`Belonging to wealthy parents must help him cope.'

`You are a horrible cynic, Falco. Diomedes is a very sensitive soul.' `What are his talents? What are you planning to do with him?'

`I am trying to help him decide what he wants to be in life. Once he has readjusted to his father's death, I believe he will review his ambitions. Marry soon. Settle down to building up a portfolio of property. Make something of himself in the community.' `Public life?' I raised my eyebrows.

`Chrysippus dearly wanted him to advance in society.'

`Many a banker's descendant has done that,' I conceded. `Our noble Emperor, for one.' Finance was a smart entrance-ticket. The descendants hit Rome well provided with money, if nothing else; all they had to acquire was social respectability. The Flavian family did that by astute marriages, as I recalled. Then civil and military positions, right up to the highest, jumped into their welcoming arms.

`Who is Diomedes marrying?'

`We have yet to decide on a suitable young woman. But I am in discussion currently with a good family.'

`One nuptial step at a time, eh?' I scoffed offensively.

Lysa knew I had reached the real subject of the interview. Already she was looking uncomfortable – though that was probably because I had not yet told her what my errand was.

`I've just been given some startling information, Lysa.'

Really?' While seeming indifferent, she abandoned the accounts and signalled to her scribe to leave the room. No maid had appeared to chaperone her. She was a tough woman, whom I distrusted; I would have welcomed the presence of a chaperone – to protect me.

`I hear you have inherited half the trapeza.' Lysa inclined her head. `Lucky woman! Did you know about your place in the will, when we discussed it previously?'

`The bequest had always been intended.'

`But you modestly kept silent?'

`There could always have been,' she said a little archly, `some lastminute change of plan.' It would be a brave testator who would change his will after Lysa believed she was his main legatee.

`With the new wife angling to improve her own position?' I hinted. `Had Chrysippus ever suggested that he might change the inheritance?'

`No.'

`And after the divorce, you continued to manage the affairs of the trapeza?'

`Women are not permitted to engage in banking,' she corrected me.

`Oh, I don't believe that ever inhibited you. Are you saying that Lucrio runs everything? Presumably, he does what you tell him?' `No one person has ever made all the decisions. Chrysippus and I -

and Lucrio too – were a joint board of management., 'Oh, Chrysippus did come into it?' She looked surprised. `It was his business.'

`But you were the force running it – as you still are. And now it's in the joint hands of you and Lucrio – but I am told you are about to remarry!'

`Yes, I shall probably do that,' Lysa responded, unmoved by my fierce approach. `Who told you?'

`Lucrio.'

I wondered if she was annoyed with the freedman, but apparently not. `Did he name the man I am marrying?'

`Unfortunately he forgot to mention that.' He had told me coyly that I should ask her to provide the details. `So, who is this lucky bridegroom, Lysa? Someone you have known for a long while?'

`You could say so.'

`A lover?'

`Certainly not!' That made her furious. Informers are used to it. Whatever she claimed, I would look into whether she had had an existing affair with the new husband.

`Own up. Don't you realise this places you at the top of my suspects list?'

`Why should it??

'You and your paramour had a prize incentive to kill Chrysippus – so you could acquire the bank.'

The woman laughed gently. `No need, Falco. I was always going to inherit the bank anyway.'

`Your new boyfriend may have wanted more direct ownership – and he may have been impatient, too.'

`You do not know what you are talking about.' `Tell me then.'

Lysa spoke frostily. `It has been the custom for centuries when Greek banks are inherited, to leave them jointly to the owner's widow and his trusted agent.' That was what Lucrio had told me. He had held back delicately, however, on the next peculiar Athenian joke: `To protect the business, it is also the custom that the two heirs will subsequently join forces.' Then Lysa said, as if it were nothing extraordinary, `I shall be marrying Lucrio.'

I gulped. Then, though it appeared not to be a love match, I wished the future bride every happiness. The couple's shared wealth presumably rendered formal best wishes for their future superfluous.

THIS WAS the dangerous stage, where the case could die on us. The problem with this one was not the usual lack of facts, but almost too many to co-ordinate.

The work had not ended, by any means. But there were no material clues, despite numerous loose threads. I prepared an interim report for Petro, summing up the dead ends:

The scriptorium manager, the scribes, and the household slaves are all ruled out either by proven absence, confirmed sightings off the scene, or lack of bloodstains at the initial interrogation.

We have yet to find the murderer's bloodstained clothes.

The wife, ex-wife and son, and the bank's agent have all produced acceptable alibis; some of their stories are dubitable, but their movements are in theory accounted for at the time of death.

The people who gained financially were on good terms with the victim, in funds beforehand, and in line to inherit anyway.

The authors have motives:

Avienus, the historian, has a huge debt.

Turius, the idealist, has offended and insulted the victim.

Scrutator, the satirist, has rebelled at being loaned out like a slave.

Constrictus, the would-be love poet, is a drunk and in line to be dropped.

Urbanus, the dramatist, is flying the coop and is angry about rumours belittling him.

There is, unfortunately, no hard evidence to link any of them to the crime.

`Any big holes?' Petro asked.

`Pisarchus, the shipper with the lost vessels and cargoes, quarrelled with the victim on the day he died. We have not yet managed to interview him; he is out of town.'

`At sea?'

`Inland; berthed at Praeneste. He has a villa there; that's where Scrutator was supposed to be sent to pluck a soothing lyre – perhaps to compensate for the shipper's financial grief.'

`Out of our jurisdiction,' groaned Petro; the vigiles only operated within Rome. Then he added slyly, `But I may find -I have a man travelling that way eventually. Or we'll nab him for questioning next time he comes to the city to beg for a new loan… Think he will?'

`They always do. He'll find new security somehow; how often does a long-haul ocean-trader cease trading?'

`Anything else I should know?'

`The big puzzle: one of the dead man's visitors. We were told Urbanus went there that day, but he denies it. I think I believe him. He had definitely been invited and the porter apparently counted him off, so was it somebody else? The regime is so vague and disorganised nobody knows for sure. If there was an extra caller, we don't know who.'

`Rats. Only Chrysippus could tell us, and he's in his funeral urn. That all?'

`I still think we ought to investigate customers from the bank.' `And?'

`I don't trust the son.'

`You don't trust anyone!'

`True. What strikes you then, Petro?'

`I reckon the bank is at the heart of it.' He would. He was a cautious investor, suspicious of men who handled other people's savings. `I'm going to call back Lucrio and lean on him. I'll say we don't ask for confidential information, but he must give us some names and addresses so we can interview clients ourselves. We can compare the list he gives us with the names we grabbed that night when we had access to his records. If he tries to hide a client from us, we know where to jump.'