‘Maybe. But some groups, some families are feckless by nature. People carry their character defects from birth, whatever their origin. You find freedmen who are loyal, kind-hearted, hard-working and decent to live with. Then you find noblemen who are vicious, deceitful and intolerable to be around.’

Albia smiled. ‘Helena would say, “I blame their mothers!’”

Petronius clapped her on the shoulder. ‘There may be some truth in that.’

‘So how does this theory explain Anacrites the spy?’

Petro and I both laughed. I said it: ‘He is just a poor sad boy who never had a mother!’

Albia gave me a long look. She did not say, since she could see I had just remembered it, that until Helena picked her off the streets in Londinium, she herself had struggled with neither parent.

Petronius, a father of girls, recognised her mood. ‘Falco is right. Most people do seem to be born with a character inbuilt. So you, Flavia Albia, are destined to be decent, sweet and true.’

‘Don’t patronise me!’ Of course, being Lucius Petronius, he had charmed her.

We left it there. Sergius, with his long whip, was impatient to begin.

He got as far as ascertaining that the terrified fellow the Fifth had brought us was indeed the slave Livia Primilla owned. When she went to see the Claudii, she had given him instructions to wait three days then if she failed to come home, to go to tell her nephew. Syrus, who looked as if he had come from the interior deserts of Africa, was able to describe the scene: Primilla mounted on a donkey, wearing a round-brimmed travel hat. The slave was poor on garments but thought her outfit was in shades of dark red, with a long fringed stole that was also red or damson coloured. Petronius showed him the sardonyx cameo; he failed to recognise it.

One new piece of information emerged. Petronius demanded: how could her staff, despite their duty of care to their mistress, have let Primilla go off alone to see the Claudii—especially after Modestus had already gone missing? Syrus said Primilla had intended to meet up with someone: the overseer who looked after the property and who had first found the broken fences, a man called Macer. This was a development. This man had not previously figured in the disappearances. He must be one of the family slaves who had run away.

At that point, we were thwarted. Loud hammering at the mighty gates of the station house announced unwelcome visitors. The gates were kicked open. In burst a small group of large armoured men. Plumes danced in their glittering helmets. Violence curdled the air.