ODE TO A BANKER

`Oh do go on,' I encouraged him genially. `It's your turn now. Each man I interview betrays the previous suspect. You get to spear the satirist. What's the dirt on Scrutator?'

Constrictus could not bear to waste a good suspenseful moment: `He had a blazing row with our dear patron – surely the old bore mentioned that?'

`He was too busy confiding that Turius is not as insipid as he looks, but has insulted Chrysippus rather notably.'

`Turius had nothing to lose,' moaned Constrictus. `He wasn't going anywhere in any case.'

`If Turius said everything Pacuvius alleges, Chrysippus had good reason to attack him, not the other way round. But what about Scrutator's personal beef?'

`Chrysippus had made arrangements to send him to Praeneste.' `Punishment? What's there – a grand Oracle of Fortune and the ghastly priests who tend it??

'Snobs' summer villas. Chrysippus was ingratiating himself with a friend by offering to lend out the talker and his endless droll stories as a house poet for the holiday period. We were all thrilled to be rid of him – but dear bloody Scrutator came over all sensitive about being passed around like a slave. He refused to go.'

`Chrysippus, having promised him, was then furious??

'It made him look a fool. A fool who could not control his own clients.'

`Who was the friend he wanted to impress?'

`Someone in shipping.'

`From the old country? A Greek tycoon?'

`I think so. Ask Lucrio.'

`The connection is through the bank?'

`You are getting the hang of this,' Constrictus said. Now he was being cheeky to me; well, I could handle that.

`I can follow a plot. I wonder which of the others I shall have to prod to be told the dirt on you? Or would you rather give me your own version?'

`It's no secret.' Once again, the poet's voice had a raw note. Despite having previously claimed that their meeting had been amicable, he now told me the truth: `I was too old. Chrysippus wants new blood, he told me yesterday. Unless I came up with something special very quickly, he was intending to cease supporting me.'

`That's hard.'

`Fate, Falco. It was bound to happen one day. Successful poets gather together a pension, leave Rome, and retire to be famous men in their hometowns where – touched by the Golden City's magic – they will shine out among the rural dross. They go while they can still enjoy it; by my age, a successful man has left. An unsuccessful one can only hope to offend the Emperor by some sexual scandal, then be exiled to prison on the edge of the Empire where they keep him alive with daily porridge just so his whimpering letters home will demonstrate the triumph of morality… Vespasian's womenfolk have yet to start having rampant affairs with poets.' He flexed an arthritic knuckle. `I'll be beyond servicing the bitches if they hang about much longer.'

`I'll put the word out at the Golden House that here's a love poet who wants to be part of a salon scandal…' To be left without funding at his age could be no joke. `How will your finances stand up?' I asked.

He knew why I was asking. A man plunged into sudden abject poverty could well have turned violent when the unsympathetic patron sat in his elegant Greek library telling him the news. Constrictus enjoyed informing me he was reprieved from that suspicion: `I have a small legacy from my grandmother to live on, actually.'

`Nice.'

`Such a relief'

`Absolves you from suspicion too.'

`And it's so convenient!' he agreed.

Too convenient?

When I pressed him about timings, he was the first person to tell me that when he left the library yesterday, he saw the lunch tray waiting for Chrysippus, in the Latin room's lobby. It seemed he might well have been the last to visit before the murderer. Honest of him to admit it. Honest – or just blatant?

I made him look at the side table with the Phrygian purple upstands. `When did you last taste nettle flan?'

`I beg your pardon?'

`Did you go up to that buffet table, Constrictus? Did you help yourself from the tray?'

`No, I did not!' He laughed. `I would have been afraid somebody sensible had poisoned his food. Anyway, there's a decent popina in the Clivus outside. I went out for air, and had a bite there.'

`See any of the others?'

`Not the morning he died.' He stared at me, much more daring than the rest. `Naturally most of us met up in the afternoon, after we heard what had happened, and discussed what we would say to you!'

`Yes; I had already worked out that you did that,' I answered quietly.

I let him go. He wanted to be too clever. I had liked him, which was more than I could say for the historian, the ideal republican, or the satirist – yet I trusted none of them.

There was now only one remaining on my list of visitors, Urbanus, the dramatist. Time was running out; I couldn't wait on his convenience. I took the address Passus had obtained for me and went to his apartment. He was not in. At the theatre probably, or in some drinking-house full of actors and understudies. I could not be bothered to try searching, or to wait for him to wander home.

XXVI