I, Claudia Read Free Page B

herself to raisins. ‘What’s this got to do with my husband and myself?’
    Orbilio leaned back to rest his spine against the bark of the tree. ‘Now who said this has anything to do with Gaius ?’
    Had the sun gone in? It seemed rather chilly all of a sudden.
    ‘Come to the point, Orbilio.’
    He fished in his pouch and came out with a torn scrap of apple-green cotton. ‘This is the point,’ he said quietly. ‘It was found on the door of the room where poor old Crassus was killed. Looks like you caught it in your hurry to leave.’
    Claudia took the proffered scrap. ‘It’s not mine,’ she said, tossing it over her shoulder where it landed to adorn a rosemary bush.
    ‘Oh, but it is.’
    ‘Rubbish. I wouldn’t be seen dead in that colour.’
    ‘I rather thought it would suit you,’ Orbilio replied, smoothly retrieving his evidence. ‘It would complement the tints in your hair.’
    Claudia narrowed her eyes. ‘Then perhaps I should order some,’ she said sharply.
    Orbilio smiled. ‘But you already have, remember? I know, because I spent all yesterday traipsing round mercer after mercer to see who sold this particular cotton in this particular colour and Gratidius, now—Gratidius remembers quite clearly it was the wife of Gaius Seferius who was so taken by the subtlety of the shade.’
    ‘Gratidius is old and he’s a fool with it. I’ll have you know, I’m not in the habit of visiting malodorous slums, Marcus Orbilio—’
    ‘Then you won’t mind if I have a look around, will you?’
    Claudia jumped to her feet. ‘Yes, I bloody well would! How dare you come in here, you jumped-up little mongrel, and presume to search my house!’
    Orbilio studied his thumbnail. ‘Would you prefer someone with higher status?’ he asked indifferently. ‘Someone, say, like Callisunus, who would bring his soldiers with him?’
    ‘That sounds suspiciously like blackmail, Orbilio, and I don’t like blackmailers.’
    Orbilio sighed. ‘Sit down, Claudia, and try to remember I’m investigating the brutal murders of four of our most prominent citizens. Just to refresh your memory, that’s one prefect, one aedile, one retired senator and a jurist.’
    ‘Which you assume gives you the right to trample over decent folk in the process.’
    ‘For pity’s sake, woman! I’m busting my baldrics in the hope of reaching this lunatic before another unfortunate sod has his eyes gouged out and if that offends your sweet sensibilities, I couldn’t give a stuff!’
    Realizing one of the slaves might be watching, Claudia seated herself with a show of indifference and nibbled an olive. He was whistling in the dark, she decided. He couldn’t prove she’d bought the fabric, and besides, if push came to shove, she could always slip Gratidius’s assistant a spot of silver—between them, they could manage to persuade the old mercer his memory was at fault here and she’d done nothing more than simply admire the colour.
    No. What really irritated her was the fact that she’d slipped up. By heaven, she’d chop that wretched Melissa into pieces for not checking the stola was intact!
    ‘I’ll be discreet,’ he added, reaching up and plucking a sour apple.
    ‘Young man,’ she said. It sounded so pompous when he was virtually the same age as herself. ‘There’s no way in the world I’m having your greasy little fingers poking around in my underwear and that’s final.’
    ‘Would you mind, then, if I requested your husband’s permission?’
    He was up to something, the bastard. She could smell it. He knew damn well she didn’t want Gaius involved.
    ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Junius!’
    A muscular young slave appeared as if by magic.
    ‘Junius, fetch my husband, will you?’
    ‘I’m sorry, madam, but the master’s already left for the baths.’
    She shot Orbilio a glance. ‘How long ago?’
    ‘About an hour,’ the boy replied.
    Curiously enough, it was shortly after that when Marcus Cornelius Orbilio came to