at tiny Greek lettering in endless columns, sometimes accompanied by blotted diagrams of plants, he grunted. 'It works quickly. An initial reaction in as little as half an hour. Death then takes a few more hours. The method is paralysis. The muscles fail. The brain stays alert, but the subject slowly fades.'

'Any distressing side-effects?'

Scythax was sarcastic. 'Other than death?'

'Yes.'

'Vomiting. Evacuation of the bowels - with diarrhoea.'

I sniffed. 'They never tell you that in the lofty story of Socrates.'

'In the Greece of antiquity, the innocent were allowed their dignity.' Scythax, a man of grandiose gloom added, 'Unlike here!' He came from slave stock, and may well have had Greek origins. 'I a.s.sure you, the tragic death of Socrates will have been accompanied by gruesome effects.'

I was satisfied. 'Gruesome effects' had certainly been inflicted on Saffia Donata's embroidered coverlet. 'Would you appear as an expert witness in court for me?'

'Get lost, Falco.'

'I shall have you issued with a subpoena then.'

'You'll have to find him first,' commented Petro. 'I'm not having him hanging around the b.l.o.o.d.y Basilica; we need him here.'

'What about my case? I'm trying to nail a killer.'

'And my lads need their grazes dabbed clean.'

'Oh pardon me.' I looked down my nose at him. 'I'll have to hire some d.a.m.ned informer to deliver the summons, I suppose.'

They all laughed.

x.x.x.

SOME DAYS an informer spends in endless walking. In the pursuit of comfort, I always wore hobnailed, well-worn-in boots.

My plans to pursue the issue of lethal herbage had to be put on hold; there was no time to work out how Metellus had been persuaded to imbibe or digest the hemlock, or else how it came to be administered secretly. I had promised Honorius he could come with me that afternoon to investigate the clown who had been deprived of performing at Metellus senior's funeral.

Sadly for Honorius, the logistics were against him. I was now up at the vigiles' station-house on the Aventine crest; he was right down by the river at my house. The vigiles had given me a bread roll and a drink, so I did not need to go home for lunch. Then I knew where to find Biltis; her hangout had been listed in Aelia.n.u.s' original notes. The funeral firm operated in the Fifth Region, so when I left Petro's squad, it was least effort just to plod down from the Aventine at the eastern edge, skirt the Circus Maximus at its rounded end, and head off past the Capena Gate to the Fifth. Honorius would have to miss the fun.

I had already made this tiresome hike twice, going to and coming back from the Metellus house. By the time I encountered the mourner I was in a bad mood. Biltis was, as Aelia.n.u.s had tersely noted, a woman who pressed too close and took too much interest in anyone who had to interview her. She was shabby and shapeless, with restless dark eyes and a mole on her chin, and was dressed in a style that proved funeral mourners are just as overpaid as you always suspect when you are arranging some loved one's last farewell. Plenty of bills that people were too distressed to query must have helped provide the gla.s.s bead edging on the woman's brightly coloured dress and the faddy fringe on her lush crimson stole.

'Of course I wear dingy tones when I'm working,' she explained, no doubt aware I was sizing up how much her zingingly gay apparel must have cost. 'All the effort goes into dishevelling the hair to tear - Some mourners use a wig, to spare their scalps, but I had some false hair fall off once. Right in the street. It doesn't impress the bereaved. Well, they are paying, aren't they? And with Tiasus they hope they are paying for quality. You have to avoid discourtesy.'

'Quite.'

'You don't have much to say for yourself, do you?'

'True.' I was listening. We had doubts about her reliability. I was trying to evaluate her from the stream of chat.

'I liked the other one.' That was a first for Aelia.n.u.s. I would enjoy telling him.

'Would it be rude to ask what happened to your eye?' asked Biltis.

'Why not? Everyone else does!' I made no effort to tell the woman.

Miffed, she shut up. Now it was my turn. I ran through what she had told Aelia.n.u.s about the family tensions at the Metellus funeral: strife among the relatives and Carina's outburst about her father having been murdered. Biltis confirmed the routine details too: the procession to the Via Appia and burning of the bier at the mausoleum, where Negrinus had presided with Juliana's husband and a friend who was presumably Licinius Lutea. The chief clown they had first intended to use in the procession was called Spindex. He worked for Tiasus regularly, though Biltis said it was ages since anyone had seen him.

'He went all huffy when he was dumped by the Metelli. Tiasus sent him one or two commissions afterwards but he failed to confirm or show up. He just dropped out of sight.'

'So why, exactly, was he omitted from the Metellus do?'

Exactly must have worried her. From pretending to be the expert on everything, she started to look s.h.i.+fty.

'Don't worry then,' I said. 'I can ask Spindex himself, if I find him. I hope he didn't go off into retirement at some homestead in a remote province.

'Oh he has no connections,' Biltis a.s.sured me. 'He has no friends and never mentions family.'

'Probably because he spends his days being rude,' I suggested.

'And is he rude!' the woman exclaimed. 'You won't find better than Spindex for rooting out the worst in human nature. Once he gets the dirt, he does not hold back.'

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