The Ides of April Read Online Free PDF Page A

to convince me I was right about the stepmother edging him out. At least he had gone off and done what he had always wanted; he became a cheesemaker. I said that was different. He said not really, if you like cheese.
    I do. We had a meeting of minds, though not extravagantly.
    He decided to become official. ‘May I ask what you are doing here?’
    I had been waiting for this and saw no reason to prevaricate. ‘My name is Flavia Albia. I work as an informer. Salvidia hired me to apply legal pressure against some compensation-seekers.’
    ‘After a botched job?’ Clearly he knew the family firm. I related the sad story of little Lucius Bassus being run over. Nepos asked what settlement the parents wanted; when I told him he immediately offered, ‘Fair enough. Tell them once I’ve sold up here, I’ll pay them.’
    I was amazed. ‘To be honest, my commission was to fend them off!’
    ‘Despite the drunken driver and overloading?’
    ‘Metellus Nepos, I don’t like all the jobs I have to do.’
    ‘The family deserve something. I am overruling Salvidia. I never saw eye to eye with her. And you would have been due something?’
    Still bemused by his attitude, I said what I had hoped to charge Salvidia, plus expenses; Nepos agreed to honour that as well. I saw no reason to mention it had been no win, no fee.
    I did not suppose this man had turned benevolent in the throes of grief. More likely, he was just lying to get rid of creditors. While they were lulled by his promises, he would grab his inheritance and make off. He had not told me where his dairy farm was. Out of Rome, I could bank on it.
    Still, he might be unusually honest. If he wanted to be good-natured as some kind of moral cleansing, it was his own business. I don’t meet a lot of that, but I was open-minded.
    Then Metellus Nepos leaned back against a pillar, turned up his face to the tiny patch of sky that was visible above us, and let out the kind of ponderous sigh that was all too familiar to me.
    ‘That sigh sounds like one of my clients, at an initial consultation,’ I said. He certainly looked troubled. ‘When they half wonder if their intended commission will sound like madness – which it often does, apart from “I think my wife is sleeping with the butcher”. That’s usually true. A sudden effusion of escalopes at the dinner table tends to be the giveaway.’
    ‘Tell me what work you do,’ urged Nepos. It was not a social question.
    I gave him my professional biography. I stressed the mundane side: chasing runaway adolescents for anxious parents, routine hunts for missing birth certificates or army discharge diplomas, or for missing heirs, or missing chickens that naughty neighbours had already cooked up in tarragon . . . I mentioned other aspects of my strangely mixed portfolio. The time I investigated the quack doctor who raped female patients after giving them sleeping draughts. How I sometimes eliminated innocent suspects from vigiles enquiries, when our fair-minded lawmen went for an easy option, regardless of proof. Then there was work I did occasionally for the Camillus brothers, two rising prosecution lawyers who might need a woman’s assistance when they were gathering evidence.
    ‘Impressed?’
    ‘You work mainly for women?’
    ‘I do.’ Female clients trusted me. They shied off male
informers, who had a reputation for groping and worse indecency. Besides, many male informers were simply no good. ‘Why do you ask, Nepos?’ I had a glum premonition.
    ‘Do something for this woman!’ Nepos was short. ‘I shall hire you. I want someone to check my stepmother’s sudden death.’
    This was a shock. My guess would have been that he sought an informer because he believed a devious rival had stolen his best cheese recipe. ‘Nepos, if I had not needed the money I wouldn’t have given her a cold, in life.’
    ‘Help her in death, Albia.’
    Startled, I ran through all the reasons I had previously produced for myself as to why