See Delphi And Die

I am a private informer, a simple man. I was stunned by this dramatic plea. My silk-clad, scented mother-in-law rarely needed anything from me. Suddenly the noble Julia Justa sounded like one of my clients.

All I wanted that evening was a better dinner than I could expect at home, where - not for the first time - I had made a bad mistake in buying a cook. Julia Justa had already enjoyed herself that night reviewing my dismal record in acquiring household slaves. In return for the dinner I would also have to put up with barbed comments about the failings of Helena and me as parents. Helena would retaliate, while her father and I grinned behind our hands until both women rounded on us, after which the slaves would carry in dessert and we would all fall on the quinces and figs...

Family life. I knew where I stood with that. It was better than the old days, when I worked alone from a two-room doss where even the gecko had sneered at me. There, the women who had sought me out were two ranks and many degrees of politeness below my mother-in-law. Their pleas were dismal and they needed help for filthy reasons. What they offered in return went far beyond the grudging thanks I would expect here, though it rarely involved money.

'I am, of course, at your disposal, dear Julia.'

The senator grinned. 'Not too busy at the moment?'

'Surprisingly quiet,' I told him. 'I'm waiting for the normal rash of divorces when couples come back to Rome after the holidays.'

'Cynic, Marcus! What is the matter, mother?' Helena sized up a platter of fruit; she was looking for a piece to give to our elder daughter. Favonia, our youngest, was happy to spend half an hour sucking a single grape but little Julia, left to herself, would take a bite out of every peach and pear, then surreptitiously put each one back on the dish.

'Everything is the matter!' Julia Justa posed in a refined manner, yet several rows of pendant gold beads quivered among the fragrant folds of sage green silk on her bosom. Beside her on the couch, the senator moved away slightly, afraid that she might bruise him with an angry elbow.

Helena now shot her father a brief glance as if she thought he was trouble-making. I enjoyed watching the interplay. Like most families, the Camilli had established myths about themselves: that the senator was constantly harassed and that his wife was allowed no influence at home, for example. The legend that their three children were a constant trial held most truth, although both Helena and her younger brother Justinus had settled down, with partners and offspring. Not that I made a reassuring husband.

It was the elder son, Julia Justa's favourite, who had caused her current anguish. 'I am devastated, Marcus! I thought Aulus was doing something sensible at last.'

At twenty-seven, Aulus Camillus Aelianus was still a happy bachelor who had lost interest in entering the Senate. He was feckless and rootless. He spent too much; he drank; he stayed out late; he probably womanised, though he had managed to keep that quiet. Worst of all, he sometimes worked for me. Being an informer was a rough trade for a senator's son; well Hades, it was rough for me, and I was slum-born. The Camilli were struggling socially; a scandal would finish them.

'He agreed to go to Athens!' his mother raved, while the rest of us listened. To everyone's surprise, attending university had been his own choice - the only hope of it working. 'It was a solution. We sent him so he could study, to develop his mind, to mature.

'You cannot have heard from him already?' It was only a few weeks since we waved off Aulus on a ship for Greece. That was in August. His mother had fretted that it would be months before he bothered to write home; his father had joked that that would be as soon as the letters of credit ran out, when Aulus scribbled the traditional plea: 'Safely arrived - Send more cash immediately!' The senator had warned him that there was no more cash; still, Aulus knew he was his mother's pet. He would write to Julia and she would work on Decimus.

Now we learned that Aulus had let himself be sidetracked and, oddly for an intelligent fellow, he had owned up to his mama. 'Marcus, the damn ship stopped at Olympia. Of course I don't mind Aulus visiting the sanctuary of Zeus, but he's up to something else entirely -'

'So what is the big draw? Apart from sun, sport, and avoiding serious study?'

'Don't tease me, Marcus.'

I tried to remember whether they had held Olympic Games this year. Nero famously altered the centuries-old timing, so the mad emperor could compete in events during his tour of Greece. Unforgettable and embarrassing; a catalogue of pretending to be a herald, giving dreary recitals, and expecting to win everything, whether he was any good or not.

I fancied the date had now been altered back. By my rapid calculation the next Games would be next August. 'Relax, Julia. Aulus can't be wasting time as a spectator.'

Julia Justa shuddered. 'No, it's worse. Apparently he met a group of people and one of them had been horribly killed.'

