The Ides of April Read Online Free PDF

Salvidia’s demise was of no interest at all. ‘Just because somebody dies unexpectedly does not mean their death was unnatural. It happens. Happens all the time. Many people die for reasons that are never explained. Ask any funeral director.’
    ‘No,’ he disagreed. ‘This death is not right.’
    ‘Why? What’s bothering you?’
    Nepos moved restlessly. ‘The old lady was completely tough, she was not even fifty, she was thriving. Her people say she was herself this morning – yet apparently she comes in, dumps her shopping in the hall, and just passes out for no reason. I don’t believe it. That’s impossible. I didn’t get on with her, but I’m not having that.’
    ‘Nepos, there is no evidence of foul play. Keep the commission.’ I decided he was not the only person in Rome who could make gestures. Besides, I had that terrible sense of gloom that you experience when you think a tiresome case is safely over, then it bobs right back at you. ‘You would be wasting your money, hiring me.’
    ‘That’s for me to decide,’ replied Metellus Nepos in a grim tone. ‘Either you look into it for me, or I’ll hire someone else.’
    So I took the job. If the stepson was set on wasting his newly inherited cash, why should some other informer benefit? I was here in position, so I stepped up obligingly, took on the task and said a polite thank you.
    He had to be wrong.
    But then, there is always that little niggle that won’t go away. It always gets you. What if his daft suspicions were not daft at all? What if he was right?

5
    I did not believe I had a case to investigate, but I still looked into the facts. There was a routine; I followed it. Nepos dogged me like a hungry hound so I could not be desultory. Anyway, I really did want my final report to reassure him. Sometimes that is the point − telling your client that they do not need to worry.
    Occasionally, when it’s best to protect them from the awkward truth, you have to say that everything is fine even though you have proved their suspicions are well-founded − but I did not expect that to be the result here.
    I rechecked the corpse, this time with the stepson standing beside me so I could point out its sad normality to him. He sniffed, unconvinced.
    I then spent several hours retracing Salvidia’s movements earlier that day. I interviewed the maid and a few other household staff whom Nepos winkled out of back rooms for me. I ascertained that their mistress had shown no signs of being suicidal. I talked to the workmen at the yard. They said she was definitely full of plans, enjoyable plans to do customers out of money. The maid then escorted me round all the market stalls where Salvidia habitually bought provisions; we identified those where she had been that morning, matching the produce that still lay in her shopping baskets. Nobody in the markets told me anything unusual.
    I pondered motive. Suppose Nepos was right. Unnatural death has a cause, which we could not identify here, and it has a perpetrator. If the woman really had been sent on her way deliberately, who would want to do it? The picture that emerged matched my own previous experience of Salvidia; she was an ill-natured character you wouldn’t share a fish supper with yet, after all, she had been a businesswoman so it was never in her interests to fall out with people completely. She ordered her house slaves about, but not unbearably; she rampaged around the yard, but the workers were used to it; she let down customers almost on principle, but they rarely bothered to complain. That was the limit of her aggression. When she dealt with me she had had a testy attitude, but not so bad that I refused her case. I had decided I could work with her. So when I now asked the usual question − did she have any enemies? − the answer was, not particularly. Rome was stuffed with women who were just as unlikeable.
    I pointed out to Nepos that the one person who benefited from Salvidia’s death was