I, Claudia by Marilyn Todd

Author:Marilyn Todd [Todd, Marilyn]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781611875669
Google: X7NYPV7qEkwC
Amazon: B00D3QPVQG
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2013-05-24T18:30:00+00:00

XVII

‘Were someone to ask me to write it down, I honestly wouldn’t know where to start,’ Claudia told Drusilla.

She’d barricaded herself in her room, it was the only sure way to get peace and quiet these days.

‘The House of Seferius has turned into Pandora’s Box and had the very gates of hell been thrown wide, I swear Jupiter wouldn’t have more turmoil to contend with than I have.’

‘Ffffrow.’

‘Yes! As for you, you little hussy!’ Claudia’s fingernails raked up and down the cat’s backbone. ‘Don’t think I’m fooled by this extra podge.’ She gave Drusilla’s tummy a gentle prod. ‘I know you’re carrying kittens in there.’

Not one to miss an opportunity, the cat flopped over, squirming from side to side as Claudia’s fingertips tickled her soft cream underbelly. Her front claws began kneading the air. This was the time of day she liked best, when she’d had her supper and the light was failing. Moths would come out, and although she was particularly partial to moths nothing could beat cuddles with Claudia, because once she, Claudia and a jug of wine got together Drusilla knew she was in for a session and a half. Her blue squinty eyes closed in excruciating ecstasy.

‘Broop.’

‘The trouble is, poppet, everything’s spiralling out of hand. The minute I think I’ve got one aspect licked, another horror pops up. Look at this.’ Claudia’s hand reached out for the letter on the table. ‘From Lucan, waiting for me when I got home. Very polite, he is. Requests five hundred sesterces before Wednesday. What am I supposed to do, eh?’

She crumpled the parchment into a ball and lobbed it neatly out of the window.

‘I fobbed him off, of course. Sent him an equally polite letter back, enclosing fifty with the possibility of another fifty next week. I mean, you can’t say fairer than that, can you?’

Sneaking fifty out of the banqueting fund was a doddle.

‘I had such grand plans for raising the whole wretched sum, until Gaius scuppered it.’ Claudia changed hands, her fingers were aching. Drusilla continued to knead bread in the air. ‘It was that line I fed him about the galley captain which inspired me. I thought, why not put the trick into practice? Heaven knows, there are enough gullible bods in this city, I felt sure we could milk a handful without pushing our luck. And what did Gaius do?’

‘Brrrr.’

‘Gaius, the man who plays everything so close to his chest it gives him blisters? He blabs to the entire contingent at that bloody banquet last night how he, Gaius Seferius, wine merchant of repute, had been conned out of three hundred sesterces!’

‘Brup, brup.’

Bloody banquet. A veritable farce if ever there was one. Claudia’s eyes rolled at the memory. Melissa’s suicide left all manner of nightmares in its wake, not least the fact that she’d left no notes of the arrangements she had made. Or, to be more precise, the lack of! Consequently, of the dancers only six Syrian girls bothered to turn up, forcing Claudia to put them through their paces so many times their ankles buckled under the strain.

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