The senator spoke to his doorman, who looked annoyed but ambled off on the errand. I made Camillus Verus show me his upstairs accommodation, then when we came down ten minutes later I looked out again and saw the two loafers from the cookshop with their arms up their backs, being marched off down the street by a brisk group of soldiers.

Reassuring to discover that when a citizen of substance complains to a magistrate the response is so prompt!

With all that cast iron work on the front door, at the back they had seven different entrances to the garden, with nary a decent lock among them. The kitchen door opened when I tried my own home latch-lifter. None of the windows had bars. A balcony around the upper storey offered access to the entire house. Their elegant smoky blue dining room possessed flimsy folding doors which I forced with an edging tile from a flowerbed, while the senator’s secretary watched. He was a thin Greek slave with a hooked nose and the air of superiority with which Greek secretaries are embalmed at birth. I dictated instructions at length.

I decided I enjoyed dictating. I also enjoyed the look on the Greek’s face when I grinned goodbye, clambered onto a sundial, found a toehold on a knot of ivy, and hoisted myself up the sheer dividing wall to see about the house next door.

“Who lives there?”

“The master’s younger brother.”

As a younger brother myself I noted with pleasure that Camillius junior had sense. He had fixed up every window with solid slatted shutters, all painted in dark malachite green. Both houses had been faced in standard lava blocks, with their upper floors supported on skinny pillars hewn from a very ordinary grey stone. The architect had been lavish with his shaped terracotta gable ends, but by the time he came to stock the grounds with the customary statues of graceful nymphs in their underwear, his contingency funds ran out. The gardens were furnished with meagre sticks of trellis, though their plants burgeoned with health. It was the same building contract on both sides of the wall. Hard to say why the senator’s house bore an approachable, easygoing smile while his brother’s felt formal and cold. I was glad Sosia lived in the house with the smile.

I gazed at the brother’s house for a long time, not quite sure what I was looking for. Then, with a wave to the Greek, I walked along the top of the divider to the far end. I jumped nonchalantly off.

I got covered in dust and twisted my knee, landing in the alley behind the senator’s garden wall. Hercules knows why I did it, there was an entry for delivery carts with a perfectly good gate.

VII