'Oh?' I managed to keep my voice neutral, though Helena looked up from mopping juice from Favoma's white tunic.

'Well, Marcus,' Julia Justa said darkly, as if this was clearly my fault. 'It is just the kind of situation you taught him to get excited about.' I tried to look innocent. 'Aulus is suspicious because it is very well known that another young girl from Rome vanished at the last Olympic Games. And she was eventually found murdered too.'

'Aulus is trying to help these people?'

'It's not for him to involve himself-' I saw it all now. My task was to take over and steer young Aulus back on his way to university. The noble Julia was so eager to have him with his nose in a law scroll, she was ready to sell her jewellery. 'I will pay your fare to Greece, Marcus. But you must agree to go and sort this out!'

Taking orders from a subordinate is bad enough. Following up some lousy lead he has only bothered to pass on via his mother must be the billygoat's armpit. Even so, I did ask to read the letter.

Later, safely back at home, Helena Justina poked me in the ribs. 'Own up. You are fascinated.'

'Mildly curious.'

'Why did my ridiculous brother alert Mama?'

'Too lazy to write separately to us. He wants to know what the father has to say - the father of the first dead girl.'

'Had you heard about that?'

'Vaguely. It's the Caesius case.'

'So you are going to see the father? Can I come too?'

'No.'

Helena came with me.

We knew in advance the interview would be sensitive.

This was the situation - at the Olympic Games three years ago a young girl, travelling with a group of sightseers from Rome, went missing. Her distraught father tried to investigate; in fact, he had been doing so non-stop - far too long to nag on about it, the hard-hearted Roman public thought. He went out there and doggedly searched until he found the girl's remains. He tried to discover the circumstances of her death, then was soon making well-publicised claims that his child had been murdered. He had been agitating for answers ever since.

Finding the girl's body annoyed the authorities; they had failed to investigate properly in the first place, so they resisted reopening the enquiry. Knowing the daughter was dead took Caesius no further. Eventually he ran out of time, money, and energy; he was forced to return home, case unproven. Still obsessed, he had managed to rake up some interest among the Forum gossips, which was why I had heard of him. Most people dismissed him as a man crazed by grief, an embarrassment. I had felt some sympathy. I knew how I would react if one of my girls ever went missing.

We went early to his house. It was a warm, clear Rome morning, on the way to a very hot noon. The hint of haze above the Capitol, as we rounded it into the Forum, would soon become a flagrant dazzle, too bright to look up at the new Temple of Jupiter with its golden roof and stinging white marble. Over the far end of the Forum hung a cloud of dust from the huge building site of the Flavian Amphitheatre, no longer just the biggest hole in the world, its walls were slowly rising in a fabulous travertine ellipse and at this hour it was the busiest area of activity. Everywhere else there were fewer crowds than usual. Anyone who could afford to leave town was away. Bored senators and bloated ex-slaves with multimillion businesses had been at the coast, in the hills, or by the lakes for a couple of months; they would not return until the lawcourts and schools reopened later in September. Even then, sensible ones would find excuses to delay.

We kept to the shade as we crossed at the north end and made our way towards the Via Lata district.

I had written a letter of introduction and received a short note back that I might call. I guessed Caesius would view me as a ghoul or a shyster. I could handle that. I had had enough practice.

Caesius Secundus was a widower, long-standing; the daughter who disappeared had been his only child. He lived in a faded town house off the Via Lata, just before it turns into the Via Flamima. A cutler hired part of his ground floor for a workshop and selling space. The part where Caesius lived looked and sounded half empty, we were admitted not by a porter but by an all-purpose slave in a kitchen apron, who showed us to a reception room then went back to his stockpot.

Despite my fears of rebuff, Caesius saw us at once. He was tall and must have once been quite heavily built; now his white tunic hung slackly from a stringy neck and bony shoulders. The man had lost weight without yet noticing that he needed new outfits. Time had frozen for him, the day he heard his daughter had disappeared. Perhaps now he was back in Rome, in his own household, he would be reminded of mealtimes and other normal routines. More likely he would resist being cared for.

'I know why you have come.' He was direct, rushing into the business too fast, despite his worn look.

