Negrinus had backed the porter up against a painted wall. `Where's the coverlet?'

The porter feigned ignorance. Negrinus pulled him forwards then bashed his head back against the plaster. Trying to escape him, Perseus stumbled and fell to the floor. After that, the surprise hero used his feet. Negrinus was a senator. He had been in the army. When he stamped on Perseus, Perseus learned the meaning of a military training.

`I have had enough of you,' Negrinus told him. He stamped. He put his weight into it. I glanced at the steward and we both. winced. `I am sick of people hurting me, so I am going to -' Stamp! `hurt -' Stamp! `you!' A final stamp did the trick.

Perseus confessed that the missing bedspread might be in the garden shack. The keys were required; I had seen the place chained up. Calpurnia had said `unwanted household goods' were stored there. Regaining his authority, the steward slid off and produced Calpurnia's bunch of domestic keys.

Still fired up, Birdy dragged the porter to his feet and strode out to the garden, pulling Perseus with him. It was a mild day, surprisingly bright for winter. By now, I had stiffened up badly from the attack on me last night, so I limped painfully at a distance as the pair approached the little hillside store. A few wasps still buzzed around the area in the late afternoon sunlight. I caught up as Birdy wrestled with the lock, while the discarded Perseus whimpered nearby beneath a fig tree. He looked ready to run off, so I stood over him. Birdy heaved open the door of the shack. He ducked inside. I heard him exclaim, so I started forwards, with a sense of dread as if I thought he had discovered a dead body.

He reappeared in the doorway, holding nothing worse than an armful of brightly coloured material. It was badly crumpled and as he was inspecting it in the light, an expression of disgust appeared on his face. He threw the coverlet down, and came towards the porter. Scared of another kicking, Perseus took the initiative and went for Birdy. They fell back into the store, fighting.

I reached the low doorway just as Birdy staggered out again. I thought he might have been wounded, though I could see no blood. He lurched past me, as the porter came towards the door. I could just make him out in near darkness; I must have been outlined against the sunlight. He started jabbing at me with a long tool, the sort used for pruning trees, with a thick curved hook. Because my back was hurting, I grabbed at the lintel to support myself. That was when I noticed that the crude roof of the hutment had a warm spot. I recognised the symptoms. After years of living in attic apartments, I knew the wasps must be right there overhead. The light was too dim to spot any ceiling stains, but above me there could be a honeycombed nest three feet across.

I dropped down, grabbed a broom and stood up sharply, holding it by the brush end. As the porter lunged at me, I rammed the stave upwards into the rough boarded roof, hard. Then I spun out of the doorway, slamming the door after me.

I heard furious wasps storm down from their shattered nest. Even at this time of year they were active. The porter started screaming. I hobbled away from the door while Birdy stared at me, white-faced.

At my feet lay the coverlet, embroidered with multicoloured threads in shimmering blues like peacock feathers. It was beautiful to view but it smelt dreadful. I could understand why it had been taken out of the house – though not why it had been hidden in the store. It reeked, and the foul odour was of rotting human excrement.

XXVIII

PEOPLE CAME from the house and dragged out the porter. He was just about alive. He was lucky. Some go into convulsions, with their mouths and throats swollen. Some die. Maybe I should have felt some remorse, but he was a blatant wrongdoer. I said I would be back to interrogate him.

Birdy seemed in shock too. I tried to talk to him, but it was useless. Thwarted, I saw our jittery client put into his litter, to be returned to his sister's house.

In an aside, I demanded of the steward what hold over the family the porter had. He just gave me a guarded look. The steward seemed bemused by the smelly coverlet, muttering obsessively that it should have been burned. Like Negrinus, he had stared at the thing in the garden, transfixed. Both of them clearly thought it had significance. I warned the steward that I would pursue enquiries into how the ruined throw came to be in that condition and why it had been locked away.

Saffia Donata's other bedding was being carried to her apartment. Leaving the hysteria at the Metellus mansion to settle down, I walked along after the slaves who manhandled the mattress and pillows through the streets; at the apartment Lutea had found for her, they gained admittance to dump their burden, but then all of us were brusquely turned away. We could hear Saffia still in the throes of labour. This woman held the key to many puzzles. There too, I took my leave but grimly promised to return.

The crazy scenes I witnessed had helped me reach a conclusion. I could not prove my newly forming theory, but the stained and stinking coverlet seemed relevant to the Metellus death. I was coming to believe that Metellus senior had not, as we had always been told, retired to his bedroom to await his end, conducting a half-hearted suicide.

I did believe he had been poisoned.

Once I suspected Metellus had not died in his own bed, my task was to find out if he had been in the bed of someone else. The coverlet pointed to Saffia – but by then she had already left the house. Besides, if guilty, why would she draw attention to herself by whining for the return of her property? So my new theory was this: Metellus senior did not die in bed at all.

And that was fun to play with. It threw up a whole bunch of exciting possibilities.

XXIX

‘HEMLOCK,' I said.

The vigiles doctor, a morose blue-chinned cur called Scythax, glared at me nastily. I won't say Scythax looked unhealthy, but he was so pale and haggard that if he arrived on a cargo ship from a foreign province, port officials would quarantine him.

He was eating his lunch. It was eggs on salad leaves. He pushed his bowl away slightly.

`How's that eye, Falco?' I grimaced. He perked up. `Hemlock, you said?'

`The philosopher's oblivion. Tell me about it, Scythax.'

`Poison parsley,' sneered Scythax. He always looked down on anything to do with apothecaries. He enjoyed manipulating splints but hated ointments. Since the vigiles acted as a fire brigade, his unwillingness to soothe burns did hamper him, but he had worked with the Fourth Cohort as long as they could remember and the vigiles dislike changed. Scythax was marvellous with broken limbs and internal crushing, but no one went to him for a headache cure. His remedy when squad members had a heavy hangover was to shower them with very cold water. They preferred to sign out sick – but that meant Petronius Longus turned up at their lodgings, cursed them for drinking, and kicked them downstairs. He could do that even with his own head splitting.

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 cocked. `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.'