Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

“Vengeful,” the man whispered. “Full of spite. Empty of all remorse. Human no longer, spirits sucked dry of warmth and pity, desiccated and brittle like shards of bone, with nothing left but wickedness. Dead, but not gone from this world as they should be. Revenge is their only food. The only gift they offer is madness.”

I stared into the man’s dark, sunken eyes for a long moment, then broke from his gaze. “A friend calls me,” I said, nodding for the slave to go on.

“But neighbor, you can’t abandon me. I was a soldier for Sulla! I fought in the civil war to save the Republic! I was wounded — if you’ll step inside you’ll see. My left leg is no good at all, I have to hobble and lean against a stick. While you, you’re young and whole and healthy. A young Roman like you owes me some respect. Please — there’s no one else to help me!”

“My business is with the living, not the dead,” I said sternly.

“I can pay you, if that’s what you mean. Sulla gave all his soldiers farms up in Etruria. I sold mine — I was never meant to be a farmer. I still have silver left. I can pay you a handsome fee, if you’ll help me.”

“And how can I help you? If you have a problem with lemures, consult a priest or an augur.”

“I have, believe me! Every May, at the Lemuria, I take part in the procession to ward off evil spirits. I mutter the incantations, I cast the black beans over my shoulder. Perhaps it works; the lemures never come to me in spring, and they stay away all summer. But as surely as leaves wither and fall from the trees, they come to me every autumn. They come to drive me mad!”

“Citizen, I cannot—”

“They cast a spell inside my head.”

“Citizen! I must go.”

“Please,” he whispered. “I was a soldier once, brave, afraid of nothing. I killed many men, fighting for Sulla, for Rome. I waded through rivers of blood and valleys of gore up to my hips and never quailed. I feared no one. And now...” He made a face of such self-loathing that I turned away. “Help me,” he pleaded.

“Perhaps... when I return...”

He smiled pitifully, like a doomed man given a reprieve. “Yes,” he whispered, “when you return...”

I hurried on.

The house on the Palatine, like its neighbors, presented a rather plain facade, despite its location in the city’s most exclusive district. Except for two pillars in the form of dryads supporting the roof, the portico’s only adornment was a funeral wreath of cypress and fir on the door.

The short hallway, flanked on either side by the wax masks of noble ancestors, led to a modest atrium. On an ivory bier, a body lay in state. I stepped forward and looked down at the corpse. I saw a young man, not yet thirty, unremarkable except for the grimace that contorted his features. Normally the anointers are able to remove signs of distress and suffering from the faces of the dead, to smooth wrinkled brows and unclench tightened jaws. But the face of this corpse had grown rigid beyond the power of the anointers to soften it. Its expression was not of pain or misery, but of fear.

“He fell,” said a familiar voice behind me.

I turned to see my one-time client and since-then friend, Lucius Claudius. He was as portly as ever, and not even the gloomy light of the atrium could dim the cherry-red of his cheeks and nose.

We exchanged greetings, then turned our eyes to the corpse.

“Titus,” explained Lucius, “the owner of this house. For the last two years, anyway.”

“He died from a fall?”

“Yes. There’s a gallery that runs along the west side of the house, with a long balcony that overlooks a steep hillside. Titus fell from the balcony three nights ago. He broke his back.”

“And died at once?”

“No. He lingered through the night and lived until nightfall the next day. He told a curious tale before he died. Of course, he was feverish and in great pain, despite the draughts of nepenthes he was given...” Lucius shifted his considerable bulk uneasily inside his vast black cloak and reached up nervously to scratch at his frazzled wreath of copper-colored hair. “Tell me, Gordianus, do you have any knowledge of lemures?”

A strange expression must have crossed my face, for Lucius frowned and wrinkled his brow. “Have I said something untoward, Gordianus?”

“Not at all. But this is the second time today that someone has spoken to me of lemures. On the way here, a soldier, a neighbor of mine — but I won’t bore you with the tale. All Rome seems to be haunted by spirits today! It must be this oppressive weather... this gloomy time of year... or indigestion, as my father used to say—”

“It was not indigestion that killed my husband. Nor was it a cold wind, or a chilly drizzle, or a nervous imagination.”