Solid Citizens by David Wishart Read Free Book Online

then?’ I said casually. ‘If you don’t mind my asking?’
    ‘Oh, no, sir, I don’t mind at all. No secret there. They’re real birds of a feather, Caesius and the master. Don’t like to be beat, neither of them, and living practically cheek by jowl’s made it worse. You should see them at the auctions; it’s a tonic, especially when they’re both after the same piece. Spitting cats isn’t in it.’
    ‘That happens often, does it?’ I was pushing, sure, but the old guy didn’t seem to notice. He chuckled and shook his head.
    ‘Gods bless you! It happens all the time! Proper sideshow sometimes – you’d pay good money to see it.’
    ‘Anything, uh, particularly recent?’
    ‘Not particularly so, sir. The last was a couple of months back, at a sale of effects belonging to old Plautius Silvanus. Did you know him at all, yourself? A Roman gentleman. He had the big villa down the Appian Road a few miles outside town.’
    ‘Ah … no. No, I didn’t.’ I’d given up the pretended examination of the horseman. No need for subterfuge here, evidently: if I wanted to shut the old guy up I might be able to do it with a right hook to the chin, but I reckoned that’s what it would take.
    ‘A real aristocrat, Plautius Silvanus – well, you can tell by the name, can’t you – but not stuck-up for all that. Lovely man when he was alive, very courteous and soft-spoken. He’d been a governor out east somewhere, Asia or such, brought some pieces back with him. When he died the heir sold up, lock, stock and barrel. There was a bronze figurine of a runner, beautiful thing, over two and a half centuries old, and perfect as the day it was made. You should’ve seen the detail, sir, every fingernail and curl clear as clear. The master’d set his heart on it, so along we went.’ He chuckled. ‘Only when the auction came up it wasn’t there, was it, because old Caesius’d slipped in early and bought it off the heir direct for cash money down.’
    ‘Is that right, now?’
    ‘He saved the man the auctioneer’s fee, you see, and that wouldn’t’ve been nothing, so he wasn’t crying. The master was livid, sir, simply livid. Cursed Caesius root and branch all the way home, and threatened he’d do I don’t know what to him.’ He was still chuckling and shaking his head. ‘I laughed about it for days. Not in the master’s presence, mind, that wouldn’t’ve been right, and I didn’t mean anything by it. Present, was it, sir?’
    I blinked. ‘What? Oh, the plaque. Yeah. For my stepfather. A birthday present.’
    ‘I hope he likes it, then. And if he’s in the neighbourhood perhaps you’ll suggest he steps in and has a look round for himself. No obligation to buy, none at all. We’re always open, I don’t see many people as a rule, and I enjoy a bit of a chat.’
    So much was obvious, given that the chat all went the one way; still, I wasn’t complaining, because it had added another name to my list. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal. See you around.’
    ‘Give Quintus Caesius my regards, sir, when next you talk to him. I’ve got every respect for the gentleman, professionally, whatever the master may think of him. It’s nothing personal, on my side.’
    ‘I’ll do that, too,’ I said. ‘If I see him again.’
    I left.
    The wine shop was quietly busy. I nodded to the other barflies, parked myself on a stool at the counter, and ordered a cup of Alban. Just a cup: if you’re going to a funeral, even as a bystander, it’s not quite the done thing to turn up smashed. Still, because the owner knew his wine, we at least had quality here: the Alban was pretty good – not the best stuff, of course, from one of the top vineyards; that all goes to well-heeled buyers in Rome, and it’d be far too pricey even in small amounts for the local punters – but a decent-enough
deuxième cru
which some of my more weak-chinned acquaintances would say amused by its brash pushiness.
    ‘You want