`You went home with your father?'

`I certainly did.' She paused. `Papa already had a quarrel with them.'

`It happens in families,' I sympathised. `What was at issue?'

`Oh something to do with my dowry, I know nothing of such matters…'

Wrong, darling. Saffia Donata knew everything about anything that concerned her. Still, women of rank like to pretend. I let it go. I can pretend too.

`So, home to Papa, at least temporarily? Of course you wanted to live in your own apartment; you are a married woman, used to your own establishment?'

Not quite. She was used to living with Calpurnia Cara, a matron who possessed – as Helena Justina had commented wryly – bearing and presence. Saffia saw that I recognised the contradiction; she made no answer.

I smiled like a conspirator. `You have my congratulations. Living with Calpurnia must have taken stamina. I imagine she told you exactly how you should do everything -'

'I cannot permit my son's wife to suckle!' Saffia mimicked viciously. She was good.

`How dreadful.'

`At least this baby won't have the evil wet-nurse that my daughter was forced to endure.'

`You are glad to have escaped such tyranny.'

`If only I had.' I looked quizzical. Saffia then explained the curious procedures that are imposed on mothers-to-be who divorce from families where a large inheritance may be at stake: 'Calpurnia is insisting a reputable midwife lives with me, examines me, and monitors both the pregnancy and birth.'

`Jupiter! What's she afraid of?'

`A substituted grandchild, if my baby dies.'

I huffed. It seemed a lot of fuss. Still, Metellus Negrinus would not want to be saddled with maintaining the wrong child.

`She told me you would call.' So Saffia and the tyrant were still on speaking terms.

`She told me you are causing trouble,' I said bluntly. `What did she mean by that?'

`I have no idea.' I could see that she did know, but she was not going to tell me.

I changed tack. `You are very well organised. There must have been hectic activity to find you somewhere to live so fast.' Briefly, I even wondered if Calpurnia had had a hand in this.

`Oh, dear old Lutea sorted it all out for me.'

I raised an eyebrow, half amused. `Your ex-husband?' I guessed. She blushed slightly at being outwitted. It was an unusual name. I would soon track him down. I smiled. `Let's be frank. Do you believe Rubirius Metellus killed himself?'

But Saffia Donata knew nothing of those matters either. She had had enough of me. I was asked to leave.

At the door, I paused. Since I had already put away my stylus, I chewed a fingernail instead. `Damn! I meant to ask Calpurnia something… I don't want to keep annoying her in her time of grief – would you happen to know, what poison was it that Metellus took?'

`Hemlock.' This was good, from a woman who had not been in the house when the poisoning occurred and who was estranged from the family.

`Hades, we're not in the wilds of Greece, and Metellus was not a philosopher. Nobody civilised takes hemlock nowadays!'

Saffia made no comment.

`Do you know where he would have acquired it?' I asked.

Saffia looked more wary. She merely shrugged.

I had now interviewed two matrons from the same family, in my opinion both deeply devious. My brain ached. I went home for lunch to my own open and uncomplicated womenfolk.

VIII

‘How could you do that to me, Falco?'

Justinus was chomping his way through a bowl of chicory, olives and goat's cheese. He looked morose. I asked what I had done, knowing he referred to Ursulina Prisca. His brother, who was reading a scroll as if he despised lunch, smirked.

`Vulcan's breath,' Justinus went on. `Your widow is so demanding. She goes nattering on about agnates -'

`Agnates?' Helena looked sceptical. `Is that a disease or a semiprecious stone?'

`Close relatives, other than children, who are next in line to inherit.' Aelianus, for once more efficient than Justinus, must actually be learning up the finer points of inheritance law. Was that in his scroll?

'Ursulina has some claim on the estate of a brother,' I confirmed. `Or she thinks she does.'

`Oh I'm taking her word!' Justinus marvelled. 'Ursulina Prisca has a firm grip on her rights. She knows more law than all the barristers in the Basilica.'

`Why does she need our help then?' Helena managed to put in.

`She wants us to be, as she puts it, the instruments of her legal challenge.'

`Go to court for her?'

`Go to Hades for her!' Justinus moaned, in deep gloom.

`So you accepted the client,' I surmised, laughing at him. `You are a public-spirited soul. The gods will think well of you.'

'Even his wife doesn't think well of him,' Aelianus told me, in a curt tone. The two of them never stopped. They would be wrangling to their graves. Whoever first had the task of pouring the funeral oils over his brother's bones would be obnoxious in the fraternal elegy. `But your litigious old widow fancies the boots off him, so he fell for it.'

I shook my head, ignored the scrapping, and gave instructions for our next move.

`Right. We have done some preliminary exploration, and identified the chief personnel. Now we have to grill the key people, and not let up. With luck we are going in before the witnesses have any more time to confer. There are two Metellus daughters and a son. We have two Camillus sons and a daughter, so I wish I could match you up neatly with opposites – but I cannot send Helena Justina to interview an aedile.'

`We have no evidence that Birdy is a womaniser,' Helena protested. `You don't have to protect me.' Senators' daughters cannot knock on strangers' doors. Her rank barred Helena from visiting strange men.

It had not stopped her visiting me in my seedy informer's apartment – but I knew where that had led. 'Metellus Negrinus is a high-placed official,' I countered. `As a responsible citizen, I am protecting him!'

`You're saving the best for yourself,' she muttered.

`Wrong. I hate corrupt state servants, especially when they hide behind feeble cries of "I had no choice; I was unfairly influenced". No wonder our roads are blocked with dead mules' carcasses and the aqueducts leak. So Helena, can you try to visit Carina, the daughter who is supposed to have stayed aloof from the tricky business?'

`If I can do her sister too. I want to compare them.'

I nodded. `All right. You take Carina and Juliana. Then Justinus, you can apply your charm to their two husbands and do a similar comparison. Their names are Canidianus Rufus and Verginius Laco. I'll take on Saffia's husband.'

`Which?' demanded Helena.

`Both.' I had no intention of letting anyone else interview Metellus Negrinus, whose role in his father's downfall had been so significant; there were curious questions hanging over `good old Lutea' as well. His full name, I had discovered from sources at the Curia, was Lucius Licinius Lutea, and he was thought to be something of a social entrepreneur. I believed it. Not many divorced husbands would personally find a new apartment for a wife who had been married again and who was carrying the new man's child. Either the good old marital discard was risk-obsessed and looking for a scandal, or he was up to something.

`What about me?' wailed Aelianus.

`Stick with researching agnates. I have a hunch that inheritance plays some part in whatever is going on here.'

`What was in the Metellus will?'

`That's been kept rather quiet. Presumably the seven tame senators who witnessed the "suicide" had also previously witnessed the will being signed. I asked the ones I interviewed what was in it. I got nothing. Only the Vestal Virgins with whom the document was lodged during Metellus' lifetime will know details of bequests.'