Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

“Yesterday,” I said, “you told me you didn’t know what use your father intended for that townhouse. Here is the deed from the Archive.” I took the diptych from a fold of my toga and opened it. “And here he states plainly that it is ‘to serve as a residence for his only surviving son, Quintus.’ He didn’t bother showing you this deed or getting your seal on it because he was a very old fashioned man, and by the ancient law of partria potestas you were a minor and could not legally own property while your father was alive. He took you to show you your new digs, and that is where you argued and you killed him.”

Everyone glared at Cosconius, but by this time he had gained enough wisdom to keep his mouth shut.

“Killed the old man for his inheritance, did he?” Cicero said grimly.

I shook my head. “No, nobody gets killed over money these days. It’s always politics. Aulus Cosconius was generous enough with his wealth, else why give his son a whole town-house to himself? But he supported Crassus, and Quintus here is Pompey’s man. Aulus wouldn’t stick his neck out for Crassus, but he could keep Pompey from getting another tame tribune without risk, or so he thought.”

I addressed Cosconius directly. “Sometime during the tour of that townhouse he told you that he forbade you to stand for tribune. As pater familias it was his legal right to do so. Or perhaps he had told you before, and you waited until you were together in a lonely spot to kill him. The law admits of no distinction in such a case.”

Cosconius started to get hold of himself, but Cicero deflated him instantly. “I shall prosecute personally, unless you wish to, Decius Caecilius.”

“I shall be far too busy for the balance of this year.”

Cosconius knew then he was a dead man. Cicero was the greatest prosecutor in the history of Roman jurisprudence, which was precisely why I had asked him there in the first place. He took few cases in those days, but a parricide in a senatorial family would be the splashiest trial of the year.

I summoned the owner of the school. “Statilius, lend me a few of your boys to escort this man to the basilica. I don’t want him jumping into the river too soon.”

Cosconius came out of his stupor. “Gladiators? You can’t let scum like that lay hands on a free man!”

“You’ll have worse company soon,” Cicero promised him. Then, to me: “Aedile, do your duty.”

I nodded to my borrowed lictor. He walked up behind Quintus Cosconius and clapped a hand on his shoulder, intoning the old formula: “Come with me to the praetor.”

That’s the good part about being aedile: you get to arrest people.

These were the events of two days in the year 703 of the City of Rome, the consulship of Marcus Valerius Mesalla Rufus and Cnaeus Domitius Calvinus.

Why Tonight? by Jan Burke

Why tonight?

As she lay staring up at the lazily circling blades of the ceiling fan, Kaylie asked herself the question again and again. She wasn’t sure what caused her to ask herself that question more than any other, especially as there were certainly other matters that she should be addressing before the sheriff arrived. But through the numbness that surrounded nearly every other line of thinking, one question occurred to her repeatedly, refused evasion by tricks of distraction: why tonight?

Was it because of the heat? It was hot tonight. But then, it wasn’t the first hot summer night in Kansas. Even her grandmother used to say that the devil couldn’t be found in Kansas in August; in August he went back to hell, where he could cool off. No, the heat had not decided this night would be the night that Joseph Darren died.

She had met the man whose body hung from a rope tied to the rafters of the garage on another, long-ago August night, when she had gone down to the small man-made lake on the edge of town, hoping it would be cool there.

She had talked Tommy Macon into driving her down there that night. She smiled, thinking of Tommy. Tommy who used to have a crush on her. Tommy, taking her out to drag Main in his big old Chrysler. Kaylie calling “Hey!” to Sue Halloran, just to rub it in. Sue calling back, half-heartedly, like a beaten pup.

Willowy. That’s what Joseph called her that night. If his eyes had moved over her just a little more slowly, it would have been insulting. He had taken in her skinny frame, a body she dismissed with the word “awkward” up to that moment, that moment when Joseph asked, “Who’s the willowy blonde, Tommy?”

When he introduced them, Tommy, who would never be a Thomas, whispered to her, “Don’t never call him Joe.” He needn’t have bothered with the warning. She knew from that first moment that Joseph would be extraordinary. He would never be “an average Joe.” Tommy was sweet and clumsy, but she was too stupid in those days to see the advantages of being with a sweet and clumsy man.