Seeing the priest wiping off his beard with a dinner napkin reminded me I was short of sustenance myself. I had a bite in a cookshop, then strolled along the river walk, thinking about my discoveries. By the time I returned to Maia's house I was more optimistic.
Maia had been to Lenia's, come home for lunch, then vanished to visit my mother, but she had left a bundle of my garments, most of which I recognized dismally; these were all the tunics I had never bothered to pick up from the laundry because they had sleeves unstitched or lamp-oil burns. The most decent was the one I had worn when I disposed of the warehouse corpse. I had dumped it on Lenia afterwards, where it had been waiting to be paid for ever since.
I sniffed at it, then pulled myself into the tunic, and was pondering my next move against Pertinax when Maia came home.
'Thanks for the clothes! Was there any change?'
'Comedian! By the way, Lenia said somebody keeps trying to find you-and since the message is from a woman, about an assignation, you may want to know-'
'Sounds promising!' I grinned cautiously.
'Lenia said…' Maia, who was a pedantic messenger, prepared a faithful recitation. '"Will you meet Helena Justina at the house on the Quirinal because she has agreed to talk to her husband and wants to meet you there?" Are you working on a divorce?'
'No such luck,' I said, with foreboding. 'When am I to go?'
'That could be a snag-the servant mentioned this morning. I would have told you at lunchtime, but you weren't here-'
I spat a short exclamation, then shot from my sister's house without waiting to kiss her, thank her for yesterday's custard, or even explain.
The Quirinal Mount where Pertinax and Helena had lived when they were married was unfashionable, though people who rented apartments in this pleasant, airy district were rarely doing so badly as they complained. While Vespasian was still a junior politician his youngest child Domitian, the scorpion's sting in the Emperor's success, had been born in a back bedroom in Pomegranate Street; later the Flavian family mansion had been there before they fixed up a palace for themselves.
I felt odd, coming back to the place where I had worked thinking Pertinax was dead. Odd, too, that Helena regarded her old home as neutral ground.
Since our house clearance, the building itself remained unsold. It was what Geminus would call a property 'waiting for the right client'. By which he meant, too big, too expensive, and with a nasty reputation for harbouring ghosts.
How true.