"No idea. She keeps running off to flirt with a man. Larius swears it isn't him."

"Should I let her go out tonight?" I consulted Helena.

"Of course," she returned mildly. "So long as the friend is a matron, free from any hint of scandal, who will send her own chair for Hyspale!"

That seemed unlikely.

Julia was too busy to go indoors. Too young to be worried by men on scaffolds, she had her entire toy collection spread in the courtyard: ragdoll, wooden doll with one leg missing, fashionably dressed ivory doll, push-along cart, clay animals, dolls' dinner set, rattle, beanbag for throwing games, balls in three sizes, nodding antelope, and dear gods- some swine with no care for her parents' eardrums must have given her a flute. I won't say my daughter was spoiled, but she was fortunate. Four grandparents doted on their dark-eyed toddler. Aunts vied with one another for her love. If a new toy was created in any corner of the Empire, Julia somehow acquired it. You wonder why we had brought every one on a thousand-mile journey? Sheer terror of her reaction if she discovered we had left any treasure behind.

Now our acquisitive two-year-old was absorbed in some well ordered play.

Helena grabbed my arm and hissed with mock-excitement, "Oh look, darling! Julia Junilla is taking her very first inventory!"

"Well, that's next Saturnalia sorted. Her present can be an abacus."

"The child has expensive tastes," Helena replied. "I think she would rather we supplied her with her own accountant."

"Be more useful than her nurse!" scoffed Maia.

Maia had been standing in the open doorway to our suite, supervising Julia or rather applying a jaundiced eye to Hyspale's encounters with the men on the scaffold. The fellows would have had more to comment on if they could see Maia, but she stayed the wrong side of the threshold so was out of sight. One member of my household knew how to behave modestly, if she wanted to.

She did, however, have a male follower. She had been talking to Sextius the statue-seller. Well, she had been letting him talk, without making her replies too objectionable. Sextius, still with the wary look he had always given Maia, had been telling her he had sold his cartload of statues.

At this news, Aelianus stuck his head out; he and Larius must have been lounging indoors. "Olympus, who bought them?" demanded Aelianus with professional interest.

"One of the contractors for the King's bath house."

Aelianus shot me a private smirk; apparently he thought little of the statues. Installing them in the royal changing room would be a huge joke.

"There should be plenty of water on hand for the works!" I commented. Unnerved by our presence, Sextius shambled off. If he had returned to the site hoping to inveigle himself into Maia's confidence, it had failed.

Maia was only interested in hearing from me. She dragged me indoors. Having reassured myself that in our absence there had been no incidents, I gave her a brief update on Perella. I had to come clean about the Marcellinus death before my sister heard it from others. I played down the details. I stressed that this indicated Perella's mission to Britain had been quite unconnected with us. 4Oh really!" scoffed Maia.

I went to my office. There I found Gaius, working on a batch of invoices and sipping mulsum. We had not spoken since I stormed off after accusing him of lying to me.

"Oh I see, Iggidunus waives his ban on serving this office, so long as I'm not here!"

Gaius grinned warily over his beaker rim. "You have to know how to handle him, Falco."

"That's what I was always told about women. Applying it to the drinks boy never cropped up before." I gazed at him. "Magnus says I got you all wrong. Apparently you are honest, helpful and an all round model of probity."

"Well, I am on the right side," he claimed.

I told him what we had discovered at the Marcellinus villa. The missing supplies that we would be fetching back today should improve chances of balancing the site account. Gaius cheered up.

"So tell me about helping Magnus. In particular, explain why you never told me what you were up to."

Gaius looked shy. "Not allowed to, Falco."

"Not allowed? Look, I'm tired. Murder depresses me. So does blatant corruption, actually. Magnus said I should ask you what's what."

The clerk still kept mum.

"Gaius, I like hearing that you are straight, but it is not enough. Explain your role. I won't allow mystery men to meddle in this project."

"Is that a threat, Falco?"

"I can dismiss you, yes. Dalmatia's a long way to trundle home in disgrace, with no transport and your pay held up."

Dalmatia was where he had said his mother lived.

Somebody else in this province had a Dalmatian birthplace: a highly placed British official. Your father's highest position was as a third-grade tax inspector in a one-ox town in Dalmatia' was how I once put it to the man defiantly. I was stroppy in those days. "No one but the governor carries more weight in Britain than you…"

"Flavius Hilaris!" I exclaimed. How could I have forgotten him? After all, he had lent us his town house in Noviomagus. Once my mission was completed, Helena wanted us to visit him and his wife in Londinium.

Gains had flushed slightly. "The financial procurator?"

"A tine man. My wife's uncle, did you know? He was born in Narona."

"Is that so?" murmured Gaius. "Skip the bluff."

"Lots of people come from my province, Falco."

"Not so many end up here. What are you- twenties? What did you work on before the palace, Gaius?"

"Forum feasibility study."

"Not the forum in Novio? I've seen that; it must have been planned on the back of a whelk bill one that someone then lost. Where, Gaius?"

"Londinium," he admitted.

"Under the nose of the provincial governor- and of his right-hand man! Hilaris is fair. He knows how to select staff. He's not given to favourites. But being from Dalmatia would endear you, I bet. And if he thought you showed promise- well! His speciality, for your information, is the rare one of weeding out graft. That was how I met him; it was how I met my wife, so I'm unlikely to forget. So tell me, are you working undercover here for the procurator in Londinium?"

"He would have told you, surely?" The clerk, who would have been sworn to silence for his own safety, tried one last gambit.

"I'm sure he meant to keep me fully informed," I answered starchily.

"Administrative hitch?" murmured Gaius, starting to reveal his amusement.

"Absolutely. And Helena Justina's uncle in his curule chair is a mischievous swine!"

We seemed to understand one another, so I left it at that. Gaius was well placed to observe what happened on this site, but he was fairly junior. He was doing good work. I would tell Hilaris that. To enhance future control, it was best to leave the planted clerk here if possible, maintaining his cover. So I winked in a friendly manner and continued with my own work.

I spent a couple of hours drafting a report on the site problems, and my thoughts on their future resolution. From time to time people came in with dockets for me to sign as project manager, though things seemed quiet. Cyprianus was off site of course, taking transports to collect Magnus and the materials we were retrieving from the Marcellinus villa. Not much was happening here.

When I wanted air, I took a walk around. The place today was full of abandoned barrows and half-dug trenches. I could either regard it as a site where everything had gone into limbo because of a real emergency- or as a perfectly normal building scheme where, as so often, nobody had bothered to turn up.

Investigations acquire their own momentum when they start going well. Discover enough, and new connections then quickly become apparent. It may even help to surround yourself with well-chosen, intelligent assistants.