ODE TO A BANKER

`They had their reasons. I was an adult. I remained on good terms with both.'

`What were their reasons? Adding gloss to the family so you could be moved up the social scale?'

`I don't know what you mean, Falco.'

`You kept your old room at your father's house – though you lived with your mother? Why was that?'

`Mother asked me.' I waited. I was prepared to accept that the abandoned wife needed her son's support. On the other hand, I now believed quite strongly that Lysa connived at the Chrysippus remarriage with Vibia, in order to provide Diomedes with social cachet. She cannot have been as stricken as all that by a divorce that had such devious aims.

`Did your mother think there was an attraction between you and Vibia??

'She did have some crazy notion that Vibia Merulla made eyes at me.

`Olympus. How shocking! Was it true?'

Diomedes was countering my shocks quite well now. `Possibly.'

`So how did you feel about Vibia?'

`She was my father's wife.' That really was sickeningly pious. To tone it down, he felt obliged to play the man of the world: `Naturally, I did notice that she is very beautiful.'

`Her mouth is too wide.' I dismissed her cruelly. `Well, did you have an affair with the beauty?'

`No.'

`Never go to bed with her? She seems ready for it!'

`I never touched her. I've said that three times now. She's a tease,' Diomedes complained. `Once she looked as if she wanted something – then she cooled down, for no reason!'

`Did you get her letter?' I sprang on him.

`What?' This time, at an innocuous question, Diomedes flushed; was that guilt?

`She wrote and asked you to remove your property from her house, I believe?'

`Oh! Yes, she did. I had forgotten about that, I must confess…'

`Do it tomorrow,' I ordered him briefly. `I want you at my meeting; you can bring slaves to pack up your stuff. How are the wedding plans, incidentally?'

Diomedes looked abashed. `Held up, rather – because of all this trouble with the bank.'

`Tough! Of course Vibia may have gone off you once you agreed to marry a relative of hers – women can be funny about things like that.' Diomedes expressed no opinion. `So will you be fleeing to Greece, along with your mother and Lucrio?'

`My mother thinks it would be best.'

`Don't go, if you don't want to. Rome is the place to be. What are you running away from?'

`Nothing,' said Diomedes rapidly.

I decided to stop there. I gazed at him. `Right. Well, Greece is a Roman province; we can get you back here if we need to. But I'm hoping to settle everything tomorrow. We should know who killed your father, and you can be allowed to leave the country… Where is this priest of yours?'

He produced the priest, a different man from the one I questioned. This fellow, a leery, Celtic beery sort of leach, gave the son the exact cover he needed: Diomedes had been honouring Minerva from dawn to dusk, praying and offering barley cakes, the day his father died. I was surprised a temple stayed open so long. I planted the alleged devotee in front of the goddess, with her Gorgon-headed aegis, her austere helmet and her antique spear. `Swear to me now, in the presence of this priest, and on the name of holy Minerva, that you were in this sanctum from morning to evening on the day your father died!'

Diomedes swore the oath. I refrained from calling him a lying dog. I let him leave, only reminding him that he was wanted tomorrow for my final interview.

I held up my hand slightly, to retain the priest. Once Diomedes was out of sight, I sighed wearily. `All right. I'm not the believing nymph Diomedes thinks. Don't mess me about. How much has he promised to the Temple, and how much is he paying you??

'You insult the goddess!' shrieked the priest. (The heavenly goddess made no comment, a true patroness of wisdom.)

I tried both haggling and threatening, but we were deadlocked. The priest ignored the suggestive power of the vigiles, and simply laughed at my fine oration on the subject of perjury. That was depressing. I had thought my arguments were both cogent and elegantly expressed. As an informer I was most competent to speak on that unglamorous crime – having committed perjury plenty of times, on behalf of my less scrupulous clients.

As I left despondently, the priest hurried inside looking furtive. I then observed a procession, men of all ages and degrees of unkemptness, who were entering a side building of the complex. There was more variety than you would expect to see in the ceremonial gatherings of most craft guilds. Overweight or skinny badly-dressed and pedantically meticulous; some like short-sighted auditors; some pushy, with loud laughs; some so vague they were nearly left behind by the group; occasional barrow boys. Straggly haircuts that shamed the barbering profession. Snagged fingernails. Stains. They combined the peculiarity of musicians with an aura of hunched diffidence that would be more appropriate in runaway slaves.