‘That’s right.’ No; according to what Roscius told Faustus and me, that was wrong.

‘So, Libycus –’ I turned suddenly to Aviola’s body slave, ‘– you must have come home before the thieves struck? Nicostratus let you in before anything happened? Yes?’

Libycus had a wild-eyed moment, but nodded.

I was terse. ‘Frankly, that fails to fit the timing I had from your two friends. You are supposed to have seen Aviola to bed – helped him out of his party clothes and so forth, blew his precious nose nicely − then you went out. Secundus and Myrinus told me you spent a lot of time with them, and it was very late when you left.’

He had no answer, merely muttered that I must have misunderstood what his friends said.

We were going around in circles. I could not see what these slaves hoped to achieve here. All they seemed to want to say was that the thieves had been unaware of them because they were closeted in the oecus. It was a good-sized hall, and I could accept that their presence went unnoticed if they were behaving very quietly. But they failed to shake my belief in what Faustus and I had been told by Roscius.

The slaves still maintained the robbers carried out the crimes. For that to be true, Roscius must be a robber, a killer and a blatant liar. He was a habitual denier of his gang’s guilt, yet I still felt he had told the truth about that night.

39

I returned to the apartment, to find cypress bushes either side of the front doors and a corpse in the atrium: Polycarpus. Although he lived upstairs, the Aviola executors must have allowed him to be presented to mourners here. He was lying on a simple bier on the marble table, which at least meant that table had a function sometimes. He had been dressed in a plain white toga, and placed with his feet towards the door.

There was a strong smell of incense but I was glad to learn from Dromo that the funeral was to be tonight. According to strict tradition, it should take place on the eighth day after death – but tradition tends to be ignored at the height of summer. Don’t start complaining about the decline in religious observance. You try living for a week with a dead body lying in your house, in the middle of June in Rome.

I love the potential of a funeral. I had missed seeing Aviola and his bride going to the gods, but when their steward was cremated, I made sure I was right there. For an informer it can be vital. While people have to stand for hours watching a corpse burning, something in the insidious scent of the oils – and their boredom – is apt to loosen tongues. Even if they say nothing, the way people behave can be revealing.