'I am Didius Falco. Let me introduce my wife, Helena Justina. '

Stately and pleasant, she lent us respectability. With the fine carriage and elegant robes of a well-bred matron, Helena always distracted attention from my rough manners. I managed to conceal the fact that her presence physically distracted me.

'You want to talk about my daughter - Let me first show her to you.'

We were astonished, but Caesius merely led us to a cool internal colonnade beside a small courtyard. On a Corinthian pedestal stood a half-statue of a young woman. White marble, good quality; a portrait bust with the subject turned slightly to one side, gazing downwards demurely. Her face had been given just enough character to seem taken from life, though the newness of the work suggested the commission was post-mortem.

'This is all I have now.'

'Her name was Marcella Caesia?' Helena asked, studying the statue thoughtfully.

'Yes. She would have been twenty-one.' The father stared at the bust just a little too long. A chair stood close by. He probably brooded here for long hours. For the rest of his life, time would be measured by how old his lost child should have been, had she lived.

He led us back to the original sparsely furnished room. Caesius insisted that Helena took a comfortable basket chair with its own footstool, perhaps once his wife's. Arranging her skirts, she glanced at me. I took out a note-tablet and prepared to lead the questioning, though Helena and I would share it; one of us would talk while the other observed.

'I warn you now.' Caesius blurted out. 'I have been targeted by many frauds who made me great promises, then did nothing.'

I said quietly. 'Caesius, here's the deal. I am an informer, mainly in Rome. I have taken assignments overseas, but only for the Emperor.' Mentioning Vespasian might impress him, unless he had supported Vespasian's opponents in the imperial contest - or if he was a strong republican.

He had no time for politics. 'I can't pay you, Falco.'

'I have not asked for money.' Well, not yet. 'I know you have an intriguing story.'

'How does my story profit you? Do you have a commission?'

This was hard work. If there was trouble in a foreign province, Vespasian might agree to send me, though he would not welcome the expense. This girl's death was a private matter - unless Caesius was some old crony of the Emperor's who could call in favours; he would have done it by now if he could, and not exhausted himself for three fruitless years on a solo effort.

'I offer nothing, I promise nothing. Caesius, a colleague asked me to check facts. Your story may help other people.' Caesius stared at me. 'So - if you want to tell me what happened to your daughter, on that basis, then please do.'

He made a slight hand gesture. appeasement. 'I have been hounded by monsters making false offers of help. Now I trust no one.'

'You have to decide if I'm different - but no doubt the confidence tricksters said that too.'

'Thank you for your honesty.'

Despite his claim to trust no one, Caesius was still open to hope. With a wrench, he let us win him round. He took a breath. Clearly he had told the story many times before. 'My poor wife died twenty years ago. My daughter Caesia was the only one of our children to survive infancy. My background is in textile importation; we lived comfortably, Caesia was educated and - in my opinion, which of course is biased - she grew up sweet, talented, and worthy.'

'She looks it, in her portrait' After my rude start, Helena was being the sympathetic partner.

'Thank you. '

I watched Helena, doubting if she had meant the routine praise. We had daughters. We loved them, but were under no illusions. I won't say I regarded girls as hell-raisers - but I was braced for future confrontations.

'So why was Caesia in Greece?' Helena asked.

The father flushed a little, but he told us honestly, there had been trouble over a young man.

'You disapproved?' It was the obvious reason for a father to mention 'trouble'.

'I did, but it came to nothing anyway Then Caesia's aunt, Marcella Naevia, decided to travel, and offered to take her niece. It seemed a gift from the gods. I readily agreed.'

'And your daughter?' Helena had been a spirited young girl; her first thought was that Caesia might have been difficult about being packed off abroad.

'She was thrilled. Caesia had an open, enquiring mind, she was not at all afraid of travelling; she was delighted to be given access to Greek art and culture. I had always encouraged her to visit libraries and galleries.' A look in Helena's fine brown eyes told me she knew I was thinking the young girl would be more delighted with Greek muleteers, all muscles and mischief, like classical gods.

My turn again. 'So how was the trip arranged?' I sounded dour. I already knew the answer. It was our link with the more recently murdered woman. Caesia's aunt travelled with a party; she had hired specialist tour guides.

