‘I never did anything!’ Why did a discussion with relatives always make me sound like a truculent five-year-old?

‘I suppose that’s what the low-lifes in the marshes all said too! Lucius keeps mum, but I can tell you got nowhere. You’ll have to buck up,’ Maia instructed me. She was a decent sort, when not being abrupt, hasty-tempered, condemnatory and unreasonable. That was her good side; her wild side was frightening. ‘Get this case moving, will you?’

‘It’s his case.’

‘He’s your responsibility.’

‘No—he’s thirty-six years old and a salaried officer. Besides, he wasn’t even my responsibility when we were young soldiers drinking our way across Britain while the tribes rampaged around us.’

‘I can’t live with him this grouchy,’ Maia insisted. ‘You’re supposed to be the investigator, so stop loafing and get sleuthing.’

I promised I would, but sloped off home. Helena was slightly more sympathetic—if only because she felt her role was to appear always more rational than my female relatives. Putting their noses out of joint with her blameless serenity was, according to Helena, in the noble tradition of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, every wise matron’s heroine.

‘You are not going to send me out pavement-bashing with a flea in my ear, I hope, darling?’

‘Of course not.’ Helena paused. ‘Though I am very surprised, Marcus, that you have made no attempt to find those Claudii who work in Rome, or learn where Claudius Nobilis went off to!’

I knew when I was beaten. I crawled out of the house like a slug with a spade put halfway through him.

I had no intention of being bossed. Pa, who knew just how to live a worthwhile masculine life, had bequeathed me one thing of greater worth than its book-value: I now possessed his bolt-hole. As nonchalantly as possible, I took myself to the Saepta Julia.

Now I was so prosperous, I even had two bolt-holes. I was still paying rent on a cubbyhole Anacrites and I once hired, back when we were working on tax matters. I had affection for the place that had acquired me middle rank. I was using it now for the legacy paperwork, so it was stuffed with scrolls and piteous pleas for the inheritance tax clerks to give me time to pay. I didn’t need more time, but today Nothokleptes had impressed upon me the need to delay bills so he could invest the capital in short-term sure prospects. ‘The more you have, the more you can make, young Falco. You realise that, surely?’ I certainly realised the more I had, the more my banker could cream off for himself. ‘Only the destitute pay up prompt, for fear they won’t have any money later.’

I had told Nothokleptes I would have to get used to this principle—but that I was a fast learner.