ODE TO A BANKER

Euschemon coloured up slightly. `Well, no, Falco. These are our regulars, the mainstay of our moderns list -'

`You do pay them?' He did not reply, sensitive perhaps to my own – different – position regarding the poems the scriptorium had tried to commission. `But do you pay them enough?'

`We pay them the going rate,' said Euschemon defensively. `How much is that?'

`Confidential.'

`How wise. You don't want writers comparing. It could lead to them noticing discrepancies. And that might lead to jealousy.' Jealousy being the oldest and most frequent motive for murder.

The list sounded familiar. I took out Passus' written round-up of today's visitors to Chrysippus. `Well, well. All the men you have named saw your master this morning! What can you tell me about that?' Euschemon looked shifty. `Don't mess me about,' I warned.

`We were reviewing our future publication lists.'

`It was planned? They had appointments?'

`Informally. Chrysippus did business in the Greek way -` a casual meeting, a friendly chat about family matters, politics, the social news. Then he would come to the matter in hand, almost as an afterthought. People would have known he wanted to see them, and they would have dropped in at the house.'

'So which of them likes nettle flan?'

`What?'

`Nothing. Any of these fellows have a black mark by their names?' Euschemon looked puzzled. `Which of them, had you decided, was about to be dropped from your catalogue?'

`None.'

`No problems at all with them?'

`Oh, with authors there will always be problems! They will be only too happy to grumble. You ask them, Falco. One or two needed encouragement, let's say. Chrysippus will have handled it tactfully.'

`Do as I tell you, or the bread supply is cut off?'

'Please don't be crude.'

`This may seem cruder: could a disgruntled author have shoved a scroll rod up his patron's nose?'

Euschemon went rigid. `I prefer to believe we are patrons to men of refinement.'

`If you believe that, you are deluding yourself, my friend.'

`If Chrysippus was planning changes, he had not told me. As his manager, I waited to hear what he wanted.'

`Did you have different critical standards?' I guessed.

`Different tastes sometimes.' Euschemon seemed a loyal type. `If you want to probe into what was discussed this morning individually, only the authors know that.'

I thought of sending a runner to all the authors, commanding them to present themselves before me this evening in Fountain Court. That would perhaps allow me to tackle them at a stage when only the murderer knew Chrysippus had been killed – but it did not give me time to dissuade Helena from beating me to pieces over the intrusion. Five authors in sequence was not her idea of a family evening. Nor mine. Work has its place, but Hades, a man needs a home life.

They could wait. I would seek them out tomorrow. It was urgent (to stop them conferring), though not the most urgent thing I had to do. Before anything else now I had to interview Lysa, the aggrieved first wife.

She lived in a neat villa, large enough to have internal gardens, in a prosperous area. Unfortunately, when I found the address, I was met by two men Fusculus had sent ahead, who told me both the ex-wife and her son were out. Needless to say, no one knew where. And it was a certainty, they would both turn up at their home that evening just when I wanted to be in my own apartment having dinner myself. With prescient gloom, I told the vigiles to come and fetch me as soon as the missing relatives turned up.

So much for my home life, I thought glumly. But when I reached the apartment, the evening was ruined in any case: Helena was holding off the barbarian attack with a glint in her eyes that said I had reappeared in the nick of time. We had been invaded by my sister Junia, complete with Ajax, her untrained and unrestrainable dog, her ghastly husband Gaius Baebius, and their deaf but noisy son.

XVI

I FLASHED MY beloved a secret grin; as I had not been here when the visitors arrived, this would count as her fault. She took it with a sickly smile. Marcus Baebius Junillus, aged about three now, ran up to me as I sank wearily onto the first stool that came to hand. He flung himself on my lap, shoved his face near mine, and grinned a huge imitation of my private grimace to Helena – there was nothing wrong with his eyesight. At the same time, he growled loudly, like some horrendous wild beast. He was playing – probably. We did not see him often; when we did, we had to readjust to him.