Decimus Camillus owned a freehold mansion on his own square of land among quiet domestic streets. He had purchased the right to draw water direct from the old Appian aqueduct nearby. He felt no financial necessity to lease his frontage out as shops, nor his upper storey as lodging rooms, though he did share his desirable plot with the owner of an identical house next door. From which I deduced that this senator was by no means extravagantly rich. Like the rest of us, the poor muffin was struggling to keep up the way of life appropriate to his rank. The difference between him and most of us being that to qualify for the senate Decimus Camillus Verus must be a millionaire.

Since I was visiting a million sesterces I risked my throat under a barber’s razor. I wore a worn white toga with the holes folded out of sight, a short clean tunic, my best belt with the Celtic buckle, and brown boots. A free citizen, his importance signalled by the length of his train of slaves—in my case, none.

There were spanking new escutcheon plates on the senator’s doorlocks, but a hangdog porter with a badly bruised cheekbone looked through his grille and opened up as soon as I pulled at the rope on the big copper bell. They were expecting someone. Probably the same someone who socked the porter yesterday and carried off the girl.

We crossed a black and white tiled hall, with a spluttery fountain and faded cinnabar paint. Camillus was a diffident man in his fifties who lurked in a library among a mass of paperwork, a bust of the Emperor, and one or two decent bronze lamps. He looked normal, but he wasn’t. For one thing, he was polite.

“Good morning. How can I help you?”

“The name’s Didius Falco. Credentials, sir.” I bowled him one of Sosia’s bracelets. It was British jet, the stuff they ship down from the northeast coast, carved in interlocking pieces like whales’ teeth. She had told me her cousin sent it. I knew the style from my army days, but they were rare in Rome.

He inspected it gently.

“May I ask where you obtained this?”

“Off the arm of a decorative party I rescued yesterday from two thieving hulks.”

“Is she hurt?”

“No, sir.”

He had heavy eyebrows above decently spaced eyes that looked at me directly. His hair bristled straight up from his head even though it was not particularly short, giving him a cheerful, boyish look. I saw him brace himself to ask what I wanted. I put on my helpful face.

“Senator, would you like me to bring her back?”

“What are your terms?”

“Any idea who took her, sir?”

“None.” If I had realized he was lying, I should have admired the brisk way the man spoke. As it was, I liked his insistence. “Your terms please?”