I felt truly grim, though I presumed I had the hangover from Hades after that Caecuban wine. Had it gone bad in the ageing process? Was the gorgeous flavour an illusion? Even my stomach seemed to be growling, which could not be from what I had eaten with my uncle just now. Claudia kept a well-run house. She never served slimy salad or covered up the smell of bad meat with strong sauces. You don’t risk six small children performing synchronised diarrhoea.

I preferred not even to think about that.

Well, biliousness could be useful when I had stubborn suspects to interrogate. I would like to believe kindness works, but I knew from experience that shouting at people and tetchily suggesting you are going to throw them to the beasts often has a quicker effect and produces more details.

So in that spirit, for the last time I went in to see the slaves.

55

Faustus was not there. He had left me an extremely peevish note (‘should your condition ever allow you to appear’).

I guessed he was upset that I had not come to carry out interviews this morning according to my promise. But now here I was, bringing the answers he hired me to find: I had identified the killer of the bridal couple. Even better, I had found their missing property, which always carries more weight than mere life. His agent had succeeded. The killer had been identified and would be caught. Meanwhile I, the uncomplaining hireling, would also sort out what to do with these pesky slaves.

The nine culprits – and they were all culprits, I believed – were loafing about in dappled shade in the garden as if they had no cares. I would put a stop to that.

I hauled out Olympe, the fifteen-year-old, a soft target.

I led the little sweetie-cake into the office, taking some comfort from its association with Manlius Faustus. I fussed about, as if preparing myself, adjusting furniture, laying out note tablets.

‘Tell me about your family,’ I began conversationally, while I pretended to get ready.

Olympe presumed the real interview had not yet started. She had never had any kind of regular employment; she was unfamiliar with being routinely messed about by some supervisor …

As she had hinted previously, she grew up a member of a travelling group of Lusitanian musicians, all one big family; like most Iberian entertainers, they used tambourines and castanets, but also other traditional instruments, which they plied with frenzy while they danced and sang, and occasionally sliced one another up with traditional Lusitanian boning knives. Mucia Lucilia had seen them perform once; on one of her whims, she asked for Olympe and was sold her.

Olympe had convinced herself her family were shocked by the money; she innocently believed that they intended to return it.

‘You ran away back to them, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but my people explained to me we are obligated by a work contract.’