You spend months stalking a problem that constantly escapes. Then cover more ground in half a second than your brain can comprehend.

This was why Decimus had spoken of Pertinax in such a reluctant tone: Pertinax was his misery of a son-in-law. Atius Pertinax! Now I knew. I knew how the silver pigs were carried to Italy, by whom, and how concealed: under a cargo so dull the customs force at Ostia—who operate the luxury tax and have perfect artistic taste—glanced once inside the hold, groaned at the ghastly shale, then never stooped to search his boat. Poor Helena had innocently tried to arrange our passage on a ship weighed down to the gunnels with silver pigs!

More. At the start of all this Atius Pertinax, as aedile in the Capena Gate Sector, would have been the snoop in the praetor’s office who heard where his praetor’s friend Decimus had hidden the lost ingot in the Forum—probably he arranged to have Sosia Camillina snatched from home. After I spoiled that, he nosed out that she was with me, told her father, then used Publius as an excuse to arrest me for stalking in too close. All this in high panic, because the ingot lost in the street might have pointed to him.

Helena was his wife.

“Your first thought,” she insisted, “will be that this implicates me.”

She was not his wife now.

“You’re too straight.” My second thought—always the best.

She goaded me on.

“Now can your dull brain tease it out? The two names Triferus gave to Uncle Gaius must be my husband Pertinax, and Domitian, Vespasian’s son.”

“Yes,” I said. I felt about as useless as she always implied. It must be because Pertinax had been her husband that Gaius had refused to tell us whose names they were.

There was a long pause. Somewhat stiffly I asked, “Tell me, lady, how long ago did you work this out?”

For a moment she remained silent. “When the captain of my husband’s ship refused to carry us. Gnaeus and I had parted kindly. It was such a spiteful act.” So she still called him Gnaeus!

“The captain of your ex-husband’s ship must have felt quite dismayed when you asked! How close,” I demanded as another aspect struck me, “is your ex-husband to your Uncle Publius?”

“Uncle Publius cannot know about this.”

“Sure?”

“Not possibly!”

“Any views on Vespasian?”

“Uncle Publius supports him of course. He’s a businessman; he wants stability. Vespasian stands for a well-run state: high taxation—also high profits in trade.”

“Your uncle provides wonderful camouflage for Pertinax in more than one way.”

“Oh Juno, my poor uncle!”

“Is he? Tell me, what line did Publius take in the discussion about Domitian Caesar that made you quarrel with Pertinax?”

“None. He wasn’t there. He only came to our house for family events. Stop hounding my uncle.”

“I have to.”