"This had better be good!" I roared at them. My imitation of Mars the Avenger had all the effect of a warm-up act at a run-down theatre in the offseason.

"Keep your curls in, tribune."

"You moved that rope?"

"What rope? You don't mean this one?"

"Oh yes I do. But you're right- why not untie the thing? It will be a lot easier to use the rope to hang the pair of you!"

They exchanged glances. They were treating me like any wild eyed client at the end of his tether- with utter indifference.

"What are your names?"

Tin Septimus and he's Tiberius," the spokesman informed me, implying that such a question was bad manners. I took out a tablet and pointedly wrote down the names.

"Stand up." They humoured me. "What are you doing here?"

"Spot of work required, tribune."

"I don't see you doing it!" I snarled. "You're loitering at a crime scene, interfering with my security measures, allowing un authorised access and irritating all Hades out of me."

They pretended to look impressed. Big words and a bad temper were a novelty. I had plenty more of both to call on. And they had plenty of stubborn defiance.

"Have you entered the baths since you took off the rope?"

"No, tribune."

"You had better hope I believe that." I did not, but there was no point nit-picking. "Has anyone else been in?"

"Oh no, tribune. Not with us sat here."

Wrong. At that moment my own sister marched out from the changing room behind them. She was carrying her personal oil flask and scraper and was livid. "This is a complete disgrace- there is no hot water and no heat at all in the steam rooms!"

"My orders, Maia."

"Well, I might have known!"

"There's a dead man in the hot rooms not to mention a killer preying on lone bathers. Did you go in past these two brazen layabouts?"

"Well, I stepped over them," Maia sneered.

Septimus and Tiberius just smirked.

Maia was storming off, but I held her back. "Is anyone else inside?" I asked.

A guarded look crossed her face. "Not now."

"What do you mean? Was there someone?"

"I thought I heard movement."

"Who?"

"No idea, Marcus. I was undressed as tar as my under tunic just exploring the cold room- what a waste of time! I didn't know who had turned up, so I kept quiet." Maia knew what I thought about her visiting a mixed baths alone. She didn't care. Being Maia, she might have enjoyed the fris son of risk.

"Next time, drag Hyspale along to stand guard. You may like being leered at by lads looking for women in wet breast-bands but being spied on by a strangler would be a different beaker of maggots."

"I might just have heard these two messing about," Maia returned, cheerfully implicating the workmen.

"Oh surely not," I responded sarcastically. "Septimus and Tiberius would never spy on a lady, would you, lads?"

They gazed at me, not even bothering to lie. Given the dopey way they were hanging about in the entrance when I turned up, playing at voyeurs probably never occurred to them. Besides, my sister exuded the air of a woman who would savage peephole spies.

With a whisk of her skirts, Maia darted away back towards our suite. I let her go. I could ask more questions later, with Helena in support.

Alexas finally turned up. When he saw the two workmen, I thought he looked slightly awkward. They were quite unabashed and greeted him by name.

"You know these scoundrels?" I demanded angrily.

"They work for my uncle." Septimus and Tiberius "watched our confrontation with the bright eyes of happy troublemakers.

"Your uncle is the King's bath-house contractor?"

"Afraid so." Alexas sounded rueful. Well, I knew all about awkward relatives.

"So where is this uncle?"

"Who knows? He won't be on site!" A true professional.

"What's your uncle's name?"

"Lobullus."

No one I was after, then.

I led the way indoors, heading a convoy that consisted of myself, Alexas, a couple of whey-faced lads carrying a pallet to remove the body, and the two workmen, both suddenly nosier about the corpse than they had professed to be about Maia.

"And where were you last night, Alexas?"

"It's on my tablet."

"Tell me anyway."

"I went into Noviomagus to see my uncle."

"Will he vouch for you?"

"Of course he will."

I never like family alibis.

The vaulted rooms were colder than last night. Even with the furnace out of action, it takes a while for the fabric of a bath house to cool. A slight clamminess was creeping through the steaming suite. We reached the final chamber. The dead Pomponius was still lying as I left him, as far as I could tell. If anyone had been in here and tampered with the body, I would never prove it. |

Initially, there was no reason to think anyone had done that.

Everything looked the same. After my companions finished exclaiming over the way the architect had been mutilated, they hoisted his corpse onto the pallet. I adjusted the small towel to cover his privates. Then I heard a rattle and something fell on the floor.

"Oh look!" cried Tiberius helpfully.

"Something was caught up in the poor fellow's towel," added Septimus, bending to capture the object and hand it obsequiously to me. Everyone else watched my reaction. A cynical informer might have thought it was a planted clue.

It was an artist's paintbrush. Tightly bound pigs' bristles with carefully shaped tips for delicate work. Traces of azure on the short handle: was that blue frit? There were letters handily scratched there too. 'll'.

Comment from me was unavoidable. "Well, that's a curious hieroglyphic."

"Would it be the owner's initials?" enquired Tiberius with almost intellectual interest.

"Hey," murmured Septimus, suddenly shocked. "You don't think one of the site painters was responsible for the murder, Falco?"

I had to hide a smile. "I don't know what to think." But somebody was trying very hard to tell me.

"An architect wouldn't bring a paintbrush when he came for a bathe, would he?" Tiberius asked Septimus.

"That painter in charge is called Blandus," his mate answered. "So he's not LL."

"You know, I believe it must be his assistant," I broke in. Septimus, Tiberius and even Alexas, whose role in this fiasco seemed the most subdued, all looked at each other and nodded, impressed by my deductive powers.

I held the brush in the palm of my hand, looking from the silent Alexas to his uncle's two workmen. "Congratulations, Septimus. This seems to be an important clue and you just helped me work out what it means."

I could see what it really meant. Someone was being framed.

I seized the towel and shook it out, in case any other offerings had been deposited. Negative. I replaced the linen rectangle neatly over the dead architect's loins. I signalled to the bearers to carry off the body.

"So! It looks like that young painting assistant has killed Pomponius. There's only one way to be sure. I'll ask him to be a good boy and own up."