Finished Business by David Wishart Read Free Book Online Page B

door slave, and after half an hour or so spent kicking my heels in the vestibule, I was shown into the atrium, where the lady herself was waiting to grant me an audience.
    Cornelia Sullana was comfortably into her fifties and dolled up like a woman twenty years younger. Not that it had much effect on her basic appearance, mind: she was bony and angularly ugly, with an expression on her sharp-featured face like she’d just swallowed a pint of neat vinegar. An image of a discontented parrot in moult eyeing up a particularly recalcitrant nut came to mind. I could see, given their avian similarities, where Surdinus Junior had got his looks from.
    ‘Valerius Corvinus,’ she said. ‘I assume, from the communi-cation I received from Naevia Postuma, that you are here in connection with the death of my former husband.’
    ‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right,’ I said. I glanced at the couch opposite her – she was sitting on a chair – but if I was expecting an invitation to use it, I didn’t get one.
    ‘Then I’m not sure that I can help you in any way. Nor am I aware of any need or reason to do so, since the death was a complete accident.’
    ‘It was no accident,’ I said. ‘Naevius Surdinus was murdered.’
    ‘So Postuma claims, of course, but that is complete nonsense. The tower was unsafe. Everyone told him so, I told him myself, but Lucius never did listen to reason. The silly man deserved all he got, and there’s an end of it.’
    ‘He was murdered, Cornelia Sullana,’ I repeated. ‘I checked for myself. The whole thing was deliberate, and it was planned in advance. Someone climbed to the top, pried the stone that killed him loose from the parapet above the entrance, waited until he was directly below and pushed it free.’
    She stared at me. ‘You’re sure about this?’
    ‘Absolutely certain. The tool the killer used left marks in the cement, and there was cement dust on the plank below where the stone had been.’
    ‘But that’s …’ She frowned. ‘Who on earth would want to kill Lucius?’
    ‘Yeah, well,’ I said, ‘that’s the question I was hoping you might help me with.’
    ‘Frankly, I can’t see anyone bothering.’
    Ouch. She meant it, too. How many years had they been married? It had to be thirty-five, at least, given her age and the age of Surdinus Junior. ‘As far as the actual killer is concerned,’ I said, ‘one of the garden slaves saw a freedman moving through the grounds at about the time when your husband—’
    ‘Ex-husband.’
    ‘When your ex-husband died. Shortish, probably in his forties, with a distinctive mark on his cheek. A large scar or a birthmark. Any bells?’
    ‘No. Certainly he’s not anyone I recognize. Oh, you might as well sit down, Valerius Corvinus. I suspect this is going to take rather longer than I anticipated.’
    I sat. ‘Did your … Did Naevius Surdinus have any enemies?’ I asked. ‘Anyone who’d want him dead?’
    ‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘I told you. Lucius wasn’t effective enough to make enemies, as any decent man would in the normal course of events. All he cared about was his silly philosophical studies.’
    ‘I know he wasn’t involved in politics, but …’
    ‘Certainly he was not.’ Clearly, from her tone, this was a sore point, which was understandable: not to be involved in politics, for a woman with the background of Cornelia Sullana, was unthinkable. ‘Not since his suffect consulship ten years ago. And the trouble I went to, the strings I pulled, to get him that and properly on the ladder you would not
believe
! Wasted, completely wasted, all because that fool Bassus was forced to kill himself.’ So, Leonidas had been right about that. ‘Bassus may have been guilty of treason, Corvinus, and so justly condemned, or he may not; the truth of the matter is immaterial. These things happen, one shrugs them off and forgets. I told Lucius as much at the time, but as I said, he never did listen to reason. A most