The worst thing I've seen is feeding time at Crocodilopolis. The poor chief croc there is supposed to be a god. You bring him hampers of stuff- bread and cakes, and wine to wash it down. He waddles out all covered with perfumes and jewellery, though looking apprehensive, if you ask me. The keepers wrench his jaws apart and force in the goodies – and sometimes he has hardly gobbled up one load when a new crowd arrive and bring him more to gorge on. When I saw him, he was so fat, he could hardly move. Can't say the priests were exactly slender either!"

"Of course they have their teeth drawn. declared Marinus.

"Do you mean the priests?" Looking over from where she sat with Helvia, Helena found her voice, stopping the flow of stories with this deadpan jest. "Marcus, did Indus and Marinus have any intimate conversations with Statianus? Were they able to entice anything out of him?"

"Sadly, not much there to entice," Marinus apologised, giving in and returning to our real subject. "Nice boy – but when the brains and spirit were handed out in that family, they must have passed him by."

"Sad for Valeria?" Helena asked Helvia.

"No, they were well matched, in my opinion. Valeria was a sweet little thing, but scatty."

"A bit lacking in judgement?"

"Utterly. She was fresh from the nursery, Helena. I don't think her mother can ever have taken her on so much as a morning drive to meet a friend and drink mint tea."

"Her parents were dead. She had a guardian, Helvia, but you know how that works – so often a formality. I suspect she was brought up solely by slaves and perhaps freedwomen."

Helvia sighed. "With hindsight, I feel dreadful that I never took her under my wing." More tartly, she added, "Well, she would not have wanted me. In her eyes she was a married woman, travelling with her husband; she knew nothing, but thought she knew everything."

"Was she rude to you? Not give you the respect due a widow?"

"A little dismissive.

"She was rude to you, Helvia!" Indus spelled it out. "She was rude, at one time or another, to most people."

"But probably had no idea she was doing it," Marinus defended Valeria. The scatty girl must have been his type, I reckoned. Was it significant? "She was outspoken even to her husband. She had a sharp tongue. If her killer propositioned her, she would have straightaway let rip with a riposte."

"Perhaps that helped madden him?" I suggested.

"She could be a superior little madam," Indus agreed. "What was she? Nineteen, with no background and no real money. Neither of them had any clout. As newly-weds, they attracted a lot of attention; we made a fuss of them. They could have sat back and enjoyed it, and had a really good time. Instead they rubbed people up the wrong way; they insulted the guides, irritated us, and were fractious with each other. It was nothing too much, but just what you don't want when you are on the road in uncomfortable conditions."

"So," I said, "they had alienated people. When the girl first went missing, Statianus had to look for her himself; then when he was accused of her murder…?"

"Oh that was when we rallied. It was not his fault. That idiotic magistrate needed a kick up the posterior."

"So do you people know where Statianus has gone now?" Helena asked them, still hoping for news of her brother too. But they all shook their heads.

We seemed to have extracted as much as they could tell us, so we enquired about the two men themselves. Marinus owned up immediately that he was a widower, on the lookout for a new wife. We joked that since Helvia was in the same position, many would think that a neat solution.

"Oh Marinus is out of the question. He talks far too much!" Despite her wispy hair and uncontrolled drapery, Helvia was absolutely blunt.

"I do," Marinus admitted without rancour. "And / am hoping for a ladyfriend who owns half of Campania!" Helvia cast her eyes down, as if defeated.

"What about you, Indus?" Helena slipped in. "Are you on the lookout for a wealthy new wife, or looking over your shoulder for some over-officious auditor?" She made it humorous. Indus took it that way – apparently.

"Oh I like to be a man of mystery, dear lady."

"We all think he is a runaway bigamist!" giggled Helvia. So the rumours about Indus were openly mentioned – and he liked to let those rumours hover.

"You know the old maxim. never confess – and you'll never regret."

"Deny and you'll get a black eye!" I retaliated.

After a few moments' silence, Helena sat up slightly. "Statianus and Aelianus are missing; so is someone else," she said. "We were told you had a third man travelling by himself- whom nobody has mentioned at all. Wasn't there a Turcianus Opimus in your group? Our information is that he says this is "his last chance to see the world."

The silence lingered.

"Has nobody told you?" Helvia seemed wobbly.

The two men glanced at each other. It was rather ominous. Indus puffed out his cheeks, blew air awkwardly, then said nothing. Helvia by now was twisting her transparent stole between both hands, apparently distressed. We looked to Marinus, who always had too much to say, and screwed out of him the fatal words. Turcianus has died."

Helena drew herself up, then slowly let out a breath. "I hope," she said softly, "you are not going to tell us there was anything unnatural about his death?"

"Oh no," Helvia assured her, a little giddily. "We just are – well, I can see that news would have been rather a shock, after you came here to investigate Valeria. It's just that for all of us – well, of course, we really hardly knew the man.

"He was ill." I made it a statement.

Helvia calmed down. "Well, yes he was. Very seriously, it turned out. But none of us had realised."

Helena was still wary, thinking that this might turn out to be yet another untoward death. "Was it true then. when he said he was travelling while he could – he knew that he had very little time left?"

"Apparently so," Marinus replied. "Without being cynical – " Which we gathered he always was. "I doubt whether Phineus would have accepted Opimus on the tour, had he been aware of the true situation."

"So much trouble…" Helena responded. "Having to repatriate the ashes. So bad for his reputation, sending clients home in funeral urns."

"The rate this tour is going," Marinus quipped, "Phineus will end up taking more urns back than people!"

"Oh Marinus!" Helvia reproved him. She turned to Helena and confided the story. "Opimus seemed such a nice man. But he was very ill, we discovered, and he badly wanted to go to Epidaurus – where the Temple of Aesculapius is, you know."

"I didn't know Epidaurus was on your itinerary," I said.

"No, it wasn't originally. But we are doing Tracks and Temples, after all, and Epidaurus has a very famous temple with a fascinating history. In fact there is even a stadium."

"And a good theatre?"

"An astonishing theatre. When we found out how Opimus was

suffering, we all took a vote. Most of us were happy to go to the medical sanctuary and let him seize his chance for a cure."

"How did Phineus take this vote for a detour?" I asked. Marinus and Indus laughed heartily. "I see! Still, you are the clients, so you persuaded him."

"It was no loss to bloody Phineus!" Marinus said crisply. "We pay for it if we want a new itinerary."

"And this was after Olympia?"

"Yes," said Helvia. "We were all feeling shaken by Valeria's death, and perhaps a little kinder towards our fellow humans. When Opimus revealed how ill he was, we all felt it very deeply. You know, I think the shock of what happened to Valeria contributed to his decline; while we were at Olympia he deteriorated rapidly."