I heard muttering, but Petro's name carried weight.

I barged through the press in the shop and into the scriptorium. The workers were standing about looking anxious. Euschemon, the freedman who had propositioned me to sell my work, was leaning his backside against a table. It looked as if he slumped there whilst under interrogation by Fusculus, one of Petro's best men. I knew Fusculus well. Seeing me, he gave a cheery wave, pressed Euschemon in the chest with the flat of his hand to warn him to stay put, and then came across.

`Falco! He nobbled you then?' The bastards must have discussed me earlier.

`I gather Marcus Rubella is sunning himself in Campania, and the rest of you have forgotten how to do any work. That's why you need me?'

`It's July. The Espartos have to douse fewer fires at night, but everyone is feeling hot and stinky and we're inundated with tunic thieves at all the public baths.'

`Well, lost underwear must be your priority! And Rubella would not want you getting bloodstains on your uniforms, while sorting out a slaying. He would hate to approve the dockets requisitioning new togs.'

`Rubella's all right, Falco.'

`Change of heart? Do I gather he's been in post long enough to stop hammering everyone because he's new? Now you all regard him as lover-boy?'

`We regard him as trouble,' Fusculus replied gently.

Tiberius Fusculus, heavy but fit, a cheery soul, was now Petro's second-in-command, having grabbed the position after Petro shunted on Martinus, the previous lazy incumbent. Fusculus was shaping up well, though his preferred element was not major crime but the thousands of elaborate fiddles and dodges that small-time crooks invented. Admiring the madness and light-fingered skill of flyboy purse-shifters and skallydiddlers, he had made an intense study of confidence tricks. Recognising Forum swindles would not help much here. As with all murders, the chances were that some obvious culprit had flared up and swiped a relative or close associate in a sudden fit of pique. Still, Fusculus would, if his services were available to me, search out clues to whoever had lost his or her temper as diligently as I could wish.

`Are you on my complement?' I asked bluntly.

`For about half a day.' Not long enough, if this turned out to be the one case in fifty that was complicated. `What's the plan, Falco?'

`How far have you gone?'

`Corpse is still in situ. I'll introduce you when you like. He's not rushing off anywhere. This lot all claim they were together out here throughout the relevant period.'

`Which was?'

`After you left in a huff this morning -' He grinned; I just grinned back. 'The deceased said he was going to work on manuscripts and went into his house…' I glanced around while Fusculus was talking. There was, as Petro had mentioned, a doorway and a corridor which obviously led further inside the property. But if Aurelius Chrysippus was a rich man, that could hardly be the main entrance. Petro had described it as a grand abode. There must be formal access elsewhere.

'So Chrysippus was being studious. Then what?'

'A couple of hours later a slave was surprised to see the master's lunch still sitting on a salver, untouched. Somebody then found' the body and the screaming started. One of our sections was just up the street, dressing down the owner of a popina for a food offence. Our lads heard the racket, but did not have the sense to scarper without looking. So we're landed.'

'No,' I said calmly. 'I'm landed. Still, that should assist your clearup figures.'

`You reckon you're the bod for it?' Fusculus chortled genially. 'A natural.'

'Right, I'll get the drinks in, ready to celebrate.'

'You're a hero. So what have you done so far without me?'

He waved at the scriptorium staff. 'I've been taking statements from

this piteous bunch. Everyone who was in the main house when we

arrived has been confined to quarters there's no guarantee we collared

them all, though. A couple of our lads have begun working through

the house slaves for any information of interest.'

'What's the set-up domestically? Was he a family man?' 'That I've yet to find out.'

I nodded at Euschemon. 'Anything to say for himself?'

'No.' Fusculus half-turned, letting Euschemon hear him. 'Tight as a clam. But he's only had the gentle treatment so far.'

'Hear that?' I winked at the scriptorium manager, hinting at unspeakable brutality to come. 'Think about it! I'll speak to you later. I shall expect a sensible story. Mean time, stick there, where you're parked.' Euschemon frowned uncertainly. I raised my voice: 'Don't budge!'

Fusculus motioned a ranker to watch Euschemon, while he and I went into the main property to inspect the scene of death.

A SHORT, DARK, undecorated corridor with a slabbed stone floor led us straight out into the library. Light flooded down from rectangular openings high above. It was very quiet. Exterior noise was muffled by thick stone walls. They would baffle interior noise too. A man being attacked here could call for help in vain.

The plain approach had done nothing to prepare us for the vast scale of this room. Three tiers of slim columns mounted to the ceiling vaults, decorously topped with white capitals in all three classical orders: Ionic, Doric, Corinthian. Between the columns were pigeonholes, sized for complete scroll sets, rising so high that short wooden ladders stood against the walls to aid retrieval of the upper works. The pigeonholes were stuffed full with papyri. For a moment all I could take in were the quantities of scrolls, many of them huge fat things that looked of some age – collections of high-quality literature, without doubt. Unique, perhaps. Occasional busts of Greek playwrights and philosophers gazed down on the scene from niches. Poor replicas that my father would have sneered at. Too many heads of that well-known scribbler, 'Unknown Poet'. It was words that counted here. Words, and whether they were saleable. Who wrote them came a poor second in importance.

The terrible sight on which the bald reproductions were staring down certainly gave me a chill. Once my eyes fell on the corpse, it was hard to look anywhere else. My companion, who had seen this once, stood quiet and let me take it in.

'Jupiter,' I remarked quietly. It was hardly adequate.

'He was face down. We turned him over,' Fusculus said after a while. 'I can put him back as we found him, if you like.''Don't bother for me.'

We both continued staring. Then Fusculus blew out his cheeks and I murmured, 'Jupiter!' again.

The open centre of the room was chaos. It should have been an area of peaceful study. A couple of high-backed, armless pedagogues' chairs must have normally served readers. They and their plush seat cushions now lay overturned on the exquisite geometric marble tiles. The floor was black and white. A pattern of great mathematical beauty, radiating outwards in meticulous arcs from a central medallion that I could not see because the body covered it. Ravishing work by a master mosaicist – now spattered with blood and soaked in pools of spilled – no, thrown, poured, deliberately hurled – black ink. Ink and some other substance – thick, brownish and oily, with a strong though rather pleasant scent.

Aurelius Chrysippus lay face up in this mess. I recognised the grey hair and spade-shaped beard. I tried not to look at his face. Someone had closed his eyes. One sandalled foot was bent under the other leg, probably a result of the vigiles flipping the body. The other foot was bare. Its sandal lay two strides away, dragged off, with a strap broken. That would have happened earlier.

`I'll find something to cover him.' The scene shocked even Fusculus. I had seen him before in the presence of grisly corpses, accepting them as matter-of-factly as any of the vigiles, yet here he had become uncomfortable.