The Iron Hand of Mars: A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery by Lindsey Davis

Author:Lindsey Davis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Private investigators, Historical, Marcus Didius (Fictitious character), Mystery & Detective, Fiction, Rome, Mystery fiction, 69-79, Historical fiction, Private investigators - Rome, Rome - History - Vespasian, Falco
ISBN: 9780312647292
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-06-21T01:31:00+00:00

XXXIII

I took Helena Justina to see the Jupiter Column so that I could talk to her in privacy. At least, that was my excuse.

We walked solemnly round, pretending to admire the four-sided obelisk which had been set up by two ingratiating financiers on behalf of the local community. It was a decent enough monument, if you like salutations to Nero. It pictured the usual plaques of Olympian deities: Romulus and Remus showing that having a peculiar mother need not hold a man back; Hercules doing his demigodly stuff with his usual hairy panache; and Castor and Pollux watering their horses, one each side of the column as if they were not on speaking terms. Up aloft stood a huge bronze of Jupiter Best and Greatest, all beard and big sandals, and wielding an extremely snappy thunderbolt that would be a hit at any fashionable soir The location of this edifice was too public for me to grab Helena in a clinch, though she knew that had been in my mind. I thought she looked disappointed. Since it was at least three hours since I had last touched her, I was too.

'I'll have to row you down the river with a picnic,' I murmured.

'Juno! Is that safe?'

'All right, I admit Germany isn't the place to come to at the moment if you fancy a quiet autumn cruise.'

'But you are going downriver, aren't you?' She asked it in an intensely level voice, which I recognised as anxiety.

'Looks as if I shall have to, my love.' She was upset. I hated that.

I had put Helena in a quandary. She never tried to dissuade me from work. For one thing, she was keen for me to earn enough money to buy myself into the middle rank so that we could be married without a scandal. To achieve that I needed four hundred thousand sesterces - an outrageous sum for a dusty lad from the Aventine. The kind of cash I could earn only by doing something illegal (which, of course, I could never contemplate) or something dangerous.

'Anyway,' she said brightly, 'you came out here on political business, but you seem to have stumbled into a straightforward ceramics war.'

'It looks like that.'

Helena laughed. 'When you agree so meekly I usually discover you mean the opposite.'

'True. I think the ceramics troubles are an incidental problem.' However, if I could help out the potters while achieving my own ends, I would. 'These potters have found themselves facing the usual administrative mess. The tendering process has been bungled by an idiot who is paid enough by the state to know better. It goes on everywhere. To have Florius Gracilis involved in that, and also poking his nose into what Vespasian sent me out here to negotiate with Civilis, is just my hard luck.'

But the last thing I wanted if I was going into a danger area was some senatorial buffoon who had shown himself unfit to handle even a routine kitchenware contract travelling the same route. Especially if,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.