My eyes drooped. I saw him move, hopefully. I opened my eyes again, and smiled at him.
'This is pointless, Falco.'
'Life is pointless.'
'Why do you want me dead?'
'You'll see.'
'Today was pointless,' Pertinax mused. 'Why the trick with the barmaid? I can repudiate the marriage as soon as I want-'
'Got to get out of here first, sir!'
He thought about the marriage bitterly, ignoring me. His old restless bad temper jerked behind those pale, turgid eyes. His face had grown gaunt with his obsessions-that sense of outrage, not at his own failure, but at the world's refusal to give him recognition. His was a soul inching into madness. But he was not mad yet. I judged him still capable of answering for his crimes.
'Did my wife arrange this?' he demanded, as if the sunshine of sudden understanding had flooded him.
'Your first wife? She has the brains, but is she that vindictive, sir?'
'Who knows what she would do!'
I knew. In any situation I could make a fair guess: look for the obvious, then look for the oddest deviation from it and there would be Helena. Helena, making her quaint choice appear to be the only course anyone with any culture and moral fibre could take. He had owned her for four years whilst she struggled to do her duty by them both-yet he did not know the first thing about that eccentric mixture he called his wife.
'Helena Justina wanted to help you. Even when she knew you were a traitor and a murderer-'
'Never,' he stated briefly. 'This was the one thing I asked her to do for me…' He watched me easing the bloodstained cloth around my ribs. 'We could help each other, Falco. Neither of us stands much chance alone.'
'Mine's a scratch on the surface. You're bleeding internally.'
Whether he was or not, the threat frightened him.
'Your wife's no fool,' I said, taking his mind off his terror of death. 'She told me, in Campania, "Every girl needs a husband!".'
'Oh she does!' exclaimed Pertinax. 'Did she tell you she picked up a pregnancy?' He said it as if he meant a heat rash she had caught on holiday.
'No,' I replied calmly. 'She never told me that.'
'My father found out while she was staying in his house.' Remembering how she had looked sometimes in Campania, that was allowable. Anyone who knew Helena's normal stamina should have realized without being told. Including me.
Although he was in the shade, Pertinax was sweating heavily; he blew out his cheeks. I suggested, 'I suppose it was your father's idea to use the situation; to rescue Helena's reputation-to offer a respectable name for her child?'
'I'm starting to think he wants a grandchild even more than he wants to do something for me!'
'Have you quarrelled with him?'
'Possibly,' he squeezed out.
'I saw him after you left Campania. I thought his attitude had changed.'
'If you must know, Falco, my father made it a condition of standing up for me that I should re-establish relations with Helena Justina-and when she rejected the favour he blamed me… He'll come round.'
'Did she ask for this favour?'
'No!' he retorted in his most contemptuous tone.
'You surprise me!' I said softly. I let him settle, then put to him, 'This unlooked-for infant of hers must have a father somewhere.'
'You tell me! In fact I wish you would. If Helena Justina has slipped up with her father's driver it's irrelevant, but if she's involved with a man of quality I can put pressure on. You were her bodyguard; if you did the job properly you must know what pools she has been dandling her fingers in.'
I smiled faintly. 'You can assume, sir, that I do my job properly.'
The sunlit air was motionless in the small courtyard. Light gleamed broadly off the open-palmed leaves of the fig. Heat tingled a clump of scratchy lichen on the old stone seat and thrummed along the pierced walling where I sat.
'Ever see Helena Justina flirt with another man?'
'No one who got past me, sir.'
Pertinax spat with exasperation. 'The proud piece refuses to tell me-and you're no help!'
'What's it worth?'
'So you do know? Nothing,' he snarled abruptly. 'I'll find out for myself!'
'Thrash it out of her?' Pertinax made no answer. Something made him look at me more carefully. I asked softly, 'Does this man bother you?'
'Not in the least!' His defiance faded slightly. 'When I told her she was a fool not to take my offer she admitted she found it impossible to forget we had been married-but someone had a claim on her…'
I let out a long, low, suggestive whistle. 'That's tough! Some sly double-dealer with an eye on her bank box must have persuaded Helena Justina that he is in love with her.'
He stared at me, as though he could not decide whether I was being satirical.