ODE TO A BANKER

A guarded look crossed Pisarchus' face. `I might have done.' So losses did not necessarily ruin a commercial relationship. `But I heard one or two rumours in the Forum today… I may try to put together another arrangement. A syndicate of family and friends. Two of my sons are in the business.'

`Shipping or banking?' queried Petro.

`Shipping!' Pisarchus clarified, slightly indignantly as if he did not regard banking as a trade. `My sons have both done well lately, luckily for us. That's how it goes. We support one another.'

`In which case you won't need recourse to a bank.' I smiled. `What rumours have you heard about the Golden Horse, incidentally?'

`I won't spread tittle-tattle,' Pisarchus said.

`All right. Tell me, did you have a slight altercation – over your loans, presumably – with Aurelius Chrysippus recently?'

`No,' replied the shipper. `It is Lucrio I deal with when I need credit.'

I half-turned towards Petronius and we exchanged frankly sceptical glances. I had told him before we started that Pisarchus might be the man I had seen arguing.

`Wrong identification?' Petro suggested to me. Pisarchus frowned, wondering who had identified whom, and where. `I don't think so!' I said firmly.

`The man sounds definite.'

`Me too. So he's definitely lying!'

I looked slowly back at Pisarchus. `Don't mess us about, sir.' Pisarchus looked anxious, yet he did not panic. He simply sat waiting to be told what was up. Something about him appealed to me.

He was either a clever dodger or quite straight. I found myself hoping he was innocent.

`You were seen,' I said heavily, `at the Chrysippus scriptorium.'

He did not blink. `That's right.'

`Well, why didn't you say so?'

`You asked me about credit. My visit to the scroll-shop was nothing to do with that.'

I took a long breath, scratching my head with the stylus. `I think you had better explain – and make it good, for your own sake.'

He too stretched, as people do when the conversation takes a turn into a new subject. `I had something to discuss – business for somebody else.'

`Not banking – so shipping?'

`No. Not shipping either.' This time I waited. Pisarchus coloured up gradually. He looked embarrassed. `Sorry – I don't want to say.'

`I really think you should,' I told him quietly. I still felt that in his own way he was being honest. `I know you were there, I saw you myself. I saw you leave, looking extremely put out.'

`Chrysippus was being difficult; he would not help my… friend.'

`Well, you know what happened not long after that.'

`I know nothing,' protested Pisarchus, now losing my misplaced confidence.

`Oh you do!' He had told us he did. I spelled it out angrily: `Not long after you had your wrangle on behalf of this mysterious "friend", somebody battered Aurelius Chrysippus to death in his library. So you were one of the last people to see him – and from what the other visitors have told me, you are the last person we know for sure who had a disagreement with the dead man.'

Pisarchus lost all the colour that had swamped his face a few minutes earlier. `I didn't know that he was dead.'

`Oh really?'

`That's the truth.'

`Well, you have been away in Praeneste!' I sneered, hardly able to believe it.

`Yes – and I deliberately made no attempt to contact Chrysippus,' Pisarchus argued hotly. `I was annoyed with him – for several reasons!'

`Of course you were – he promised you a visiting poet, didn't he? A poet who then refused to come -'

`He blamed the poet,' Pisarchus said, still trying to play the rational type. `I felt aggrieved, but it was hardly a mortal insult. Would I kill him over that?'

`Those I know who have been entertained by that poet, would say you were well out of it,' I conceded facetiously. I returned to my previous grim tone. `This is serious, man! What was your other grievance, Pisarchus? What had Chrysippus refused to do for your mystery "friend" – let's hear it!'

Pisarchus sighed. When he told me the truth, I could see why a man of his kind might be reluctant to admit this. `It was my son,' he said, now squirming on his stool. `My youngest. He does not want to follow his brothers to sea – and for family peace I'm not arguing. He knows his own mind, and he is supporting himself as best he can while he tries to get where he wants to be… He has had no luck; I just tried to persuade Chrysippus he ought to give the lad a helping hand -'

`Whatever is your boy after?' I demanded, intrigued.

Then at last Pisarchus forced it out: `He wants to be a writer,' he informed us gloomily.

XLII

I

HAD MANAGED not to laugh. Petronius Longus, less sensitive to the feelings of creative artists, let out a high-pitched snort.

As soon as Pisarchus made the embarrassing admission, he relaxed somewhat. Though shame-faced, he apparently felt that now this was in the open he could return to dealing with us man-to-man.