Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

He dashed off, leaving the lantern. I continued to study the body, but it told me nothing. I sighed and scratched my head, wishing I had thought to bring along a skin of wine. Not yet half over, and it was one of the worst years of my life. And it had started out with such promise, too. The Big Three were out of Rome for a change: Caesar was gloriously slaughtering barbarians in Gaul, Crassus was doing exactly the opposite in Syria, and Pompey was sulking in Spain while his flunkies tried to harangue the Senate into making him dictator. Their excuse this time was that only a dictator could straighten out the disorder in the city.

It needed the straightening, although making a dictator was a little drastic. My life wasn’t worth a lead denarius after dark in my own city. The thought made me nervous, all alone with only a corpse for company. I was so deeply in debt from borrowing to support my office that I couldn’t even afford a bodyguard. Milo would have lent me some thugs, but the family wouldn’t hear of it. People would think the Metelli were taking the Milo side in the great Clodius-Milo rivalry. Better to lose a Metellus of marginal value than endanger the family’s vaunted neutrality.

After an hour or so Varus appeared, escorted by his lictors. Junius was close behind, his stylus tucked behind his ear, accompanied by a slave carrying a satchel full of wax tablets.

“Good afternoon, aedile,” Varus said. “So you’ve found a murder to brighten my day?”

“You didn’t happen to bring any wine along, did you?” I said, without much hope.

“You haven’t changed any, Metellus. Who do we have?” His lictors carried enough torches to light the place like noon in the Forum. The smoke started to get heavy, though.

Junius bent forward. “It’s Aulus Cosconius. He doesn’t attend the senate more than three or four times a year. Big holdings in the city. This building is one of his, I think. Extensive lands in Tuscia as well.” He held out a hand and his slaves opened the leaves of a wooden tablet, the depressions on their inner sides filled with the finest beeswax, and slapped it into the waiting palm. Junius took his stylus from behind his ear and used its spatulate end to scrape off the words scratched on the wax lining. It was an elegant instrument of bronze inlaid with silver, befitting so important a scribe, as the high-grade wax befitted senate business. With a dextrous twirl he reversed it and began to write with the pointed end. “You will wish to make a report to the senate, praetor?”

Varus shrugged. “What’s to report? Another dead senator. It’s not like a visitation from Olympus, is it?”

Yes, the times were like that.

“I’ve sent for Asklepiodes,” I said. “He may be able to tell something about the condition of the body.”

“I doubt he’ll be able to come up with much this time,” Varus said, “but if you want, I’ll appoint you to investigate. Make a note of it, Junius.”

“Will you lend me a lictor?” I asked. “I’ll need to summon people.”

Varus pointed to one of his attendants, and the man sighed. The days of cushy duty in the basilica were over. I said, “Go and inform the family of the late Senator Aulus Cosconius that they have just been bereaved and that they can claim the body here. Junius should be able to tell you where they live. Then go to the contractor who built this place. His name is...” I opened one of my own wax tablets “...Manius Varro. He has a lumberyard by the Circus Flaminius, next to the Temple of Bellona. Tell him to call on me first thing tomorrow morning, at my office in the Temple of Ceres.”

The man handed his torch to a companion and conferred with Junius, then he shouldered his fasces

and marched importantly away.

Asklepiodes arrived just as Junius and Varus were leaving, trailed by two of his Egyptian slaves who carried his implements and other impedimenta. Hermes was with him, carrying a wineskin. I had trained him well.

“Ah, Decius,” the Greek said, “I can always count upon you to find something interesting for me.” He wore a look of bright anticipation. Sometimes I wondered about Asklepiodes.

“Actually, this looks rather squalid, but the man was of some importance and somebody left him in a building I was inspecting. I don’t like that sort of thing.” Hermes handed me a full cup, and I drained it and handed it back.

Asklepiodes took the lantern and ran the pool of light swiftly over the body, then paused to examine the wound. “He died within the last day, I cannot be more precise than that, from the thrust of a very thin-bladed weapon, its blade triangular in cross-section.”

“A woman’s dagger?” I asked. Prostitutes frequently concealed such weapons in their hair to protect themselves from violent customers and sometimes to settle disputes with other prostitutes.