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

I stepped closer to the brazier, spreading my fingers to catch the warmth. “What a strange day!” I muttered. “What can I say to you, Cornelia, except what I said to another who told me a tale of lemures earlier today: why do you consult me instead of an augur? These are mysteries about which I know very little. Tell me a tale of a purloined jewel or a stolen document; call on me with a case of parricide or show me a corpse with an unknown killer. With these I might help you; about such matters I know more than a little. But how to placate a lemur, I do not know. Of course, I will always come when my friend Lucius Claudius calls me; but I begin to wonder why I am here at all.”

Cornelia studied the crackling embers and did not answer.

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “you believe this lemur is not a lemur at all. If in fact it is a living man—”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe or don’t believe,” she snapped. I saw in her eyes the same pleading and desperation I had seen in the soldier’s eyes. “No priest can help me; there is no protection against a vengeful lemur. Yet, perhaps the thing is really human, after all. Such a pretense is possible, isn’t it?”

“Possible? I suppose.”

“Then you know of such cases, of a man masquerading as a lemur?”

“I have no personal experience—”

“That’s why I asked Lucius to call you. If this creature is in fact human and alive, then you may be able to save me from it. If instead it is what it appears to be, a lemur, then... then nothing can save me. I am doomed.” She gasped and bit her knuckles.

“But if it was your husband’s death the thing desired—”

“Haven’t you been listening? I told you what it said to me: Now you. Those were the words it spoke!” Cornelia sobbed. Lucius went to her side. Slowly she calmed herself.

“Very well, Cornelia. I will help you if I can. First, questions. From answers come answers. Can you speak?”

She bit her lips and nodded.

“You say the thing has the face of Furius. Did your husband think so?”

“My husband remarked on it, over and over. He saw the thing very close, more than once. On the night he fell, the creature came near enough for him to smell its fetid breath. He recognized it beyond a doubt.”

“And you? You say you saw it for only an instant before you fled. Are you sure it was Furius you saw last night on the balcony?”

“Yes! An instant was all I needed. Horrible — discolored, distorted, wearing a hideous grin — but the face of Furius, I have no doubt.”

“And yet younger than you remember.”

“Yes. Somehow the cheeks, the mouth... what makes a face younger or older? I don’t know, I can only say that in spite of its hideousness the thing looked as Furius looked when he was a younger man. Not the Furius who died two years ago, but Furius when he was a beardless youth, slender and strong and full of ambition.”

“I see. In such a case, three possibilities occur to me. Could this indeed have been Furius — not his lemur, but the man himself? Are you certain that he’s dead?”

“Oh, yes.”

“There is no doubt?”

“No doubt at all...” She shivered and seemed to leave something unspoken. I looked at Lucius, who quickly looked away.

“Then perhaps this Furius had a brother?”

“A much older brother,” she nodded.

“Not a twin?”

“No. Besides, his brother died in the civil war.”

“Oh?”

“Fighting against Sulla.”

“I see. Then perhaps Furius had a son, the very image of his father?”

Cornelia shook her head. “His only child was an infant daughter. His only other survivors were his wife and mother, and a sister, I think.”

“And where are the survivors now?”

Cornelia averted her eyes. “I’m told they moved into his mother’s house on the Caelian Hill.”

“So: Furius is assuredly dead, he had no twin — no living brother at all — and he left no son. And yet the thing which haunted your husband, by his own account and yours, bore the face of Furius.”

Cornelia sighed, exasperated. “Useless! I called on you only out of desperation.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Oh, my head pounds like thunder. The night will come and how will I bear it? Go now, please. I want to be alone.”

Lucius escorted me to the atrium. “What do you think?” he said.

“I think that Cornelia is a very frightened woman, and her husband was a frightened man. Why was he so fearful of this particular lemur? If the dead man had been his friend—”

“An acquaintance, Gordianus, not exactly a friend.”

“Is there something more that I should know?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “You know how I detest gossip. And really, Cornelia is not nearly as venal as some people think. There is a good side of her that few people see.”

“It would be best if you told me everything, Lucius. For Cornelia’s sake.”

He pursed his small mouth, furrowed his fleshy brow and scratched his bald pate. “Oh, very well,” he muttered. “As I told you, Cornelia and her husband have lived in this house for two years. It has also been two years since Furius died.”

“And this is no coincidence?”