Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

“I don’t believe you’ve never seen these betting receipts. I don’t believe you’ve never defrauded your customers, or that you’ve never smuggled your wine out of Rome to avoid paying taxes, and that’s why I love you, my darling, and that’s why I know that when you marry me, life will never be dull—”

“See a physician, you have a fever.”

“—and I know, equally, that I’ll never be able to trust you with money or business, but I do trust your judgment, Claudia Seferius. What is it about this morning that bothers you?”

“You really want to know?” Claudia drew a deep breath. Stared up at the celestial Archer. Let her breath out slowly to a count of five. “What bothers me, Orbilio, is that a woman was murdered today and the wrong man took the blame. A young man who, conveniently, is not around to tell his side of the story.”

“You think Labeo—”

Claudia snorted. “That arrogant oaf?” In her mind, she heard again the sickening thud as the general’s boot thudded into the dead boy’s ribs. Heard the youth’s exuberant yell as he scrambled down the fig tree on the wall.

“No, Marcus,” she said wearily, “Labeo did not kill Callista.” She thought of her tiny, fair-haired neighbour laid out on her funeral bier in the atrium next-door, cypress at the door, torches burning at her feet. “The thing is, Volso is a domineering drunk and a bully.” She sighed. “Who liked to beat his wife and his children.”

Juno in heaven, how often had she heard them? The muffled screams. The pleading. Wracking sobs that lasted well into the night... Many times she would rush round there, only for the door to be slammed in her face, and the next day Callista’s story would be the same. The children had fallen downstairs, she’d say, or she had walked into a pillar. Sweet Janus, how often had Claudia begged her to leave the vicious brute? One day, she’d told Callista, he will end up killing one of the children.

“Think of them, if not yourself,” she’d advised.

Months passed and nothing changed, until, miracle of miracles, last week Callista called round to confide that she was leaving. Enough was enough, she’d said. Claudia was right. One of these days she feared Volso would go too far and as soon as she’d found suitable accommodation for herself and the children, she would pack her bags and leave.

“So you think Volso killed his wife?” Marcus said.

“No,” Claudia replied sadly, “I killed her.”

She could easily have taken Callista and the children in, but she had not. She’d been too busy trotting round placing bets on boxers and wrestlers, ordering new gowns for the Vinalia in six days’ time, planning parties, organising dinners, garlanding the hall with floral tributes. A battered wife with moping children would have got in the way. Put a dampener on everybody’s spirits.

As surely as Paulus Salvius Volso throttled the life out of poor Callista, so Claudia Seferius had provided him with the ammunition.

Orbilio was forced to admit that when Claudia told him he wouldn’t believe what she was going to tell him, he was wrong. He’d said he was convinced that he’d believe her. But wrong he was.

That Volso killed his wife he could accept. The minute he’d heard that Callista had been found strangled in the course of a burglary, his suspicions were aroused. Having listened to the report of the centurion sent to investigate the killing of the thief, he’d not been at all satisfied with the army’s neat conclusion. Volso’s reputation preceded him and Marcus knew him as the type who vehemently believed that his wife and children were his property, that he would say who came and who went, and that nobody, but nobody, left him unless he threw them out. That was why he’d called on Claudia this evening. To hear her view on the matter.

But that she was in any way morally responsible was bullshit.

In time, of course, she would come to see this for herself, and surely the best way of helping her to reach this point was for her to help him clap the cold-blooded bastard in irons.

“The killing required a lot of planning,” he said.

And together, as the Archer rose and the level in the wine jug sank, they gradually pieced together the sequence of events.

First, Callista, having made her decision, must have somehow given the game away. Perhaps she had started to put things together in a chest. Maybe she’d confided to one of the older children. Who knows? Hell, she might even have lodged her claim in a divorce court, where Volso was just powerful enough to have the scribe report the matter back. Either way, he knew about her plan but did not let on.