Albia had broken away from Anacrites and barged up, thinking I was talking about her. She sensed me making arrangements with Lentullus. ‘I’ll take Nux for a walk—if I’m allowed out?’

‘You’ve just been out—but you are not a prisoner. Just stop stalking Camillus Aelianus—and keep away from other men as well.’ I meant the spy. Lentullus was too much of a clown to count.

I returned to Anacrites and his planned search of my house. ‘Who are you looking for?’ Better to ask, rather than admit I knew. ‘Does your lost lamb have a name?’

‘State secret,’ Anacrites mumbled, pretending to make a joke of it.

‘Oh, one of your precious bodyguards, would that be?’ This was like trying to squeeze a dry sponge, one that had been desiccated in the sun on a harbour wall for three weeks. He nodded reluctantly, so I added, ‘Aren’t there two? Where’s the other one? Doesn’t he know what his brother’s been up to?’

Anacrites shot me a suspicious glance. ‘How do you know they are brothers?’

‘They look like brothers—and in some passing conversation, they told me, you idiot. I don’t waste my time trying to find out sordid details about your useless staff.’

Anacrites then set about peering into all our upstairs rooms, while I ambled along with him to ensure he saw nothing too private. I encouraged him to look under beds, if I knew there were chamber pots; I wished we had put snappy rat traps just inside cupboards. A toy donkey fell down a step and nearly made the spy take a tumble, but the beds were neatly made, shutters closed, lamps trimmed and filled. We had staff; order had seeped into my domestic life like a leaking drain. None of the slaves were discovered rifling papers or money chests, none were screwing one another in the guest rooms or playing with themselves alone in linen cupboards. Something about Anacrites made them all scuttle for cover even though I, their reassuring master, was escorting him, with my half-read scroll of Horace still tucked under my elbow and an expression of pained tolerance at his damned intrusion.

We glanced in every room, then went out on to the roof terrace. ‘If he’s up here, I’ll throw him off.’ By now I was curt. ‘This has gone far enough. What’s going on?’

‘I told you—my agent has gone missing; I have to find him. He has family, for one thing; if something’s happened, they will want to know.’

‘Married?’ I felt a strange need to know. I had shared three crucial days in that man’s life. His worthwhile existence reached its end in my home. Petronius and I were his last civilised contacts. Remembering Helena’s furious comparison, I wondered if psychopathic killers developed this warped sense of relationship with their victims.

‘Yes, there is a wife—or so I believe.’