'Perhaps I don't want to -'

'I'll win you round -'

'Marcus, I don't want to think about it; I need to live with what has happened first!'

'I know that -' I suspected I would lose her altogether if she crashed the bolts home on me now. Besides, I was annoyed. 'Don't block me out of it-and don't suppose it had no effect on me!'

'Oh you and your old republican code!' Helena murmured with one of her sudden changes of mood, kissing my face. 'Stop being so reasonable -' I said nothing. 'Didius Falco, somebody ought to explain to you, informers are tough; informers are hard men who lead mean lives, and whenever they have a lucky escape, informers speed off back to their own low world-'

'Wrong. Informers are soft slugs. Any woman in decent shoes can stamp on us.' That reminded me of something: 'Though I have no intention of letting the Hortensius females squash me on a garden path. There was no need for you to reconnoitre the terrain; my darling, I can look after myself...' I could certainly do that. My problem was looking after Helena. 'Don't get involved.'

'No Marcus,' she promised, with a meek air I knew was false.

'Well don't tell me afterwards!' She was still watching me. 'There's no need to worry about me. Those two women at the Hortensius house are trash. There's no one to compete with you. Besides, I have a rule: never sleep with a client.'

'Ever broken it.'

'Once.'

I gave her a sheepish grin. She gave me a twitchy smile. I tugged her head down onto my shoulder and held her close.

The colonnade where we were lurking was a completely private area. I stayed as I was, holding Helena. I felt relaxed, and more affectionate than I usually allowed myself to be. She still looked troubled; I stroked her hair, which soothed the look away. This encouraged me to range more widely, in case there were any other little tension spots that needed attention...

'Marcus!' I decided to carry on. Her sleek, soft skin seemed to have been oiled at the baths especially to attract an appreciative hand. 'Marcus, you're making things impossible for both of us...' I decided to prove I was as tough as she had said earlier; so I stopped.

Not long afterwards I chose to make my excuses; the various chinks of silverware which announced that her parents were at dinner were becoming an embarrassment. Helena invited me to dine, but I did not want Helena or her parents (especially her mother) to get the idea I was the sort of parasitic hanger-on who kept turning up at mealtimes in the hope of being fed.

On leaving the house I walked north, thoughtfully. Some informers give the impression that wherever they go ravishing women shed their scanty clothing without the slightest encouragement and want to fall into bed. I told myself it so rarely happened to me because I appealed to a more selective type of girl.

Well; I had appealed to her once.

Chapter XVIII

The ladies were at home. Their men were elsewhere. The ladies were bored. I turned up like a treat from the gods, to fill the vacant after-dinner entertainment spot. If I had brought along a flute and a couple of Phrygian sword dancers I might have been better use to them.

In all my visits to the Hortensius house, I would never be received for an interview in the same room twice. Tonight I was shown into a dramatic azure leisure suite, with heavy boudoir overtones. All the couches had expensive coverlets flung over them with suggestive abandon. Bulbous cushions with shiny covers were piled on top, with fringing and fat tassels much in evidence. The room was stuffed with furniture: bronze side tables held up by priapic satyrs; silver daybeds with lions' feet; tortoiseshell cabinets. The cabinets were displaying a job lot of spiralled Syrian glassware (including at least one vase which had been recycled in Campania recently), some ivory, a collection of quite pretty Etruscan hand mirrors, and an extremely large solid gold vessel of doubtful purpose which they probably called 'a votive bowl', though it looked to me like the personal chamberpot of a particularly gross Macedonian king.

With their burnished skin and antimonied eyes the women looked as plush as the drapery. Sabina Pollia occupied her couch with the thrusting sprawl of a sage bush taking possession of a herb garden. Hortensia Atilia lolled with a neater habit, though she held one foot up behind in a way which made it impossible not to notice the nakedness of her exposed leg. In fact, as they faced one another over a huge platter of grape bunches I could not forget Helena's disparaging comments (her intention, presumably). They both wore their gowns in luxuriant folds that were designed more for sliding off than draping the shapely forms beneath. I kept wondering whether Pollia's left or right shoulder-brooch would be the first to slither down a lovely arm further than decency permitted. Pollia was in emeralds; Atilia dripping with Indian pearls.

Atilia's son, an ordinary child, was with them, kneeling on the marble with a terracotta model donkey. He was about eight. I winked at him, and he stared back with the stark hostility of any little boy facing a strange beak in his nest.

'Well, Falco, what have you brought us?' Pollia demanded.

'Only news,' I apologised.

The left shoulder of Pollia's crimson dinner gown descended so far it was annoying her. So she twitched it up. This gave the right side more free play to droop appealingly over her breast.

'Do tell!' urged Hortensia Atilia, wriggling her raised toes. Atilia preferred to keep her brooches properly centred on her fine shoulders. This meant that as she lay on a couch the front of her gown (which was marine blue, verging on good taste but not quite making it) draped itself in a low parabola so anyone who was standing up at the time had a clear view straight down to the big brown mole two inches below her cleavage line: an abundant mother goddess, making good use of the area which mother goddesses love to display. (Naturally it left me unmoved; I was not the religious type.)

Without further preamble, I gave my two clients details of my findings so far. 'Regarding the astrologer, I don't want to dwell on the superstitious aspects, but better not to mention this if Hortensius Novus is likely to become anxious; nervous men tend to have accidents -'

'It proves nothing,' Pollia decided crushingly. She had wined well with her dinner. Now it was time to bring out the nutcrackers; I was the filbert she had her eye on, I could tell.

I kept cool. 'I'm the first to admit that. But ordering a memorial stone is rather a different matter! Severina Zotica is approaching her wedding with a practical grit which -if I was her intended-would send my scurrying for sanctuary.'

'Yes.'

The small boy crashed his toy donkey into the leg of a side table; his mother frowned, and signalled him to leave the room. 'To be fair to the girl,' suggested Atilia, 'perhaps we should not blame her if she wants to feel sure her previous ill luck will not recur. The horoscopes could be entirely innocent.' Of the two, Hortensia Atilia certainly had the most ample generosity. Like everything else which she possessed in abundance, the lady made it freely available to public view.

'What I want to do now,' I said, 'is tackle Severina at an interview -'

Atilia and Pollia glanced at one another. For some reason I recalled Helena's fear that something in this conundrum was not quite right.

'That sounds rather tricky.' Atilia's diffident expression implied she was a simple blossom looking for some manly type to fend off her troubles in the meadowland of life; I tried to strut like a city thug who liked to swipe the heads off marguerites for fun.