Free Illegally Dead by David Wishart Page A

there’s the business of that attack in the street.’
    ‘The attacker died, didn’t he?’
    ‘Yeah, I know, but –’ I frowned. ‘Oh, hell, look, lady, all I’m saying is at present there’re plenty of questions around with no answers. Let’s not get bogged down in useless theorising, okay?’
    Perilla smiled and ducked her head. ‘Very well,’ she said.
    ‘Where’s the Princess, by the way?’
    ‘Out with Placida. And Clarus, of course. They said they’d be back for lunch.’
    ‘Fine.’ We’d still got Placida, the hound from hell. Her erstwhile owner, Sestia Calvina, had decided she couldn’t possibly deprive us of the brute’s company and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so she’d kept the puppies when they came and let us have the original. Placida had joined the Marilla Menagerie shortly afterwards after she’d blotted her copybook irrevocably by nailing next door’s cat and presenting it to its hysterical owner, who’d watched the whole gory business from the safety of her portico. Relations with the Petillius household were consequently at an all-time low and likely to stay that way until hell froze.
    ‘That is,’ Perilla said, ‘if there is any lunch.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘We seem to be short one chef. Meton’s disappeared.’
    I sat up. ‘What?’
    ‘I went along to the kitchen about an hour ago to talk to him about the dinner menu. The skivvy said he’d gone off after breakfast and hadn’t been seen since.’
    ‘Gone off where?’
    ‘He didn’t say. Meton didn’t, I mean. The skivvy assumed he’d gone into town for the shopping, but he’s usually back long before this.’
    Yeah: Castrimoenium isn’t Rome, and although Meton always liked to do his own shopping even he could get round all the places on offer in an hour. Besides, I didn’t trust that bugger. This needed investigating.
    ‘Bathyllus!’ I yelled.
    He shimmered out through the portico. ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘You know where Meton is?’
    ‘No, sir.’ A sniff. Hell; at this particular point in the see-sawing relationship between our ultraconventional major-domo and our anarchistic chef we’d obviously hit a trough. What had caused it this time I didn’t know - the last occasion had been a five-day-old fish nailed to the underside of a stool in the little guy’s pantry as a jolly Winter Festival jape - but the result was that yet again they were Seriously Not Speaking. ‘Not in the kitchen, as far as I’m aware, but that is all the help I can give you.’
    Shit. ‘So what happens about lunch?’
    ‘No doubt the kitchen staff will rise to the occasion, sir. There is the remains of the pork from yesterday, and I’m sure the boy can heat up the leftover bean stew without burning it too badly.’
    Oh, great. ‘Listen, sunshine,’ I said. ‘When that bastard does deign to reappear you tell him I want to see him forthwith. Okay? First hand, no delegating, no little notes left on the kitchen table, all right?’
    Another sniff. ‘If you insist, sir.’
    ‘I do.’ Bloody hell! He’d probably use sign language. Still, that was his problem, and with Meton you didn’t take chances. Give him an inch and he’d take the whole fucking Nilometer, then flog it to a pal in the trade down the Subura. I hadn’t forgotten that sheep, either.
    ‘Ah, here they are now,’ Perilla said.
    ‘Who’s th –?’
    – which was as far as I got before I was hit in the chest by a ballistic Gallic boarhound.
    ‘Oh, hello, Corvinus, you’re back,’ Marilla said, appearing round the corner with Clarus in tow. ‘Down, Placida. Behave yourself.’
    I fended the brute off while Clarus ran over and heaved back on her collar. Bathyllus had shot off like he was greased: Bathyllus and dogs don’t mix, except on the most basic level. Where Placida’s concerned I use the term ‘dog’ loosely, mind.
    ‘Did you have a nice walk?’ Perilla asked.
    ‘Just the one bit of trouble with a pile of horse dung,’ Clarus said.