ODE TO A BANKER

`Keep it clean in front of the baby,' I reproved her. I took out the note-tablet where Passus had prepared details of Chrysippus' visitors. `Curious how these writers are all coming to see me in exactly the same order as their names on my list. Neat choreography. Maybe they need an editor to suggest more natural realism.' To Helena, whose determination I knew well by now, I said, `Any pickings from that bore that I should know about?'

`It's your business,' she pretended.

I shrugged. `I don't expect you to have wasted an opportunity.'

Since the others were exhausted, I dumped the baby on Maia and started hunting out food-bowls. `The chopping board is under Julia's blanket,' Helena told me helpfully. I found it, and the lettuce to chop behind a pot of growing parsley. While I set about making lunch, with a competence that failed to impress anyone, my partner in life roused herself enough to tell me what she had managed to extract from the satirist. Maia threw in snippets too, while she tried to clean fig seeds off Julia.

`I think I'll spare you his life history, Marcus,' Helena decided. `Courteous woman.'

`He has been writing for years, a regular hack with a small continuous readership, people who probably return to his work just because they have heard of him. He does have a certain blowsy style and wit. He is observant of social nuances, adept with parody, quick with cutting remarks.'

`He knows how to circulate scandal,' Maia grunted. `All his stories were crammed with things people would rather keep quiet.' That could be a source of antipathy.

`Could you tell how he got on with Chrysippus?'

`Well…' Helena was dry. `His view was that the famous Scrutator is a founder member of the writing circle, without whose dogged loyalty and brilliance Chrysippus would never have survived on the literary circuit.'

`Or to put it more succinctly, Scrutator is a useless old fart,' said Maia.

Helena took the thoughtful approach: `He claims that Chrysippus was thrilled by the new poems he produced yesterday, but I- wonder. Could it be that Chrysippus really saw him as a dire washed-up hasbeen whom he wanted to drop? Now the patron is dead, who can tell? Will Pacuvius manage to have work published that might have been rejected?'

`Would he have killed to achieve publication?' I murmured, scraping salt from a block.

`Would he ever stop talking long enough?' asked Maia.

`If he really has an established market, he must want the scriptorium to continue trading as normal, without any commercial upheavals caused by the death of its proprietor.'

`Is there a sensation effect?' asked Helena. `Might a murder increase sales?'

`Don't know – but it's presumably only temporary.' I had other priorities. `Where's that nice matured goat's cheese?'

`Gaius Baebius ate it yesterday.'

`Jupiter, I hate that glutton! So did the talking man give you any inside patter on the others involved?'

`All cooing turtledoves, according to him,' sneered Helena.

`She does not believe it. She has met writers,' giggled Maia. `Well, she knows you, Marcus.'

`What, no vinegar? No mean-spirited nastiness about his companions?'

`He was far too nice about them all. Not enough envy, not enough bile.' Helena's bright eyes had been dangling bait. `But then…'

`Out with it!'

`What did you find out?'

I could play the game. I fed her one titbit. `The historian had a large debt to the Aurelian Bank.'

`Oh, is that all?' crowed my sister, interrupting.

`I suspect he was to be dropped too – Vespasian wants his own version of history reported. Anyone who has been around during previous emperors' reigns is tainted. Chrysippus may well have been thinking he would look for someone more politically acceptable to the new regime. Waste of time trying to push the wares, otherwise.'

`Anything else?' Helena grilled me.

`The dreamer who's creating the new republic has the sniffles. An ideal society will be slow arriving, due to his funny turns.'

`What a disappointment. Which one is that?'

`Turius.'

'Ah!' Helena came alight excitedly. `Turius has a black mark against him; Scrutator loved telling us this. Turius refused to include a flattering reference to Chrysippus in his work. Chrysippus put to him that if he was prepared to take the money, he ought to respond appropriately.'

`Toady up to the patron?' I grinned.

`Mention how wildly generous the patron was,' said Helena in her austere way. `Name Chrysippus so frequently that the public learned to respect him just for being so popular – make out that Chrysippus was a man of exquisite taste and noble intention, and the next Roman world-mover.'

`Also, claim that he gives nice dinner parties,' Maia added.

`Turius foolishly prefers not to say these things?'