Covered with crumbs, he returned with Titianus. Even the vigilis appeared to be chewing. I was stuck with him; he would probably fail to investigate properly all over again. Sighing internally, I sent off Dromo for an undertaker, ignoring his pleading looks for more tuck money.

Titianus took the line that I was trouble. Nevertheless, he did not exclude me from his thoughts, which were as hidebound as ever. He immediately swore this was a second murder by the same parties. He had hardly looked at the corpse or considered the circumstances.

I pointed out quietly that the original group of slaves had certainly not carried out this killing, because not only were they under guard at the aediles’ office on the Aventine, as Titianus well knew, but I had actually seen them that morning and could give them all alibis. This confirmed his bitter theory that I was a menace, intent on ruining his life. Still, he settled down to do his job, while I tried to make his efforts fit with mine.

Polycarpus must have been murdered during my walk back to the Esquiline. I mentioned that the body had been warm when I first touched it. Titianus borrowed a stylus from me and wrote that down on a waxed tablet, asking how to spell ‘temperature’. He got lost in the middle of the word and had to ask twice.

At least he paid attention to the time-of-death issue, though he only wanted to know because the closer death occurred to the discovery of the corpse, the shorter the time period Titianus would need to cover in his enquiries. I already knew he was a minimalist. But there was no hope he would give up and leave things to me.

He went over to the nearest bar and asked if anyone had witnessed the killer entering the shop while Polycarpus was inside. Of course not. People spend their time at bar counters staring out at the street, but nobody ever really sees anything that happens. Zeus could descend in a shower of gold and rape that fat woman at the bread counter, the one with the daughter-in-law who ran off with a sailor, but the divine apparition would pass unnoticed.

The same drinkers now stayed on, to gawp at the dead body.

Anyone else walking down the street at the crucial moment was long gone. People slip in and out of shops all the time, even when they are empty or closed. This is daily life. No one ever takes it in. If there had been a noisy altercation, nobody had heard it. If they had, they would have walked on faster.

After a while, Secundus and Myrinus came sauntering back to their shop. They had been taking lunch with Secundus’ aged mother; she could vouch for them. Titianus sniffed; I saw he would have liked to pin the crime on the leatherworkers, because they were foreign. They must have known it too.