‘That was me last night,’ I admitted. ‘I started a conversation – one I never finished – to test whether she was involved. I thought I was giving her plenty of leeway to justify herself. I doubted she was a killer. But the house is to be closed and the slaves moved on, so it was time she faced up to her situation.’

‘I don’t suppose you were unkind. Myla never faced up to anything,’ Galla Simplicia reassured me. She nursed her beaker, as she began to reminisce. ‘My children used to come home to me after seeing their father and tell me all the latest. Every time one of her own youngsters was taken away, it was the same old story. Myla would refuse to believe it was going to happen, even though she was warned. Every time, right until the last minute she kept saying the master would intervene and stop it – which he never did, because every time he saw her Myla was too attached to them already.’

‘He wasn’t daft; he could see if a brat of hers stayed, she would make it a source of trouble in future.’ Fauna seemed to know.

‘Aviola could be a soft fool,’ his ex-wife agreed. ‘But he always had a keen instinct for self-preservation. He never intended to get stung, not for a slave’s brat. Still she created whenever one was sent away. Every time, a mighty scene.’

‘And no doubt each poor child had to endure screaming and a tug-of-war …’ I stretched my legs out in front of me, waggling my toes. An old informer’s trick; it helps you think − or so I am told by untrustworthy old informers. ‘When I talked to Myla last night, she had convinced herself the latest baby could have a free life. She was clearly desperate for manumission herself. She had blotted out any other possibility.’

Galla nodded. ‘Inflated ideas. But never going to happen. Aviola wasn’t one of those ludicrous childless men who fall for a girl’s smooth talk because the silly brute is desperate for an heir. He had his family, thanks to me. That didn’t stop Myla. My son Valerius came to me in tears once, when he was about ten years old, because Myla had been telling him one of her spawn was his little brother and would be sharing our life.’

‘You had a row over it, did you?’ Fauna demanded, eyes bright.

‘One of many.’ Galla’s slurred voice said she was becoming tipsy, though she remained in control as she repeated it in dreary reminiscence. ‘One of very many … Still, for all our disagreements, I would not have wished Aviola dead, and certainly not in that way. Juno, our life together was not all bad and he is my children’s father. They are devastated by the way he died.’