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

Instead, he went out and hired himself a thief. A military man, he’d know exactly where to look and, as a commander of long standing, he would know what type of character to choose. Someone gullible, for a start. Someone who would believe the story he had spun them about having fallen on hard times and how the debt collectors would be knocking at his door any day now to seize his assets. But if he could beat them at their own game...? Stage a burglary whereby the thief was paid handsomely to steal the goods, which he would hand over to the general’s henchman outside in the street to be converted into liquid assets which the debt collectors would not know about.

“How do you know he’d told the boy there would be an accomplice?” Orbilio asked.

“The yells,” she explained. “The yells were to alert the person he believed would be loitering in the street to move up to my back gate in readiness to relieve him of the sack and pay him whatever price Volso had agreed.” She shrugged. “As I said, it had to be somebody gullible.”

Older boys would not have swallowed the bait. This boy had to be new at the game. No one else would have been told to leave the ladder up against the wall and actually left it!

“Except his yells alerted Labeo instead,” Marcus said. “Who had been primed beforehand by his master that on a slaves’ holiday the house might well be a target for thieves and that he was to shoot on sight.”

Perhaps it wasn’t Labeo’s fault after all, Claudia mused. He’d been as much a pawn in the game as the boy, the one lured by greed, the other by pride. The only difference, Labeo was alive.

“So.” Orbilio steepled his fingers. “The house is empty, because all the slaves are out celebrating. It’s just Labeo in there on his own, and Callista, whom Volso had undoubtedly drugged. The boy sneaks in, probably through your garden, shins up the fig tree and over the wall. He then places the ladder so he can make his escape. Inside, he fills the sack with the items he’s been instructed to pick and then, when he’s finished, he screams like a banshee, because it’s vital the accomplice is outside for a quick handover.”

“Unfortunately, the yell alerts Labeo, who finds no trouble chasing him, thanks to the ladder Volso thought to set in place.” Claudia could see why he’d made general. In military tactics, timing is crucial. “Because while we’re all nicely diverted by the robbery and the killing of the thief, the master of the house is free to walk in through his own front door and throttle his wife at his leisure.”

“Ah.” Orbilio plucked a blade of grass and chewed it. “That’s where it starts to get tricky. You see, Volso refused point-blank to give his porter the day off today, and the porter is adamant his master left the house shortly after dawn and did not come back until after the boy had been shot. He knows this, because when Volso came home the porter told him about the robbery and he was actually with him when he found Callista’s body.”

He paused. Cracked his knuckles. Spiked his hands through his hair in frustration.

“Therefore, Volso could not have killed his wife.”

Dawn was painting the sky a dusky heather pink when Claudia finally stood up. The first blackbird had started to sing from the cherry tree, mice made last-minute searches for beetles, and frogs began to croak from the margins of the lily pond. She shook the creases from her pale blue linen gown, smoothed pleats which had wilted in the heat, and forced half a dozen wayward ringlets back into their ivory comb.

The first of the slaves had begun to trickle home three hours ago. Gradually, the rest had staggered in, singing, belching, giggling under their breath, their footsteps and their voices restoring order to the silent house. Without their presence, it was as though the bricks and mortar had been in hibernation. Now it was a home again, for them as well as Claudia, the rafters resonating with their drunken squabbles and their laughter, the clang of a kicked pan here, the spluttered expletive from a banged shin there, the bawling of too many overtired children.

For most of the night, she and Orbilio had sat in silence in the moonlight, trying to figure out how Volso could have done it. Twice Marcus got up to fill the wine jar and fetch cheese, dates, and small cakes made from candied fruit, spices, and honey to help mop it up, but now, as dawn poked her head above the covers of the eastern horizon, the security policeman admitted defeat.

“He’s got away with it, hasn’t he?” he said, yawning. There was a shadow of stubble around his chin, she noticed. And lines round his eyes which didn’t come from lack of sleep. “The cold, conniving bastard is going to walk.”

Claudia stretched. Massaged the back of her neck. And smiled.

“You fetch the army and arrest him,” she said. “I’ll give you the proof.”

She glanced across at the garden wall, then back at her own house. Gotcha, you son of a bitch.