Catilina's riddle

Claudia looked at me sidelong. 'How did you know that? I never even told Congrio.'

'You told me yourself, but I wasn't listening at the time. Do you remember the note you sent back with Congrio, thanking me for lending him to you?' I pulled the scrap of parchment from within my tunic. 'I saved it. I don't know why, except that you were so effusive in your gratitude that you called it "a promissory note" which I could use to call on you for repayment. It was sentimental of me to set much store by it, I suppose, but I was touched by your gratitude. In the note you also said something else. Let me read it to you: "Greetings neighbour, and my gratitude for the loan of your slaves," et cetera, et cetera, "especially your chief of the kitchen, Congrio, who has lost none of his skill since the days when he served my cousin Lucius. I am doubly grateful because my own cook fell ill in the midst of preparations, whereupon Congrio proved to be not merely a great help but utterly essential" So, your head cook was ill. Later he died.'

'How did you know?'

'You told me! It was here on the ridge, over on the eastern side. We were all watching the Cassian Way, you and Meto and I, and you fed us honey cakes. "My new cook baked them fresh this morning," you said. "He's no Congrio, I fear, but he does make fine sweets." Your new cook, Claudia, because the old one, the ill one, had died and you replaced him. And because you hate waste so very much — not even a morsel of a honey cake could you stand to waste! — you even found a use for your dead cook's body, thinking it could be a tool to frighten me off my farm, or at least make a begi

'You comprehend everything, Gordianus. And did the appearance of the body not frighten you at all?'

'It frightened me very much, but at the time I had reason to think I knew who had left it, and why, and it had nothing to do with my neighbours or whether I should stay on the farm. I hid the incident from the slaves, including Congrio. Was it maddening when Congrio had nothing to report to your man the next time he came?'

'Quite.'

'Meanwhile, I had every reason to think that I could trust you, if anybody, because the kitchen slaves I lent you returned with glowing reports of how you stood up for me to your cousins. It was you who planted the idea that I could use those slaves as spies on your family gathering. You joked about my having them poison your cousins; well, I would never do that, but I could tell my slaves to keep their ears open. And so they simply happened to "overhear" you defending me to Gnaeus, Manius, and Publius. But you meant for those words to be overheard, didn't you? I was to think you were my only ally, and so when awful things began to happen on my farm, I might suspect anyone and everyone else, but never you. And if the time ever came when I was ready to sell the farm in desperation — well, I would turn to the one neighbour who had stood by me, wouldn't I?'

Claudia shifted on her hard seat. 'Something like that,' she said quietly.

'The first headless body appeared in the middle of Junius. Then, for a while, nothing untoward happened. Misunderstanding the signal and its origin, I thought this was because I had complied with certain demands made on me against my will. In fact, those days were uneventful because of your absence. You left for Rome to oversee some work on the house on the Palatine, which you inherited from Lucius, so you weren't around to make mischief.

'The second body didn't appear until after the middle of Quinctilis, when we returned from Rome after Meto's birthday and the elections. You had pla

'You knew that I had met Forfex, and so once again it was necessary to remove the head, to obscure the corpse's identity. You should have removed the hands as well, but how could you have known that Meto would recall the triangular birthmark on the back of Forfex's left hand? That led me to Gnaeus. He admitted killing Forfex, which was his right as the slave's master, but he denied having dropped the body down my well. He seemed to know nothing about it.'

'He didn't,' acknowledged Claudia.

'So I thought. Once again, I had cause to suspect someone else, but the co

"That absurd contraption!' Claudia snapped.

'Yes, I realize now how frustrating it must have been for you whenever you'd sneak up here on the ridge to look down on my farm, greedy for it, imagining that it could be yours, despising me for having it, doing what you could in your own craven way to drive me of£ and all the while watching the construction of the mill go on day by day, the tangible symbol of my firm intention to stay and make this property my own. How you must have hated it when I invited you to have a look at it after it was completed! How clearly I could sense your loathing, but I thought it was merely for the mill itself. You hid your true feelings well.'

'A woman learns to hide her feelings if she's to get what she wants, without a father or a husband to give it to her and without sons to defend her!' said Claudia.

The bitterness in her voice was startling, and all at once I saw a flint-eyed woman so profoundly different from the jolly, good-natured matron I had known that I was almost frightened, as when a pretty mask drops to reveal a hideous face beneath. For two sleepless nights

I had puzzled over the riddle of how Claudia could have been behind such atrocities. Now I saw another woman behind the one I thought I knew, who proceeded by guile and deceit and kept her anger and appetites hidden. How else could a woman alone have made her way in such a family and in such a world? For the first time I felt the reality of Claudia's guilt.

'I was confused again when Gnaeus offered to buy my property,' I said, 'though now I see it was you who put him up to that He even said so in an oblique way, saying you had told him I was having a hard winter, but I thought that was merely gossip among cousins. In fact you were using him to feel me out before you made your next move, seeing if I'd had enough yet of headless corpses and poisoned water and the harshness of the winter. After his surly offer to relieve me of the farm, I grew suspicious of Gnaeus all over again, especially when, the very day after I ordered him out of my house, a third corpse appeared behind my stable. I was just setting out on a journey; there was no way I could stay to sort it out. That was just as well, perhaps, or I might have attacked Gnaeus without cause.