Free Murder in the Forum by Rosemary Rowe Page A

Perhaps he has hidden downstairs, in the cellar or one of the storerooms. If he sees the hand of the dead in this, he must fear for his own safety. It was Zetso who staked out the corpse.’
    Marcus gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Perhaps. See if you can find him, Libertus. He can take us out tomorrow to find the herald in that comfortable carriage of his.’
    ‘Us’, I noticed. It seemed my customers would have to wait another day. ‘Yes, Excellence,’ I said humbly, and seizing a smoky taper in a holder I set off to look for Zetso.
    The house was built on a slight rise, so there was an area below the rooms where we had been dining. It seemed the appropriate place to start.
    Zetso was not in the kitchens, nor in the cellars, nor in the servants’ room under the stairs. He was not in the latrine, although I surprised one of the erstwhile guests, a florid trader who was enthroned there, suspended over the drain with his sponge-stick in his hand. Zetso was not in the narrow store cupboards leading off the passage and filled with candles, wood and grain. In the last cupboard I opened, however, I did find something. One of Gaius’s dogs.
    It was lying quietly on the floor on a sort of rug, and it did not even lift its head as I approached. I might have shut the door and tiptoed away, but something made me lift my taper nearer.
    No, I was not mistaken. It was not a rug, it was a plaid cloak, of the kind that the pretended Egobarbus had been wearing earlier. In fact, I was prepared to wager it was the same cloak. When I came to consider it, I had not seen Egobarbus since the dramatic end of the entertainments. I bent closer for a moment and then shut the cupboard door and ran as quickly as I could up the dim and unlit stairs.
    I went to the lobby and exchanged a few words with the doorman, and then I returned to Marcus.
    ‘Excellence?’
    Marcus was talking to one of the
aediles
, the market police, but he turned impatiently at my approach. ‘Libertus?’ He did not care to be interrupted.
    I took a deep breath. ‘Forgive me, Excellence, but I think you must come quickly. I have not found Zetso, but there is something downstairs in a cupboard which I think you should see.’

Chapter Seven
    ‘I hope,’ Marcus said sternly as he followed me reluctantly down the short staircase, ‘that this is as important as you say.’ He was not dependent on my poor smoky taper, a slave with a fine oil-lamp was lighting his way, but he walked gingerly and with distaste, as though subterranean perambulations through the lower regions were not at all to his taste.
    He had a point. The latrine in a town dwelling is never especially sweet-smelling, despite being over running water, but the odour from this one seemed to permeate the whole area. A man like Marcus, I realised, would probably not even demean himself by visiting the ablutions in a house like this: if he were staying here he would expect to be provided with servants, washing water and chamber pots.
    ‘See for yourself, Excellence,’ I said, opening the store cupboard with a flourish. In the better illumination the contents were clearer than before.
    Marcus, who is not a lover of bouncy dogs, backed away hastily and motioned for the door to be shut before the dog awoke. All the same he had noticed the blanket. ‘That cloak! It is the one which that Egobarbus fellow was wearing. Or one very like it. What is it doing here in the store cupboard?’
    ‘I suppose it is just possible, Excellence, that either Gaius or Felix bought a length of the same cloth. Unfortunately we can hardly ask either of them since Felix is dead and Gaius is occupied in mourning him. Although perhaps the house-slaves would know.’
    Marcus turned to the slave who was carrying the lamp. ‘Well? You work in this house, don’t you? Did Gaius, or Felix, purchase such a thing?’
    The lad gulped and shook his head. When he spoke his voice was trembling with nervousness. ‘Not that I know of, Excellence. I