This was a fad of our time. We had safe roads, free passage on the seas, a common currency throughout the Empire, and tracts of fascinating conquered territory. Inevitably, our citizens became tourists. All Romans - all those who could afford it - believed in a life of leisure. Some rich idlers set off from Italy for five years at a time. As these culture-cravers crowded into the ancient places of the world, toting their guidebooks, histories, shopping lists, and itineraries, a travel industry had evolved to cash in.

I had heard leisure travel was sordid. Still, people speak badly of all successful businesses. The public even despises informers, I am told.

'Everything began competently,' Caesius conceded. 'Organisers called Seven Sights Travel arranged the trip. They emphasised that it would be cheaper, safer, and much more convenient if a group went together.'

'But it was not safer for Caesia! So what happened?' I demanded.

Again the father steadied his breath. 'I was told,' he stressed, that while they stayed at Olympia, she disappeared. After extensive searching - that was how they described it anyway - the rest of the group continued on their way.' His voice was cold. 'Like me, you may find that surprising.'

'Who informed you?'

'One of the Seven Sights staff came to my house here.'

'Name?'

'Polystratus.' I wrote it down. 'He was sympathetic, told a good story, said Caesia had suddenly left the party, no one knew why. I was too shocked to interrogate him closely; in any case, he was just a messenger. He seemed to be saying Caesia had caused them inconvenience, by flighty behaviour. Apparently the other travellers just woke up one morning, when they were preparing to embark for their next venue, and she was not to be found.' Caesius became indignant. 'It was almost as if Seven Sights were claiming financial compensation for the delay.'

'Have they softened up now?'

Given that she is dead.

'Now they are frightened that you may sue them.'

Caesius looked blank. He had not thought of it. His one motivation was finding the truth, to help him in his grief. 'The tour had a travelling manager called Phineus. Falco, it took me some time to find out that Phineus had left the group when Caesia disappeared; he returned at once to Rome. I find his behaviour deeply suspicious.' Now we were getting to his angry theories.

'Let me identify suspects for myself, please,' I instructed. 'Was there any information from the girl's aunt?'

'She stayed in Olympia until there seemed nothing else she could do. Then she abandoned the tour and returned home. She was devastated when I finally discovered my daughter's fate.'

'Can you put us in touch with the lady?'

'Unfortunately no. She is abroad again.' My eyebrows shot up. 'She enjoys travel. I believe she has gone to Alexandria.' Well, that's the trouble with holidays; every time you take one, you need another to recover. Still, it was three years since her niece died; Marcella Naevia was entitled to resume her life. People must have said Caesius should do the same; he looked tetchy.

While I noted down the aunt's movements, Helena took over. 'So, Caesius. You were so dissatisfied with the official version of events, you went out to Olympia to see for yourself?'

'At first I wasted a lot of time. I assumed the authorities would investigate and send me word.'

'No news came?'

Silence. 'So it was almost a year later that I travelled there myself. I owed it to my child to discover what had happened to her.'

'Of course. Especially if you have doubts.'

'I have no doubt!' Caesius burst out. 'Someone killed her! Then somebody - the killer, the tour arrangers, some other tour member, or the local people - covered up the crime. They all hoped to forget the incident. But I shall never let them forget!'

'You went to Greece,' I intervened, calming him. 'You spent a long time haranguing the authorities in Olympia. In the end, you yourself discovered human remains outside the town, with evidence that confirmed it was your daughter?'

'The jewellery she wore every day.'

'Where was the body?'

'On a hillside. The Hill of Cronus, which overlooks the sanctuary of Zeus.' Now Caesius was struggling to sound reasonable, so I would believe him. 'The locals claimed she must have wandered off, maybe on some romantic whim to watch the sunset - or sunrise - or listen for the gods in the night. When they were being most offensive, they said she was meeting a lover.'

'You don't believe that.' I passed no judgement on his belief in his daughter. Other people would give us the unbiased view of Caesia.

'This is a very hard question,' Helena enquired gently, 'but could you deduce anything from your daughter's body?'

'No.'

We waited. The father remained silent.

'She had been exposed on a hillside.' I kept it neutral. 'There was no sign of how she died?'

Caesius forced himself to relive his grim discovery. 'She had been there a year when I found her. I made myself look for signs of a struggle. I wanted to know what had happened to her, remember. But all I found were bones, some scattered by animals. If she had been harmed, I could no longer tell how. That was the problem,' he raged. 'That was why the authorities were able to maintain that Caesia had died naturally.'

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