The fourteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus.
Day fourteen of the Games. The first hour of the day.
“Wait with the carriage, Zosimus. What I have to do here is not for your chaste eyes.” The sun was not yet a hand’s breadth above the housetops, a pink smear on the horizon; the street still in deep shadow, exactly as it had been on the morning Verpa’s body was discovered. Pliny knocked on the door. No answer. He pounded harder, using his fist, and shouted at the window. If the sun rose higher, his experiment would be ruined. At last, a tousle-haired slave opened the door a crack, recognized the familiar face of the vice prefect, and admitted him.
“Wake my centurion and tell him to meet me upstairs with the lady Scortilla-but she is to wait outside the bedroom until I call her.” Pliny raced up the stairs with the prostitute in tow.
Valens, his face creased with sleep, came grumbling into the bedroom and stopped abruptly. He broke into a gap-toothed smile.
“Eyes front, centurion,” said Pliny. “You’re not here to gawk. Be good enough to light the lamp on that stand next to the bed.” Pliny moved back and forth across the room while he examined the shadowy figures that populated the walls. “Now girl,” he addressed the prostitute, “no one’s going to touch you, that’s not what we’re here for. Undress. Yes, and now go and stand in that corner-yes, that’s right, flat up against the wall. No, not her, I think. The one to your right. Yes. Now, on your knees, fit yourself to her form, head a little up. Yes, you understand what I mean, don’t you? And now I’m going to turn down the lamp a little. Yes-remarkable, remarkable.” The girl vanished, perfectly fitted to the painted figure behind her. In the feeble penumbra of the single lamp, unless you put out your hand and touched her, you could not have told she was there in the flesh.
“And now we are ready for the lady!”
Scortilla was ushered into the room by two troopers, who shut the door behind her. She was in her nightdress. Without her wig, sparse tufts of graying hair stuck out from her head. And she was very, very angry. “You!” she snarled. “Again! Haven’t you played the fool enough already? This is harassment. I warned you, I will complain to the emperor personally. He will have you crucified!” “Do you find it dark in here, Scortilla?” “What?” “Valens, open the shutters, will you?” The open window was a pale rectangle of light that left the room still in deep shadow. “Would you say, lady, that we are alone here-you, me, and the centurion?”
Her eyes were suddenly wary. Her head swiveled in quick jerks like a bird’s. She took a step toward the bed, back again, looked behind her. “Answer me, woman. Are we alone?” “Yes, damn you!” What else could she say? “Girl, show yourself!”
Like one of those islands in the lake, detaching itself from shore and swimming into view, the naked girl emerged from the wall. Scortilla clapped her fist to her mouth to stifle a scream. It was as though the mural had come to life.
“’Ere, this is going to cost you, whatever this is,” the girl complained. “I ain’t used to being made a show of in front a’ ladies. And my neck is stiff besides.”
“Centurion, give her a silver denarius, more than she earns in a week. Thank you. You may go now.”
Pliny bent his brows on the speechless Scortilla. “Woman, I charge you with the murder of your husband by poisoning. And I will tell you how you did it. You and Lucius planned this together, one murder concealing another.”
“Centurion, go and get Lucius out of bed and bring him here.” He turned to Scortilla. “Your mutual hatred is all a charade, isn’t it? You both wanted Verpa dead. You, Scortilla, had the poison and knew how to administer it, but Lucius contributed the idea of using Ganymede and the dagger and candelabrum to make it look like a political assassination. You could easily make Pollux, the Jew, out to be an accomplice. You went to Verpa’s room before he went to bed and before Pollux came on duty on a pretext of wanting a private word with him or something. You must have enticed him sexually and poisoned him with that needle, just as I thought. Then Lucius sent Ganymede in to stab him. You didn’t expect much from that nerveless youth, it only had to look like a fatal stabbing, but he was even more inept than you expected; he managed to not inflict a single fatal wound. But you, because of your arthritic knees, couldn’t escape through the window the way he did. Instead, you hid yourself against the wall and slipped out in the confusion when everyone ran in-you obviously practiced this ahead of time when the room was empty and chose your spot carefully. As for your motive, perhaps you would like to tell me about your nocturnal meetings with Alexandrinus, the Egyptian priest. No doubt Lucius never dreamed that you and that priest planned to take a full two million out of the estate.”
He was being reckless, he knew, but he was willing to risk everything on this throw of the dice. Scortilla didn’t know that Domitian had warned him off from challenging the will. He had to extract a confession from her by overwhelming her with the evidence.
And it seemed to work. The woman was thoroughly frightened. She sank down on the bed; when she spoke her voice was so low he could scarcely hear her. “I never planned anything with Lucius and I didn’t poison Verpa. I never saw that needle before you showed it to me. To put an end to this, I will confess to what I did do. I cursed him. The tablet is still buried in the garden. I’ll show you, if you don’t believe me. I know you can prosecute me for it-but it didn’t work! I thought at first that it had-that a demon flew in the window and slaughtered him and left some unholy symbol scratched on the wall to mark its passing. It seemed so real.”
Pliny recalled seeing her the morning the body was discovered; the glassy-eyed shock in her expression like someone who had played at black magic and found, terrifyingly, that the spell had worked. The stupid woman!
“Now I know it was only Ganymede-and that is all I know. I swear it. I will swear by our Lord and God, by any god you like.” Suddenly her thin shoulders shook with sobs. Pliny just stared. He’d been so sure!
At that moment, Lucius was brought in. He looked from Pliny to the weeping Scortilla. What was happening here, and what did it have to do with him? Pliny explained, tight-lipped.
Lucius knew at once what he needed to do. “Vice prefect, you said you’d help me if I cooperated with you. I hope you’re a man of your word. As much as I would like this filthy witch to be guilty of murder,” he jerked his head toward Scortilla, “there have been some developments while you were away that put things in a different light. The centurion can back me up. Ask him to go fetch the medical kit from my room.”
While they waited for Valens to return with the box, Lucius described his visit from the Syrians. “I went with Valens to our farm across the Tiber and it didn’t take us long to find the grave. Nasty sight. Poor fellow had been dead two weeks or more but you could see what they’d done to him. And it was him all right. The one calling himself Iatrides. My father must have wanted something out of him very badly indeed. Apparently he said the word ‘clemens’ and, as the Syrian understood it, ‘vestis,’ whatever sense that makes.
Valens returned with the box and handed it to his chief. “You’ll find his name on the bottom, sir. And you’ll find something interesting inside.”
Pliny reached in and brought out the bit of cork with its deadly needle.
“It works,” said Lucius, “I tried it on a cat. I suppose Iatrides planned to use it on himself if it came to that, but he didn’t get the chance.” Pliny let the object fall back into the box. A cold sweat had broken out on his body.
Scortilla looked up and wiped her paint-smudged face with the back of a bony wrist. There was anger again-even triumph-in her voice. “You officious dunce! Don’t forget that there was another woman in this house the night Verpa died-but, of course, she’s above suspicion, so endearing, so helpless. Not like me.”
Pliny’s leaving, like his arrival, was quick and unceremonious. He glowered at Zosimus and repulsed the young man’s questions as they rode through the dawn-lit streets toward his home. Vestis? He thought. Or Vestalis? No. He recoiled from the thought. But a tightness gripped his chest.