Solid Citizens Read Online Free PDF Page A

the shutters.’
    ‘You recognize the corpse?’
    He grinned. He only had a couple of teeth in the front, and they looked like they were fighting a losing battle. ‘You kidding? There isn’t anyone in Bovillae wouldn’t know Quintus Caesius when they saw him, even with the back of his head stove in.’
    ‘You want to tell me about it?’
    ‘Not much to tell. He was lying there –’ the spot was just shy of the embrasure – ‘covered with his cloak. I think he’s just a drunk sleeping it off, so I go over to wake him up. Only when I pull back the hood and see his face, plus the damage, that’s that, isn’t it? Goodnight sunshine, and the town’s down one appointee censor. So I leave him where he’s lying, go down to the town hall and call it in, then come back here with the undertaker’s men who cart the poor bugger away. End of story.’
    ‘Was there much blood? On the ground, I mean.’
    ‘Nah. It was throwing it down, had been all night. The alley was like a river.’
    Well, that seemed straightforward enough; certainly everything fitted. I was turning to go when I had another thought. ‘You know Opilia Andromeda, the brothel-keeper, right?’
    ‘Sure. Everyone does, round about here. She’s OK, Andromeda, always says hello, like you saw. We pass the time of day sometimes, when trade’s slack. Not that we have any contact professionally, so to speak. I’m a married man, myself, and if I did try anything on my wife’d kill me.’
    ‘She been here long?’
    ‘About a year. She’s from Tibur, originally. Bought the business cheap from old Mama Tyche when she retired.’
    ‘How did she manage that? I mean, cheap or not it must’ve cost a fair slice of cash.’
    ‘Oh, well, now.’ He sucked on a tooth. ‘It’s quite a story, that. No secret, mind, it was all over the neighbourhood five minutes after she arrived. You notice she wears a scarf?’
    ‘Yeah. To cover a burn scar. A big one, from the looks of it.’
    ‘Right. She got that in a house fire. She was in the business herself, just one of the girls. Slave, not free.’
    I remembered the burned-out shell I’d passed on the same street as the brothel entrance. ‘A fire? The one in the building further down the road near the main drag?’
    ‘Nah, nothing to do with that. That only happened a few months ago, and the place was a warehouse. “House fire”, I said. It was back in Tibur, before she came here. There was an accident with a lamp, some drunk or other in one of the rooms playing silly buggers, and the place went up like a torch. She pulled the madam – that was her owner, Opilia – out of the flames and got herself burned doing it. Opilia freed her and gave her her stake. Lucky chance, that was. She’s no spring chicken, Andromeda, and no one wants to go with a girl that’s damaged goods, even over in Tibur.’
    Interesting. I’d’ve liked to know how a slave-prostitute had developed a taste for Plato, mind. I doubted that Lydia – free or slave – could get the length of reading even the graffiti on the brothel walls. Unusual lady was right.
    I thanked the guy, and left. The next place I needed to go was the victim Caesius’s own house, for a word with his major-domo.

THREE
    I made my way back round to the main street – what they call the Hinge in Bovillae – and headed left towards the Arician Gate. A big, old house, Nerva had told me. There weren’t many of these to start with, and besides the biggest of the lot had cypress branches hung up round the door, which was, no pun intended, a dead giveaway: it was Caesius’s, for sure. I knocked, and the door was opened by a young slave with the front of his fringe shorn off close to the scalp.
    ‘Valerius Corvinus, pal,’ I said. ‘Silius Nerva asked me to look into the death of your master. Could I have a word with the major-domo, do you think? Anthus, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, sir. Of course.’ He stood aside. ‘Just go through to the atrium. I’ll fetch him for