I found Hilaris reclining, minus his belt, in a warm family room. He was reading for pleasure, so had emerged from the study to sit with his wife. I identified her as the slender, rather ordinary woman in a crimson dress, slightly uneasy within her elegant attire. A baby slept on her own arm, while a little girl of two or three was sprawling over the knees of a younger woman in much darker clothing, who was by an oversight not immediately introduced.

Flavius Hilaris sprang up eagerly.

“Didius Falco—Aelia Camilla, my wife.” The one in crimson. I had no great hopes. He was a dedicated long-term diplomat: he would have married a good, plain woman who could serve sweetmeats to a governor from the proper shape of dish, or be polite to a tribal king for three hours at a time, then remove the royal paw from her knee without giving offence.

I was right. Aelia Camilla, the senator’s sister, was a good, plain woman. She could do all that. But she had vividly eloquent eyes. It would be a brave king—or governor—who took liberties with her.

Though her husband did. As soon as he had jumped up to bring me in, he abandoned his own couch and relaxed beside her instead, dropping a hand onto her thigh as if it were quite natural for a man to fondle his wife. Neither looked embarrassed. It would never happen in Rome. I felt amazed.

Decimus Camillus had spoken of his sister with affection. She was younger than him, an afterthought in their family, still somewhere short of forty, a shy, private woman excelling in her public role. She smiled at me, a special smile, which she used so well it seemed real.

“So you are Sosia Camillina’s friend!”

“Not a very good one,” I confessed. Then I drowned my sorrows in those sympathetic eyes.

Good, plain women meant nothing to me, yet I took to Sosia’s aunt at once. This was the sweet-natured lady a boy dreams of when he decides he has been lost at birth by his real mother and is being brought up by scolding strangers in a foreign land…Oh I was fantasizing merrily. But I was whirling through a personal nightmare and had just racked up fourteen hundred miles.

Friend Gaius motioned me to a couch, but they had a brazier for extra cheer so I perched on a small stool near that, holding out my hands to the charcoal glow. In a different situation I would have stayed silent about my discovery upstairs, but I prefer to hit clients with frankness, then hear them squeal.

“I gather somebody picked over my belongings. Can’t have been pleasant. Thousand miles of unwashed undertunics—”

“It won’t happen twice!” Hilaris said, smiling. “Just cautious,” he added. It was not an apology. Nor was I disturbed. A professional risk, which we acknowledged to one another with polite nods on both sides.